Who has power. Who's taking yours. And what the alternatives actually look like. Written for everyone — no political science degree required.
~15 min read
And the people making you hate us are the ones stealing from both of us.
If you voted for Trump because you were furious at a system that stopped working for you — that anger is correct. The system has failed you. Wages have not kept up with the cost of living since the 1970s. Your town lost its factory. Your kids cannot afford a house. You watched your neighbors get destroyed by pills that pharmaceutical companies knew were addictive and sold anyway. You were told immigrants did this to you. The liberal elite did this to you. Black Lives Matter did this to you.
None of that is true. And on the things that actually matter to your life, you want what we want:
You want to work a job and afford a house. So do we.
You want your kids to go to a good school. So do we.
You want to go to the doctor without going bankrupt. So do we.
You want a government that does not lie to your face. So do we.
You want powerful people held accountable. So do we.
The billionaire class figured out a long time ago that if working class people ever stopped fighting each other over flags and bathrooms, they would turn around and look at who was actually picking their pockets. So they fund the culture wars. They fund the outrage machine. They fund politicians on both sides who keep us divided.
This page is for everyone who is tired of being managed. Who wants to understand what is actually happening. Who is ready to hear that the word “socialism” does not mean what they were taught, and that the word “freedom” has been stolen and handed back empty.
Here is what is actually happening — and what we can do about it.
Two questions place any political system on this map. Who controls the economy — and who makes the decisions.
These are the words politicians use. Here is what they actually mean.
A small group of powerful people runs everything — and they run it for themselves.
Imagine your whole town was run by three families. They own the factories, the stores, the apartments, and the local newspaper. They pick the politicians — not by voting, but by paying for their campaigns. Those politicians pass laws that keep the three families on top.
That is an oligarchy. “Oligos” is Greek for “few.” Rule by a few. Not the most qualified few. Not the most talented few. Just the few who already have the most money.
Here is the trick: oligarchies do not look like dictatorships. There are still elections. Still courts. Still a free press. But the elections are bought. The courts are stacked with judges the oligarchs helped appoint. The press is owned by the oligarchs or afraid of them.
It looks like democracy from the outside. It works like a private club you were never invited to join.
Wealthy families, dynasties, and corporations already at the top. Billionaires. Inherited wealth.
Everyone who works for a living. The working class does all the labor that creates the wealth the oligarchs collect.
The United States right now. Six men control more wealth than the bottom 50% of all Americans combined. Those same men have direct access to the president. That is oligarchy.
Whoever has the most money makes the rules.
“Ploutos” is Greek for wealth. A plutocracy is when richness itself is the qualification for power. You do not need to be smart, experienced, or good at your job. You just need to be rich. Rich is the credential.
We call ourselves a democracy, but look at how it actually works. Running for Senate costs millions of dollars. Running for president costs over a billion. That money comes from donors. Rich donors. In exchange, those donors get access — meetings, phone calls returned, legislation written, regulations killed.
The politician who raises the most money wins about 90% of the time in American elections. That is not democracy. That is plutocracy with a voting day attached so people feel like they participated.
Billionaires. Corporations. Anyone who can write a $10 million campaign check.
Everyone who earns a paycheck instead of clipping coupons from stock dividends.
Citizens United v. FEC (2010) — the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people and money is speech. The more money you have, the more “speech” you have. One billionaire spent $250 million on the 2024 election and received government contracts worth billions within months of inauguration. That is plutocracy.
Government by the worst, most corrupt, least qualified people available.
“Kakistos” is Greek for “worst.” This is what you get when a leader chooses people not because they know what they are doing, but because they will do whatever the leader wants without asking questions.
It is not that these people are all stupid. It is that they were chosen specifically because they will not follow rules, will not push back, and will not let laws get in the way.
The result: environmental agencies run by people who work for oil companies. Education offices run by people who want to eliminate public schools. Justice departments that prosecute enemies of the leader instead of actual crimes. Health agencies run by people who do not believe in public health.
The agency is now working against its own mission. On purpose.
The leader. Their family. Their donors. Anyone who got their job through loyalty instead of skill.
Everyone who depends on government to actually function — which is everyone.
Appointing a vaccine skeptic to run public health agencies. Appointing officials with no relevant experience to lead intelligence agencies. Appointing people who were forced to withdraw from previous positions due to misconduct allegations. These are documented facts from the current administration.
Government by thieves — people in power use that power to steal from the public.
“Kleptes” is Greek for thief. A kleptocracy is when the people running the government use that position to enrich themselves at the public's expense.
This does not always look like theft because they often write the laws that make it legal. But the mechanism is identical: public power is being converted into private wealth.
Foreign governments booking rooms at the president's private hotel. Government agencies awarding no-bid contracts worth billions to companies run by the president's personal friends. A president running a private cryptocurrency exchange that foreign governments invest in right before favorable foreign policy decisions. Each individually might be dismissed. As a pattern, it is a kleptocracy.
The leader and their inner circle.
Taxpayers. The public. Future generations who inherit the debt and hollowed-out institutions.
All examples cited above are documented and ongoing events in the current administration as of 2025–2026.
Ultra-nationalism + corporate power + a strongman who declares himself the country itself.
Fascism is the word people throw around most and understand least. Here is what it actually means.
Fascism is a system where the nation — or the race, or the religion — is treated as more important than any individual person. And where a single leader claims to embody that nation. “I am the country. What is good for me is good for everyone. What threatens me threatens everything.”
Fascism has specific features that distinguish it from just being strict or conservative:
Ultranationalism: One group is the “real” people. Everyone else is a threat, a parasite, or an invader.
The strongman: One person is above the law. Courts, legislature, and press exist to serve the leader, not check him.
The corporate merger: Corporations partner with government rather than being regulated by it. Business does what it wants. Labor gets crushed.
The scapegoat: There is always a group being blamed for everything — immigrants, minorities, political opponents. The scapegoat keeps people angry at each other instead of at the people actually stealing from them.
Violence as politics: Protest is terrorism. Opposition is treason. Journalists are enemies of the people. Judges who rule against the leader are corrupt.
The leader. The military-industrial complex. Corporations freed from regulation.
Immigrants. Minorities. LGBTQ people. Labor unions. Journalists. Political opponents. Eventually everyone outside the inner circle.
Historian Umberto Eco identified 14 features of fascism in 1995. A checklist comparison with the current U.S. administration yields matches on: cult of tradition, rejection of modernism, action over analysis, fear of difference, obsession with a plot, enemy portrayed as both powerful and weak, contempt for the weak, machismo, selective populism, and Newspeak.
A system where the government demands obedience and punishes dissent — regardless of what the law says.
Authoritarianism does not need a fancy ideology. It just means: the people in power do what they want, and you do what they say.
The key is that it does not require canceling elections or declaring martial law. Modern authoritarianism hollows out institutions while keeping the shell. You still vote — but the results get managed. You still have courts — but they get packed with loyalists. You still have a press — but it gets sued into submission or bought by friendly billionaires.
This is called democratic backsliding. It is how most modern dictatorships actually happen — not with tanks on day one, but with a slow, legal-looking erosion of every institution that was supposed to keep one person from having too much power.
The tell: when the government ignores court orders it does not like.
The strongman and their allies.
Civil society. Journalists. Judges. Marginalized communities. Eventually, everyone.
The current U.S. administration ignored a unanimous 9-0 Supreme Court order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a foreign prison. If the president can ignore the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court does not function as a check on power. That is authoritarianism.
When corporations effectively run the government — using it as a tool for private profit.
A corporatocracy is what happens when the line between government and corporate power disappears entirely.
Corporations write the legislation that is supposed to govern them. Corporate executives rotate between industry and the regulatory agencies that oversee that industry — the “revolving door.” No-bid government contracts go to companies run by the president's friends. Trade policy is shaped to maximize shareholder profit, not human welfare.
The most dangerous version: when a billionaire receives hundreds of billions in government contracts, is given access to federal data systems containing information on every government employee, is given the power to fire government workers with no congressional oversight, and faces no accountability mechanism. That is not a contractor. That is a co-ruler.
Corporations, their shareholders, and their executives.
Workers. Consumers. Communities that depend on regulated industries not poisoning them.
An unelected billionaire given access to federal payment systems and employment databases while simultaneously receiving billions in federal contracts. No congressional authorization. No oversight. This is documented and ongoing.
When religious doctrine becomes law — and leaders claim to govern in the name of God.
“Theos” is Greek for God. A theocracy is when a government derives its authority from religion and imposes religious law on everyone — including people who do not share that religion.
The United States was deliberately designed to separate church from state. The founders had watched centuries of European religious wars and inquisitions and concluded: when one religion controls the government, people who believe differently get persecuted.
Full theocracy looks like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. But you do not need a full theocracy for religious doctrine to corrupt governance. When judges make rulings based on a religious text rather than the Constitution. When medical procedures are banned based on a bishop's opinion rather than medical evidence. When public schools are directed to promote one religion's beliefs. That is theocratic drift.
The danger is not faith. The danger is using faith as a political weapon against people who do not share it.
The dominant religious institution and the politicians who use it to mobilize voters.
Religious minorities, non-believers, women, LGBTQ people, and anyone whose life does not fit the doctrine.
Overturning Roe v. Wade based primarily on arguments rooted in religious doctrine. Project 2025 was authored largely by Christian nationalist organizations. Several current administration officials have publicly stated the U.S. is a “Christian nation” where law should reflect Christian values — for everyone.
Private ownership of the means of production — with profits flowing to owners, not workers.
Capitalism is not evil in theory. Markets can produce real benefits. Competition and innovation are real.
The problem is what happens when capitalism has no limits placed on it, and when the people who own the most capital use that ownership to buy the political system that is supposed to regulate them.
Capitalism works tolerably when: unions balance corporate power, regulations prevent monopolies, safety nets prevent desperation, and money cannot buy elections.
Capitalism becomes catastrophic when: a small owner class accumulates all the wealth, uses that wealth to buy governments, destroys labor's ability to negotiate, and treats basic human needs — housing, healthcare, food — as markets to extract from rather than necessities to guarantee.
What America has right now is not textbook capitalism. It is late-stage capitalism: the phase where concentration of wealth becomes so extreme the system begins consuming itself.
People who own the machines, land, factories, platforms, and data.
People who operate the machines, work the land, staff the factories — anyone who works for wages.
The top 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. Three individuals own more than 160 million Americans. 40% of Americans cannot cover a $400 emergency expense. This is the end stage of unregulated capitalism.
The United States was designed as a republic with constitutional limits on power. Imperfect from birth — built on slavery, excluding most people from power — but the ideals in the Bill of Rights were real, and they were hard-won.
Over 250 years those ideals have been deliberately eroded by the concentration of wealth and power.
What we have now is best described using the words on this page: an oligarchic plutocracy trending toward fascism, administered by a kakistocracy, running the tools of a corporatocracy, with clear signs of kleptocracy, and theocratic elements being pushed by an organized movement.
That is not hyperbole. Every one of those words has a specific meaning — they are all defined above — and the current administration matches every definition.
A small number of extremely wealthy people have purchased enough political power to rewrite the rules in their favor. So thoroughly that the government now serves them, not you. Culture war is their management tool — keeping you angry at your neighbors so you do not look at them.
This is not a political disagreement. It is a class war. The working class is losing because it keeps fighting itself.
These words have been used as weapons for 80 years. Here is what they actually mean — and why they are not scary.
The things everyone needs to survive should be owned collectively and run for human benefit — not private profit.
Socialism has been the most successful scare word in American politics for 80 years. Generations were taught it means gulags and breadlines and total government control.
That is not what socialism means.
Socialism is an economic idea, not a political one. It means: the factories, the hospitals, the utilities, the essential things — should be owned collectively rather than by private shareholders. The profit from those things should go to the people who do the work and the communities who depend on them, not to people who just own stock.
You already live with socialist programs — and you like them:
Public roads. Public schools. Public libraries. Medicare. Medicaid. The fire department. The post office. The military.
You do not pay per fire. You do not subscribe to the roads. These things work as collective infrastructure and you depend on them every day.
The fight is only about whether to extend that same logic to healthcare, housing, internet access, and childcare — because the evidence is overwhelming that when those are treated as profit markets, the outcomes for regular people are catastrophic.
Socialism is not communism. It is not authoritarian. You can vote for it and you can vote it out. The world's most free, happy, and equal countries — Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland — are democratic socialist.
Workers. Everyone who provides labor. Everyone who needs healthcare, housing, or education.
Shareholders who collect profit from other people's labor without contributing to it.
The Nordic countries rank #1 globally in happiness, health outcomes, education, social mobility, and quality of life. They have private businesses AND strong public services. They are not “communist.” They are the proof that an economy organized around human need instead of profit works better for almost everyone.
No rulers — not no rules. The belief that human beings can self-organize without hierarchical authority.
People hear “anarchy” and picture broken windows and chaos. That is what anarchism's enemies say it is. Here is what it actually means.
Anarchism means: no rulers. Not no rules. The difference matters enormously.
Rules can exist without a ruler. Your neighborhood probably has unwritten rules — be quiet at night, look after each other's kids, split the cost of shared things — that nobody enforces at gunpoint. They work because people cooperate.
Anarchists believe that most of the violence, poverty, and misery in human history comes from hierarchical systems — kings, bosses, landlords, generals — that extract wealth and power from everyone below them. And that people, given the chance to organize on the basis of equality and mutual aid, can build communities that are more free and more just than anything imposed from above.
The main flavors:
Anarcho-communism: Collective ownership, no state
Anarcho-syndicalism: Workers run things through democratic unions — this is what project2032 is built on
Mutualism: Free markets without exploitation, based on actual labor value
Green anarchism: Hierarchy destroys both people and planet; these are the same fight
Everyone currently operating under someone else's authority without consenting to it.
Everyone who profits from their position in a hierarchy — bosses, landlords, executives.
The Zapatista communities of Chiapas, Mexico have operated on anarchist principles for 30+ years: no hierarchical government, community assemblies make decisions, rotating leadership, women equally represented. They have better healthcare, education, and food security than surrounding areas governed by the Mexican state.
Community members support each other directly — not out of charity, but because we are in this together.
Mutual aid is older than money. Before governments, before currency, communities survived by helping each other. You help me bring in the harvest; I help you fix your roof. Not because you are being charitable. Because we are in this together and we both need it.
Mutual aid is different from charity:
Charity flows from rich to poor. The giver decides who is deserving. The power stays with the giver.
Mutual aid flows between equals. Everyone gives what they can and takes what they need. No judgment. No application. No deserving.
Mutual aid networks have kept communities alive during every crisis — the Black Panther Party free breakfast programs, Hurricane Katrina, COVID. They consistently move faster and reach further than official government programs because they are run by the people who actually know the community.
It is not a replacement for systemic change. It is what keeps people alive while that change is being built. And it builds the relationships that make collective action possible.
The whole community. Everyone.
Nobody. This is not a zero-sum system.
Food Not Bombs: volunteer-run, no hierarchy, has fed millions of people in hundreds of cities for decades. No paid CEO. No board. Just people who decided to show up.
Citizens vote on actual decisions — not just for people who make decisions for them.
Representative democracy was a workaround. In 1787, you could not gather millions of people to vote on every law — they would have to travel for weeks. So you sent a representative.
We do not live in that world. There is no technical reason citizens cannot vote directly on legislation today.
Switzerland has done it since 1848, before the telephone. Swiss citizens vote four times a year on actual laws. They can veto anything parliament passes. They can propose constitutional amendments themselves. The result is the highest quality-of-life metrics in the world and a government that genuinely cannot ignore its people.
FOLKMOOT is the cryptographic implementation of this. Verifiable without being traceable. Mobile-first. No ID required. Community-vouched identity so no one can be excluded and no one can vote twice. Built on infrastructure that has no single killswitch.
The Swiss transition took 43 years and three pieces of legislation. project2032 maps that same arc onto American governance. The Swiss Model page has the full breakdown.
Every citizen with an equal voice.
Professional politicians and the donor class that funds them.
Switzerland. Four votes per year. Citizens can veto any law parliament passes. Highest quality of life in the world. This is the model. It works.
Here is what working class conservatives and working class progressives actually agree on — and who benefits from keeping them fighting instead.
Not abstract ideology. Specific things. For everyone who works for a living.
This page is the entry point. The network goes much further.
Six specific mechanisms that have captured American democracy. Named and documented.
Read the indictment →How Switzerland layered direct democracy over 43 years. The exact legislative template for America.
See the model →Why anarchosyndicalism and not Marxist-Leninist communism. The full political theory with historical evidence.
Read the theory →Plain-language breakdown of constitutional protections and documented violations happening today.
Know your rights →FOLKMOOT is live. Cryptographically verifiable direct democracy. No ID required. Register now.
Launch Folkmoot →