Should-Read: JEC: The Taxonomy of Oligarchs: "Rich people in America have the luxury of indulging an astonishing variety of self-destructive fantasies...
...Thus far, the worst "ideas" of the American oligarchic class have been blissfully free of consequences. (More specifically, free of consequences for the oligarchs themselves, which is of course what really matters to oligarchs.) But over the last decade or so, a new fantasy has captured the imaginations of a faction of America's oligarchic class: the notion that American oligarchs can make common cause with the oligarchs of countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and, especially, Vladimir Putin's Russia.... Once again, it will probably fall to America's liberals to save the imbecilic rich from their own idiocy and malice. 'Twas ever thus....
The basic political idea which drives oligarchs of all stripes is that wealth and power go together, and, more importantly, that is is a desirable feature to be sought and preserved in any political system. And in this, the oligarchs of America and the oligarchs across the sea share values and vision. But there is a crucial difference apparently overlooked by all to many oligarchs of the American variety. Namely, that American oligarchs are, with a few exceptions, plutocrats, while the oligarchs they admire, particularly in Putin's Russia, are kleptocrats. This is a distinction which Americans overlook at their own great peril....
Precisely why American oligarchs, plutocrats who uniformly decry the power of government to take their stuff, should imagine that a cadre of individuals whose personal fortunes derive precisely from the power of government to do exactly that, is their natural ally is for the moment a question left open.... One can at least wish that American oligarchs would realize that the Russians are coming for their money before it is their turn to sample Russian prison life from the inside or to explore the slimming effects of a diet high in polonium. American liberals, for our part, can remind our own faction of the oligarchic class (for there is one) that plutocrats and kleptocrats are not friends but mortal enemies: kleptocrats are predators, and plutocrats are their natural prey.
