Eat. The. Rich. (Metaphorically)

If it wasn't already obvious, events this week have made it clear that we are in the midst of a plutocratic coup. Billionaires, in service of a billionaire, are gagging journalists, buying up votes, and doing everything possible to make sure that power and money are, more than ever, synonymous.

Donald Trump has always admired Vladimir Putin. Now America's monied elite are ganging together to treat him as if he is Putin.

On Friday it became clear that The Washington Post, which was already conspicuous for its silence this election cycle, was not going to make an endorsement for the first time in 36 years. And they're not hiding where this decision was made.

An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources.

Washington Post Editor-At-Large Robert Kagan has reportedly resigned from his position in response to Bezos' action. Others in the newsroom seem likely to follow.

This follows just days after Mariel Garza, Editorials Editor of the Los Angeles Times, resigned from her post after billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked that paper from publishing an endorsement of Harris.

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza told [The Columbia Journalism Review] in a phone conversation. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

Both Bezos and Soon-Shiong have personally intervened to prevent their papers from making a Harris endorsement to please their fellow billionaires and the billionaire those fellow billionaires want to install as billionaire-in-chief. They are far more concerned about their position in the oligarchy if Trump wins, than they are in seeing that democracy survives.

And lo, the billionaires are happy.

That's Soon-Shiong lying about his direct intervention to block the L.A. Times from publishing an endorsement, and his fellow South African media mogul Elon Musk giving him a nice pat on the back.

In the meantime, Musk has not allowed a letter from the Department of Justice to slow his roll as he attempts to buy votes in Pennsylvania. And that is happening at the same time we've learned that Musk has been in regular communication with Vladimir Putin.

Musk owns two-thirds of the satellites in orbit. He doesn't just control the public internet service that's providing data to millions of households and both sides in Putin's illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, he controls the "secure" version used by U.S. military and intelligence.

There are Starlink dishes in the field with troops in Ukraine and installed on ships of the U.S. Navy. Musk knows where they are. His systems hold the security over everything transmitted through those dishes. His satellites have unprecedented observation capabilities over the entire globe. And that's on top of his controlling access to the International Space Station, owning a major media outlet, and having a fun little side company that has permission to put chips directly into people's brains.

Musk has been hosting gatherings of billionaires at Palm Beach, making it clear that they should support Trump. Or else. The message all of them are getting is the same: It's not just that Trump will cut their taxes, he'll stay out of their way.

Unless, of course, they miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to swear fealty.

For Musk, a deal with Trump means not having to worry about rampant racism in his factories. Or the FAA slowing down his rocket experiments. Or anyone telling him that he can't force workers to show up in the middle of a pandemic.

If Trump wins, Musk will have the power to decide the fate of those agencies currently trying, without a lot of success, to rein in his violations. There's not much doubt about what he would do if he gained control.

Big media is owned by big money. It always has been. Only now they're not even pretending to be in the business of public service. They're in the business of business, specifically, the business of helping their billionaire owners seat a man they feel they can control and manipulate. A man who will never make them pay their fair share. A man who also hates paying overtime, unions, safety regulations, anti-discrimination laws, and environmental regulations. And women. And trans people. And whatever else he's told to hate.

It may seem shocking, but the billionaires have seen how this worked out in Russia, and to them, it seems like a pretty sweet deal. So they're going to bend America over a table and treat the nation the same way they treat any female employee who catches their eye.

But hey, maybe they'll buy us a horse.