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The Corporate Colonization of Our Democracy
The United States of America has gotten so large, certain regions or even states, are taking on the same kind of burdens that third world colonized people have elsewhere. Americans are being colonized by a corporate-government complex right here in our own backyard.
In parts of Asia, Central and South America, and in the whole of Africa, colonization has long since created the "slave-in-place" model that worked only when the indigenous people behaved. This required a puppet ruler be put into place by the US and European countries, who have been colonizing in these continents for centuries. When it has worked for the empire countries, they have gotten along with their selected ruling elite who governed on behalf of the foreign corporations, and not at all on behalf of their citizens who suffered impoverished lives, extracting their own natural resources to hand over to the empire.
When it has not worked, is when the people resisted the colonization efforts, and we all know India as one example. Recently, with new technology, people have been getting upset about their living conditions in colonized (or even so-called post-colonized) regions, where they all get the tweets about how great life in the first world is, but suffer horrible poverty and joblessness at home in the third world.
Americans already know how good life is supposed to be in the first world, with "You can have it your way," and other $1.99 faux American Dream statements, but what's happening today is that corporations are controlling American government just like the colonizers did around the globe, and as a result, over the last several decades, life has gotten harder and worse for Americans: actually, they really aren't having it their way.
The very same colonialism we have conducted overseas has now come home to roost here in America, and that was a deep irony just waiting to happen. This comes directly from a situation where private sector corporations are funding certain US candidates to get elected, then paying countless lobbyists to influence them all day long once in office, so the laws of the cities, counties, states and federal government favor the corporations. This means people in America are getting burdened just like people in the third world, where the government does not work for them, but rather, works for the power base, the big corporate money interests: favoring the financial sector, outsourcing manufacturing jobs, increasing productivity making the worker work harder, and so on, to maximize profit.
There is always some collusion going on between the upper end of the corporate sector and their elected, lobbied politicians to control the worker on the left and the consumer on the right -- one and the same person, world-wide. Indeed, the corporations view the people as their workers and consumers -- exactly like a flock to feed and fleece, and the US Government is seen facilitating this under direct corporate supervision, functioning like an HR department with laws in place of policies.
Clearly, the corporations prefer their consumers who pay them, over their workers, who cost them money. Indeed, for many Americans, it is this problematic duality that corporations exploit, and the people get very upset sometimes, here and around the world.
In Wisconsin, the governor is clearly in the court of the corporate ruling elite, and we all knew that, long before the prank call. He has a whole state to rule over like a puppet corporate dictator. If more corporate elite ruling politicians are elected by discontented but highly mistaken people on the right, there will just be greater discontentment for all people as puppet dictators are elected in lavishly, corporate funded political campaigns.
Government staff employees paid $60k--$120k aren't necessarily more out to get you than private sector power brokers who make millions and billions. But the elected politicians are different: they are embraced by the corporations during the candidate-funding-election process, and never let go of once they win and get into office. They often are already on the inside long before they run for office.
Have you noticed that people vote, they don't lobby, and that corporations lobby, they don't vote? Corporations lobby 24/7/365, and have the money and connections to do so, while the rest of us 308 million Americans are pretty much ignored by the corporate sponsored politicians who haven't the time to listen to the small people, since they are so busy listening to the big people.
Across the country, Americans should all join in Denial Of Service (DOS) attacks directed at our politicians and demand all of their time until we feel like we have gotten back our government of, by and for the people. Until then, America will continue to be colonized, where the ruling class will exploit Americans for their labor-consumer function: they will pay less for labor, extract the most from the consumer, all without killing them both, and pocket the balance for profit.
It used to be that all of your labor and consumption was kept on the family farm and not laundered through the corporations. The time has come to find a contemporary way of having a greater say over our persons who labor and consume so we pocket the difference.
13 Comments so far
Show AllHall claims: "Across the country, Americans should all join in Denial Of Service (DOS) attacks directed at our politicians and demand all of their time until we feel like we have gotten back our government of, by and for the people. Until then, America will continue to be colonized..."
Sorry, that idea is not going to work. Contacting politicians via email and petitions and phone calls has gotten us to our present state.
No. What we need is very simple and very large. It is mass protest combined with a general strike. And even then, you are only at square one, like the Egyptian people today. A population can topple a dictator, but the task of removing the 'regime' and the 'ruling elite' is a thorough revolution, both political and social. The ordinary working people will know they've won when they see themselves on TV talking about their revolution and enacting all the changes they have been dreaming about.
Let no one be mistaken about the enormity of the task at hand and imagine it to be as simple as a 'denial of service' attack or barrage of email and phone calls to corrupt politicians!
Although Obama and many other Democrats pay lip service to populism on occasion, they are enabling the same regressive (call them colonial) results as the in-your-face Republicans.
The author's claim that those on the right are electing puppet dictators is only half correct.
The author attributes the problem to "discontented but highly mistaken people on the right".
Given Obama's record, there is no question that "discontented but highly mistaken people" includes Obamabots and tea partiers.
Study the fable of David and Goliath, think outside the box, think multiple strategy.
Subvert the dominant paradigm of cartesian linearity
I meant exactly what you said and did not conceive of the DOS being online, but rather in their offices and out in front of their homes and businesses. Thank you for the point.
Chris
I say DOS action against politicians AND the corporations that get them elected. I know, that could be hard because it's the products we use every day but when's the last time you played tag and won? We can do that again, "Tag, you're it!" the company with ill intent buying our government....no money for you today. Be the consumer that just says NO and means it.
This dynamic has been known and articulated by peoples the world over since it began. One dynamic we in the west tend not to think about is that when we choose to unquestioningly adhere to, benefit from, and support a paradigm, we concurrently 'externalize' (marginalize, exclude) the price paid for not learning about other ways of being.
In this case, where the adherence is to a paradigm that is proving to be inherently abusive, we must actively struggle with and fight for the knowledge being denied. This is part of the reality marginalized as something not worth considering. In fact it begins to open the door of a long darkened room and the light of reality floods in. What the powers that be fear most is that you will begin to consider alternative voices they abuse for profit.
I come back to the example of the descendants of pre-columbian indian/indigenous/originary peoples. It is absolutely essential to the powers that be that you consider them as utterly marginalized, incapable of regenerating life, that there be no reporting about, much less by them as a voice in the press - and only minimally in the "liberal" press. Marginalized and being sacrificed for the system in centuries of genocide does NOT mean that that the sacrifice is not on going. Each day that rights are denied, the system of genocide sustains itself.
The only way to put the corporate dragon back in the dungeon prison: a national movement to create small, local enterprises made up of worker owners. Imagine a country with 75 million such enterprises---going up against the China Manufacturing complex! Check out the following companies that are thriving on the worker-owner (or cooperative) model: Mondragon, Bob's Red Mill, King Arthur Flour, etc.
This article was a veiled acknowledgement that the US has slipped into full-blown Fascism while you were distracted by American Idle and Charlie Sheen. Little more.
Perform your little DOS attack. Piss off the Corporate masters.
You have already seen how such actions will be greeted. (Pittsburgh G8/G20 redux, anyone?)
A general strike is a wonderful idea. But it is time to live up to the lesson of the past, and be willing to fight DAMN hard for what you want to take back from the Oligarchs. And yes, tragically, blood will be shed and people will be injured or even die.
Such is the game of nations.
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
I have noted among commentators on the right a concern about national sovereignty, but they seem to be blissfully unaware that this sovereignty is being disintegrated all over the world in favor of property rights that constitute a corporate sovereignty.
The problem is that the Fortune 1000 constitute monopolies that are bigger than most of the states. In 2009, for instance, Exxon Mobil was the 9th largest economic entity in the US, behind Ohio, but above Virginia; its gross revenes were more than 23% of the entire GDP of California. Wal-Mart was 11th in the nation, behind Virginia, but above North Carolina, and its revenues were more than 21% of California's GDP. Collectively the Fortune 1000 are about 80% of the entire US and are too big to meaningfully regulate.
Worldwide the problem is more extreme with over three dozen countries smaller than the least of the Fortune 1000, and therefore incapable of enforcing any laws whatever upon them. Exxon Mobil is meanwhile the 37th largest economic entity in the world, just behind the entire GNP of Pakistan, but just ahead of Colombia. Wal-Mart is nestled behind the GNP of Malaysia, but just ahead of Belgium.
To stop the carousel of greed, all of the Fortune 1000 need to be made into the Fortune 100,000.
"When [the 'slave-in-place' model] has not worked, is when the people resisted the colonization efforts, and we all know India as one example."
Yes, we all have the image of the old man leaning on a stick gathering salt from the shore. Another article posted this very day, "India Must Free Binayak Sen Immediately", suggests that extractive colonialism enforced by a local collaborator government is still in practice in India today. I refer the reader also to the bitter writings of Arundhati Roy, such as the article "'It's outright war and both sides are choosing their weapons'" (I regret I cannot put my hand on the URL at the moment).
Extractive colonialism, both internal and external, has been the Anglo-Saxon way ever since the Tudors. One can argue that the first colony of the British Empire was England. This is a consequence of the basic fact that the oligarchy does not identify with the people it rules, but sees them as restless cattle or (in Noam Chomsky's term) "the domestic enemy". What is now in progress is the niggerization of all the non-rich -- that is to say, their exclusion from society, specifically the public space in which power is exercised.
“United Coalition of American Workers” project
All U.S. workers must stand together and fight for each other’s rights and whether or not you are public, private, union or non-union labor, we are not the enemy to be arguing amongst ourselves; however, Corporate America’s Leviathans are or is the enemy and have destroyed the sacred rights of people, and since replaced our United States Constitution with the following,
The New Declaration of Independence was the promise; the Corporate Constitution was the fulfillment. “The sacred rights of corporations are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with shadows of darkness in the whole volume of corporate nature, by the hand of the evil divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”
We the Corporations of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Corporate Constitution for the United States of America.
Please note the misspelling of the word “defence” is (Reprint Twenty-Fourth ed., 2009, UNITED STATES SENATE 111th Congress, 1st Session July 29, 2009) and not mine... Richard A. Sands, 2011