US Corpocracy

“911!” is the title of my new book.1 You immediately recognize the title as the nationwide telephone number to call for help or rescue. My choice of this title was deliberate.

The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?
— Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Ant-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
— from Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Some corporations and governments have used the US public as guinea pigs in uncontrolled experiments conducted without the public’s approval. They were often gambling with our well being when they introduced new products or conducted risky tests. In contrast, there were usually few risks for the CEOs or government officials in charge of these unacknowledged experiments.

As our political and governmental systems deepen their dysfunctionality, as corporations act ever more brazenly in their greed, as our planet suffers from the horrors of a broken culture, we clearly recognize that these systems fail miserably when it comes to integrity. When we look at our local and statewide political institutions, we see a similar pattern of corruption, with policies and attitudes that favor the folks with lots of money.

He has been glorified as a hero and obeyed as a ruler, but fundamentally he is always the same. His most fantastic triumphs have taken place in our own time, among people who set great store by the idea of humanity. He is not yet extinct, nor will he ever be until we have the strength to see him clearly, whatever disguise he assumes and whatever his halo of glory. The survivor is mankind’s worst evil, its curse and perhaps its doom. Is it possible to escape him, even now at this last moment?
— Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, April 1 1984

Capitalism is broken. It is like a gun pointed at the heart of the planet. And it’s got these characteristics which mean that it will essentially, necessarily destroy our life support systems. Among those characteristics are the drive for perpetual economic growth on a finite planet. You just can’t support that ecologically. Things fall apart. It also says, well, anyone has got a right to buy as much natural wealth as their money allows, which means that people are just grabbing far more natural wealth than either the population as a whole or the planet itself can support.

Maybe Donald Trump isn’t as stupid as I thought. I’d hate to have to admit that publicly, but it does kind of seem like he has put one over on the liberal corporate media this time. Scanning the recent Trump-related news, I couldn’t help but notice a significant decline in the number of references to Weimar, Germany, Adolf Hitler, and “the brink of fascism” that America has supposedly been teetering on since Hillary Clinton lost the election.

America’s power elite are a tiny but very mighty fraction of America’s total population. The power elite belongs to America’s corpocracy, the “Devil’s” marriage between corporate America and government America, with the former firmly in the driver’s seat.1

It is “budget time” again!