My title is attributed to Mark Twain, but there’s no evidence that he actually used it. This ambiguity reflects the saying’s meaning: that although events never repeat exactly, they often resemble each other. I’m working with that concept in this blog. There are events in the past that I believe enlighten happenings today and I’m going to use them to understand contemporary politics.
First, I want to return to the fourteenth century. By that era, the republic of Venice had become an empire, controlling the eastern Mediterranean. Venice was ruled by a Doge – a leader from the reigning oligarchy, that is a government by a small, select group. He (and all officials then were of course male) was elected by a committee of 41. The Venetian oligarchs had great wealth. Their currency prevailed throughout the region and all trade had to be conducted in Venetian ships. Politics and financial power went hand-in-hand. “They were about all money people,” writes Jan Morris in her history of Venice, “Pride and profit were inevitably mingled.”
This system reminds me of the new government dominated by billionaires. Trump’s cabinet collectively owns 3.2 billion dollars. (In contrast, Biden’s had 118 million.) Moreover, Trump has designated two of his closest associates: Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man with 425.2 billion dollars, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who has “only” 1 billion dollars, to head a new government branch that they’re calling the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The entity is supposedly named after Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin that enables people to pay each other directly through an online system. It bypasses all national currencies. Trump intends to create his DOGE as a “presidential advisory commission,” rather than an actual government department, as that would require the approval of Congress. DOGE plans to severely reduce both the government’s workforce and its spending. No one knows exactly what will be cut, but Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid have been mentioned. All this is supposed to be done in a single year. We are about to be governed by a new oligarchy.
This system was caricatured by Ann Telnaes:
The relatively new owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, the head ofAmazon who has a personal fortune of 241 billion dollars, prevented the paper from publishing this cartoon. Earlier last summer Bezos refused to let the newspaper endorse Kamala Harris and also fired hundreds of employees. Musk did the same on Twitter, which he re-named X. The site has done poorly under his ownership.
Oligarchies succeed when the majority of a population supports them, as voters did by electing Trump in 2024. They fail when the general population turns against them. We can see a similar happening in Germany of 1933. After Hitler was elected by gaining the largest percentage of votes (but well under half of those cast), the big-money boys clustered around him. They figured that they could control him and have him act in their interest. We all know how that turned out.
But what can we do now? To begin with, although Trump claims to have won by a landslide, he only gained 1.5% of the vote over Harris. We need not only to keep such facts in mind, but to proclaim them. I also think we need to publicize how the Republican party conducts itself. So far, it hasn’t done well. It was going to shut the government down and failed. The MAGA faction and more traditional Republicans are vying with each other. Most commentators argue that Trump won primarily because of economic reasons: many voters thought they were poorly off. If Trump succeeds in gaining two of his stated goals – creating tariffs and kicking out immigrants — our economy will plummet. Those of us opposed to his government need to keep on keeping on: by emphasizing reality, criticizing their actions, and acting when we can. I believe that Trump’s new government will fail spectacularly and so will lead to Democratic successes in ’26 and ’28.
Perhaps then we can then replace this new oligarchy with a democracy.