And it is the job of the oligarchs to use their resources (e.g. think tanks, regulatory capture, political parties, media empires, etc) to convince the rest that it's "right vs left".
A while ago I listened to a radio interview with an author whose thesis was that modern philanthropists allow change only in a way that doesn’t threaten their own wealth and power. This definitely rings true.
“The only way to overcome the oligarchy and Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy is for the rest of us to join together and win America back.
That means creating a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans who will fight for democracy and oppose oligarchy.
White, black and Latino; union and non-union; evangelical and secular; immigrant and native-born – all focused on ending big money in politics, stopping corporate welfare and crony capitalism, busting up monopolies and stopping voter suppression.”
Edit-the point is to see beyond that possible connection and to what really needs to happen: the voters demanding and reinforcing their political powers. Practically, I think this asks people to not become jaded, “tune out”, and accept what’s going on as too big and beyond your influence.
Engage-read the news, do all the research you can muster on what politicians are doing, and come up with your own opinion. Then do your civic duties to reinforce your opinions.
Let's assume (without loss of generality) that your $400k income is from a salaried job at some company. Suppose that there is an NGO fighting to abolish said company on moral grounds. Would you be willing to donate your money to that organization?
Which, even if that NGO succeeded, wouldn't undermine the position in society. If Facebook were dismantled, the employees just switch to Google, Amazon & Co.
What this is more broadly is the Overton Window. There is "acceptable" topics that can be broached.
As for Right versus Left, well that is 1 dimension politically. There is for example authoritarian / libertarian scale. So many political tests have the "Quad" or "Compass". Most people normally score around the middle.
However there are 4 dimensional tests such as this.
I have no idea how accurate these are, or whether they are biased. But there is certainly much more than left vs right.
> A while ago I listened to a radio interview with an author whose thesis was that modern philanthropists allow change only in a way that doesn’t threaten their own wealth and power. This definitely rings true.
Well what you are talking about is the idea of hyper-normalisation. The idea is that you finance both sides e.g. pro fascist, anti-fascist etc. This creates a state of confusion where people don't really know what is going on and become apathetic to it.
Adam Curtis made a documentary about it, however here is a snippet from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=31&v=wcy8uLjRHPM
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". If you didn't know the quote then it might sound like a good description of a modern welfare state, so only people with strongly libertarian views would reject it. However most people who recognise it as a quote from Marx will reject it because they are not Marxists.
"It is more important to have a balanced budget than to look after everyone" (quote from memory). False dichotomy: if a country fails to have a balanced budget over the long term then it won't be able to look after anyone.
> We should open our borders to immigration.
This would be a definite "No" to me, but I still answered with "Weakly agree", because otherwise it puts me in the strong-borders faction, which I definitely don't belong into. I don't want open borders right now, but I want the world to evolve into a state where we can have open borders 50 years from now.
(If you consider that outlook crazy, remember that it took Europe 50 years to get from WW2 to open borders under the Schengen treaty.)
Switzerland for example was a Schengen signatory. Switzerland has never allowed open immigration, work permits, or welfare benefits for people entering under Schengen terms.
So while I think you give a good example of what can happen in 50 years, I think it's very important to draw a distinction between Schengen-like agreements and what people commonly understand from the closed/open border debate.
(Not that the Left has a monopoly on conspiracy theories of course, but it should be called out whenever it appears).