I ask this question in all honesty: Have the American people accepted the imposition of a fascist Corporate State?
This morning someone sent me a message asking this question, so I decided to go ahead and ask readers. Here's what was sent to me:
Have people already subconsciously accepted fascism?
Have people already been so overwhelmed with the power of the corporations in directing our legislation and government that they have become accepting of it as a given, unable to take action -
Before I continue, let me ask one more question: Could it be that the main challenge in addressing this issue of the rising fascist corporate state, is that as fascism creeps in (as it tends to do in every society where it has manifested itself), the vast majority of the population remains unaware that that's what's happening?
I've been warned by polite liberals (via private messaging) that the main challenge I face (as I write about this topic over and over again) in convincing people about the true nature of what's going, is my use of that word (fascism), because people tend to associate it with the imagery of jack-booted thugs bursting through your doors in the middle of the night, putting a hood over your head, and taking you to some detention camp to be tortured.
I tend to resist that explanation, thinking that people can't really be that naive, but just in case, instead of just using the term, let me go ahead and describe it, just to make sure there is no doubt about what to call the current state of affairs in our country.
Through what has become a system of legalized bribery our entire system of government has been taken over by a super-wealthy elite consisting of billionaires, corporatist cartels, including Wall Street, and organizations like ALEC.
During the last 40 years or so, these forces, acting out of shared interests, and influenced by thinkers and philosophers, have set in place a sophisticated and extremely powerful propaganda machinery in the form of the U.S. mainstream media.
They achieved this control (media conglomeration) by buying off the political establishment so the regulatory infrastructure that protected people from the harmful effects of media oligopolies could be torn down. These forces also founded a myriad of think tanks and public relations agencies (CATO, Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and many others), which purpose was to construct a the narrative that would be fed to the mainstream media conglomerates, with the final objective of controlling and manipulating the populace into accepting those narratives--a form of mind control, or brainwashing at a massive level.
Many readers may already accept the nation that the marriage of Corporation and State is a form of fascism, but again, I think many people fail to understand why it is so.
In a system of government based on democracy, its function is to ensure the welfare and security of all its citizens without prejudice.
The fascist corporate state, like the one rapidly ascending in the United States today, focuses on extracting the maximum amount of profit from the citizenry, and from the environment (natural resources) for the benefit of a tiny ruling elite.
The fascist corporate state is predatory (rapacious) and its survival depends of constant and rapid "growth." As the citizenry and the environment are squeezed to their limits, the fascist corporate state is forced to strip the citizenry of constitutional rights, the social safety net, and other benefits previous generations struggle to attain.
This is done in order to squeeze even more productivity (profits) from the citizenry, and the environment.
This condition is what's bringing about the imposition of a total-information-awareness police state (DOMA, CISPA, torture, illegal surveillance, private prisons, increasingly onerous and draconian legal system, etc.).
All of this brings about a Darwinian-type system, where those deemed weak, old, infirm, are cast aside setting the conditions for a quicker demise (death, suicide, imprisoned), and those who resist its imposition are marginalized, and eventually intimidated or worst.
And this finally brings about what we are witnessing, where billionaire-funded corporatist cartels (ALEC, NRA, etc.) start arming right wing extremists, which could eventually be used as the billionaires' useful idiots, to harass and intimidate intellectuals, liberals, progressives, and social justice and anti-corruption activists, which after all, always represent the biggest threat to would-be tyrants--of every era.
To the tee, this is exactly what is happening in the United States today, and it can be characterized as rapidly rising corporate state fascism (after having slowly crept in during the last 40+ years or so).
Now, back to the original question: Have people accepted its imposition?
Or worst, is it that people in general are not aware of the actual state of affairs?
When I write these types of diaries, I will never leave you without expressing what I think needs to happen as an appropriate response from the citizenry. I don't want to be accused of being a keyboard activist or just bitching about the situation without offering any solutions...
First, you need to come to terms that this is exactly what is happening. Second, you need to reach out to others who have finally come to understand this reality, this truism. Third, you need to organize into a cohesive resistance movement capable of coordinating action nationwide, in a very strategic manner, identifying short-, mid-, and long-term strategies and tactics on how to not only confront the rising fascistic corporate state, but how to defeat it completely.
Also, people need to start examining ways of purposely defunding the corporate state. Ideas like employee-owned, employee-run businesses, food and housing collectives, supporting locally-owned businesses vs. big-box retailers, and related ideas need to be part of the conversation.
Finally, you need to get off behind the keyboard, and unite with other people and hit the streets in coordinated protests across the country--boots on the ground.
There is no alternative to this. In our history, not until people took to the streets in mass, and for sustainable periods, have tyrants of yore relented.
Does that means you don't participate in politics, in voting, in signing petitions, and calling your congressperson, or social media activism, etc.? Of course not. It just means all those things are not enough.
There has to be a powerful, cohesive, well-organized, and strategic resistance (to the imposition of the fascistic corporate state) movement.
In answering the private message I got, I argue that those who haven't realized these things I'm reporting here (as facts), have either accepted the imposition of corporate state fascism, or don't know that's what's happening.
What do you think?
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.
- Frederick Douglass
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Ray Pensador |
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