The other day, I went OFF. I mean really, went OFF.

posted by The Vidiot @ 12:47 PM Permalink

Everywhere I looked, I saw advertising and crass commercialism. I saw cars spewing crap into the air and trash on the streets. I saw too many homeless people to throw money at and I saw a Dunkin Donuts on the corner of a really neighborhoody street here in Brooklyn, a storefront that used to house a cute little crap shop that was owned by someone in the neighborhood. I saw people displaying hundreds of different logos on their bodies and sipping Starbucks, oblivious to it all because they were stuck in iPod land and looking in the windows of really posh shops, examining the merchandise while simultaneously checking themselves out via their reflections in the windows. "Does my hair look alright? Oooo, nice bag!"

Maybe I'm just over reacting because we just got back from Spain, and well, it's just not that bad there. For instance, here, every available space in the transit system has advertising it on it, inside and outside of the trains, including some of the tunnel walls. In Spain, the advertising stopped once you walked on the train. It was shocking AND delightful. It was a relief. I couldn't believe how relieved I was to have a few moments that were advertising free. It was like the noise stopped, or the ringing in my ears that was suddenly silenced.

But what is this plague? The images, noise, lack of social safety net and destruction of our neighborhoods? What's driving this force that is transforming America into an ugly spectacle of strip malls, fast food and self-centered citizens?

In a word?
CORPORATIONS. (I mean, I know it's deeper than that, but that's the cyst that's easiest to pop.) I'm sick of corporations. I'm tired of hearing about their profits on one day, and their layoffs the next. Who are they maximizing profit for anyway? Shareholders? Who are the shareholders? They aren't you and me. Sure, we may own a few stocks here and there, mostly because our IRAs or 401(k)s do, but for the most part, the shareholders are the donor class. NOT the working class (and any working class person who considers himself a shareholder should also consider himself an idiot.) And this isn't bad apples here. I'm not pissed because I'm broke. Until a corporation starts to make my life miserable (a la Time Warner or Verizon with their ludicrous and loosely termed "customer support") I don't care all that much about money.

However, when gas is up over $3/gallon nationally and that cost is being pushed onto the consumer in ways not even considered (trucks deliver the food, no?) yet gas companies are reaping a windfall in profits -- Apache, Exxon/Mobil, Shell, all of them -- while some of us have to resort to pedal bikes, I tend to get a little persnickety.

Meanwhile, while they're making outrageous profits, the corporations funnel money into our political system and our media to maximize their agendas. They've hijacked the 14th Amendment by having themselves declared persons so that the Bill of Rights will apply to them. And because of their wealth, their megaphone is a lot bigger that yours or mine. I ask you, how are they persons, exactly? Do they breath? Nope. Do they crap? Well, in manner of speaking if you consider all the crap they produce, I'll give them that. They do crap and they do it well and with aplomb. Do they reproduce? Well, I guess they can create little sub-divisions but those sub-divisions don't breathe, so I won't give them that. Do they feel sadness, love, go hungry, feel pain? No, no, no, and no. Can they die? (And going bankrupt is not death. It just feels like it is all.) No, they cannot die. (They can profit from death however.) So, other than the occasional crap, I don't see how they can possibly be considered a person.

When did it become legal to not provide your employees with decent healthcare, then force that employee to pay for his healthcare with public funds, while at the same time, taking business tax deductions for having that employee to begin with?

When did it become legal give your CEOs millions upon millions of dollars in compensation (that's barely taxed, by the way because most of it is deferred) then turn around and say your pension is unfunded?

When did it become legal to move your business address and operations offshore to escape taxes and environmental and labor standards, while still reaping the benefits of doing business in the USA?

Why aren't any of these damn corporate bastards having their charters revoked?

With so much going on in the world, why am I going off on corporations right now? Well, for the most part it's because these corporations have polluted our minds and confused us as to the difference between what we want and what we need that has created this resource-driven world -- created by their greed and avarice and our laziness in confronting it, thereby creating a government that responds to their greed and avarice and not to our actual, real needs.

It has to stop.

But when?

Written by The Vidiot and posted via The Sailor due to blogger probs.