Date: Wednesday, 29 July 2026
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/how-billionaires-control-the-government
https://theduran.com/how-billionaires-control-the-government-by-controlling-the-public/
How Billionaires Control the Government by Controlling the Public
28 July 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
A billionaire owns at least a thousand million dollars, and that’s far more than is needed in order to fund the careers of (by advertising, and hiring of campaign aides, for) politicians to win office on the basis of lies — public promises that are no more credit-worthy than are forged currencies or checks. By contrast, the private promises to those megadonors must be fulfilled, because once having won office this way, a politician is forever afterward dependent upon them, not only by having been bought, but also by those megadonors total knowledge of the dirt in their personal background that could destroy them and even blackball them into ignominy. Thus, in a capitalist society, money is power; and, so, in a capitalist electoral ‘democracy’, the billionaires control the Government, and the public are mere workers and consumers for their corporations, and their votes are thus always mere choices between the candidates of Democratic Party billionaires and of Republican Party billionaires — but ONLY by billionaires. The differences between the Parties are thus superficial, and the real political war is the class war (billionaires versus the public); and the money (the billionaires) not the votes (voters) rule in such a country; it is, in reality, an aristocracy, no authentic democracy, at all. It’s ruled by corruption — from the top on down. THAT is the reality. Especially the MAGA 35% of the remaining U.S. public who still approve of Trump are totally faith-based blinded to reality, but even the astronomically high 88% net favorability rating (favorable% minus unfavorable%) by Democratic voters regarding Obama — the very person who intentionally started the war in Ukraine in February 2014 (Trump didn’t do that, nor did Biden — nor did Putin, whom the U.S. imperial propaganda-factory lies to allege did) shows that those voters are at least as oblivious to reality as Republican voters are. You can’t have a democracy that way — by lies and liars.
The idea about which there is virtual unanimity amongst the billionaires in such countries, is that the U.S. empire must be expanded so that it will control all other countries (and this ideal of an all-inclusive U.S. empire is called “neoconservatism” — all billionaires throughout the U.S. empire either actively or quietly are neocons — not a one of them is against neoconservatism). Consequently, the most highly regarded recent U.S. President, Barack Obama (backed, of course, by the Democratic Party’s billionaires) started the war in Ukraine in February 2014 by a brutal bloody Ukrainian coup that his Administration hid behind crowds of U.S.-propaganda-raised anti-Government demonstrations in Kiev to overthrow the existing democratically elected internationally neutralist Government, and Obama’s team promptly installed rabidly anti-Russian leaders who immediately targeted supporters of the prior Government and even directly bombed the regions of Ukraine that had voted more than 75% for it — the goal being to get those voters to flee into Russia so that they’d no longer be around to vote for leaders of Ukraine (such as the prior Government) that favored Ukraine’s being neutralist instead of for Ukraine to apply for membership in the U.S. regime’s control-organizations over Europe, NATO and the EU.
We hear and read from all of the billionaires’ media throughout the U.S. empire, that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 started the war there, but that is a lie and brutal rape of the minds of their public in order to foment popular hatred against Russia’s Government for its doing what it has to be doing in order to prevent for Russians now the same thing that America’s Government in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis had to prevent the Soviet Union from doing to Americans, namely placing their nuclear missiles dangerously close to the nation’s central command — Cuba in 1962 against Washington DC, and now Ukraine since 2014 against The Kremlin. If JFK hadn’t gotten the Soviet Government to back off in 1962, then America would have invaded and taken control over Cuba; and if Putin won’t get the U.S. Government to back off now, then Russia will have to take control over all of Ukraine — and now Putin has said that Russia will have to do this. So, all that propaganda from the U.S. empire, that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was “unprovoked” is proof that the U.S. imperial regime and its media lie through their teeth. The enemy throughout the U.S. empire is the U.S. regime itself and its local stooge-leaders throughout its colonies.
Right now, U.S. President Trump, and his colonial stooge-leaders, are pumping the ‘necessity’ to double ‘defense’ spending, in order to keep America’s most profitable industry-segment, ‘Defense’ and High Tech, continuing to BE the most profitable.
Here’s a typical example of how the billionaires’ ‘news’ media distort their public’s view of reality:
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4 March 2022
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“Russia's GDP to fall 15% this year on Ukraine-linked sanctions -IIF”
10 March 2022
NEW YORK, March 10 (Reuters) - Russia's economy will contract in 2022 by some 15% due to the severity of sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine, and the rise in commodity prices will be both a tail- and a headwind across emerging markets, according to an analysis from the Institute of International Finance.
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https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=RU
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https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=US
From 2021 to 2025, America’s GDP growth grew 35%, while Russia’s grew 40%.
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How much of the U.S. public know, or have been provided any opportunity to learn, these crucial facts, against the U.S. empire’s lies?
The regime’s ‘news’ media’s predictive performances aren’t much better than the controlling billionaires’ politicians promise-performances. And neither those ‘news’ media nor those politicians tell the public afterward that what they had said turned out to have been false. Public falsehoods are how the billionaires control the public, and the empire’s media then intentionally hide the ugly reality from the public. It’s not done “by accident.” This is constantly engineered deception of the public.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
