The Beauty of the Supreme Court's Decision on Corporate Personhood

Recently, the Supreme Court of the United States determined that corporations have the right to sway our elections through the use of corporate fortunes. This decision represents a triumph of American corporatocracy over democracy. It comes at the precise moment when the greed and arrogance of our corporate class have destroyed our economy, rendered us unable to produce our way out of the debt they have heaped upon us, and destroyed our capacity to sustain a world-wide empire. Of the three branches of our government, the Supreme Court is intended to be the most independent and objective. Nevertheless, this determination by that court has made undeniable the fact that our government is a government of and for the corporation and nothing more. The illusion of democracy has come to an end and all that remains is the naked arrogance, raw power, and selfishness of the corporate entity.

Is this a reason to wring our hands, mourn our lost freedom, and cry out with indignation? Absolutely not! This is a reason to celebrate. The beast has finally ripped its friendly mask from its face and revealed its monstrous identity. There is no going back now. Nothing is less questionable than this: the United States is not and never has been a democracy. Not even a fig-leaf of denial covers the gaping asshole of the corporate state as it shits upon The People. At last we can put to rest the tired old delusion that we are a free society and a democracy. No one can argue otherwise. We stand before the world as a naked fascist state. We stand before the world as a system so unjust that it cries out for revolution.

If the corporatocracy had unmasked itself during a time of economic prosperity, we would have a reason to worry, for the monster would surely argue that its fascist structure cranked out our good fortune. As it stands, the mask has come off just as the failure of the fascist corporatocracy is approaching the climax of its self destruction. We are now a people living in a system ruined by corporate greed. Our debt is greater than we can repay. Our military is stretched across the world in an unsustainable orgy of criminality and financial lunacy. While millions of Americans face economic destruction, the corporate parasites pay their executives obscene salaries and bonuses drawn from our treasury. Instinctively, they know the end is near and so it is reported that the corporate titans are hording personal arms in fear of social upheaval. Never before have the contradictions between our ideals and our reality been so pronounced. No working Americans are satisfied with a system that incrementally impoverishes them. The abyss is before us and there is nothing to salvage.

The unavoidable conclusion is that change is coming. Change must come. The status quo cannot continue. The system is experiencing a mud-slide of epic proportions. There is no stopping it. All that remains is to let it fall and then embrace the opportunity to rebuild. Therein lies the key to how to see this development. We should be discussing where we go from here, not how to get back to where we were. The system that we have been living under is the culmination of two hundred thirty some-odd years of greed heaped upon an antiquated notion of governance. We can no more return to how it was than we can return to “The Little House on the Prairie.” Those days are gone – long gone.

If we cannot return, then we should construct a future based on what we have learned and how best to go forward. That future must be a future where the greedy amongst us are not permitted to subvert the common good. We got where we are because we embraced an ideology that made virtues out of selfishness, greed, aggressiveness, egotism, consumption, and arrogance. Additionally, we failed to realize that democracy is a local, not a global, phenomenon. Stated differently, large entities cannot be democratic as the needs and values of communities are neither continental nor global in size. Free trade and globalization are nothing more than races to the lowest common denominator in all dimensions of human endeavor. Globalization brings the worst of all worlds in all things.

As we pull ourselves up from the mud, we must construct smaller entities that guarantee greater democracy, must must shun greed and work towards a collectively better society at balance with nature and our neighbors. We must seek to promote peace and mutual respect. Now that the mask is off and the nature of the beast is known, there are no more excuses for holding on to “what we have” for “what we have” is not worth holding onto.