A lot of people were ready for this years ago, but it kept getting swept under the rug. More people are listening now than ever before. Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist,

I heard that someone was flying a plane with a banner that said This is Trump country… It sure don’t look like it today. I don’t think this is Trump country. This is our country. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez just before her speech in Folsom, California.

I’m gonna be honest: I did not have Bernie Sanders introducing Clairo at Coachella on my 2025 bingo card. Lexi Williams in msn which – according to itself – is a A general-purpose Web portal from Microsoft that includes news, sports and entertainment as well as the Bing search engine.

Out in the West – and more in the red Republican West of Idaho and Bakersfield than the blue West of the Coast – something is happening that I have never seen in my lifetime: two politicians, neither of whom is currently running for office, are drawing huge crowds on a protest tour. The tour is called “Fighting Oligarchy” and, not surprisingly to me, given the name, one of the politicians is Senator Bernie Sanders. Still, I am somewhat surprised that Bernie is not alone; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is also on the ticket.

Bernie – as he is known to his followers, if followers is the right word – is 83 and clearly will not run again, but AOC as she is known to her followers, is looking at a higher office and just as clearly as Bernie isn’t running, I’m sure AOC is running…for something and this is her introduction to the nation, especially the red parts of it. Running or not, Bernie and AOC are drawing huge crowds in red territory, such as Boise, Salt Lake City, and Bakersfield, but are receiving very little attention in the eastern mainstream media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

And this is the problem, the mainstream media is owned and controlled by people who brought us the oligarchy in the first place. Most of them are rich almost beyond comprehension, and they want to stay that way. The Ochs-Sulzberger family holds a controlling interest in The New York Times worth more than $8 billion, with a significant portion of the remaining shares owned by Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire worth about $88 billion. Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong, who is worth approximately $5.5 billion.

We – I’m going to go with Democratic Socialists because that’s how Bernie and AOC most identify themselves – Democratic Socialists have a lot of common goals with the Ochs-Sulzberger family, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and even Jeff Bezos, starting with equal rights for everybody, or as the Trump administration has phrased equality, DEI. Still, they differ from them in policies that will cost them money or diminish their power and influence, such as raising the tax rate on the ultra-rich, implementing a minimum wage that people can live on, or expanding Medicare to include everybody. They are not reporting on the Fighting Oligarchy tour because they are The Oligarchy.

I’ve listened to AOC’s speeches at Folsom and Boseman, Montana, and came away energized. Here is a sample of AOC on the stump.