Prole Crushing -- or: What's Wrong With Corporate Rule, Anyway?

The recent Palace spats over raising the Debt Limit have dramatized for all to see just how powerful the Corporate Interests are in DC, and how little power The People have in the face of the Onslaught of the Titans.

According to the polls, The People do not want the Debt Limit raised (and in this, Public Opinion may be well ahead of the "Opinion Leaders"), but of course Our Rulers, particularly Wall Street and its dependencies insist the DL MUST BE RAISED forthwith or they'll Blow Up the Economy. This is the actual bloodcurdling threat being issued by the Financial High and the Mighty to the Governmental High and the Mighty if they continue to fuck around like they've been doing for political advantage.

The whole thing goes in the crapper if they don't do what they are told. (Not that this hasn't already happened for millions upon millions of Americans, more every year; the current threats are being issued from one faction of the Ruling Class to another. We, the Proles, factor not at all in the rumblings except as pawns.)

This has the salutary effect of focusing the minds of the Powerful, one would suppose, but it also exposes what's really going on: "Prole Crushing" (h/t David Sirota) in a word.

(One is somehow reminded of the Firesign Theatre -- Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, yes?)

And that's what's wrong with corporate rule.

What is really startling about what has been going on -- for years now -- is just how mean and mean spirited The Powers That Be are in pursuit of their predatory and vicious goals. There is no "Nice" about it; it's cruelty all the way, from every side of Power.

They revel in their power to inflict "pain" on others. It has become a hallmark, almost a reason for being among the High and the Mighty and their media courtiers. The media in fact is, if anything, much worse than their sponsors in loving the sight and the thought of Other People Suffering.

This is what Corporate Rule means on the everyday level: plunder and pain and suffering for the Masses, further accumulation of wealth and power by the Overlords.

There is no mercy, there is no recognition of the human wreckage left in the wake of the predatory Ruling Class, any more than predators in nature "recognize" the wreckage they leave behind, nor even that their prey is capable of sensing what is going on.

It reminds me of the incredible and mindless cruelty of plunging live lobsters into boiling water. As if there were no other way. And as if lobsters could not be sensible to any pain or suffering -- because they are lobsters, meant for the cooking pot.

It's just the same with the Corporate Ruling Class and their minions vis a vis the masses. We are nothing to them, not even capable of "feeling" or even sensing what is being done to us for the profit and pleasure of the Overlords.

Neither mercy nor forbearance enters the picture.

Much the same was typical of the heyday of Empire and its resurgence today masquerading as the Global War on Terror. The Natives had no human qualities their Conquerors were bound to recognize or accept; their suffering and their slaughter was pre-ordained on high. Wiping them from the face of the Earth, enslaving remnant survivors was God's Work. Civilization!

It was even worse during the initial phase of Western Empire building when entire continents were essentially de-populated in the race for riches and the exploitation of regions. The corpses of the exterminated Natives meant as little to those who were killing them as the piles of buffalo bones meant to the herd exterminators of the 19th Century.



And note, the victims are always to blame.

This is the world we have entered; this is the real view "behind the curtain."

But, as Our Rulers always say, "There is nothing to be done about it. Nothing."