The Empire's Collapse Continues Unabated (2009 In Review)

The Supreme Court finally came off the bench today (pun most certainly intended), firing yet another salvo in the all-but-officially-declared Class War the United States' corporate masters have spent decades waging against we mere mortals.

The decades-old system of rules that govern the financing of the nation's political campaigns was partially upended by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling issued just ahead of the pivotal 2010 midterm congressional election season.

Thursday's landmark decision, approved by a 5-4 margin, could unleash a torrent of corporate and union cash into the political realm and transform how campaigns for president and Congress are fought in the coming years.

[...]

The new ruling blurs the lines between corporate and individual contributions in political campaigns. It also strikes down part of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that banned unions and corporations from paying for political ads in the waning days of campaigns.

Even before the court's decision, national political campaigns had been growing increasingly expensive. Watchdog groups worry that by removing limits on expenditures by corporations that are not coordinated with candidates' campaigns, the court will boost the role of special interests in politics.

That last sentence is the kind of “no shit, Sherlock” reporting you can only find on NPR, a paragon of mainstream media tedium. Nevertheless, the implications of this ruling are so blatantly obvious even Nina Totenberg felt compelled to admit, “[The ruling] will undoubtedly help Republican candidates since corporations have generally supported Republican candidates more.”

Occasional liberal hero Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) seems to be the only member of “our” Congress capable of seeing the implications of all this through the fog of lobbyist cash:

"If we do nothing then I think you can kiss your country goodbye," Grayson told Raw Story in an interview just hours after the decision was announced.

"You won't have any more senators from Kansas or Oregon, you'll have senators from Cheekies and Exxon. Maybe we'll have to wear corporate logos like Nascar drivers."

Grayson said the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling -- which removes decades of campaign spending limits on corporations -- "opens the floodgates for the purchases and sale of the law."

Nice words, and Grayson at least has the courage to do what his position allows: In the lead-up to this decision, he introduced five bills with wonderful names like the Business Should Mind its Own Business Act, intended to plug the new holes Justice John Robert's court seems intent on burning into our Constitution. Yet Grayson still appears blind to the essential problem of “our” democratic institutions. Within this little Empire of ours, there is no law that can't be overturned by the influx of cold, hard cash.

Add to this the fact that Our Glorious Leader has renominated Ben Bernanke to his apparently-sacrosanct position as head of the Federal Reserve. The merest hint of a delay in his reconfirmation sent the jackals, vultures and vampires of Wall Street into an uncontrolled, three-day orgy mass nappy-soiling, despite the soothing promises of Senate Banking Committee Chairman, former presidential candidate, and all-around toothless, corporate hack, Chris Dodd.

Add to this the fact that, over a month ago, on December 13, Our Glorious Leader's top financial-industry waterboy and former Laura Ingraham date, Larry Summers, won the unofficial Within the Empire Holy Shit Award when said, live, on CNN, that “everyone agrees that the recession is over,” a comment that certainly holds true for the billionaires he's helped enrich throughout his entire career. The rest of us are faced with one, undeniable message from America's ruling class: “Bend over, shut up, and take your medicine, you fuckin' crybabies. Don't act like you don't like it.”

Meanwhile, the lunatic asylum more commonly known as the U.S. Congress has shelved any further discussion of health care reform until former nude model Scott Brown takes Ted Kennedy's old seat in the Upper House, providing him a greater vantage point from which to join his fellow Republicans in their by-now-year-long campaign to demonize President Obama and piss on the non-billionaire citizens of this country. Their fear-mongering intransigence, along with the opportunism and stupidity of their Democratic “rivals,” has destroyed any chance at meaningful health care reform, ensuring that, whatever legislation eventually appears on the president's desk, it will include a massive give-away to the insurance industry.

From Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) comes conformation of my worst expectations, among them that,

at the highest levels of the Senate and the White House, there's still no plan, and he doubts whether President Obama will insert himself forcefully into the process.

Of course he won't. Our Glorious Leader has two foreign wars to fight, plus the domestic propaganda war against the paleo-conservatism. Hamstrung by his own post-ideology ideology, he seems incapable of realizing the scope of this last war, perhaps the most important one of his first term. With three years to go, the score is a rather obvious 0-1, and no amount of rousing speeches in Ohio or on television are going to change that, Mr. President.

Mr. Obama's appearance coincided with new state figures showing Ohio's jobless rate climbed last month to 10.9%, from 10.6% in November, nearly a full point higher than the national average. National figures released Thursday showed a jump in the number of Americans who applied for jobless benefits, with claims rising 36,000 to 482,000 last week, the third straight week claims increased. Analysts had expected new claims to slip to 440,000.

I offer these comments with no wonkish solutions to the crisis this country faces. Mass firings of those responsible for our current financial crisis would only a trigger another, for which Our Glorious Leader would, in true “liberal” fashion, fall all over himself to take the blame, even without an opposition ready, willing, and clearly able to foist it all upon him. Despite all the myths surrounding President Obama, he is and always has been a conciliator, a self-conscious shill for the status quo. That is the awful truth at the heart of his non-ideological ideology: a truth that, by its ability to please the robber barons that truly own this country, ensured his election in the first place.

How Obama won over the managers and money movers of this country remains the great untold story of the 2009 campaign. The results of this marriage between the centrist politics and the robber barons are visible on any street in the country not named “Wall.”

Outside the corridors of power, the status quo is quickly becoming unmanageable. Now, from the series of tubes comes word that Our Glorious Leader has agreed to cut his party's throat, announcing a freeze in discretionary spending...except for that which is sure to disappear down the military-industrial complex's black money hole across the Potomac River from his house, otherwise known as the Pentagon.

Cubefarm, Act Two: Propagandistic Boogaloo

On Tuesday I get the memo. “There will be a mandatory meeting Saturday, 2/10/07, from 9 to 9:55 a.m. Please bring your Operations Manual.”

On Friday I check the bus schedule and for the millionth time I curse My Fair City’s public transit company. Where is Charles Foster Kane when I need him, and his oh-so yellow journalism, to protect me from Trimet Corp. and its pack of money grubbing pirates?

On Saturday I rise and catch the bus. I read Woman on the Edge of Time. My commute is ninety minutes of sit, stand, and wait. I put twenty-six pages to bed before I arrive.

Inside my coworkers are ranged around the desk. My manager allows himself the privilege of standing. He addresses us in a direct, unhesitant voice that is used to being listened to. A manager’s voice. His bald plate of a head glows in the overhead lights. He tells us that, in 2006, our call center processed seven hundred thousand two hundred and ninety-six tickets. I am supposed to be impressed.

We are told to meet quota in the upcoming busy season. We are told which door to exit through in case of a fire. We are told not to put our feet on our desks, chairs, power strips, or cubical walls. We are told the team who moved our furniture to its new location spent five hours cleaning the walls of our “pods,” and that it was “not fun.” We are told to clean up after ourselves. Candy bars may be eaten at our desks, but “messy” food is off limits. “We have a nice break room for all of you. Use it, alright?”

Nine o’clock becomes nine-fifteen becomes nine fifty-five. We’re told to hang our coats on coat wracks and sit quietly at our desks. I think of kindergarten. The rules were exactly the same in Mrs. Neatherton’s class and the only “pods” that concerned me were Seth Brundle’s telepods. I think back to my five year-old self, and the first time I watched David Croneberg’s The Fly. I think of Geena Davis literally knocking Jeff Goldblum’s block off.

“And remember,” our manager says, “whenever you press your ‘Mute’ button, what you say still goes on the recording. All your calls are recorded. The microphone is always on. And sometimes the board members are listening.”

We are, to him, giant five year-olds in need of constant supervision. That being impossible, the “adults” being busy with their own, oh-so important lives, our supervisory benefactors revert to their favorite default method of control: fear.

“Fear,” as Darth Maul once told us (in a line cut from the finished film, thank you very fucking much, literally cutting his spoken performance in half) “is the mind-killer. Fear is my weapon.” A certain “path to the dark side,” fear is also the most effect means of self-enforcement known to man…in any galaxy. Fearful individuals are too busy watching their own backs (or mouths, as the case may be) to ask questions, demand leniency, or feel patronized by jumped-up, self-important authority figures. They want us to worry about our every move. They want us cowed into a state of glassy-eyed stupidity. They need us to police ourselves because (as has been true throughout history) there are far more of us than there are of them, and their masters are all-too ready to subscribe to the same tactics.

Thus fear, like an avalanche, flows downward, always gathering force as it goes, leaving those of us down in the trenches of our modern, service economy to bear the brunt of its weight. Any good German (or good America) will tell you that the fearful are the most compliant and compliant parts allow the machinery to move all the more swiftly.

“Remember, the moment you come into work, you decide whether or not to have a good day. It’s your choice.” The only choice we, at the lowest levels, are allowed in view of all of the above. Do we accept the repetitive, mechanistic character of our work, which requires virtually none of our conscious attention? Do we ignore the fact that we are, daily, reduced to the level of component parts if a societal machine erected for no better purpose than to preserve a corporation’s private property at the behest of a government? Do we reject any grandiose delusions we might have that we are really creative, intuitive, rational, inventive, human individuals with individualized needs, beliefs, experiences or capacities? Do we ignore the fact that every one of our callers possesses all these traits as well? Do we merely sit and work, screaming in desperation behind the smiles frozen to our faces (“Remember: they can hear a smile in your voice”), unable, even, to sympathize with our fellow toilers for fear that some suit with visions of lawsuits dancing in his head might fire us because of an offhand remark?

We are meant to, yes, as to acknowledge the consciousness destroying quality of “work” (which “requires” so little “exertion of physical or mental effort” that I’m beginning to doubt its claim to the word, as defined by my copy of the Oxford) would render us incapable of performing it. The sheer absurdity of the situation would reduce us to giggling heaps, were we motivated by our own survival to maintain a facade of seriousness. Sometimes this happens to me, and I know now that my every bout of uncontrollable laughter survives, somewhere, sleeping next to every muttered curse, every offhand comment and every paranoid utterance.

However, my manager is right to say the choice remains in our hands. We could always chose to merely act as if we’ve made the choice. Turn these choices into a role, breathing new life into the Bard’s old world as we “performed” our working “lives” for an audience of “superiors”, remaining just sentient enough to play the role of obedient machines. The only danger in that was articulated by Nietzsche a century and a quarter ago, in one of his most over-used of quotes: Beyond Good and Evil’s Epigram and Interlude 146. All together now:

“Whosoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”

Strange to hide that thought, of all places, amidst a page of unmitigated nineteenth century sexism.