Rebellion is the flavor of the year. Will the USA succeed in rebelling against corporate rule? by Mavis Mathews
(conservative)
Friday, July 15, 2011
A PENDING REBELLION
Mavis Mathews
There is so much unrest in the world these days that it’s easy to find ourselves smugly feeling superior, more evolved, and even angry that things have come to this. We’re angry because these are not our battles. Yet we, claiming to be a more civilized people, keep getting involved, sending aid, losing lives, and wondering how those people ever let this happen to them in the first place.
It‘s apparent that the unrest has been brewing for a long time and just about everywhere on Earth at the same time. The pot is boiling over in one country after another; people who have had enough of dictatorship are demanding freedom from it. It’s messy, but it works. In every case though, they have a long way to go.
This unrest is nowhere more alive than in our own country. Here we are not gathering at the town square and throwing things at each other. We’re not taking up arms and pointing guns at the enemy. We’re not surrounding the White House; not yet anyway. But we are joining forces to expose the culprit and stop the nonsense before it’s too late.
Most people are not even aware of who the culprit is. Our unrest takes many forms: politics, medical bills, unemployment, Afghanistan, gasoline prices, education, etc. ad infinitum. But at the bottom of it all is the horrifying fact that big corporations now control every aspect of our lives.
We are in a dictatorship like none other. Even the remarkable man who won our presidency is trying to do his job with one hand tied behind his back. His every move is blocked by an arm of the corporate control of Washington DC.
What are the chances of our being able to overthrow this dictator? Well, they’re darned good. They’re good because there are so many of us (at least 85% of all Americans are against corporate control.) Because we’re Americans.
Americans don’t surrender without taking a stand against the oppressor. An organization calling itself Move to Amend is growing like a wildfire. Details and a proposed Amendment to the Constitution can be found on the website www.movetoamend.org. It’s so American to get involved.
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Posted By: Bill Gee
Date: July 18, 2011 07:21:04 AM
Mavis,
When you say that the corporate elite are "darned good" at what they do, I'd have to say that would be the understatement of the year. This is just a taste of what we can expect to see in the event of a total and complete corporate takeover of the government.
Infrastructure: All infrastructure not deemed to be of vital economic importance will be ignored. That means that main highway and rail systems designed for transporting goods will be maintained (many of which will start charging tolls if they have not already) while small rural towns will see their roads, bridges, water treatment, and power grids fall into such disrepair and neglect that residents will be forced to move to commercial centers.
Taxes: While public taxes are likely to go down, so-called "private" taxes will go up significantly. This will take the form of increased user fees, tolls, insurance premiums, utility bills, food costs, etc., while we will also see an overall reduction in the number of Public Goods available to all people at no cost. These increased private taxes will go directly to further enrich the owners of the businesses, and not to improving anyone's quality of life. The average working family will have no means in which to save for education or retirement and there will be no social safety net for mandatory retirements. The result will be an increased dependence on family members to care for elderly loved ones and/or a dramatic increase in the practice of assisted suicides (to which the drug companies will be all too happy to provide).
Education: The concept of Public education will be gone. Instead it will be replaced by a network of private enterprises where the wealthy will be given all the opportunities they can afford while the poor will be relegated to a factory educational model where students are taught only those skills they will need for doing a specific job or vocation depending on whoever the dominant corporate sponsor happens to be. Students will be taught how to do their jobs and how to never question authority.
This is not some Orwellian vision of the future. This is happening or is evolving RIGHT NOW! The power of our government must be given back to the people! If it takes a rebellion or a revolution to do that, then that is what it will take.
Posted By: rwilymz
Date: July 19, 2011 11:11:31 AM
But at the bottom of it all is the horrifying fact that big corporations now control every aspect of our lives.
Conspiracy theory.
40 years ago it was the Trilateral Commission.
20 years ago, the Council on Foreign Relations.
There's also been the "New World Order", which is the liberals' favorite go-to conspiracy when grousing about "neo-cons", and there's "Agenda 21" which is the conservatives' go-to when griping about the statist liberals.
Throughout it all has been the Masons with their inscrutable secret messages on the dollar bill, their devil's pact with the Knights Templar, and the black magic under the Pharoahs.
Corporate oligarchy has been a recurrent theme in the post-apocalyptic fiction genre for decades. Rollerball and I, Robot. If it's not one thing, it's another. These are the manifestations of a society with too much spare time on its hands to worry and fret about trivialities. Sociology calls it anomie. And it's not that there aren't legitimate things to worry about - national debt probably prime among them since insolvency is the prime or contributing factor in more societal disintegrations than any other single cause - but it's that an individual person doesn't feel connected to the issues that are important so he makes up issues to take their place.
The result is that real problems are ignored and pseudoproblems are trumpeted as "critical issues". "I feel I don't have control of my life, so I seek something to blame..." While a psychologically valid response, it is supposed to be transitional; it is supposed to bridge the gap between despair and resolve, between when you realize you're powerless and when you take control of those things you can control.
I forget who said it: "Everyone is an environmentalist, but no one wants to clean his room." It's always easier to bitch.
The "remarkable man" seeking to extricate us from corporate oligarchy gave us Obamacare, which posits that "health insurance is the problem"; the solution to that problem? More health insurance - and mandatory to boot.
The "remarkable man" seeking to remove corporate influence on our food supply by increased regulation has virtually guaranteed the corporate food structure remain in place and grow stronger: corporations are the only entities with the loyyers and CPAs necessary to work their way through the regulatory cesspool.
You wanna reduce corporate influence? reduce government.
Posted By: Bill Gee
Date: July 19, 2011 11:52:42 AM
I make no excuses for the "remarkable man". In my view he's just another tool of the Corporate Elite. My wife believes he honestly wants to make the government more transparent and accountable to the People, but my view is that it's impossible given the power of the Corporate elite.
I know what I sound like when I talk about this. In fact, I have lambasted many people who have mentioned other Conspiracy theories in the past, and I realize how easy it is to tumble down a rabbit hole and start blaming Microsoft for the all the world's ills.
When I couch the state of political power in terms of "Corporate Ruling Elite", I am intentionally taking a rather complex subject and putting into a convenient sound bite. I don't think there is a conspiracy at work here. What I do believe is that Oligopolies, all working and lobbying for their own selfish interests, have collectively and quite accidentally wrested Power from the state for their own needs. In order to get what they wanted from government, they produced elaborate stories about how a law, tax loophole or some other favor would help the nation as a whole. When they got exactly what they wanted (and then some), they wanted more. Eventually they started to believe their own spin, and they demanded more.
In the end, a corporate entity is most concerned about their company's bottom line. They can care less that the tax break they just received means that property taxes on homeowners will need to go up. They don't care that the kickback they just gave the EPA inspector will eventually turn their factory into a Superfund site. They don't lose a wink of sleep over laying off thousands of loyal employees if it means that a new location will produce a net cost savings to production, even if the savings is negligable.
By giving corporate entities the same rights as human beings, and giving their money the same power as "speech", we are in essence granting citizenship to very powerful life forms that are incapable of empathy, justice or a sense of patriotism.
I don't know if the answer to reducing corporate power is by reducing the overall size of the government. In an ideal democracy, we should all consider ourselves agents of our government and of our national interest. Like you said, "Everyone is an Environmentalist". I would go one further and say that "Everyone is a Citizen, but everyone wants somebody else to think for them." If more people would take the time to take responsibility for their own actions, then we wouldn't need a big government to watch over them. So how do we do that?
