Who could possibly have guessed this would all turn out OK?
When the Supreme Court majority held in favor of “Citizens United” the billionaire class were wetting their pants with excitement. Finally, they could pour unlimited funds into the coffers of their lickspittle lackies, enabling them to obfuscate the glaring wealth disparity that was already grinding the country into the macabre billionaire oligarch theme park that we see today. Pockets now bulging with cash, these minions of the rich could effectively outspend any candidate that dared get in their way, confidently swaggering into political office and effectively laying siege to the United States Government. With the aid of billionaire-owned media, these unprincipled dirtbags could dictate the social agenda, smoke and mirroring the readers and viewers with anti-abortion legislation, budget shutdowns, Social Security cuts, curbing of fundamental constitutional rights through extremist religious fanaticism, encouraging the vilification of the poor and demographic minorities, the financial rape of young people, now forced to drag an obscene loan yoke through their career, if they could even find a job. Pharma companies successfully lobbying their lowlife pals in House and Senate to build what amounts to an medical iron curtain, preventing cheaper drugs from Canada or Mexico. So much for ‘free trade’. Medical insurance companies (despite Obamacare) wringing every penny they possibly can out of the population. It is a shameless unrelenting attack, cleverly appealing to lowest, basest instincts of society; a campaign of fear and loathing.
Like passionate lovers, these sycophantic representatives wholly embraced the ruthless corporate dream of a deregulation landscape, a nightmare across-the-board “drill baby drill” approach to society as a whole, a society that is now no more than a goose forced to pump out golden eggs at an accelerated rate and be simultaneously cooked and consumed at the same time.
Instinctively, the majority of people knew that all was not well in the kingdom; one did not have to look any further than the report card for the House and Senate that now typically polls well below 20% - figures conceivably lower than those of King Louis XVI as he tottered up the steps to the guillotine scaffold.
However, cracks were appearing.
First of all, pretty much everybody knew that local, as well as Federal Government representatives were beholden to the rich and powerful. After all, how else would you get into government without a nice healthy Super PAC to ease you into the power seat?
Folks shrugged. As far as elections went, there was no option of a proactive choice; these simply did not exist. We only had the unsavory, limited choice of voting between the horrible and the mediocre - every election a rear guard action.
And then - suddenly - everything changed.
Senator Bernie Sanders declared his candidacy for president, with the declaration that HE WOULD NOT TAKE SUPER PAC money! That, together with his almost spotless Robin Hood-esque record of service to the public over a lifetime, made him a most unusual candidate. At first, few people noticed, especially those who felt - and still feel - that drinking from the billionaire cup is business as usual. Despite the almost complete silence from the billionaire dominated media, news started to spread via the social networks, eventually igniting the firestorm we see today; a groundswell that might well propel Bernie Sanders into the White House.
As Bernie Sanders addressed audiences around the country, he stressed that this revolution was not about him, it was about us. It takes a few moments of head scratching to grasp the implications of that statement, but one quickly realizes it simply boils down to this: Bernie Sanders as President is a pointless exercise, unless we rid ourselves of the Super-PAC-sucking leeches that presently infest the Houses and Senates, not only on a Federal Level, but on a State and County level. Bernie Sander’s statement is nothing less than a heart-renderingly, backbreakingly, spirit-drainingly HUGE task that will outlive his presidency; a task that may take decades to accomplish: The removal of money from politics.
The advent of the social network phenomenon makes such a daunting task actually possible, because it is not beholden to outside financially corruptive influences so very prevalent in the conventional billionaire-owned mass media.
It does seem so much like a swimming, distant vision, but if successful, might this not be a better world to live in?
So to come full circle, ironically, this snowballing ‘Sanders Revolution’ can almost exclusively, inadvertently, be placed at the feet of the US Supreme Court, and their majority decision to allow for “Citizens United”.
So thanks, Supreme Court! :-)