The Trump Era and America's Corporate Oligarchy: When the Mask Comes Off

The most revealing thing about the Trump presidency isn't what it changed about America, it's what it revealed about what America has always been. For the first time in recent memory, we're witnessing American corporatism without the pretense of democratic idealism. The oligarchy that has always controlled this country is now loud and proud about it.

The Founding Fiction

Let's start with historical truth: America was never designed to be a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word. When the Constitution was written in 1787, voting was restricted to white, male property owners - roughly 6% of the adult population. This wasn't an oversight or a product of the times; it was an intentional design feature. The country was more of a company rather than a place for equitable living.

The Founding Fathers weren't trying to create equality. They were trying to create a system that would protect their economic interests while providing enough stability to prevent both monarchy and mob rule. They enslaved people. They were exploitive capitalists. This story of heroism that we're taught in American schools makes me sick now, especially knowing people like Phyllis Wheatley proved intellectual parity to no avail.

Alexander Hamilton was explicit about this: "The people, sir, are a great beast." Those boys didn't care about people then, and they absolutely didn't care about anyone in the year 2025. If they were alive now, they'd probably be surprised their scheme lasted this long. The entire structure of American government: the Electoral College, the Senate, the indirect election of presidents, etc. was designed to prevent direct democratic control.

What we're seeing today isn't a corruption of American ideals. It's the maturation of the original design.

Corporate Capture: A Historical Perspective

The idea that corporations have "captured" American government implies there was a time when they were separate entities. But this has never been true! From the very beginning:

1790s: Hamilton's financial system explicitly tied federal government debt to the wealth of bondholders, creating a permanent class of citizens with direct financial interest in federal policy. They didn't put that on the Broadway show!

1800s: Railroad companies received massive land grants on stolen land. This wasn't corruption; it was official policy. Despite efforts we still have not forgotten slavery, indigenous genocide, and Jim Crow!

1900s: The "Gilded Age" saw the rise of industrial trusts that openly controlled political machinery. The period wasn't called gilded ironically, it was a time when wealth and political power were openly synonymous.

2000s: Citizens United didn't create corporate political influence; it simply made explicit what had been implicit for decades.

The Trump Difference: Dropping the Pretense

What makes the Trump era unique isn't the presence of corporate oligarchy, it's the abandonment of the rhetorical pretense that this isn't happening.

Previous administrations maintained elaborate theater around "public service" and "democratic norms." Politicians pretended to be reluctant about wealth, apologized for connections to big business, and maintained the fiction that they represented "the people" rather than capital.

Trump dispensed with all of this. His cabinet was filled with Goldman Sachs executives, oil company CEOs, and telecom lobbyists. He openly discussed policy in terms of its impact on his personal business interests. He appointed family members to government positions and used the presidency to direct business to his properties.

The quiet part was being said loud. On top of that, he's a convicted felon, friends with an evil pedophile, and, frankly, just a pure dumbass! How could someone lead a nation when he isn't even one with his word?

The Crypto Parallel

As someone building in the blockchain space, I've watched a similar dynamic play out in crypto and DeFi. The early promise of decentralization and "banking the unbanked" has given way to the same familiar patterns: early adopters accumulate massive holdings, institutional money enters to solidify control, and regulatory capture ensures that existing power structures adapt rather than disappear.

The difference is that blockchain makes the concentration visible. On-chain analysis can show exactly how wealth is distributed, which wallets control governance tokens, and how voting power is exercised. Traditional finance hides these dynamics behind complex corporate structures and regulatory opacity.

In both blockchain and American politics, transparency reveals that power has always been concentrated. You either play the game to win or get left behind. The only thing we can do is support altruism in our efforts to gain power so that schemes like the trump memecoin can at least be distributed to a broader community.

The Oligarchy's Evolution

The American oligarchy has evolved through several phases:

Industrial Oligarchy (1870-1930): Direct control through industrial monopolies. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, the Jeckyll Island guys.

Financial Oligarchy (1930-1980): Control shifted to financial institutions. Power became more sophisticated and less visible, exercised through banks, insurance companies, and investment firms.

Information Oligarchy (1980-2010): Media consolidation created new forms of narrative control. A handful of companies controlled most information distribution.

Digital Oligarchy (2010-present): Tech platforms become the new infrastructure of power. Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta control not just commerce but communication, information, and increasingly, financial services.

Trump represents a regression to the Industrial Oligarchy model: direct, visible, unapologetic control by wealth. It's just that now they're not killing themselves for oil, they're killing themselves for compute and AI dominance.

International Perspective

Living and working across different continents has given me perspective on how unique (and how familiar) American corporatism really is.

In Europe: Corporate influence exists but operates within stronger social democratic traditions. There's more shame around obvious corruption and stronger institutions to check corporate power.

In Africa: Many countries are explicitly dealing with the legacy of extractive colonialism. The relationship between foreign capital and local government is often exploitative. Many governments are unashamed of corruption exposure; someone please link me that video of the guy saying corruption is only bad if he's not involved 😂.

In Latin America: The history of U.S. corporate intervention is well-documented and widely understood. American companies working with local oligarchies to extract resources and suppress labor movements is documented history.

From this global perspective, American "democracy" looks like what it's always been: a sophisticated system for maintaining oligarchic control while providing enough legitimacy to prevent revolution. It's just that the cat's out the bag and they think the people of the world are too afraid to do anything about it.

The Blockchain Challenge

This is why I'm building Sereel and why I believe in blockchain technology's revolutionary potential. Not because crypto will magically solve inequality, but because it provides infrastructure that's harder for traditional oligarchies to capture.

Decentralized financial infrastructure means:

• Monetary policy that isn't controlled by central banks serving elite interests
• Financial services that don't require permission from traditional gatekeepers
• Transparent governance where token holders can see exactly how decisions are made
• Capital Markets that have low barriers to entry and can serve more niche use cases, like chamas and motshelos

This doesn't eliminate power concentration. Early crypto adoption has created new forms of inequality. But it does make power visible and potentially contestable in ways that traditional systems do not.

Moving Forward

The Trump era's most valuable contribution might be clarity. By abandoning the pretense of democratic norms, it's forced Americans to confront what their system actually is rather than what they pretend it to be.

This clarity creates opportunities:

For Builders: We can design systems that acknowledge power dynamics rather than pretending they don't exist (Coming Soon: The New Green Book).

For Citizens: Understanding that you live in an oligarchy changes how you think about political action. Voting matters (kinda, most of the time we're fucked either way), but building alternative infrastructure matters more.

For Global Community: Countries can stop pretending that American "democracy promotion" is about democracy rather than about expanding American corporate interests.

The oligarchy isn't hiding anymore. The question is: what are we going to do about it?

For my part, I'm building financial infrastructure that doesn't depend on their permission. And I'm being open about it so that if I'm killed someone can continue my work. Because if there's one thing the Trump era has taught us, it's that asking nicely for systemic change is a fool's errand. The system is working exactly as designed. My ancestors were tortured, raped, and maimed from it. There's nothing on this earth that can stop me from building what needs to get built.

The solution isn't to reform it. The solution is to build something better.