Rant #2: What Democracy is left?

[l_c_h_a_n]

So, I wasn't going to post this until I'd had some time to think about it. After all, the decision was just handed down today. Certainly I will need more time to consider all the ramifications of such a monumental decision. Certainly I will need more time to decide exactly how this will impact the democracy we have grown up with and think that we

Comments

[hubbit]

The corporate system is, plain and simple, parasitic. It drains us all, and in return gives us less that we really should have and charges us for it. I just...I'm not sure how cogent I can be, which is why I haven't responded to this before now. But yes, I feel that SCOTUS has basically sold the American People down the river. What's already horrible has the potential to become astronomically worse.

It's bad enough that the entertainment industry has Congress locking up any potential cultural literary heritage until hell freezes over, then imposing harsher sentences for "Intellectual Property theft" than those received by many convicted of homicide.

We've had multinational corporations for over a century that I know of, but I don't know when they began their creeping takeover of government. My guess is during the 1940s, when large factories began either manufacturing munitions for war, or continuing to make whatever they made but having all their production requisitioned by the government for military use. And during the postwar period (perhaps even before), we started seeing government posts being filled from the executive ranks of the corporate world.

Meanwhile, the public has already become accustomed to being ordered around by corporate behemoths, who wear a smile while so doing. We're told what to consume, how much, and how often. (I probably should be saying this in response to your Fast Food post, but in a way it's all interconnected...) Part of this is through psychological advertising, but part of it is also in portioning and packaging.

We're all being played for puppets, every moment of our lives. Some know enough to resist, but most have no idea that they are living in an advertiser's "reality show". (And yes, I put that phrase in quotation marks as well. I don't care if those things are unscripted, unrehearsed, or unplanned. They're EDITED, and anything that's been edited is NOT. REALITY.)

By the way, if you really want to see how badly we've been robbed by the corporate culture, go to your local library and find any book on self-sufficient living written by the late John Seymour of England. I can tell you for a fact, because I watched it happen, that my maternal grandfather and great uncle knew how to build a HOUSE. From framework to plaster to clapboard to roofing to floors to wiring. You may have had ancestors who knew how to make tables, chairs and other furniture. Me? I know *none* of this. My generation calls contractors, who get their materials from large corporate suppliers.

I'm going to follow your posts in this vein with great interest. For myself, my family and I have committed to buying small, artisan-made items whenever feasible. I would much rather support an individual craftsperson anyway, and get something made with love and care and designed to last. Same thing with food; during Farmers Market season, nearly all our produce comes from local farmers, many of whom actually use heirloom seeds and do what they can to avoid supporting huge oppressive corporations like Monsanto.

Meanwhile, if this is something your uncle fought for, I'm sure he would be proud of you. That's quite a legacy to carry, and I have no doubt that you'll carry it well.

[l_c_h_a_n]

For the history of corporations and specifically on corporate personhood, this is a great resource. Also, you might enjoy this movie, which is all about the ascension of the corporate state.

It is all interconnected, our food is as commercialized as our clothing as our houses as our lives. I believe in a self-sufficiency movement, and there are a great deal of books out there on how to do things for yourself. Not just gardening and raising animals and making your own clothes, but building structures (made much more difficult by safety codes, but they're there for a reason), constructing wells and DIY plumbing, electricity, just about anything. We live in a made-to-order society, where everything can be done for you by someone else if you pay them enough money. Myself, I'd like to buy a plot of land on the cheap, construct a house, have a farm and livestock and wind/solar power. Unfortunately, it costs a great deal of money to make all of this happen, and I highly doubt I'll make much as a protester/writer/skeptic.

Instead I'll buy organic local produce from our three farmer's markets in the area, buy humane meat when I can, and attempt to buy as little processed garbage as is humanly possible. I know it's difficult, and expensive, but damn if it isn't a better way to live without corporations owning every piece of you.