A Special Society of Hubristic Oligarchs and Leaders of Extraordinary Sagacity - aka ASSHOLES...

spot on.

Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic:

You first became aware of them when you were in grade school—self-appointed leaders, directors of taste and trend, unchallengeable because their mockery and physical abuse could make life quite uncomfortable—the in-group. As you got older, you discovered there was always an in-group. An in-group runs the country and indeed, the world. Just like grade school, they flaunt their exalted status and make life miserable for outsiders. SLL hereby christens this group: A Special Society of Hubristic Oligarchs and Leaders of Extraordinary Sagacity. For convenience, we’ll refer to both the society and its members by the acronym ASSHOLES.

The caveman who bludgeoned other cave people until they made him king, hailed him as a god, and were forced to let him and his crew run things, and later, the pharaohs, emperors, kings, queens, tzars, kaisers, fuehrers, dear leaders, dictators, etc. who did essentially the same things, are testament that notwithstanding the occasional setback—revolution, coups, foreign conquest—ASSHOLES have dominated and subjugated throughout history. There have been rare and fleeting times when ASSHOLES have left their serfs alone, but anyone who lived during those periods should have counted themselves lucky. The present age is certainly not one of them.

No particular virtue is required for membership in ASSHOLES; many members have been virtually virtueless. One sociopathic character trait is necessary: a neurotic compulsion to tell others what to do and a willingness to use any means available to enforce compliance. An exercise in proctology—studying ASSHOLES—is as distasteful as it sounds, but an examination of their last one hundred years or so is instructive.

Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, JP Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller, et. al., were the ASSHOLES of their day, and two “innovations” they thought Americans ought to have “for their own good” (a favorite phrase of ASSHOLES), were a central bank and an income tax. Funny money and government theft weren’t really new ideas, but in 1913, America got the Federal Reserve and the income tax. Not to worry, the ASSHOLES assured, “elastic money” would prevent panics and the income tax would only be exacted in almost imperceptible levies on the fattest of the fat cats.

One year later, European ASSHOLES started a glorious little war to further their convoluted geopolitical interests and aspirations. Four years later Europe lay in ruins with 17 million dead and another 20 million wounded. Empires were in tatters and a war-weakened Russian government had succumbed to Bolshevik ASSHOLES. Just to prove that war is the gift that keeps on giving, a war-spread Spanish Influenza pandemic killed another 50 to 100 million people. Just to prove that ASSHOLES’ work is never done, the winners imposed on the losers terms so onerous they almost guaranteed another war.  READ THE REST