The rising extension of power handed to corporations since the Supreme Court decision of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886, has allowed the few, ultra-affluent, to steadily gain control over how we conduct our public and private lives. It was this court decision that distorted the fourteenth amendment, which was intended to grant certain rights to emancipated slaves. But, with the clever trickery and legalese of a few attorneys working on behalf of a chartered, incorporated business, "corporation" was redefined as having the same rights as a living "natural person." Since that court decision, the very systemic appendages of our governing body have become so intertwined with corporate interests that our own government has become a corporate entity itself - a corporation which grants power to its ilk and provides debt-crushing blows to common citizens in the forms of inflation or taxation. In fact, with the passing of the newest Supreme court ruling, new loopholes have been opened to essentially allow foreign corporations to have rights like our corporations, think lobbying.
You could say that our government is in a symbiotic relationship, or a limited partnership with our multinational corporations. You itch my back, I'll itch yours type of thing. Being that our own government chooses to embed itself with these illusory entities and protect them from collapse, offer them contracts, shield them from prosecution, and loot the public to pay them, then it is obvious that our government has become nothing less than one of them. I call it USA, LLC.
America has always been a plutocracy, but the way in which the plutocracy has operated has changed over the decades. The plutocracy now has fiefdoms, or mini kingdoms that rule over the people, collectively called the corporatocracy, as coined by John Perkins, the author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Banking, defense and weapons manufacturing, prisons and security, media, construction, and energy are just a to mention a few areas where the corporatocracy's "natural persons," aka plantations, aka mini-kingdoms, reside and thrive. The most influential of these throughout history has been banking.
The Plutocrat bankers control through economic slavery, because in order for you to survive you must either work on one of their corporatocracy plantations or start your own business (that prospect looks bleaker everyday) and pay the principal plus interest on debt you incur. Since the banks control the flow of funds and loans, they can increase or decrease money supply and credit. We as a nation have become so helplessly addicted to credit in order to survive that we now rely on banks for everything tied to our livelihood. And, that has been the plan of the ruling class all along, to keep the public in a mindless stupor, racing to pay off spiraling debt while not paying attention to the slow pillage of our country, devaluation of our currency and passage of restricting legislation.
Corporate lobbying is what has ultimately turned our great United States of America into what it is now, USA, LLC. Over time, the absence of term limits placed on our politicians has allowed for the Plutocrat bankers to use their many corporate fiefdoms inside the corporatocracy to bundle as many $100,000 lobby donations as they deemed necessary in order to sway our representatives. As this practice continued unabated for many years, they slowly shifted the interests of our politicians from the common American citizen to that of the "natural person," or corporation.
The passage of NAFTA, massive contracts given to Lockheed Martin and Halliburton in Iraq, Wackenhut's building of private prisons, allowing Monsanto to patent seeds, Exxon's many environmental atrocities, and the list goes on and on. The result is what you are witnessing today. A corporatized United States political and law system that has limited liability for the losses it causes the very populace it was originally intended to defend and protect.
In his farewell address to the nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us that we must be wary of the "military-industrial complex." Little did he know, every individual facet of our society has become a complex unto itself, but incorporated into an ever-expanding web. As citizens, everywhere we turn, we are confronted with what USA, LLC has given us, and they are uncontrollable monsters devouring beyond their sustainable capacity. Examples include the prison-industrial complex (with nearly two million in prison or jail and growing), the education-industrial complex (with its standardized testing and in-the-box teaching objectives brought on by the No Child Left Behind Act), the medical-industrial complex (leaving us at 38th rank in the world for health care), and the most misleading, lie-spouting, spin-spitting, disinforming of Frankenstein's monsters, the media-industrial complex.
Wake up America! There is no left or right. There is no justice. It's just us! Put aside your petty differences and realize this is the media's job - to divide and conquer for the Plutocrat-controlled corporatocracy.
There is hope amidst all of this. The mechanisms of the corporatocracy and USA, LLC are beginning to fall apart. It was bound to happen because we have been traveling on an unsustainable course. We are watching the slow, gasping death of a juggernaut. Why do I say there is hope in destruction? Because with every death, comes what the Buddhists' believe to be a rebirth or a change in consciousness. Since the government of the United States has become a corporation, or a "natural person," then there should be a process by which we all mourn its death since we are all a part of this collective.
If truth lies in this logic, than we should all experience what Elizabeth Kubler-Ross defined in her book, On Death and Dying, as the Five Stages of Grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Of course, as pieces of America die off slowly, the citizens making up this collective, will all be in different stages of grief at different times.
Do we put up blinders, medicate ourselves numb with pharmaceuticals, obsess about money, get drunk or high, act out in road rage, glue ourselves to the television, shop excessively for items we don't need, pray the banks won't push foreclosure, get mad at people we love, gorge on food until we are sick, act out sexually, and worry about unimportant quandaries? If you think about how different people cope, the answer is a resounding, "Yes."
How quickly do we get to the acceptance phase? Must we wait for USA, LLC and the corporatocracy to destroy the U.S. before we realize a harsh reality? As members of the American public, at this pivotal moment in our existence, it is up to us whether this shift in polarity will result in an enlightening renaissance of pride in our country, or an asphyxiating conscious reality. We can still save our country. It is possible. We can choose to become selfless and redevelop the sagacity that this country has been known for, or we can slide further into self-absorption and ineptitude. What kind of rebirth do you want to see when you are done grieving?
