Short-Circuited

We continue to talk about personalities — Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — although the heads of state or elected officials in Congress have become largely irrelevant. Lobbyists write the bills. Lobbyists get them passed. Lobbyists make sure you get the money to be elected. And lobbyists employ you when you get out of office.

Those who hold actual power are the tiny elite who manage the corporations. Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, in their book “Winner-Take-All Politics,” point out that the share of national income of the top 0.1 percent of Americans since 1974 has grown from 2.7 to 12.3 percent. One in six American workers may be without a job. Some 40 million Americans may live in poverty, with tens of millions more living in a category called “near poverty.” Six million people may be forced from their homes because of foreclosures and bank repossessions. But while the masses suffer, Goldman Sachs, one of the financial firms most responsible for the evaporation of $17 trillion in wages, savings and wealth of small investors and shareholders, is giddily handing out $17.5 billion in compensation to its managers, including $12.6 million to its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein.

The massive redistribution of wealth, as Hacker and Pierson write, happened because lawmakers and public officials were, in essence, hired to permit it to happen. It was not a conspiracy. The process was transparent. It did not require the formation of a new political party or movement. It was the result of inertia by our political and intellectual class, which in the face of expanding corporate power found it personally profitable to facilitate it or look the other way.

The armies of lobbyists, who write the legislation, bankroll political campaigns and disseminate propaganda, have been able to short-circuit the electorate. Hacker and Pierson pinpoint the administration of Jimmy Carter as the start of our descent, but I think it began long before with Woodrow Wilson, the ideology of permanent war and the capacity by public relations to manufacture consent. Empires die over such long stretches of time that the exact moment when terminal decline becomes irreversible is probably impossible to document. That we are at the end, however, is beyond dispute.
~ from The Corporate State Wins Again by Chris Hedges ~

While I agree with the general tenor of Hedges' message, I think he is wrong on the issue of conspiracy. Global capitalism -- particularly disaster capitalism -- inherently is an ideology to usurp populist democracy. As Hedges points out above, our so-called elected leaders are "hired to permit" the unelected elite to make all the big decisions. In my book, this is the very definition of a conspiracy because, while maintaining the facade of public will, said will is marginalized to the point that it becomes entirely impotent to affect political change.

In less than two years, we will be thrust into the make-believe world of elections again. Partisans will argue for this candidate and against that candidate. Liberals will screech to the high heavens that we must re-elect Obama in order to stave off the machinations of whichever weak candidate the GOP offers up. But the whole process will be nothing more than an elaborate ruse.

Whichever figureheads are "elected," they will continue to do the bidding of the unelected elite. They will pretend to argue with each other, while the redistribution of wealth and the evisceration of civil liberties continue unabated.

And for those who believe that it is still possible to elect a true champion of the people, all I can say is that you live with your head in the clouds. If a true progressive renegade was elected to Congress, that candidate would be marginalized and drowned out by the cacophony of corporate shills. That person would have no impact on the machine.

If a true progressive renegade was elected president, one of two things would occur. That person either would be killed -- assassination or something more nefarious -- or bought off in short order.

If the People truly want to slow down or end absolute corporate control of almost every aspect of our lives, change must come from a different avenue than the electoral process. The ballot no longer makes ANY difference at all!