THE CORPORATE (POLICE) STATE

I never can tell what's going to turn into an interesting discussion on facebook.  Here's the original post:

Happy Halloween.

This is my greatest terror. Not the rats, but rather authority stripping away all my dignity and humanity, reducing me to an object, an animal, a thing, being deprived of all my hopes and dreams, being forced to be someone I'm not, and having my nose rubbed into my insignificance for the rest of my hopefully short life. This is the most horrifying thing I can imagine. Total and complete insignificance as a human being.

All it would take is another 9/11 and we're there.

 And I added this ghastly video to go with the thought.



Of course, it wasn't long before somebody thought they'd caught me in a contradiction.

Scott Interestingly you share a greatest fear with the Tea Party. 1984 is a little hard on big government as I recall.

Ronald Governments, corporations, at this point it's all the same.

And that was that, I thought.  No contradiction.  It's not big government.  It's who's controlling it.  But I declared the discussion over before it really even got started.  Another old high school pal made essentially the same point.

Mike I do find it interesting that your greatest terror is also the vision of the future that you embrace. The bigger the government, the smaller the individual!

Ronald Mike, see my comment to Scott, who made the same point, above. But I do have this to add. Milton Friedman's Chicago Boys made clear to one and all back in Chile during the 70s that police states and neoliberalism go together like love and marriage, in spite of the central premise of Friedman's ironically named book "Capitalism and Freedom."

Actually, I think Hitler might have made the same point back during the thirties, too.

But Mike wasn't gong to be dismissed as easily as Scott.

Mike Corporations cannot compel citizens into action without the force of the government. Only the government has that power. Hence the reason that the Constitution was written to limit the power of the government.

Ronald Mike, that's not how it works in the real world. I mean, that's how it's supposed to work, but it's just a civics lesson having very little to do with the actual functioning of the government. Corporations are all over the place in government. Regulatory agencies, lobbyists, massive campaign donations, and the class of people who are elected in MANY cases leave government and go to work directly for corporations. In many cases, corporations literally write the bills that they get their representatives to sponsor and pass. And this goes from big time Washington politics down to state and local politics.

Surely you've read about the "kids for cash" scandal. Well, that's totally minor, chump change compared to what happens inside the beltway.

Ronald Corporations have nothing to do with the government imprisoning and killing people.

Ronald Just nothing to do with anything at all.

Ronald No, corporations are like your friendly neighborhood banker, or the guy who owns the hardware store down the block, just nice regular people who are members of the local chamber of commerce, like mom and dad, and apple pie. Corporations are a Norman Rockwell painting. All is well in the USA.

Yes, yes, I'm being sarcastic, but corporate ownership of the US government is undeniable. Indeed, all this "big government" the conservatives love to bash historically came about with the rise of big business. From trust-busting TR, through FDR's New Deal, and into the 60s, "big government" was the only force in society keeping the corporations from running roughshod all over our republic. Then came Reagan, who, with like minded others, started dismantling social protections against the raw power of corporations, while at the same time shifting the emphasis of "big government" to something enabling big business control over America. So our protector, "big government," was essentially bought by big business, and they now use it at will.

Needless to say, taking away "big government" would simply mean direct corporate rule. What we need instead is getting big business out of "big government" entirely.

And that's when my old pal Bill, a right wing Army chaplain, chimed in.

Bill Ron, then why don't you run for President. You have all of the answers!!!

Ronald Well, certainly not all of them. I do, however, understand well that what we want to be the reality, so much so that many of us confuse desire with truth, is definitely NOT reality.

But running for president in order to dismantle the corporate state is utterly futile. The way elections and campaigns are structured absolutely requires butt loads of corporate cash in order to succeed. That is, no anti-corporate candidate can possibly be elected. You think I like Obama? No way. He's right in the middle of all this.

I'm totally serious, and correct, when I assert that corporations own the government.

Bill Whatever, Ron...I might even vote for you...and I'm conservative, white, a devout Christian, and SO ready for change. I pray for our President, but don't trust him. I might trust you. Go for it!

Ronald Bill, you are a true gentleman.

Also, you shouldn't trust ANY politician. What drives them is not what drives us.

Excelsior!

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