The same corporations that built their profits exploiting undocumented labor spent 50 years teaching America to hate those workers. Now there are combat boots on American streets.
But Americans have been brainwashed by decades of propaganda,rep vs dem same as coke vs Pepsi They just want to make us think we can have a choice.But the populace will not wake up to the class warfare that we have been losing since Nixon took us off gold standard.
Pretty much all right-wing ideology is a product of rich people trying to gaslight poor people into thinking otherwise. In fact, I think that's its defining characteristic, other than totalitarian militarism and rigid sex/gender roles and race realism.
And what is a corporation? An anti-gravity energy machine that sucks the bottom of a pyramid dry while shunting 95 percent of the remaining energy to the top. About 95 percent of the populace divvies up 5 percent of all extracted sources and resources profit; the rest goes straight up. The corporate tapeworm grinds up the source/resource bedrock and provides nearly zero real-time mitigation for the consequences of their hegemonic plunder.
This parasitic behavior is millennia old. The paradigm has never really shifted. in 2024 corporate, capitalist 'murka churned out 19.9 trillion$ in earnings, and garnered, after a gazillion tax loophole write-offs written by their political lackeys, a profit of 13.1 percent. That's 2.6 trillion$. Yet corporate for-profit 'murka paid out only 530 billion in taxes, about one fifth of that profit. Now this is AFTER all their infrastructure costs. Yet they borrow gigantically from the saved largess of the bottom 97 percent who put very fluid money in thousands of banks under the federal system. Stealing from the poor to pay for yachts, planes, off-shore stashes, stock buy-backs, corporate expansion via buying out small competitors, etc.
At the same time payroll and personal income taxes pumped about 5 trillion$ into the govt. treasury, which is where the deficit, that horrible threat to whom? comes in. The con, the grift, the outright theft, the reactionary subjugation of the citizenry and the overwhelming destruction of the planet's ecosystems and physical substrate goes un-mitigated, exponentially increasing the probability of a planetary collapse within ten years.
And who cares? Not the corporate cabal of capitalist parasites. The propaganda advertising/gaslighting/distraction industry is reminiscent of Soylent Green or Blade Runner grift, grotesque promises of a better LIFE OFFWORLD. Pray tell, where will that be?
Much of the human population is either insane or getting there. The sci fi fantasies of the ubermen and their delusional sloth continue with each passing hour, each 'promise' more ludicrous than the last one before it. Stressed out, dumbed down, drugged up, malnourished, poisoned, gaslighted, drowned in Newspeak and Doublethink and turning into garbage dumps for microplastics- the certain fate of the human animal.
And what do we get? Marine killers in the streets, commanded by a nitwit, prurient drunk whose megalomania is exceeded only by its decadent boss' lust for complete madness - The Grand Inquisitor on steroids. What the fuck are we going to do about it?
I have no workable idea, other than shutting down the entire 'economy,' a long game of stalemate which almost no citizen is physically or mentally prepared to play.
This is the inchoate insanity of the delusion of rapture addling the brains of the religiously irreligious.
From Michael Hudson: Ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia both rejected and resisted the tendency of oligarchs to capture power. Key to a king's success was cancelling the debts accrued by the populace, as the leaders were well aware that debt and interest were overwhelmingly powerful and would reduce the population to misery and cause the kingdom to be captured by financial oligarchs. The Jews learned of this practice in Babylonia and wrote it into their Law as the Jubilee Year (Jesus preached the Jubilee).
The West learned of interest carrying debt from Phoenician traders, but did not learn of debt cancellation. The Roman Empire was a creditor empire with no provision for debt cancellation; over time, this practice of "all debts must be paid" enslaved the citizenry and led to the fall of Empire.
We live in a Roman world today. "Debts that can't be paid won't be paid."
Years ago, my husband worked for a landscaping company. One day the owner asked an employee who hunted & owned guns how to get “one of those automatic rifles.”
“Why do you want that?”
“There’s so many Mexicans around. I just don’t feel safe.”
My husband, being my husband, asked, “Then why do you keep hiring them?”
“They work so cheap!”
I think this pretty much sums up the right wing position on immigration.
Some very good points about the way corporations have constructed elaborate systems that simultaneously rely on and demonize immigrant labor, though you didn't quite follow through on the implied promise of a benchmark for measuring corporate power.
I would point to studies like the Princeton study that showed how our representatives vote consistently in line with wealthy interests, regardless of the prevailing public opinion. https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
Finally, there is the World Happiness Report. While it doesn't correlate directly with corporate power, I'd say if the end result is that everyone is happier then that is the more important benchmark. Coincidentally, the happiest countries are the ones that have the best checks on corporate power, but there's no reason to assume that before you have the numbers to back it up. This is the ultimate benchmark that needs to be pursued. Freedom, equality, and functioning democracies are just the best way to get there. https://worldhappiness.report/
You only have an hammer and everything seems to you to be a nail. And to be fair there ARE a few nails here and there.
But corporate power is only a third (maybe even half) of the story, and places like Russia and Hungary are not what they are because of corporations.
Also things like trade wars and deportation are damaging to corporations which would rather leave things exactly as they are, or be happy to open the doors to more migrants.
I think that another big part of the story has been, for example, the relentless chipping away of trust in the institutions and the government operated by the political right from the 80’s onwards (yes with monopolistic corporate money too).
But there are other key pieces too, like the degree to which public goods are left to “the market” in this country. The insistence in not regulating the media. Or a meritocratic culture that was never really there.
I don’t disagree with your assessment there. I’m not saying that all things would be fixed by restructuring of power. I am saying that without a restructuring of power very little can be fixed.
Right, I agree on this. I'd say any fix that doesn't touch money in politics but power concentration too in general is destined to get reversed in the medium-long run.
Right now, the right is holding territory. Not just with armed state power, but with an ideology—however incoherent—that says: break the system, empower the rich, blame the weak.
And what do we have on our side?
A series of protest tours. Speeches. AOC and Bernie can still draw crowds. There's rage out there. But rage with no roadmap is just emotional catharsis. We need an ideological occupying force. A vision of what comes next.
I'm not pro-war. I don't think military occupations have worked out well for us in the past. This is a metaphor, not a call to arms. But the power vacuum created by a lack of clear ideological alternative is leading to violence and frustration that won't help our cause.
I disagree with you comment regarding Russia and Hungary. The oligarchs there are definitely powerful and colluded with the governments. That is what fascism and authoritarianism is based on. Multinational corporations are pushing their agenda world wide not just in the United States
Corbin, I agree with your piece and have been frustrated for decades about it. You worked for AOC; I continue to donate monthly to Our Revolution and Justice Democrats, about $1200/year. For a teacher, that’s a lot. What feedback do you get from your contacts with Progressive politicians? What do they say?
By “it” I mean the system of exploitation and corporate control that you describe and provide evidence for in the piece. I’m so tired of seeing milquetoast Democrats on the pundit circuit telling “us” to do something. My wife and I have protested every Saturday for the past two months. Rather than hearing the mayor of Lis Angles saying on Rachel Maddow that the LAPD can handle the protesters, why doesn’t she say they are exercising their 1st Amendment rights and “I’ll BE OUT THERE WITH THEM!” Why don’t local city councils pass ordinances making it illegal to prevent elected representatives from carrying out their duties and start arresting ICE agents. Bring this crisis to a head! So what do you hear, away from the microphone from the progressives I have been supporting?
Well one of the things I hear a whole lot from Progressive politicians when I talk to them is that people aren't ready or some version of that. I hear that we need things like Medicare for all instead of healthcare for all. I still fully believe in the concept of Brand New Congress. I'm doing my best to lay the foundations of what something like that might ideologically look like. One of the things that I noticed when working with Justice Democrats or AOC or the like is a lack of a cohesive vision or a real team environment. I would like to avoid that when the opportunity arises again
Exact same scenario has taken place in Hungary since the "regime change" in 1989. There, PM Orban is Trump's prototype. And what's more, the same people have helped map and move both country's "theft rings" forward, except you can substitute "oligarch's" for "corporations".
Powerful piece but I’m flabbergasted that such blatantly gendered language such as alpha dogs vs bitches is used here. You should be aware that gendered language such as calling immigrants rapists also has played a pivotal role in demonizing them
Absolutely! The only way to overturn copious Supreme Court corporate-friendly precedent, including Buckley and Citizen’s United, is via this path. Force the Congress to allow the people’s voice to carry the day.
We've (almost) always been been ruled by oligarchs but now, we've noticed it. The privatized FED funnels money to the bankers and corporations instead of to us...like a nationalized FED would be able to do. Those who control the currency, control politics and the oligarchs well understand this.
Simply put, we live in an exploitative economy where the greater good is collecting rent (there are many forms of rent), as JS Mils said of landlords, "Making money in their sleep." What is lacking is a popular understanding of how people are being exploited, how the parasites suck their wealth, diminishing people, de-educating people. Due to government oppression, the great leaders of our times are systematically destroyed (some co-opted, same thing) while at the same time, the education system was dumbed down. No comprehensive analysis is generally available. Nevertheless, I recall in Pearl Buck's THE GOOD EARTH where she showed a local revolution in China, "When the rich get too rich…" This pattern is as old as civilization, and the current Masters of the Universe are not immune.
And count the dollars in the bank accounts of the Bush's, Cheney's, Clinton's and Obama's not to mention generations of other Democrats and Republicans! Then ask yourself, "why was I voting against my own self-interests?"
The scary twist on this is the Yarvinites. The coalition of racist evangelicals and laissez-faire capitalists was a known thing and gave us such wonders as the Civil War and the Holocaust, favoring fatalism, social darwinism, dominionism of a form, exploitative urges and related stuff but the business people at least wanted life to go on with a plentiful supply of peons. The Yarvinites think technology frees them from the need for so much useless baggage of humanity ...
So maybe we're heading for the final roundup and frat party of the Bluto presidency, pardners, after which there'll be nothing left but the stench of stale beer and adolescent boy-barf and maybe Jesus riding in on a cloud if the premillenialists are right but I could never keep that shit straight ...
When the Marines show up in your city to enforce the sins of the ruling class, that’s not law and order—it’s late-stage empire in a MAGA bathrobe. The corporations built the furnace, stuffed it with labor, and now they’re throwing in the matches while blaming the smoke on immigrants.
This isn’t a policy failure. It’s spiritual rot. You can’t build a civilization on stolen wages and scapegoated dreams without the ghosts of that theft clawing their way back into the streets.
You want to measure corporate power? Count the boots. Then count the silence of those still calling this “normal.”
It should be bottom vs top, not left versus right.
But Americans have been brainwashed by decades of propaganda,rep vs dem same as coke vs Pepsi They just want to make us think we can have a choice.But the populace will not wake up to the class warfare that we have been losing since Nixon took us off gold standard.
Huh?
The rich exploit the poor.
Pretty much all right-wing ideology is a product of rich people trying to gaslight poor people into thinking otherwise. In fact, I think that's its defining characteristic, other than totalitarian militarism and rigid sex/gender roles and race realism.
And what is a corporation? An anti-gravity energy machine that sucks the bottom of a pyramid dry while shunting 95 percent of the remaining energy to the top. About 95 percent of the populace divvies up 5 percent of all extracted sources and resources profit; the rest goes straight up. The corporate tapeworm grinds up the source/resource bedrock and provides nearly zero real-time mitigation for the consequences of their hegemonic plunder.
This parasitic behavior is millennia old. The paradigm has never really shifted. in 2024 corporate, capitalist 'murka churned out 19.9 trillion$ in earnings, and garnered, after a gazillion tax loophole write-offs written by their political lackeys, a profit of 13.1 percent. That's 2.6 trillion$. Yet corporate for-profit 'murka paid out only 530 billion in taxes, about one fifth of that profit. Now this is AFTER all their infrastructure costs. Yet they borrow gigantically from the saved largess of the bottom 97 percent who put very fluid money in thousands of banks under the federal system. Stealing from the poor to pay for yachts, planes, off-shore stashes, stock buy-backs, corporate expansion via buying out small competitors, etc.
At the same time payroll and personal income taxes pumped about 5 trillion$ into the govt. treasury, which is where the deficit, that horrible threat to whom? comes in. The con, the grift, the outright theft, the reactionary subjugation of the citizenry and the overwhelming destruction of the planet's ecosystems and physical substrate goes un-mitigated, exponentially increasing the probability of a planetary collapse within ten years.
And who cares? Not the corporate cabal of capitalist parasites. The propaganda advertising/gaslighting/distraction industry is reminiscent of Soylent Green or Blade Runner grift, grotesque promises of a better LIFE OFFWORLD. Pray tell, where will that be?
Much of the human population is either insane or getting there. The sci fi fantasies of the ubermen and their delusional sloth continue with each passing hour, each 'promise' more ludicrous than the last one before it. Stressed out, dumbed down, drugged up, malnourished, poisoned, gaslighted, drowned in Newspeak and Doublethink and turning into garbage dumps for microplastics- the certain fate of the human animal.
And what do we get? Marine killers in the streets, commanded by a nitwit, prurient drunk whose megalomania is exceeded only by its decadent boss' lust for complete madness - The Grand Inquisitor on steroids. What the fuck are we going to do about it?
I have no workable idea, other than shutting down the entire 'economy,' a long game of stalemate which almost no citizen is physically or mentally prepared to play.
This is the inchoate insanity of the delusion of rapture addling the brains of the religiously irreligious.
From Michael Hudson: Ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia both rejected and resisted the tendency of oligarchs to capture power. Key to a king's success was cancelling the debts accrued by the populace, as the leaders were well aware that debt and interest were overwhelmingly powerful and would reduce the population to misery and cause the kingdom to be captured by financial oligarchs. The Jews learned of this practice in Babylonia and wrote it into their Law as the Jubilee Year (Jesus preached the Jubilee).
The West learned of interest carrying debt from Phoenician traders, but did not learn of debt cancellation. The Roman Empire was a creditor empire with no provision for debt cancellation; over time, this practice of "all debts must be paid" enslaved the citizenry and led to the fall of Empire.
We live in a Roman world today. "Debts that can't be paid won't be paid."
Michael Lincoln: ...and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year (Tyranny of Debt)
https://www.amazon.com/forgive-them-their-debts-Foreclosure/dp/3981826027
Years ago, my husband worked for a landscaping company. One day the owner asked an employee who hunted & owned guns how to get “one of those automatic rifles.”
“Why do you want that?”
“There’s so many Mexicans around. I just don’t feel safe.”
My husband, being my husband, asked, “Then why do you keep hiring them?”
“They work so cheap!”
I think this pretty much sums up the right wing position on immigration.
A good story well told. Thank you.
Some very good points about the way corporations have constructed elaborate systems that simultaneously rely on and demonize immigrant labor, though you didn't quite follow through on the implied promise of a benchmark for measuring corporate power.
I would point to studies like the Princeton study that showed how our representatives vote consistently in line with wealthy interests, regardless of the prevailing public opinion. https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
There's also the GINI coefficient that provides a benchmark for wealth inequality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
The Freedom Index is another good one. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-index-by-country
Finally, there is the World Happiness Report. While it doesn't correlate directly with corporate power, I'd say if the end result is that everyone is happier then that is the more important benchmark. Coincidentally, the happiest countries are the ones that have the best checks on corporate power, but there's no reason to assume that before you have the numbers to back it up. This is the ultimate benchmark that needs to be pursued. Freedom, equality, and functioning democracies are just the best way to get there. https://worldhappiness.report/
You only have an hammer and everything seems to you to be a nail. And to be fair there ARE a few nails here and there.
But corporate power is only a third (maybe even half) of the story, and places like Russia and Hungary are not what they are because of corporations.
Also things like trade wars and deportation are damaging to corporations which would rather leave things exactly as they are, or be happy to open the doors to more migrants.
I think that another big part of the story has been, for example, the relentless chipping away of trust in the institutions and the government operated by the political right from the 80’s onwards (yes with monopolistic corporate money too).
But there are other key pieces too, like the degree to which public goods are left to “the market” in this country. The insistence in not regulating the media. Or a meritocratic culture that was never really there.
I think it’s time to get new tools.
I don’t disagree with your assessment there. I’m not saying that all things would be fixed by restructuring of power. I am saying that without a restructuring of power very little can be fixed.
Right, I agree on this. I'd say any fix that doesn't touch money in politics but power concentration too in general is destined to get reversed in the medium-long run.
Oh and by the way a Democratic Party without a clear vision to sell is another key piece of the puzzle. This happened in Europe too.
Right now, the right is holding territory. Not just with armed state power, but with an ideology—however incoherent—that says: break the system, empower the rich, blame the weak.
And what do we have on our side?
A series of protest tours. Speeches. AOC and Bernie can still draw crowds. There's rage out there. But rage with no roadmap is just emotional catharsis. We need an ideological occupying force. A vision of what comes next.
I'm not pro-war. I don't think military occupations have worked out well for us in the past. This is a metaphor, not a call to arms. But the power vacuum created by a lack of clear ideological alternative is leading to violence and frustration that won't help our cause.
https://www.americasundoing.com/p/we-cant-beat-trump-without-an-alternative
I disagree with you comment regarding Russia and Hungary. The oligarchs there are definitely powerful and colluded with the governments. That is what fascism and authoritarianism is based on. Multinational corporations are pushing their agenda world wide not just in the United States
Corbin, I agree with your piece and have been frustrated for decades about it. You worked for AOC; I continue to donate monthly to Our Revolution and Justice Democrats, about $1200/year. For a teacher, that’s a lot. What feedback do you get from your contacts with Progressive politicians? What do they say?
By “it” I mean the system of exploitation and corporate control that you describe and provide evidence for in the piece. I’m so tired of seeing milquetoast Democrats on the pundit circuit telling “us” to do something. My wife and I have protested every Saturday for the past two months. Rather than hearing the mayor of Lis Angles saying on Rachel Maddow that the LAPD can handle the protesters, why doesn’t she say they are exercising their 1st Amendment rights and “I’ll BE OUT THERE WITH THEM!” Why don’t local city councils pass ordinances making it illegal to prevent elected representatives from carrying out their duties and start arresting ICE agents. Bring this crisis to a head! So what do you hear, away from the microphone from the progressives I have been supporting?
Well one of the things I hear a whole lot from Progressive politicians when I talk to them is that people aren't ready or some version of that. I hear that we need things like Medicare for all instead of healthcare for all. I still fully believe in the concept of Brand New Congress. I'm doing my best to lay the foundations of what something like that might ideologically look like. One of the things that I noticed when working with Justice Democrats or AOC or the like is a lack of a cohesive vision or a real team environment. I would like to avoid that when the opportunity arises again
Exact same scenario has taken place in Hungary since the "regime change" in 1989. There, PM Orban is Trump's prototype. And what's more, the same people have helped map and move both country's "theft rings" forward, except you can substitute "oligarch's" for "corporations".
Powerful piece but I’m flabbergasted that such blatantly gendered language such as alpha dogs vs bitches is used here. You should be aware that gendered language such as calling immigrants rapists also has played a pivotal role in demonizing them
WTF are we going to do about it? Well, here's one thing that absolutely must be done, whatever else it may take: https://movetoamend.org.
Absolutely! The only way to overturn copious Supreme Court corporate-friendly precedent, including Buckley and Citizen’s United, is via this path. Force the Congress to allow the people’s voice to carry the day.
HJR-54
We've (almost) always been been ruled by oligarchs but now, we've noticed it. The privatized FED funnels money to the bankers and corporations instead of to us...like a nationalized FED would be able to do. Those who control the currency, control politics and the oligarchs well understand this.
Simply put, we live in an exploitative economy where the greater good is collecting rent (there are many forms of rent), as JS Mils said of landlords, "Making money in their sleep." What is lacking is a popular understanding of how people are being exploited, how the parasites suck their wealth, diminishing people, de-educating people. Due to government oppression, the great leaders of our times are systematically destroyed (some co-opted, same thing) while at the same time, the education system was dumbed down. No comprehensive analysis is generally available. Nevertheless, I recall in Pearl Buck's THE GOOD EARTH where she showed a local revolution in China, "When the rich get too rich…" This pattern is as old as civilization, and the current Masters of the Universe are not immune.
And count the dollars in the bank accounts of the Bush's, Cheney's, Clinton's and Obama's not to mention generations of other Democrats and Republicans! Then ask yourself, "why was I voting against my own self-interests?"
Bring back Glass Stegall. The brilliant law passed by Roosevelt. the last President that really cared about this country and all it's people.
I hope your last sentence including - “what are we going to do about it?” - presages your Part 2. When will you conclude your argument?
The scary twist on this is the Yarvinites. The coalition of racist evangelicals and laissez-faire capitalists was a known thing and gave us such wonders as the Civil War and the Holocaust, favoring fatalism, social darwinism, dominionism of a form, exploitative urges and related stuff but the business people at least wanted life to go on with a plentiful supply of peons. The Yarvinites think technology frees them from the need for so much useless baggage of humanity ...
https://www.theframelab.org/my-talk-with-heather-cox-richardson-about-tech-fascism/
So maybe we're heading for the final roundup and frat party of the Bluto presidency, pardners, after which there'll be nothing left but the stench of stale beer and adolescent boy-barf and maybe Jesus riding in on a cloud if the premillenialists are right but I could never keep that shit straight ...
https://www.salon.com/2014/03/02/baby_boomer_humors_big_lie_ghostbusters_and_caddyshack_really_liberated_reagan_and_wall_street/
When the Marines show up in your city to enforce the sins of the ruling class, that’s not law and order—it’s late-stage empire in a MAGA bathrobe. The corporations built the furnace, stuffed it with labor, and now they’re throwing in the matches while blaming the smoke on immigrants.
This isn’t a policy failure. It’s spiritual rot. You can’t build a civilization on stolen wages and scapegoated dreams without the ghosts of that theft clawing their way back into the streets.
You want to measure corporate power? Count the boots. Then count the silence of those still calling this “normal.”
Blessed be the exploited who refuse to vanish,