The Frankfurter School

If you watch any of the presidential “debates” that have been conducted by the large media corporations, you will find that the “important issues” facing Americans have a distinctly partisan slant to them.  If you are a Democrat, you are told that Health Care, The Economy, the Environment, and The Iraq War are the most important things facing us.  If you are a Republican, it’s the War on Terror, immigration, and the social security “crisis.”  And for both sides, there’s the litany of divisive social issues that are everyone’s bread and butter, like gay marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research.  CNN lists the campaign issues as such:  Abortion, Guns, Health Care, Immigration, Stem Cell Research, Same-Sex Marriage, Iraq, Social Security, Taxes.  This exemplifies the role of the corporate media, which acts as a stenographer to the two political parties, reporting what they say and calling it balanced objective journalism. 

I believe that the greatest threats to us as Americans do not come from either terrorists, or even the Christian Right.  The biggest threat to our safety and welfare is the concentration of power in our society and government in the hands of corporations and a single branch of government.  This consolidation of power, along with the undermining of all oversight and accountability that has taken place over the last seven years is a grave threat to our democracy and our freedom.  

The founding fathers of our nation understood best the corrupting nature of absolute power.  They designed our system of government, with all of its seeming inefficiencies, to divide power equally amongst the three branches of our government and thus create “checks and balances” to keep any one branch from amassing too much power.  And unchecked corporate power in close cooperation with the state is a critical component of many scholars’ definitions of fascism. 

Executive Power 

The Bush Administration has undertaken enormous and radical steps to consolidate power during its eight years in office.  Using an extreme and expansive view of a constitutional interpretation known as the Theory of the Unitary Executive, Bush has claimed power that is not subject to any congressional oversight.  In some cases, the administration even believes that if the president does something while acting as commander in chief, it is automatically lawful; or in other words, that the President is above the law. 

There are any number of reasons that this is alarming and dangerous, let me leave it for now that it is inherently corrupting and anti-democratic.   It also clearly goes against the intent of the framers of the constitution who provided for the rule of law and checks and balances of each branch of government against the others. 

In the dozens of instances of potential lawbreaking that has been uncovered by whistleblowers and journalists in the past several years, investigations have been delayed and outright obstructed with claims of Executive Privilege, State Secrets Privilege or in many cases evidence has either disappeared or been destroyed. 

There are many adjectives and names for governments that behave this way: authoritarian, monarchical, totalitarian, police state, etc…None of them are democratic, or free societies, and all of them are antithetical to our understanding of The United States of America.  

Corporate Power 

A close friend of mine recently asked me, in all seriousness, “Why do you hate corporations so much?”

I do not hate corporations and I do not believe that they are inherently evil (although the excellent documentary “The Corporation” makes a very good case that they are in fact, sociopathic).  But I believe that nearly every problem that our country faces today is a result of the overwhelming influence that private companies wield over every aspect of our government and, increasingly, our private lives.  We are at a critical juncture (if we have not already passed it) where the power in this society that was given to “we the people’ is about to be completely usurped by corporations who are not accountable to anyone except their shareholders and are not expected to do anything except post increased quarterly profits. 

This is an extremely dangerous situation to all of us as individuals.  And while these words are perhaps strident, I do not think that they are exaggerated.   

We have handed control over every aspect of our lives to corporations.  They write our legislative policy, they run our elections, they own our media and our means of communication, (including the manner in which you are reading this, which is allowed at will and increasingly disrupted).  Through massive privatization programs, and the more insidious “public-private partnerships,” they are gaining control over the functions of our government, military, and educational systems.  They control almost all of our natural resources and they dictate the way that we treat the environment.  And through ingenious gifts, labeled “deregulation,” “tort reform,” and “retroactive immunity,” they are now allowed to conduct their business with out any oversight or accountability whatsoever.