Vitriolic Corporatism in an Unconscious Society

By Randell A. Monaco, Esq.
January 10th, 2011




The abundance of guns has little to do with being responsible with one’s rhetoric. Mentally ill people or criminals will find guns when determined. More bad laws as shamefully and opportunistically announced by Rep. Robert Brady, will not solve the problems which most easily can be avoided by self censorship with our support and commitment to stand up to corporatism.

Here are some excerpts from an article published October 15, 2010, when Fox News was clearly put on notice, “Drop Glenn Beck or Have Blood on Your Hands.” “No one, left, right or center, wants to see another Oklahoma City. The next ‘assassin’ may succeed, and if so, there will be blood on many hands. The choice is yours. Please join my call to do the right thing in this regard and put Fox News at arm's length from your company by halting your advertising with them.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/15/tides-foundation-ceo-glenn-beck_n_764470.html

The solution is the same as when driving a car. Telling people not to drive cars 100 mph through a school zone is obvious, just as Beck’s vitriolic ranting that, not long ago, almost resulted in an incident that unfortunately did eventually occur just as Fox had been warned likely to happen.

What I’m driving at here is that words have consequences and, just as traffic laws are intended to reduce the risk, that doesn’t always avoid the inevitable collisions. Civil responsibility, hitting offenders in the pocketbook, does modify the behavior of most. In the case of Beck and Fox it truly is time to make them pay for speeding through our verbal school zones, if you will.

What our unconscious society is experiencing is a long list of people crushed by credit card debt, mortgages they shouldn’t have been granted, predatory lenders as well as sudden and catastrophic unemployment caused by outsourcing. Inadequate insurance runs the gamut – healthcare, employment, worker safety and more. How this ties into Fox, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin and the neoconservative dialogue responsible for the vitriolic tenor in America stems from the heart of corporatism.

American’s were allowed to prosper in the latter part of the 20th century through what might be described as, managed capitalism. Now, after an almost complete gradual dismantling, we have a government that serves the interests of corporations rather than those of its citizens. The transformation and dark logic that has engorged and empowered new oligarchy holds our economic and political life hostage to corporate interest and profits. The fact is that American’s just can’t grasp the grave implications for our future. This is particularly so when our U.S. Supreme Court continues to drive a federalist agenda, most recently with its ruling in the Citizens United case.

The furious pace of technological progress, the global doubling of the workforce in the early twenty-first century, the emergence of such giants as China and India with their huge and well-educated legions of workers have rewritten the playbook of this pernicious transformation into a corporate state.

The fact is that the rise of a corporate state undercuts our most fundamental rights as citizens, creating a society in which we are forced to subordinate our common welfare to the higher priority of corporate profit. The corporate state champions personal greed and self interest with disdain for public good. This mission is not possible without media vehicles such as Fox and their on camera henchmen. The tragedy in Arizona was a matter of time, predicted and warned against!

This assault on the middle class is under way and at full speed. Increasing the frustrations and making matters worse, anything that can be put on computer software – finance, architecture, and engineering is now outsourced to workers in countries at a fraction of the pay and no benefits. A college education is no longer a guarantee of a stable job. Worse the power of national, state and judicial authorities to respond has been neutralized through huge corporate campaign contributions, political action committees and armies of lobbyists. With the help of the neoconservative spin machine, the consent of the governed has become an empty phrase. The solution in my opinion begins with election campaign finance reform and restoration of the integrity of our elected government. In short, Fix Congress First.

Today, with the skewed vitriolic rhetoric of Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and their Fox Friends along with a host of equally irresponsible shock jocks, including Rush Limbaugh, our mainstream less than fifth grade political debate does nothing to attempt to confront the advanced destruction of our democracy by the corporate state. To ignore these facts and the responsibility that mainstream media’s words have consequences, not just in Arizona but for our nation’s future is a dark realization of the transformations that have occurred in our seemingly unconscious society.