A Most Perfect State

Dear George,

The upside of the emergence of the corporate state has been the concurrent emergence of a corporate democracy that sanitizes and brings under control an unruly and unpredictable rule by the unwashed, of the unwashed and for the unwashed.

Corporate democracy elevates freedom from a diffuse force that focused on social welfare to one that is focused solely on corporate welfare. Citizens become employees who are rewarded to the extent that they hue to corporate policy and marginalized if they deviate from it.

Society’s rebels, artists and poets are reduced to court jesters who are allowed to insult and criticize royalty with impunity because they constitute no threat to the established powers.

Dissent is muffled because the state is able to maintain the illusion of prosperity through the inflation of a succession of asset bubbles, which give rise to the individual bubbles that embrace members of the underclass, thus making them unaware of the oppression under which they are living.

Multiple cars sit in the driveway and the central air is keeping the heat and humidity at bay. The plasma TV works and the electronic gadgets are scattered throughout the house. Each and every thing, each toy, each blinking light and beeping finger pad confirms that all is well, even though the only freedom the drones have is the freedom to enjoy their toys until they become bored with them and need a new set of toys to keep them distracted.

They are so free that they no longer need worry about civic participation. They can leave that to the experts who know better than they do what they need to be happy. A few of them might drag themselves to the polls to elect a new slate of “experts,” but most of them think an expert is an expert so it doesn’t really make any difference who’s in charge.

In a corporate democracy, an expert in no way implies expertise; it simply means one has seized the reins of power. An expert can be dumb as dishwater and still be considered an expert through the miracle of media spin, as you have so amply demonstrated.

It is thus that they are complicit in their own oppression as they exhibit the approved behavior patterns and thoughts implanted and embellished by school, church and media. Debate is dismissed as divisiveness because the one virtue the corporate state values is a total unity of purpose. Corporate goals, as set forth by the “experts,” are all that matter.

What makes the corporate state so powerful and so inured to change is that nobody is in charge. It’s not even a hydra-headed monster to conquer. This means there is no head to cut off, no battery to change nor screw to tighten. The corporate state is without direction or goal, other than maximizing profits. It moves with a slug-like momentum that slithers slowly over peasant huts, reducing them to rubble. Its nominal leaders are as victimized by the blob as are the peasants.

The blob is a malevolent mix of hubris, greed and stupidity that is forced to move because it is crushed beneath the weight of its own momentum. It sees neither sky nor landscape, but only the muck over which it slides.

Despite its size and destructiveness, the blob is completely invisible. Its victims never see it or feel it, so they attribute their misfortunes to fate or destiny, because, in their minds, there is no blob, and those who raise the alarm are dismissed as cranks and head cases.

It is, George, a most perfect state, one that is not even aware of itself.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones