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In the first week of this year, we saw just how fragile even a mature, constitutionally grounded democratic republic can be. As we reached out to family, friends, and colleagues, we got the sense that we, as individuals, are just as siloed as our media. We finally came to realize how about six hundred billionaires control the information flow for a country of three-hundred and thirty-one million citizens within the United States. And to our dismay, it was revealed, that the most privileged among us have become even more enriched, while the marginalized and powerless are dead, dying, or stewing in hormones of stress.
For years we’ve watched helplessly as a sociopathic few presume to speak for a world population that is fast approaching eight billion human beings. And now we are witnessing an abrupt shift as the most inauthentic, shell like corporations have found that, despite all the deceptive practices, the public’s perception of their corrupt political influence is now more acute than ever. The dark money is now front and center and so, supporting the most integrity challenged politicians is therefore, no longer convenient.
We have long been told that the natural world’s response to overpopulation is through war, famine, and pestilence. And when we’ve witnessed behaviors of elected representatives willing to write off entire swaths of humanity in the name of “culling the herd” and “herd immunity, we are somehow expected to adopt the same kind of calloused world view, together with the depraved heart indifference they have shown towards the people we care about.
The thin vernier of religiosity, that is now on full display in the realm of religion and politics, has failed to conceal the moral cowardice of those prostituting themselves for forces intent on undermining our constitutional republic. Their corrosive influence, on the democracy underpinnings of our nation, is a clear betrayal of the oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Standing in stark contrast to those who have disgraced themselves are the heroes, the steadfast healthcare workers that have held the line while those sworn to provide for the common defense were AWOL. The coronavirus pandemic infected more than 80 million people and killed more than 1.8 million globally over the course of just it’s first year. While microscopic foes have proven to be just as deadly as political adversaries, our conventional definitions of what it means to “provide for the common defense” are clearly inadequate.
We’ve seen some supremely heroic and some truly pathetic responses to the global pandemic and, while we have also listened as some claimed the economy will come “roaring back,” others don’t want to rebuild the economy in the same old way. These opposing forces have very different ways of experiencing the economy. While one group holds that the stock market is the leading indicator of economic health, others have noticed that this particular market tends to rise in tandem with the human misery index.
The question before 331 million of us affecting the eight billion of us is this: If we are to “build back better,” just how will that be achieved? Some would undoubtedly like to see us rebuild on the same old rotting foundation of baser instincts and moral bankruptcy. People of true integrity would prefer to build upon a culture of benevolence.
The United States fought a revolutionary war to throw off the yoke of what the founders called “foreign potentates.” Then, in less than 250 years, the arch-typical democracy devolved into a feudalistic corporatocracy. One that is controlled by other, more brutal, foreign potentates.
There are those among us that are entirely ok within a world where the rich get richer and the poor die. That form of fascism that is often seen wrapped in the flag, while carrying a cross, is fooling a group that is getting smaller and smaller every day. The year 2020 was a defining moment for them. Those elected officials that were once engaged in a masquerade as constitutional conservatives, have been exposed as anything but.
Likewise, Justices on The Supreme Court of the United States that have long been masquerading as originalists and textualists while ignoring the entire Preamble to the Constitution, have demonstrated a lack of intellectual rigor. They have clearly dishonored themselves and the institution as they capped off a long series of cases advancing a counterfeit corporate personhood, with the case Citizens United.
They have failed to differentiate between those inauthentic corporations that are controlled by foreign potentates, shells with no affinity for company or the people they claim to represent; as opposed to those authentic corporations composed of people in good company, choosing, associating, and operating for a common purpose, real people who are acting corporately.
In contrast to counterfeit corporations that enrich only the few, Employee Owned Benefit Corporations are of, by, and for We the People.