Don’t trust an oligarch. They don’t trust themselves.
Their paradox is an abundance of lack: a lack of self-love, self-worth, loyalty to themselves, inner power, confidence, and self-knowledge.
The need to control others can reveal what they fail to recognize within themselves. They seek power over people instead of recognizing the power inherent in themselves and everyone else.
You cannot claim to love humanity while denying the power and worth of the people who make it up, including yourself.
This is not Republicans vs. Democrats.
This is oligarchs vs. the United States of America.
There is nothing wrong with being rich or exchanging your products and services for money. We are all powerful, with unique abilities we can offer one another. We pay others for their skills, for convenience, or simply because something does not interest us enough to do it ourselves.
That exchange recognizes that we each have something valuable to contribute.
Money itself is not bad. It is how you use it.
An oligarchy, by definition, is a system in which power is concentrated in the hands of a small group. An oligarch is a member of that ruling few. Being wealthy alone does not make someone an oligarch.
The problem is using that wealth to buy political influence, concentrate power, and bend public decisions to serve private interests.
Money is not the issue. Corruption is the issue.
Corruption means the loss of integrity and, in public life, the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. When public power serves those who can buy influence instead of the people it is supposed to represent, that is corruption.
It may appear that oligarchs are loyal only to themselves. But serving your own interests is not the same as being true to yourself.
Being true to yourself means recognizing your own inherent power and worth, and recognizing that others possess that same power and worth. Someone who truly recognizes this does not need to control others to feel powerful.
Paradoxically, the need to dominate can reveal a feeling of powerlessness within. If your sense of power depends on controlling everyone else, how much of that power do you recognize within yourself?
By denying others their worth and sacrificing their own integrity for control, oligarchs betray both others and themselves.
In choosing power over integrity, oligarchs have corrupted themselves.