The Age of Neo-Feudalism: A Government of the Rich, by the Rich, and for the Corporations

By John W. Whitehead

“The shap­ing of the will of Con­gress and the choos­ing of the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent has become a priv­i­lege reserved to the country’s eques­trian classes, a.k.a. the 20% of the pop­u­la­tion that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the cor­po­ra­tions and the banks, own and oper­ate the news and enter­tain­ment media, com­pose the laws and gov­ern the uni­ver­si­ties, con­trol the phil­an­thropic foun­da­tions, the pol­icy insti­tutes, the casi­nos, and the sports are­nas.” – Jour­nal­ist Lewis Lapham

The pomp and cir­cum­stance of the pres­i­den­tial inau­gu­ra­tion has died down. Mem­bers of Con­gress have taken their seats on Capi­tol Hill, and Barack Obama has reclaimed his seat in the White House. The cir­cus of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion has become a faint mem­ory. The long months of debates, ral­lies, and polit­i­cal adver­tise­ments have slipped from our con­scious­ness. Now we are left with the feel­ing that noth­ing has really changed, nor will it.

This is not by acci­dent. The media cir­cus lead­ing up to the elec­tions, the name call­ing in the halls of Con­gress, the vit­riol and barbs traded back and forth among peo­ple who are sup­posed to be work­ing together to improve the coun­try, are all com­po­nents of the game set up by those who run the show. The movers and shak­ers behind these engag­ing, but ulti­mately trite, polit­i­cal exer­cises are the elite, the so-called upper class, who ben­e­fit from the sta­tus quo. This sta­tus quo is marked by an eco­nomic cri­sis with no end in sight, by the slow but steady growth of a police state aimed at the low­est rungs of soci­ety, and a polit­i­cal cir­cus which keeps us enrap­tured long enough that we don’t ques­tion what’s really going on.

Mean­while, this elite, com­posed of cor­po­ra­tions prof­it­ing off of our igno­rance, avoid being brought to task for their destruc­tion of demo­c­ra­tic gov­er­nance and the econ­omy. These are the cor­po­ra­tions who sent our econ­omy into a tail spin and were then rewarded with tax­payer money. These are the cor­po­ra­tions who write laws which elim­i­nate real com­pe­ti­tion in the mar­ket in order to secure their prof­its through lucra­tive gov­ern­ment con­tracts. These are the cor­po­ra­tions who avoid crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, and are instead slapped with mea­ger fines which do noth­ing to halt their felo­nious activities.

We now live in a two-tiered sys­tem of jus­tice and gov­er­nance. There are two sets of laws: one set for the gov­ern­ment and the cor­po­ra­tions, and another set for you and me.

The laws which apply to the major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion allow the gov­ern­ment to do things like rec­tally probe you dur­ing a road­side stop, or lis­ten in on your phone calls and read all of your email mes­sages, or indef­i­nitely detain you in a mil­i­tary hold­ing cell. These are the laws which are exe­cuted every sin­gle day against a pop­u­la­tion which has up until now been bliss­fully igno­rant of the rad­i­cal shift tak­ing place in Amer­i­can government.

Then there are the laws con­structed for the elite, which allow bankers who crash the econ­omy to walk free. They’re the laws which allow police offi­cers to avoid pros­e­cu­tion when they strip search non-violent crim­i­nals, or taser preg­nant women on the side of the road, or pep­per spray peace­ful pro­tes­tors. These are the laws of the new age we are enter­ing, an age of neo-feudalism, in which corporate-state rulers dom­i­nate the rest of us, where the elite cre­ate the laws which can result in a per­son being jailed for pos­sess­ing mar­i­juana while bankers that laun­der money for drug car­tels walk free.

Unfor­tu­nately, this two-tiered sys­tem of jus­tice has been a long time com­ing. The march toward an impe­r­ial pres­i­dency, to con­gres­sional intran­si­gence and impo­tence, to a cor­po­rate takeover of the mech­a­nisms of gov­ern­ment, and the divi­sion of Amer­ica into haves and have nots has been build­ing for years.

Jour­nal­ist Chris Hedges, one of the few voices to speak against the corporate-state, who has put him­self on the line by mak­ing a legal chal­lenge to the President’s author­ity to indef­i­nitely detain Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, sum­ma­rizes the sit­u­a­tion at hand:

“Our pas­siv­ity has resulted… in much more than impe­r­ial adven­tur­ism and a per­ma­nent under­class. A slow-motion coup by a cor­po­rate state has cemented into place a neo­feu­dal­ism in which there are only mas­ters and serfs. And the process is one that can­not be reversed through the tra­di­tional mech­a­nisms of elec­toral politics.”

Indeed, elec­toral pol­i­tics are off the table as a means of reform­ing the sys­tem. They are so thor­oughly cor­rupted by cor­po­rate money that there is no chance, even for a well-meaning per­son, to affect any real change through Congress.

Just con­sider the last elec­tion cycle. Both par­ties spent $1 bil­lion each attempt­ing to get their can­di­date elected to the pres­i­dency. This money came from rich donors and cor­po­rate spon­sors, intent on get­ting their can­di­date in office. This mas­sive spend­ing was mir­rored at the con­gres­sional level, where busi­ness lob­by­ing soared in the last three months of the year. The U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce alone spent over $125 mil­lion attempt­ing to influ­ence mem­bers of Con­gress, an 88 per­cent increase from 2011.

Indeed, lob­by­ists are the source of much cor­rup­tion and exchang­ing of money in Wash­ing­ton, and their attempts to woo Con­gress­men only exac­er­bate the prob­lems inher­ent to the insti­tu­tion. Jack Abramoff should know. Jailed for brib­ing pub­lic offi­cials, the for­mer lob­by­ist insists that the sys­tem is every bit as cor­rupt now as it was when he was con­victed. From job offers for staffers and Con­gress­men after they leave Capi­tol Hill, to tak­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives to sport­ing events and fancy restau­rants, there is no short­age of meth­ods of influ­enc­ing pub­lic offi­cials to enact the poli­cies of spe­cial inter­ests. Accord­ing to Abramoff, these tac­tics are still in use today, and “the sys­tem hasn’t been cleaned up at all.”

Once their foot is in the door, these lob­by­ists then offer up lan­guage for leg­is­la­tion that is “so obscure, so con­fus­ing, so unin­for­ma­tive, but so pre­cise” as to make pas­sage as easy as pos­si­ble. This leg­is­la­tion cements the priv­i­lege of the cor­po­ra­tions to do as they please, mak­ing all of their dubi­ous activ­i­ties “legal.”

This lob­by­ing is buoyed by a con­gres­sional lifestyle which demands that our rep­re­sen­ta­tives spend the major­ity of their time fund rais­ing for cam­paigns, rather than respond­ing to the needs of their con­stituents. In Novem­ber 2012, the Demo­c­ra­tic House lead­er­ship offered a model daily sched­ule to newly elected Democ­rats which sug­gests a ten-hour day, five hours of which are dom­i­nated by “call time” and “strate­gic out­reach,” includ­ing fund rais­ers and cor­re­spon­dence with poten­tial donors. Three or four hours are for actu­ally doing the job they were elected to do, such as attend­ing com­mit­tee meet­ings, vot­ing on leg­is­la­tion, and inter­act­ing with constituents.

When half of one’s time is devoted to ask­ing for money from rich indi­vid­u­als and spe­cial inter­ests, there is no way that he can respond to the prob­lems which per­vade the coun­try. And yet, even Con­gress­men in safe seats are expected to fundraise con­stantly so as to sup­port their col­leagues in com­pet­i­tive dis­tricts. As Rep. John Lar­son (D-Conn.) put it, “…this is the mother’s milk of what [Con­gress­men] need to do to try to sus­tain their cam­paigns, and it’s the only sys­tem they have to work with.”

Thus, even well-meaning Con­gress­men face a Catch-22 where they are pushed to fundraise to secure their seats, but then once in office, it is basi­cally impos­si­ble for them to do their jobs. The full ram­i­fi­ca­tions of this are laid out by Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC):

“Any mem­ber who fol­lows that sched­ule will be com­pletely con­trolled by their staff, handed state­ments that their staff pre­pared, speak­ing from talk­ing points they get emailed from lead­er­ship… It really does affect how mem­bers of Con­gress behave if the most impor­tant thing they think about is fundrais­ing. You end up being nice to peo­ple that prob­a­bly some­body needs to be ques­tion­ing skep­ti­cally… You won’t ask tough ques­tions in hear­ings that might dis­please poten­tial con­trib­u­tors, won’t sup­port amend­ments that might anger them, will tend to vote the way con­trib­u­tors want you to vote.”

The influ­ence of cor­po­rate money on Con­gress is exac­er­bated by how out of touch Con­gress­men are with the daily strug­gles of most Amer­i­cans. In Feb­ru­ary 2012, the median net worth of Con­gress­men was $913,000 as com­pared to $100,000 for the rest of the pop­u­la­tion. Aside from being imme­di­ately wealthy, Con­gress­men also weath­ered the tribu­la­tions of the finan­cial cri­sis much bet­ter than the aver­age Amer­i­can. An analy­sis of Con­gres­sional finances by the Wash­ing­ton Post in Octo­ber 2012 revealed that the wealth­i­est one-third of Con­gress was largely shielded from the effects of the Great Reces­sion. While the median house­hold net worth of the aver­age Amer­i­can dropped by 39 per­cent between 2007 and 2010, the median wealth of Con­gress­men rose 5 per­cent. It rose 14 per­cent for the wealth­i­est one-third.

At a time when most peo­ple in the coun­try are suf­fer­ing, Con­gress­men are prof­it­ing. This alone should demon­strate how out of touch our elected lead­ers have become. Mem­bers of Con­gress, entrusted to rep­re­sent the best inter­ests of the aver­age Amer­i­can, instead play out a stilted, inef­fec­tive soap opera on our TV screens, com­plete with phony dis­cus­sions of fis­cal cliffs and debt ceil­ings which take the place of real pro­pos­als for mean­ing­ful change in the country.

There is no voice for the work­ing Amer­i­can in the halls of Con­gress, the Amer­i­can who was promised a life beyond taxes, debt, and unem­ploy­ment. There is no voice for the peace lov­ing Amer­i­can, the Amer­i­can who under­stands that America’s mil­i­tary might is meant for defense of the home­land, not look­ing for trou­ble in far­away lands. There is no voice for the Amer­i­can who expects his rep­re­sen­ta­tives to abide by the Con­sti­tu­tion, who laments the way Con­gress, the Pres­i­dent, and the Supreme Court work together to take away our rights piece by piece.

WC: 1623

Posted by Guest 1 Columnist on Jan 31 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.