There's an implication of wealth, and in a system where great public wealth was suddenly "available" for privatization (e.g., the Soviet Union as it was dissolving), oligarchs could be counted on to figure out how to enrich themselves, and many certainly did.īut the essence of oligarchy is the fewness of those at the top, not their wealth. The front end of the word is from oligos, meaning "few." That arch element, meaning "rule," is familiar from other words in English such as monarch or hierarchy. The "businessmen" in the inner circles of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the ousted Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, are referred to as "oligarchs."Īn oligarch is part of an oligarchy, a system of "government by the few." This term came into English around 1570, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, from French, but it's rooted in Greek. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me," we children used to sing-song on the playground.īut that hasn't stopped the news media from fixing on some set terms to describe key actors in the unfolding crisis in Ukraine and Crimea. And that takes a lot of work. Today’s lead story, as arduous as it was, is an attempt to do that – to understand an important part of America just a little bit better, to help open the door to progress for all. Finding answers will be impossible without understanding those deeper forces. The roots of violence everywhere are as much mental as political, influenced by culture and values. But that same rule applies to all regions – in the U.S. To ensure he got the story right, Patrik went back a second time. What we found was a portrait not of policies or legislative bills, but of an underlying mental landscape and how that has led to higher rates of violence. Why?In traveling to Nashville, Tennessee, and Alexander City, Alabama, Noah Robertson and Patrik Jonsson sought to show different faces of violence in the South, in large cities and rural hamlets, without falling into stereotypes or shallow narratives. And within these trends, one sticks out for its clarity and constancy: The American South has dramatically higher levels of violence. There is no single “gun violence problem” in the United States, but different challenges in different places. Rather, it is a product of the subject: the roots of violence. American conversations about gun violence – particularly mass shootings – often revolve around gun laws and mental health.But the closer we looked, the more we saw something else. Today’s lead article was not one of those stories. That’s not criticism. An idea emerges, and with a minimum of fuss, it is done. Sometimes, a story comes together with kinetic beauty.
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