In continuation of a post from a couple days back, wherein I suggested the fearsome possibility of governmental powers considering either a nationalizing or privatization of domestic militias to help keep the unwashed masses from straying too far away from complacency, I wanted to point out a pair of somewhat older stories which I think support the likelihood, no matter how revolting such a likelihood obviously is. Because in the view of those same governmental powers Capitalism and Nationalism have already become synonymous for one another.
A year ago, Tom Jackman reported on a national sheriff’s group called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, who are pushing for law enforcement officers around the country to refrain from enforcing gun-control laws, in retaliation over what they deem excessive gun restrictions and rising taxes. Which is just wonderful news, if it means that cops will no longer be shooting at children under the guise of their possibly wielding firearms. But unfortunately, this amounts to a wide-scale effort of peace officers openly defying federal law, showing how grateful they truly are for all of the free grenade-launchers and flame-throwers and army tanks and hundreds of millions in drug-war funding. Police in America are nobody’s friends.
Possibly because police officers are increasingly more interested in doing their own thing with public funding rather than serving the public trust, Cora Currier and Murtaza Hussain wrote on the FBI’s plans to form “Shared Responsibility Committees“, purposed with gathering community leaders to promote anti-radicalization in their communities, by outsourcing its intelligence gathering and surveillance to communities themselves. By all accounts this appears to be the FBI radicalizing community members to weed out dissidents. Yet history shows that when the public polices itself, the results are lynch mobs.
One of the key points made by Edward Snowden that most demands ongoing reassertion, is how governmental surveillance has nothing to do with privacy or security and everything to do with control. The recent revelation that approximately 90% of the federal budget for cyber-defense actually goes towards offensive measures backs this up. So when the FBI drops new warnings of impending cyber-threats to the nation’s power grid, it is safe to presume that the FBI itself is planning to attack its own citizenry on behalf of imagined foes. Likewise, when government-funded scientists constantly renew their own warnings of solar flares devastating electronic communications, it is safe to presume that governmental spy agencies are planning to toy with new spyware on a wide-scale initiative. Because the greedy few dictate that the government regularly spend well over half of its budget on military projects which increasingly focus upon the digital sphere, and if neither privacy or security are the emphasis then control most assuredly is. It should be obvious by now that America’s spy agencies cause more damaging effects to the internet than do undefinable terrorists or any act of nature no matter how celestial.
In April of 2016, several buildings on Google’s Mountain View, California campus were evacuated after an unrealized threat was received from an online source. The notion that the wealthiest multinational corporation joined at the hip to the American government, one enjoying near-weekly private meetings at the White House and a former CEO literally working for the Pentagon, could ever be susceptible to anything short of an actual evading army is laughable. I think it was orchestrated melodrama to humanize the company, like earning sympathy points. Elsewhere, it was revealed that Google’s new parent company Alphabet is building its very own city. Many old science fiction novels both notable and forgettable played with the idea of powerful corporations eventually replacing governments, but here in the real world we are experiencing the early signs of nothing less.
The ever-futile Government Accountability Office confirmed that over two-thirds of all active U.S. corporations paid nothing in federal income taxes during the period of 2006 to 2012. So by the government’s own statistics most American-based companies are criminally not paying their fair share. There is no discernible reason to believe this situation might improve after the three impending international trade deals, dead in name only, will pointedly enable far less checks and balances. In a potently related story, a study conducted by the global anti-poverty charity Oxfam is concluding that the 50 largest U.S. firms own more than 1,600 subsidiaries in tax havens, allowing them to hide approximately 1.3 trillion dollars from trickling back down into the economy. A particularly telling segment from the article:
“Oxfam found the companies profited by almost $4 trillion globally between 2008 and 2014 and got $11 trillion in US government support over the same period. The charity estimated the corporations received $27 in government support for every dollar they paid in federal taxes.”
As such, I heartily encourage all readers who should happen to ever encounter anyone using the phrase “trickle-down economics” in any positive capacity to punch them in the face as hard as possible. I mean really lean into it. If your hand doesn’t hurt afterwards then try it again, over and over. The bulk of the population deprived of opportunity or upwards mobility have the deck stacked against them quite enough without also having to contend with being made to watchdog each other for the amusement of big business or the state.
When poor people bend laws they tend to do so over needing more than they can legally achieve, while rich people, always self-entitled, bend laws over wanting more than they can legally achieve. The unobserved distinction is downright celestial.
Capitalism creates nothing for society, merely exploiting what is already there. And exploiting our trust in one another is categorically demonic.