As the primary smoke clears, we see: The Corporate Gangster Republic of America

Now that Edwards has quit, progressives can view politics without false hope; that is, with something resembling detachement. Here's my take.

The public is left with only four major-party candidates for President. All of these choices are thoroughly in the pocket of one subsidiary or another of Corporate America. A GOP victory will cement the Bush gangster state. Whereas, a Democratic victory will merely slow the onset of the police state aspects of the corporate program - without taking the enabling laws and twisted signing statements off the books. A Democratic victory will still allow the economic looting and war profiteering to continue, perhaps at a modestly reduced rate - until the rest of the world figures a way to cut us off without killing themselves in the process.

This sad state of affairs is the inevitable and fatal outcome of the metastasis of gangsterism throughout the U.S. governmental and corporate bureaucracies. There is a straightforward progression of the disease from the U.S. re-seeding the Mafia in Italy after WW2 (e.g., Lucky Luciano) - to stop Italy from "going Red", through the CIA-mob connection to get Castro (and, probably, JFK), to the Iran-Contra drug running, to today's out-in-the-open CIA/military torture camps and the resurgent Taliban heroin operation.

For the last eighty years, the emphasis of U.S. law enforcement has been on smashing the left (unions, pinko intellectuals, feminists) by any means, including making common cause with gangsters. Beginning with the vicious, egomaniacal J. Edgar Hoover, national law enforcement has had a soft spot for "informers" and "undercover agents" who turn out to be the top drug runners in the country. The Feds set the tone for the big city police departments.

Los Angeles has long been the poster child for a hyper-militarised and hyper-corrupt police reign of terror, including the botched investigation of the RFK assassination and the lockstep denial of the late Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" allegations. Chicago, capital city of Prohibition Era gangsterism, was the site of the assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton in his bed by a hail of police bullets and the site of the infamous 1968 police riot. The Miami Cubans are notorious for their ties to the Mafia-supported Batista regime and for their appearance in way too many CIA operations, including Watergate.

We have heard a lot about the corporate takeover of America, but its worse than that. CIA/FBI-sanctioned gangsters have acquired legitimate businesses or influence over legitimate businesses - especially in the area of drugs, guns, and money. Then, those criminal, or criminally-connected, corporations have muscled out real corporations in the grab for corporate control of the government. Haliburton is crooked; Blackwater is a gang of murderers-for-hire; the banking and stock trading industries are one giant Ponzi scheme; the insurance industry is a profit-skimming protection racket. The Bush administration has been one giant mob "bustout" charged to the credit card of middle class America.

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Given all that, I think its finally time to talk about a fundamental weakness in American government. It is a weakness that may once have been a strength (or it may have always been a charade), but now it is killing our country. The weakness is that we have no ongoing elite class with a vested interest in keeping corruption within some kind of bounds. In a country with a hereditary nobility or a religious monopoly, legitimacy carries the burden of some minimal standards of honesty, fair play, and noblesse oblige.

But, in America, elites come and go. New industrial techniques constantly create new fortunes. In a country where most people were recent immigrants, what little geographical loyalty had managed to form vaporized with the onset of modern transportation. A vast population moves across a vast country. Your business went bust? Move to another state and start over. Don't like your family? Run away to Hollywood and become a star. Had a run-in with the law? Change your name and move cross-country. (Bad doctors do this all the time.) We have the morals of a ball of ants clambering over each other to cross a river.

As a result of this wanderlust and irresponsibility, America has had more or less continuous, massive corruption from the Civil War onward. One can always buy a jurisdiction in which to do business. Case in point, corporations bought the state of Delaware a hundred years ago. One can always buy a politician. One can always buy, blackmail, or intimidate an investigation.

Legal jurisdiction has evolved from an organizing principal into a tool with which to hamstring U.S. law enforcement. It was an open gripe in the 1980s that the DEA couldn't arrest the perps because the perps were all protected by the CIA. Look at the hybridoma known as DHS. It is a Frankenstein monster of something like twenty overlapping, feuding Federal agencies. It has turned into nothing but a giant ripoff, complete with seminars in Honolulu, while chemical plants and railroads remain sitting ducks for the non-existent terrorists.

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Smart crooks love chaos; sometimes they even create it deliberately. There is a lot of opportunity for dumping bodies and snatching purses in the midst of chaos. As we have seen, high-level crooks have thrived in America. They have infiltrated law enforcement in America. And, since the fall of Communist resistance, our corporate elite has decided to go global with the franchising of the Corporate Gangster Republic of America (GangReAm for short - close to gangrene, so its easy to remember).

Ever since then, critics without blinders have said that "the biggest beneficiary of globalization is organized crime." We now have what R.T. Naylor calls "peek-a-boo finance" on a global scale. We have private mercenary armies, instead of a few mob guys with mattresses, when we need to pressure some chump country to pay the vigorish. We have a globalized slave trade in sex workers and other undocumented aliens.

In case you missed it, GangReAm is a testerone-addled country. Its getting harder to distinguish America from fanatical Islam, where women are perpetually harassed in public, and practically property. We are headed back to a definition of republic that predates the 1920 Suffrage Laws, predates the Roman pater familias, predates the Athenian polis of only "free men":



It is no contradiction in terms for there to be a republic where only corporate gangsters have the franchise. Its just one of those "organizational details" that corporations think they are so much better than the government at handling.

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At this point, I have no hope that America can escape from our current nightmare without massive damage to our institutions, our economy, our environment, and our standing in the world. We now live in a country where politicians are nothing but clients of powerful and corrupt groups. You don't need a platform and a constituency to be a candidate anymore, you just need the backing of some "boss". The boss's mob will provide the money, the media, and the organization to get you elected. Once in office, you will deliver the boodle to the boss's organization. Its a very efficient system. It eliminates that annoying, whiny middleman - the citizen.

This kleptocracy will only change when it collapses of its own corrupt weight, due to some combination of Peak Oil, climate change, economic depression, and live-ammunition factional warfare.

With Edwards dropping out before 90% of Americans had a chance to vote, voter disenfranchisement by corporate media/corporate funding is now completely dominant. We will never, in what remains of the life of this First Republic, see anything but the jockeying for feeding spots at the carcass of America by the various factions carving up what's left of our country.

As I heard recently: "we have no party anymore, all we have left is the movement". So, my adice is to buy a copy of "The Shock Doctrine" and get ready, because its coming to a city near you, real soon.

arendt

Thanks, that makes me feel real good as an Obama supporter from day one.

arendt

quit,...."

"Foot, meet shoe that fits."

> I deliberately avoided naming names and personal histories (just used Edwards quitting as a hook for the essay).
> Its about "the system".

My point is simply that Edwards was the only guy not on the corporate teat. But I could have used Kucinich's name and the rest of the post would still mean the same thing. I could have left out the first sentence entirely and the post would still be the same.

So, you will just have to live with the fact that I chose THIS EVENT as the HOOK. Clearly, you have no interest in discussing the corrupt system, as you are still completely invested in the horse race bullshit.

arendt

So tell me again how we were to know that treating your post as being about the primaries was a mistake?

You lament that one of your favorite candidates is out of the race and you ascribe it to the remaining candidates being on the corporate teat. But we are not to contest your take on it because that is making it a GD-P issue and you put the post in GD. Ok. whatever.

> How are we supposed to know...

By reading my post. Which you still seem not to have done.

I wrote the piece a while ago, and waited for an appropriate moment to post it. I felt that Edwards quitting would leave everyone stunned and offer a good chance to get some readers. The OP was not "about the primaries" or about "favoring" someone in the same way that selling hot dogs outside the stadium on game day is not "about the game" or "favoring" the home team, its just where you find the customers.

But, no. You can read my mind better than I can. You know my intention. You can read my secret thoughts. You spotted the camouflaged message.

I need to revise my old estimate that "DUers don't do nuance". Apparently, some DUers see nuance where there is none.

arendt

"My point is simply that Edwards was the only guy not on the corporate teat."



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Stearns, Weaver et al $131,000
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Goldman Sachs $77,100
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http://opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.asp?id=N00002283&cycle=2008

all we (who have yet to vote) have to vote for in our own primary is Clinton or Obama. And my answer has NOTHING to do with them PERSONALLY.

It has to do with institutional arrangements in this country. So, if you can't contribute to that discussion, please don't obstruct it.

arendt

I said nothing insulting, I happen to agree with a lot of what you said. I would ask that you don't obstruct my right to post a comment.

to read my post and to still be "happy" to vote for HRC/BO is the perfect example of why progressives in this country have no chance.

I deliberately avoided naming names and personal histories (just used Edwards quitting as a hook for the essay).
Its about "the system". Your response is a small scale version of "Congress may be corrupt; but my Congress-critter is OK."

Can you understand that I wouldn't find what you said to be supportive?

arendt

But I also recognize that you have to work with what you are dealt. America will never be rid of the corporate influence. That said I think that regulation, unions, and a Democratically controlled White House could do a lot to cut down on corporate greed. As well as Edwards as VP or AG. As a realist I know that we can never get rid of all corporations, nor should we as they are not all bad, I do think that ones like En-ron should punished to the full extent of the law. There is a 0% chance of that happening if Republicans are allowed to control any part of our Gov. after the next election, so weather you call it "happy," "holding ones nose," or some other form of it. I will be voting D in the election.

Where corporate power is interlocked with government power in the setting of national economic and foreign policies. Elections are contests between various corporate interests attempting to set policy for their own benefit. Nowhere in the definition exists room for the people at large. This is why left wingers like FDR are no longer electable. They have the support of no major business elements, so they have no money.

bhn

seeing most of it happen. About the only thing you left out was nuclear weapons.

hope was unrealistic.

That's why Barack's whole shtick grated on me from day one. I fell for that crap for twenty years before I woke up.

arendt

Coast, own water, garden and peace.

Thanks for taking the time to write it.

I don't know how Edwards supporters can endure this news, I'm a Canuck and find it devastating. It is unbelievable that dems never got behind him in the numbers he needed. Its not just America that needed someone like Edwards to be POTUS, the world needs it. Its a tremendous loss.

Most Americans I talk to, including the educated ones, are hypnotized by media, by consumption, by personal concerns. They use the internet for crapola like myspace and facebook. Their talk is full of celebrities, sports, personal consumption, and spectacle. They are, by and large, socially unsophisticated people whose ideas haven't progressed beyond what they learned in "jocks vs geeks" culture in high school.

Or, maybe, they just are in denial, because reality is just too damn depressing.

Whatever.

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I endure by telling the truth. (And, pretty soon, I will have to add "and run like hell" to that.)

arendt

if you need a place to run to.

Modest size county in CA, rural, low population, big lake in middle, lots of undeveloped space in hills, 1325'elevation (no worry about sea levels), no freeways into area- all 2-lane roads (defendable)...

however, if the cities start to look like Soylent Green. I would consider getting out.

arendt

I am saving it to share with a friend with no internet access.

I have "Dark Alliance", Martin Lee's "The Beast Reawakens", the Chalmers Johnson "Blowback" series, and several of Gore Vidal' political works.

Yup, you are right. Damn.

we're heading towards something very different from the America we've grown up in, something dark and corrupt, something devoid of justice and liberty for all.

Every day, I weep for what was once a great republic, that now seems hell bent on bringing about its own downfall. :cry:

My students call me Cassandra...

-Create a regional Resource guide. Who are the producers in your area? The workers? Identify the needs and skills of neighbors.

-Investigate creating a Local currency. EF Schumacher Society is a good source of info here. http://www.schumachersociety.org/

-Or consider starting a Time Bank in your area. Time Dollars is a tested and exciting way of valuing members of a community and bringing them together. http://www.timebanks.org/

-Insulate your home! Get a free energy audit from your utility company and take advantage of any and all rebates and subsidized programs to install solar panels, upgrade insulation, make Energy Star, etc.

-Reduce Consumption! Use a laundry line. Use power strips. Use CFLs. Practice sharing. Carpool. Walk or ride a bike or take a bus when you can. Whittle a stick on your porch instead of turning on the TV.

-Volunteer at a farm nearby! start your own garden. join a community garden.

-Start building cold-frames (i've grown winter Kale in 2 feet of snow)!

-Be a seed-saver! Know your local foragable greens! (dandelion, purslane, chickweed, early poke, etc)

-Find the nut trees in your area, compete with the squirrels (they're taking over the parks anyway)!

-Test your soil... plant appropriate (native) berry bushes and fruit trees in abundance.

I've harvested beach plum, black cap raspberry, salmonberry, mulberry, blackberry, blueberry, strawberry, black walnut, elderberry, sour cherry... all in the wilds of Western Massachusetts. And the plants that grow naturally in their own domain are much more power packed with flavor and nutrients. Yeah, it's work. But it's fun work... and you get to know your local eco-systems real well. I'm compiling my own regional resource guide... it will be a years long project for me and my child (she's six now)... but she'll know plants and will get wilderness training, and she loves the heck out of picking wild berries and fruits. Not all food needs to come from the store.



If we all try to act like "survivalists" we won't survive. We will need cooperation, not competition in order to rebuild after the fall.

Some good books:

In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry Mander
Cradle to Cradle by McDonough/Braungart
The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
Dwellers in the Land by Kirkpatrick Sale
Timeless Way of Building and A Pattern Language by Chris Alexander
Walden Two by BF Skinner
No More Throw-Away People by Edgar Cahn
Money by Tom Greco
Mortgage Free by Rob Roy
Small is Beautiful by EF Schumacher
Gaviotas by Alan Weisman



btw, i enjoyed the OP Arendt, and i agree in most every aspect.

K&R

As a canuck, I deeply admired Edwards and hoped he would prevail. Not saying he would of accomplished everything he wanted to do....government is very big, and there are many many many there who have fed of the corporate trough. They will not give up their hard earned(?) rewards. It would of been pretty hard to get it to comply with Edwards goals. But, at least Edwards had the audacious balls to call it as it is.

And I think you called it correctly when you stated that it will only collapse from within, from its own corrupt weight. It is inevitable, and will be painful beyond belief. There is no one hero standing on the horizen to deliver us from what is to come. And so, I guess we must be our own heroes for ourselves and each other. The system is fractured - and perhaps the best thing is to allow it to fade into irrelevance. Never give up on the imagination and fire in the human spirit however. Out of the ashes, and decay a new system will evolve. What that system is to be is up to you....and me.....and any of us left standing.

the faster we can begin to rebuild.

We need help to get the gangsters out of our government. The Dems on offer will make nice to the gangsters.

arendt

Hey, how's that been working out for us lately? :sarcasm:

First of all, we have to have totally government-funded election campaigns. The current system is open, legalized bribery.

Second of all, we have to stop this Richard Perle phenomenon (I'm in the government and I'm running my own consulting firm.)

---

But, how do you deal with this in the current environment?

arendt

and willing to stay only one term, if necessary, to accomplish it. I don't see those characteristics in any of the Dem candidates we have left.

Big problem is dumping the shack I’m in with mortgage foreclosure public auctions popping up more every day.

I would like to offer for your consideration my own thought that the kleptocracy would collapse "of its own corrupt weight" alot sooner if people simply stopped cooperating with it.

I'm talking about extremely radical actions, of course. Like, stop using credit cards. Like, pulling all of your money out of Wall street. Like, putting your energy and passion into building alternative community-based institutions such as; micro-lending, local energy-generation, cooperative, worker-owned enterprises, etc. -- instead of investing in the dead end of national electoral politics. Like, stop voting for lesser evils.

But, I'm just an old school, "turn on, tune in, drop out" 60s relic, so what do I know...

sw

unless you are completely off the grid.

You need money to, at minimum, pay taxes. You need access to what is increasingly and internet-mediated world. No ISP (internet service provider),no access.

Just as you say, it would be a radical action to set up an off-grid community. John Brunner made the "paid avoidance areas" in "The Shockwave Rider" sound easy; but it would be so hard to pull off. From the beginning, there would be government spies and provocateurs. If you got any traction, there would be sabotage and violent demonstrations.

These days, they won't let you drop out. They will come out and pull you back in.

But, live free while you can. Maybe it will all collapse so fast that you will be safe.

Nevertheless, I do think about the things you mention.

arendt

n/t

We are crashing hard soon and so will they.

some others have posted about getting off the grid, and trying to disconnect from society. I gave that a bit of thought. I guess I hope for their own sake that when the collapse comes, they're far off the beaten track, because their self-sustaining little enclave is perhaps not likely to survive the first round of hungry, armed, roving gangs that happens across it.


(don't mind me, I was never a pollyanna.)

first, if I'm living out in the sticks, I WILL have weapons, and probably big DOGS. I might also have cheap night-vision surveillance cameras - solar powered. If I'm a nasty bugger, I will have some Claymore mines that "fell off a truck". :hide:

Second, by the time an armed gang gets out to my part of the world, they will either be starving or desperate or both. Doesn't make for good strategy.

Of course, by this point, I am as insane :crazy: as the nutcases running around Idaho screaming "black helicopter, black helicopter"! :silly:

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Don't mind me. I'm off my meds.

arendt

Yeah, I think my mind might have ventured off in that direction too. Thinking alng those lines conjures visions of a person I don't think I'd want to be... I'm still trying to find a third option.

1. off the grid, etc. - down side: not too defensible.
2. off the grid and well-armed - down side: not too humane.
3. ???

:shrug:

it's just life, I long ago figured out I wasn't getting out of it alive... I'm trying to learn to enjoy it while I can, and not give myself a stroke worrying about what the future holds, since so much of it is beyond my control.

Thank you!

K&R

You summed it up very well. Very well.

Excellent post

way before the primary smoke cleared . . . the two candidates are McCain and Clinton, and there's not a damned thing we could have done to make it otherwise . . . and in the general election, McCain beats Clinton -- even if they have to "mis-count" a few votes to make it so . . .

"It's not who votes that counts; it's who counts the votes." . . .

I didn't.

This book should be required reading.

K&R

I was making the same point as the redoubtable Mr. Schechter. But, somehow, I got dumped into the candidate dungeon.



Can we discuss rampant systematic corruption? Or haircuts, handshakes, and dirty looks?

It doesn't work, not enough balloon animals I guess.

There was an interesting post yesterday at DKos on the anniversary of the execution of King Charles in 1649 after he refused to compromise with Parliament and tried to reassert Absolutism in England. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/30/105411/459

Recall, as well, what happened 140 years later to another thickheaded regent, Louis XVI, when he went back on his pledge to honor the laws passed by the National Assembly of the First French Republic. http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2008/1/30/105411/459/10#c10

No, if history is any guide, we aren't in for a reign of tyranny. There will be a Civil War before that happens. Once the people have had a taste of freedom, no unitary executive is safe.

As for the Mafia Chieftains and any mercenaries who would defend them, the U.S. Army and the CIA will deal with them. This is not 2003 -- if we recognize the treachery of the Bush-Cheney kleptocrats and the treasons of the neocons -- so do career military and intelligence officers.

half the CIA is among the Mafia Chieftains, and the Army has been outsourced to the mercenaries. What's left of the army is an exhausted, demoralized, understaffed, over-stretched mess. Whereas, Blackwater has the best of everything. If push came to shove, Haliburton could tell the army to pound sand and supply Blackwater instead.

Yeah, that would be Civil War. I am not sanguine about who would win, because I don't think most Americans have a clue what has been going on in the way of privatization of the military/intelligence/government over the last seven years. They think that when push comes to shove, the machinery will respond. My worry is that the machinery has either been stolen, sabotaged, or hijacked. Then there is the whole Bush 25% that would happily side with Blackwater.

No, I am not placing any money on the outcome at this time. But, keep talking, its very calming.

arendt

domination of society and government by a predatory, mindless business class, Rotarians and Klansmen. The America Sinclair Lewis wrote about.



But, then came FDR, who surrounded himself with a fair balance of conscience and brains. The New Deal was more hope and promise than results. But, it scared the hell out of Wall Street. The House of Morgan tried to buy its own Mussolini, but Douglas McArthur bowed out, and Smedley Butler blew the whistle. The plot to overthrow FDR collapsed in 1934, the resulting Congressional hearings were held in a whisper and the major papers buried the whole thing. The American financiers of fascism were forced to lay low, and concentrated on projects in Germany and Italy, instead. The Bush and Dulles families were at the center of this quiet conspiracy. They had to wait a long time for their next chance.


I'm convinced that something like this is happening again -- because there is no other choice -- the American Right has collapsed. After Plame, Iraq, and Katrina, even the Joint Chiefs of Staff and career CIA despise the Bushites and have quietly rebelled. But, that revulsion only goes so far. if we can't again find another deep reservoir of people in Washington with talent, love of liberty and luck, we could soon be led by another American Mussolini.

the country, the economy, and the world is so much more complex and interconnected today. The ecology is on the brink of collapse.

If this economy goes South, it is coming back as peasants with hoes. No one will be able to afford internal combustion, and we won't have done the research on alterntive tech. Loss of tech will result in at least some die-off, until people get used to growing their own and doing with way less meat.

So, if you have the slightest awareness of an FDR-like program that isn't blackmailable/intimidatable by the current BCF, please, please talk them up.

People need to have some cause to work for (as opposed to some personality to worship). The environment is obviously the cause; and it can lead to sensible economics and public works. It can lead to localization, instead of globalization. It can blow the whistle on the Bush perversion of science in government.

Its really a shame that Ralph Nader has turned into the Queen Elizabeth of the environmental movement. Aren't there any environmental leaders who could step up and mobilize people? Right now, it seems that half the enviro organizations have been bribed into silence by corporate contributions.

Thank you for your post. Where do you find time to catalog such pertinent photos? I know how to point at a URL; but it takes time to find good ones.

arendt

power generation -- along with incentives to purchase plug-in autos -- with loan payoffs by sell-back into the power grid surplus kilowatts generated by home systems.

Kill a bunch of birds with one stone: would destroy the multinational oil companies and big electric utilities; create many thouands of U.S. jobs and small businesses for residential photovoltaic and wind energy conversion; eliminate carbon fuels for most residential and vehicular uses; cut major cost of living items (fuel and utility bills).

That might be a cause to work for.

Finally, I find almost all my photos on Google image. Just cut and paste the URLs. Quick and easy. Works for me. :hi: