A world where corporations run the politicians, promote endless war and secretly manipulate public opinion through the media. Thankfully, these bleak visions never materialised
I'm surprised that so many commenters are surprised that a postscript explaining the article's present day perspective was necessary!
As Jonathan indicates, the population at large are propagandised to a point where the majority do not understand the world they live in in these terms. The puppet masters are hidden, the pretence seems real. A false consciousness pervades Western societies. (and probably others, but they are outside my experience).
Many of the more literate people, the kind that might, like me, follow Jonathan's writings, are well insulated from the less pleasant realities of life. The working (or unemployed) masses have received a poor education and few have any time for politics or reading anything lengthy (this is backed by surveys and statistics).
Those seeing society as Jonathan, and some of us, do are a small number of those who even engage with ideas. And irony doesn't work well in print, it needs to be spelt out, as I have found out to my cost more than once.
The question is how we win significant numbers to understand and, more importantly, to act against this situation. And what individual, communal and collective actions can change an immensely powerful global system?
We probably won't be able to express views freely like we can (to an extent) on platforms like this for ever. Authorities will cut off (or 'sanitise') all parts of the internet they deem subversive as soon as any significant resistance to the system develops.
But secret cells of activists, by definition, don't grow into large networks. We must use other tools to organise.
“If voting changed anything [in favor of the poor and disenfranchised] they’d have made it illegal.” (‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine, in the film Our Brand Is Crisis)
----
Regardless of who or which party gets elected to lead us, we in the Far West exist in virtual corpocracies that only masquerade as genuine democratic rule — mostly thanks to the first-past-the-post ballot system. While the FPTP system may technically qualify as being democratic within the democracy spectrum, it’s still particularly democratically weak. But it does largely enable an insidiously covert rule by way of potently manipulative and persuasive corporate and big-monied lobbyists that serves their clients’ interests quite well.
Low-representation FPTP-elected governments, in which a relatively small portion of the country's populace is actually electorally represented, are the easiest for lobbyists to manipulate or ‘buy’. Perhaps it's why such powerful interests generally resist (albeit probably clandestinely) grassroots-supported attempts at changing from FPTP to more proportionally representative electoral systems of governance, the latter which dilutes corporate influence on government policy and decisions.
Those lobbyists can also write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time writing them. The practice may have become so systematic that those who are aware of it, including mainstream news-media political writers, don’t find reason to publicly discuss or write about it.
Meantime, faux liberals and neo-conservatives remain overly preoccupied with vocally criticizing one another for their relatively trivial politics and therefore divert attention away from the planet's and humanity’s greatest threats where it actually very-much should and needs to be sharply focused.
A corresponding very large and still growing number of people are too overworked, tired, worried and rightfully angry about such unaffordability thus insecurity for themselves or their family — largely due to insufficient income — to sufficiently criticize and/or boycott Big Business/Industry for the societal damage it needlessly causes/allows, particularly when not immediately observable. And I doubt that this effect is totally accidental, as it greatly benefits the interests of insatiable corporate greed.
Still, there must be a point at which corporate greed thus practice will end up hurting big business’s own monetary interests. Or is the unlimited-profit objective/nature somehow irresistible? It brings to mind the allegorical fox stung by the instinct-abiding scorpion while ferrying it across the river, leaving both to drown.
Could it be that a bunch of morbidly and self-mortally greedy corporate officers may know their big businesses will inevitably, if not imminently, collapse due to a great lack of consumers who can afford those big businesses’ products — perhaps including some would-be consumers who’d lost their jobs to employer-profit-maximizing AI or other forms of automation); yet, the corporate officers will nonetheless continue ardently politically supporting (via covert lobbying of governments, of course) the very economic system, especially its below-poverty-line minimum wage, that's basically going to ruin their big businesses?
As strange as it likely sounds, perhaps those corporate officers cannot help themselves, and they realize an intervention by a truly-independent body/entity may be needed, one completely untouchable by the morally- and/or ethically-corrupt corporate lobbyists. ‘We scorpions simply cannot help ourselves. We need externally independent intervention, but we will still resist it. It's in our nature.’
Regardless, corporate officers continue shrugging their shoulders and defensively saying their job is to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests. And shareholders also go on shrugging their shoulders while stating they just collect the dividends and that the big bosses are the ones who make the decisions involving ethics/morals or lack thereof.
But can such insatiable-human/corporate-greed nature really be that morally hopeless, indeed pathetic?
Dear Jonathan, this is one of your best articles. I appreciate it very much. Please, continue to help us understand this world through your analysis and comments. Many thanks.
It's funny; I immediately thought, "A whole bunch of eejits will think Jonathan Cook is being serious and not realize the obvious sarcasm." And sho'nuff.
Thank you for the article Jonathan and for keeping your posts free like we do over at SPN. We covered aspects of this here.
-
Thought capitalism had a final form? Wrong. It’s been levelling up behind our backs and has now unveiled its most sinister upgrade: the final boss form. Forget free markets, forget competition, forget even the polite fiction of social mobility. Welcome to Techno-Feudalism, where the ultra-rich decided democracy was a fad, workers’ rights were a typo, and ownership was just a cruel joke played on the middle class.
A few social/labor uprisings or revolutions notwithstanding, the superfluously rich and powerful have always had the police and military ready to foremost protect their big-money/-power interests, even over the basic needs of the masses.
Even today, the police and military can, and I believe they probably would, claim (using euphemistic or political terminology, of course) that they had to bust heads to maintain law and order as a priority during major demonstrations, especially those against economic injustices. Indirectly supported by complacent or compliant corporate news-media, the absurdly unjust inequities/inequalities can persist.
I can imagine there were/are lessons learned from successful social/labor uprisings — a figurative How to Hinder Progressive Revolutions 101, maybe? — with the clarity of hindsight by big power/money interests in order to avoid any repeat of such great wealth/power losses.
We in the Far West live in a virtual corpocracy, regardless of who’s elected prime minister or president. Leaders are elected via the first-past-the-post ballot system, which enables an insidiously covert rule by way of potently manipulative/persuasive corporate and big-monied lobbyists.
Apparently, the superfluous-wealth desires of the few, and especially the one, increasingly outweigh the life-necessity needs of the many. The more they make, all the more they want — nay, need! — to make next time. It’s never enough.
All of that, and much more, may be why a growing number of people find New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, unlike his political competition, ideologically and politically refreshing. And, of course, he'll experience great animosity and resistance from a formidable American system based basically on insatiable superfluous-profit/-wealth greed.
George Carlin knew the nature of the machine and how it evolves and adapts with technology and surveillance capitalism. Here we are in the thick, bold wildly exploitative world where bubbles rise and fall like people on stolen Fizzy Lifting Drinks… it’s not cold fusion… this is known quantity predictable behavior. Anyone who is on the wait and lets see fence, or still supporting this band of lowlifes are filled with mistaken beliefs or they deserve probably the sad trajectory that is looming large just ahead of us. I have no idea, but I’ll try praying. Please, Lord, whatever Gods may be… hear us, see us.. our ship is sinking. Can you please ‘take care’ of maliciously corrupt lying traitors out to undermine our democracy? Many thanks, how you take care of it is none of our business. Help us, to grow and learn from the past. Help us pull the rabbit out of the hat please, once more. I pledge my life to serving you and my fellow man.. it’s not contingent on anything - but, grant us the faith necessary to totally reply on you. Amen. 🙏 ~ D
Apparently, the superfluous-wealth desires of the few, and especially the one, increasingly outweigh the life-necessity needs of the many. The more they make, all the more they want — nay, need! — to make next time. It’s never enough. ‘We are a capitalist nation, after all,’ the morally lame justification typically goes.
Yeah……that could never happen. Here is another thing that could never happen - brown people being slaughtered like cockroaches, while the state doing it sends singers to international singing competitions, football teams to international football competitions, and diplomats all over the west, to make sure that nobody there does anything about it.
Irony is the preserve of subtle minds Jonathan. Surely those who didn't get it were not subscribers!
We’re well into it. I puzzled for years: haven’t they seen Matrix? Avatar? Bladerunner? They saw and decided the point was dystopia. With them on top.
I'm surprised that so many commenters are surprised that a postscript explaining the article's present day perspective was necessary!
As Jonathan indicates, the population at large are propagandised to a point where the majority do not understand the world they live in in these terms. The puppet masters are hidden, the pretence seems real. A false consciousness pervades Western societies. (and probably others, but they are outside my experience).
Many of the more literate people, the kind that might, like me, follow Jonathan's writings, are well insulated from the less pleasant realities of life. The working (or unemployed) masses have received a poor education and few have any time for politics or reading anything lengthy (this is backed by surveys and statistics).
Those seeing society as Jonathan, and some of us, do are a small number of those who even engage with ideas. And irony doesn't work well in print, it needs to be spelt out, as I have found out to my cost more than once.
The question is how we win significant numbers to understand and, more importantly, to act against this situation. And what individual, communal and collective actions can change an immensely powerful global system?
We probably won't be able to express views freely like we can (to an extent) on platforms like this for ever. Authorities will cut off (or 'sanitise') all parts of the internet they deem subversive as soon as any significant resistance to the system develops.
But secret cells of activists, by definition, don't grow into large networks. We must use other tools to organise.
Thank you Jonathan, indeed we live in Utopia😹👏👏👏
“If voting changed anything [in favor of the poor and disenfranchised] they’d have made it illegal.” (‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine, in the film Our Brand Is Crisis)
----
Regardless of who or which party gets elected to lead us, we in the Far West exist in virtual corpocracies that only masquerade as genuine democratic rule — mostly thanks to the first-past-the-post ballot system. While the FPTP system may technically qualify as being democratic within the democracy spectrum, it’s still particularly democratically weak. But it does largely enable an insidiously covert rule by way of potently manipulative and persuasive corporate and big-monied lobbyists that serves their clients’ interests quite well.
Low-representation FPTP-elected governments, in which a relatively small portion of the country's populace is actually electorally represented, are the easiest for lobbyists to manipulate or ‘buy’. Perhaps it's why such powerful interests generally resist (albeit probably clandestinely) grassroots-supported attempts at changing from FPTP to more proportionally representative electoral systems of governance, the latter which dilutes corporate influence on government policy and decisions.
Those lobbyists can also write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time writing them. The practice may have become so systematic that those who are aware of it, including mainstream news-media political writers, don’t find reason to publicly discuss or write about it.
Meantime, faux liberals and neo-conservatives remain overly preoccupied with vocally criticizing one another for their relatively trivial politics and therefore divert attention away from the planet's and humanity’s greatest threats where it actually very-much should and needs to be sharply focused.
A corresponding very large and still growing number of people are too overworked, tired, worried and rightfully angry about such unaffordability thus insecurity for themselves or their family — largely due to insufficient income — to sufficiently criticize and/or boycott Big Business/Industry for the societal damage it needlessly causes/allows, particularly when not immediately observable. And I doubt that this effect is totally accidental, as it greatly benefits the interests of insatiable corporate greed.
Still, there must be a point at which corporate greed thus practice will end up hurting big business’s own monetary interests. Or is the unlimited-profit objective/nature somehow irresistible? It brings to mind the allegorical fox stung by the instinct-abiding scorpion while ferrying it across the river, leaving both to drown.
Could it be that a bunch of morbidly and self-mortally greedy corporate officers may know their big businesses will inevitably, if not imminently, collapse due to a great lack of consumers who can afford those big businesses’ products — perhaps including some would-be consumers who’d lost their jobs to employer-profit-maximizing AI or other forms of automation); yet, the corporate officers will nonetheless continue ardently politically supporting (via covert lobbying of governments, of course) the very economic system, especially its below-poverty-line minimum wage, that's basically going to ruin their big businesses?
As strange as it likely sounds, perhaps those corporate officers cannot help themselves, and they realize an intervention by a truly-independent body/entity may be needed, one completely untouchable by the morally- and/or ethically-corrupt corporate lobbyists. ‘We scorpions simply cannot help ourselves. We need externally independent intervention, but we will still resist it. It's in our nature.’
Regardless, corporate officers continue shrugging their shoulders and defensively saying their job is to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests. And shareholders also go on shrugging their shoulders while stating they just collect the dividends and that the big bosses are the ones who make the decisions involving ethics/morals or lack thereof.
But can such insatiable-human/corporate-greed nature really be that morally hopeless, indeed pathetic?
This picture is not as far-fetchef as one would wish to believe!
Dear Jonathan, this is one of your best articles. I appreciate it very much. Please, continue to help us understand this world through your analysis and comments. Many thanks.
Thank you Jonathan. The need for an explanatory PS seems to prove we now live in a post-satirical world. Oh, the irony.
It's funny; I immediately thought, "A whole bunch of eejits will think Jonathan Cook is being serious and not realize the obvious sarcasm." And sho'nuff.
Translated in French with a huge pleasure, I have just employ conditional tense to emplify the evidence and I saw your post-scriptum after ...
https://zanzibar.substack.com/p/hey-arretez-de-paniquer-soyez-heureux
Many thanks for the translation, Zanzibar.
This gives me the shivers. Too close to the truth.
Thank you for the article Jonathan and for keeping your posts free like we do over at SPN. We covered aspects of this here.
-
Thought capitalism had a final form? Wrong. It’s been levelling up behind our backs and has now unveiled its most sinister upgrade: the final boss form. Forget free markets, forget competition, forget even the polite fiction of social mobility. Welcome to Techno-Feudalism, where the ultra-rich decided democracy was a fad, workers’ rights were a typo, and ownership was just a cruel joke played on the middle class.
-
https://satiricalplanet.substack.com/p/techno-feudalism-the-final-boss-of
A few social/labor uprisings or revolutions notwithstanding, the superfluously rich and powerful have always had the police and military ready to foremost protect their big-money/-power interests, even over the basic needs of the masses.
Even today, the police and military can, and I believe they probably would, claim (using euphemistic or political terminology, of course) that they had to bust heads to maintain law and order as a priority during major demonstrations, especially those against economic injustices. Indirectly supported by complacent or compliant corporate news-media, the absurdly unjust inequities/inequalities can persist.
I can imagine there were/are lessons learned from successful social/labor uprisings — a figurative How to Hinder Progressive Revolutions 101, maybe? — with the clarity of hindsight by big power/money interests in order to avoid any repeat of such great wealth/power losses.
We in the Far West live in a virtual corpocracy, regardless of who’s elected prime minister or president. Leaders are elected via the first-past-the-post ballot system, which enables an insidiously covert rule by way of potently manipulative/persuasive corporate and big-monied lobbyists.
Apparently, the superfluous-wealth desires of the few, and especially the one, increasingly outweigh the life-necessity needs of the many. The more they make, all the more they want — nay, need! — to make next time. It’s never enough.
All of that, and much more, may be why a growing number of people find New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, unlike his political competition, ideologically and politically refreshing. And, of course, he'll experience great animosity and resistance from a formidable American system based basically on insatiable superfluous-profit/-wealth greed.
Maybe utopian novels will become a more popular genre now. Dystopia is just current affairs.
George Carlin knew the nature of the machine and how it evolves and adapts with technology and surveillance capitalism. Here we are in the thick, bold wildly exploitative world where bubbles rise and fall like people on stolen Fizzy Lifting Drinks… it’s not cold fusion… this is known quantity predictable behavior. Anyone who is on the wait and lets see fence, or still supporting this band of lowlifes are filled with mistaken beliefs or they deserve probably the sad trajectory that is looming large just ahead of us. I have no idea, but I’ll try praying. Please, Lord, whatever Gods may be… hear us, see us.. our ship is sinking. Can you please ‘take care’ of maliciously corrupt lying traitors out to undermine our democracy? Many thanks, how you take care of it is none of our business. Help us, to grow and learn from the past. Help us pull the rabbit out of the hat please, once more. I pledge my life to serving you and my fellow man.. it’s not contingent on anything - but, grant us the faith necessary to totally reply on you. Amen. 🙏 ~ D
Apparently, the superfluous-wealth desires of the few, and especially the one, increasingly outweigh the life-necessity needs of the many. The more they make, all the more they want — nay, need! — to make next time. It’s never enough. ‘We are a capitalist nation, after all,’ the morally lame justification typically goes.
Yeah……that could never happen. Here is another thing that could never happen - brown people being slaughtered like cockroaches, while the state doing it sends singers to international singing competitions, football teams to international football competitions, and diplomats all over the west, to make sure that nobody there does anything about it.