Jeffrey Winters’ “The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy” is about much more than our own American democracy, right now, in our own time. Whether in imperial Rome, classical China, feudal Europe or, yes, even in today’s United States, the wealthy few have wielded political power throughout human history.
(I would guess that the caveman who invented, created and owned his clan’s first spear was also their lead hunter.)
So, just how did oligarchs come to dominate democracy in our country, “the home of the free and the brave,” founded on principles of “liberty and justice for all”? Winters adroitly leads the reader through the historical record, focusing especially on the 1787 Constitutional Congress, where interclass frictions arose and our privileged founders agonized over how to combine democracy with oligarchy and yet preserve both (cf. Madison in the Federalist Papers).
Winters coins a new term, “participatory inequality,” for this unique and seemingly contradictory combination. We vote, yes, but for whom or sometimes even for which issues is often pre-determined by the influential monied class.
But wait! Once the political structures were established to preserve the power of the oligarchs, that wasn’t enough for these guys. More had to be done to preserve the actual wealth underpinning the oligarch’s political power. Indeed, more was done to do just that, as Winters outlines in great detail.
Now, especially with the rise of social media, people are noticing the wealth disparities, the power plays and the overall injustice of the inequalities, and they are angry, from the MAGA folks on the right of the political spectrum to the progressive social democrats on the left. So, now, here we are.
However, the situation is not as dire as you might think. Winters closes with his optimistic yet practical proposals for change to rebalance the power relationship in favor of the many. His ideas can’t be actualized easily or quickly, but then, as Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Winter’s book is an important contribution to understanding our current world.
Kathleen Lance is a retired librarian, IT program manager, and book reviewer in Denver.
The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy
Author: Jeffrey Winters
Publisher: Scribner
Pages: 384
Score: 4 stars (out of 4)
