The Quiet Coup

"Thank a soldier" An utterly ridiculous statement if ever there was one. At least, it is today. We are told "thank a soldier, because they protect our freedoms", and there was a time when that was true. 75 years ago our nation fought a war to save mankind from the clutches of madmen hellbent on world domination and near enslavement of all mankind. The story of the next 70 years, however, is one that, should they look at it objectively, will turn the stomach of anyone with a thinking brain. For the sons and daughters of the ones that saved the world from tyranny, are the very ones that goose stepped us quietly back into it.




This story, like many, begins with a prologue, Ours takes place in may of 1886 when a court reporter slipped in a few innocuous lines as a headnote to the decision of a Santa Clara Count V. Southern Pacific Railroad, they read as such:




"One of the points made and discussed at length in the brief of counsel for defendants in error was that 'corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.' Before argument, Mr. Chief Justice Waite said: The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."


Poof! with the wave of his hand, a lowly court reporter had effectively signed into law that corporations were people, and thus the stage was set for our tale of betrayal and corruption.


Little was done with this decison at first, but in 1971 a man by the name of Lewis Powell wrote a memo entitled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System.", to a man named Richard Nixon, prior to his acceptance of his nomination as associate justice of the supreme court. In this memo powell wrote "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Ralph Nader as the chief antagonist of American business.


Notably this memo foreshadowed the decision of "First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti" in which it was ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to make contributions to ballot initiative campaigns.


And thus the first salvo had been fired in the greatest coup in world history. Nobody really paid any attention to it, at least not your average person. Your neighbor probably didn't even know, it passed under the radar of the military, it didn't even enter into the lively chit chat at the barbers or coffee house. But to corporations and the wealthy it was like a dog whistle. suddenly the flood gates had begun to crack and being the clever shrewd businessmen they were they seized the opportunity to succeed where their fathers had failed in the 1930s with the business plot (but that's a tale for another time).


What followed from there was a mockery of democracy, bribery that was once, underhanded, illegal and done under the table, was now open and legal. where once corporations had to obey the EPA and financial regulations, they now had the power to, In the befitting words of emperor palpatine, "make it legal"




In effect what this meant was that, on a national scale at least, you could not expect to get elected without big businesses blessing. Thus we got Reagon, Bush, and most telling, the center right democrat, Bill Clinton. Reagan and bush were par for the course as far as republicans go, corrupt, business friendly, didn't give two shits about the little guy. But the proverbial canary in the coal mine was Bill clinton. Here's a man who claims to be a progressive, who claims to be a liberal and yet he does something no thinking progressive in their right minds would do, something that would in 8 years collapse the economy, he repeals glass-Stegall, or important parts of it at least. This repeal opened the flood gates to the speculative housing derivatives trading that led to the 2008 financial meltdown. Yes Bush gets blamed a lot for that, but it was mostly Clintons doing.




Following Glass-Stegall's repeal we also had a slew of legal bribery fueled supreme court decisions further eliminating the barrier between money and politics. Today people are starting to notice. But the damage has been done, far too little was done when we could have done something that now the power we have has been virtually eliminated, barring a miracle. At this point you are not a viable candidate unless you kiss big businesses ring. And it all began back in 1978, in the quietest, and most effective coup the world has ever known. Slowly by big businesses hand democracy was slain, and your neighbors went on with their lives, the military stood silent, and we all just sat in our lay-z-boy's watching Seinfeld and eating potato chips.




There are many lies we tell ourselves to make us believe this hasn't happened, that this is okay. The most damnable however are the ones that see the writing on the wall, that pretend they can get ahead of the curve, that their children will be spared the horrors that this path will lead to if only they do so much. They are all wrong, the means by which one becomes successful are becoming exponentially harder. The well off today those in the top brackets have a chance of sending their kids to a decent future, but those not in the ruling class have only misery and failure to look forward to as the economy collapses under the immense weight of the rich. Because in their haste the rich have set up a system by which they reap more and more from the poor, and while they are clever in not taking too much as to rouse the peoples anger, inevitably one will over reach, someone will fuck up, and all the gains of the middle class will be wiped from the face of the earth as if it never existed, and the lies we tell ourselves will become apparent, undeniable, and the consequences unavoidable.




I cannot say i will take pity on any of you, or even myself, when the time comes. After all, we all stood by and did nothing, and I am as guilty of that as any of you.