I’ve come to the conclusion that the U.S. Federal government no longer has the intrinsic power to win any significant battle against large corporations. Effectively the business community has banded together to form a sort of universal American Zaibatsu. The big companies protect each other by voting as a bloc against anything that would endanger anyone’s profits. This is called “conservatism.” In reality it’s nothing but a crude power play to achieve massive monopolistic power over every financial transaction anywhere in the world.

As the American Zaibatsu grows in strength, it begins to have more power, stronger hegemony, than our elected governments. Seen abstractly, such a situation is neither impossible nor illogical. National governments, as a political unit, rely for their power on unification of a geographic territory under either a single ruler or some kind of ruling group.

Corporations, as political entities, work differently. They are not necessarily tethered to a specific geographic area. The location of a business’s facilities often is not the deciding factor on its power. Every company completes monetary transactions which flow both in and out of the company. The transactions of a sufficiently large and successful company now routinely reach every part of the world. The constant flow of money in and out gives the economic unit we call a “company” or a “corporation” its power.

We are in the habit of assuming that nation-states are the most powerful actors on the world stage. Clearly in many respects that is still true of the major industrialized powers, but there are signs of change. As the size and reach of global corporations increases, their power continually grows. Meanwhile the economic power of nation-states is actually shrinking. The so-called “conservative” movement which began, in full force, during the Reagan administration, represents the political embodiment of the victory of corporations over countries.

The political problems we see within both major parties are more fundamental than just a leadership group which is weak or prone to sabotage. There is now far too much power, in the form of money and purchased influence, to allow the U.S. Republic to function as it was designed to. In other words, this really is Wiemar.

The next phase, in which everyone begins to hate the liberals, now becomes easier to understand. Liberals, from that point of view, are those who are in favor of keeping the structure of the republic unchanged. Liberals believe we can go back to the supposed great old days of obedience to the Constitution.

Most of us progressives would like to believe the U.S. Constitution can survive in its present form. But that looks increasingly unlikely. Soon most people will be in favor of some kind of radical change. Then the Left and Right can truly duke it out, with no middle to get in the way of the battle. Obviously at that point the fight becomes a death match.

The outcome of such a process will be partly random, depending on which party is surging at the time of transition into a dictatorial state. We will probably end up with a regime with strong ideology and few constraints on its actions.

Jamison Foser does a great job of demolishing the Republican myth that MSNBC is the left-handed equivalent of Fox News. Foser does a great job of proving that Fox is a far-right hack’s dream, while MSNBC is ideologically mixed from top to bottom, starting with Morning Joe and continuing through the day with “a parade of anchors and reporters who frequently adopt conservative frames, pass along GOP spin, and routinely fail to challenge obvious falsehoods from conservative guests.” I want to add that the lefty hosts on MSNBC make use of facts, rather than innuendo and falsehoods, to make their points.

To those who are convinced Obama is giving in to the forces of darkness: please read this. And consider watching Mr. Obama’s results rather than his tactics.

Last month, Max Blumenthal delivered a talk in Berkeley which, disturbing as it is, you should watch.

Blumenthal has written a new book, published two weeks ago, called Republican Gomorrah. The talk is based on that book. But maybe watching the talk will be enough. Reading that book sounds so depressing. Just when I was trying to forget the Bush years, they keep rising up before my eyes, like a zombie escaped from a bad dream.

Alan Grayson, the Congressman now (in)famous for his declaration that the Republican health care plan amounted to “Don’t get sick” or else “Die quickly,” had a life before Congress. The article is from the Wall Steet Journal, April 19, 2006.

For a concise description of how health care lobbyists buy the legislation they favor, check out this piece from the UK Guardian. The First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech has been interpreted to include unlimited license to bribe public officials and disseminate false propaganda over privately-owned electronic communication channels. The result is a legislative system that consistently acts for the benefit of wealthy investors and at the expense of broader public interests. Mass deception is ubiquitous, and no one seems to have the slightest idea what to do about it. Something fundamental is bound to snap if the problem is not addressed soon.