The Broligarchs
The uber rich are so different from the rest of us, they might just as well be from Mars.
The New Oligarchs—primarily techies, with a few fossil fuel billionaires thrown in— are rich beyond the dreams of avarice. They are richer than anyone in the history of the world. They are so different from you and me, they might as well be, as the author Michael Wolff says, Martians.
We can also call them the “Broligarchs.” If there is one consistent thing about them, it is that as far as they are concerned, society’s rules and laws do not apply to them. When you have a fleet of transoceanic aircraft, or a $300 million super yacht, you are a citizen of the Broligarchy, not any individual country. Your superficial, public allegiance, may be to your country of citizenship, but in truth, you’re loyalty is to your money and power. In fact, after a certain dollar amount, the money becomes meaningless. At that point, it’s only the power that matters.
Are most people aware of, or even paying attention to the wholesale slaughter of so many agencies? Pew Research says we are, but I don’t know. Every day, I talk to people who are surprised to learn that the Naval Academy has banned hundreds of books, or that the Air Force has purged a website honoring the first female Thunderbird pilot.
I am, on occasion, lifted up by the spirit of camaraderie and fellowship emanating from the public protests, like the Saturday, April 5th “Hands Off” protest march. We saw 20,000 ordinary citizens march in downtown San Diego. Nationwide, “Saturdays of Protest” continue with crowds estimated to be in the millions. These marches are reminiscent of the Vietnam War protests, in that the participants, mostly Baby Boomers, recite de rigueur chants, and carry clever signs like “Dear Jesus, Please Protect Me From Your Followers,” and “Porsche Fast, Ferrari Faster, Tesla Fascist.”
More dissent can be found online where Substack, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok host funny, frightening, engaging commentaries and videos from Millennials and Gen Z’ers. Turns out protests are tailored to age groups. Young people are online; old people are in the streets. The stakes are high: everyone—citizen or not—fears being renditioned to El Salvador.
Music provided the sound track for our lives in the Sixties and Seventies, but it is way too fragmented to save us this time. Legacy media is toothless because it too has fragmented into a million disparate pieces, and the world has moved on from it. Together, the legacy protests and the online ones, are our best hope to have an impact, but the Broligarchy is unlikely to listen. They are in it for themselves.
Jon Ossoff (D-Courage), Cory Booker (D-Stamina), or the tiny handful of Republican Senators with enough sack to tell the truth might help. W’s Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was right about only one thing as he led us into the last huge American foreign policy blunder, the war in Iraq, saying, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.” Sure, I’d rather we had a majority of the Republicans in the House and Senate willing to stand up for truth and the rule of law, but we don’t. I’d rather we had a Democratic Party that is not fossilized; one that has a clue about modern media, and has the gumption to stand up as Senators Ossoff and Booker do, but we don’t.
We are all we have, and we have to start somewhere.
Nothing less than the destruction of the social safety net that began with FDR and Social Security will satisfy the Broligarchs. They are in league with a virulent strain of regressives whose fever dream of ending the New Deal has languished in the background for eighty years. Certain extreme groups and individuals have mounted attacks before—think about the John Birch Society, for instance—but they have always been turned back by both the common sense and general goodness that Americans have been famous for until now.
The Koch Brothers utilized the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for unlimited money entering politics. They spent big on actual conservative agendas, but they respected the rule of law and colored inside the lines. They fought for the long time conservative goals of reduced government spending and regulation. They did so without challenging courts to dare to oppose them, and obeyed court orders when lawsuits went against them.
The Broligarchy has no such qualms. They fight against the rule of law and against average Americans. And they’re fighting against the reality of a shrunken globe as they rail against “Globalism.”
Wow! Listen to me! I’m pining for the good old days of the Koch Bros., all because the bad new days of the Tech Bros have brought us to the brink.
Next time: Techno Medievalism
©2025 Jon Sinton
Kliph Nesteroff has written a book called “outrageous “that although is considered a history of cancel culture really nailed it on the John Birch Society, the Koch Brothers, and all of the spin-offs from the Christian coalition to the Heritage Society that essentially control the think tanks they get the ears of the non-thinking in Congress it’s a good read.
"Techno Medievalism" ... I've been saying the white supremacist, misogynist, patriarchal ultra-rich are wanting to regress to predatory, plantation capitalism, but you're right: they want to regress even further. (What is it about so many of the ultra-rich, nouveau and multigenerational, that fosters sci-fi levels of malevolent narcissism??)