THE SUPREME COURT DECISION ON CORPORATE CAMPAIGN
SPENDING
A while ago the lunatic fringe of the Supreme Court went activist and gave
giant corporations permission to spend as much as they want, handing them
the means to
quash any candidate who might want to limit corporate power. The reason
for this pronouncement--one that flies in the face of a hundred years of
precedent? They feel that poor, powerless corporations (a word which, we might
point out has the same derivation as coprolite, which is a chunk of
fossilized dinosaur shit) have been wrongly
deprived the same
rights as persons.
Well, great. Now we have to pass laws to keep this ideological idiocy
from further curtailing our control over our country.
But in the meantime, let's get literal. Let's get all strict constructionist. Next time
Halliburton or Blackwater or some other defense contractor screws us
over in the war effort, let's try them for treason or war crimes. Next time a
corporation kills someone with bad practices or shoddy merchandise, let's
charge them with murder and try to apply
the death penalty. Which I'm pretty much against in normal
circumstances, but corporations long ago proved that to them there
is no such thing as cruel and unusual.
The Tea Party screamers wail about creeping socialism--not that any of
them know socialism from fascism from Nazism from pantagruelism(1)--but
what they're really worried about is totalitarianism.
Well, so am I. But not from our government, which is, let's face it,
touchingly ineffectual more often than not.
I'm worried about corporate totalitarianism. We already have the oil and
coal companies spending mind-boggling sums to slow or stop any rational
response to climate change and dwindling resources. We've had Big Med funding the attempts to
poison health care reform. The banks--don't get me started about the
banks and financial sector. Big companies, big money; we raise a hand to
speak up, they swing a sledgehammer. We patiently try to plant democracy
and fairness with a trowel, they claw it up with a thousand horsepower
steam shovel. Truth gets spoken with a shaky voice, lies are blasted
through a million megaphones.
Saddest of all, but not particularly surprising, a lot of the Tea Party
movement and right wing scream machine is funded by big money from big
corporations. They yell that they're protecting our freedom while
actually handing our fate over to giant oligarchic structures that will
silence dissent and render choice in what we consume or believe to only what
they're selling at the moment.
Some day I hope the Supreme Court's fanatic five are condemned by
history for the ideological crime they perpetrated, and I hope we don't
have to claw our way up out of the ruins of a free society to get there.
(1)pantagruelism -from pantagruelian; satiric, though ribald; from
Rabelais' PANTAGRUEL -thank you Mrs. Byrne
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