WATCH: The government we deserve? | Gregory Crawford

Gregory Crawford -- World News Trust

July 12, 2013

TEXT BELOW

Gregory Crawford -- World News Trust

July 12, 2013

The punditry, the blogosphere, the Twittosphere – is that a bubble full of twits? I think maybe it is.

Anyway, every form of media is filling the air with a cacophony of chatter about Edward Snowden. He revealed information about the NSA’s relentless accumulation of “meta-data” about every communication, in any and every form, of anyone and everyone in this country, day in and day out.

Doesn’t it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that our elected officials distrust us all so utterly and completely that we can’t even call our moms without some psychotic über-patriot eavesdropping on our every word?

Snowden’s detractors harp on the fact that he betrayed his country by leaking this information about the NSA’s shenanigans. They forget that the government is NOT  “the country;” the people are. It is the government that has betrayed the country. Are you listening, Mr. Obama? Probably.

The former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, recently said that he believed people are happy to trade their privacy for a little security. Oh, Howard… how could you? To paraphrase Ben Franklin, “those who would trade their liberty for security deserve neither.”

And what of this alleged “Security,” and for that matter, security for whom? The fact is, none of this omnipresent security apparatus would be necessary if it weren’t for the rapacious depredations of corporate psychopaths pillaging the resources of other countries.

The magnitude of their evil greed is monstrous beyond imagining. And the favorite tool of the corporatists when imposing their will is… DA-DA-DA  DUMMM! The American government. Protecting American interests. Right…

Through economic coercion, embargoes and invasions justified with fabricated evidence, the American government abuses its power and influence to enable those who would rob us blind, steal our homes, and exploit our misery to enrich themselves and impoverish the rest of us. Nice bunch of guys. This pervasive collusion between government and business even has a name: it’s called “fascism,” though its originator, Benito Mussolini, preferred to call his form of government, “Corporatism.” How appropriate.

It would be even more appropriate if the CEOs of the most criminal corporations currently fouling the planet were to share Mussolini’s fate.

American corporations have tried to monopolize an entire nation’s water supply in South America, and have made it impossible to plant crops without paying for new seed every spring in India, and damn near everywhere else in the world. This, incidentally, has been the direct cause of thousands of suicides by Indian farmers.

So no, Dubya, the world doesn’t “hate us for our freedoms;” they hate us for our lying, thieving, murdering corporations.

Now don’t think for a minute that any of this justifies terrorism. Killing innocent people in service to some “cause,” no matter how noble the perpetrators may believe it to be, is evil beyond redemption. Those who commit such acts are usually just cowardly psychopaths looking for any excuse to kill.

People that murder for ideology are all carved out of the same turd, whether they work for Al Qaeda or for some acronymic agency that wraps itself in the blood-soaked shroud of patriotism.

Predatory corporatism has run amok. It is totally insane. Uncontrollable, frothing-at-the-mouth greed consumes its perpetrators. They are destroying our country, the world’s economy, and the only planet we’ve got.

But instead of prosecuting those in business and government who are guilty of an endless litany of crimes, the Department of Justice is crucifying anyone who exposes those crimes. Franz Kafka couldn’t imagine anything that sick in even his most fevered dreams.

Which is small comfort to Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, or any of the hundreds of other prisoners of conscience and victims of a corrupt and vindictive government that has turned on its own people to serve the demands of corporate monsters.