Dear George,
There is a delicious irony to criticism in that all criticism is a backhanded compliment to the object being criticized. I’ve just gotten my jollies off reading, “Last Sunday: Anti-capitalism in five minutes of less,” by Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at Austin’s University of Texas.
What I call Corporatism, Prof. Jensen calls “predatory corporate capitalism.” However, calling capitalism capitalism immediately muddies the waters because any critique of capitalism must begin with the realization that capitalism is dead. Corporatism is not capitalism; it’s a mutant offspring of capitalism.
However, all of this is hair-splitting, and nothing puts you to sleep faster than nuance.
Professor Jensen is on the mark when he claims that Corporatism (my term, not his) is inhumane. Well it should be. Corporatism is an exercise in rational social engineering on a scale that exceeds that practiced by the Bolsheviks when they seized power in Russia. To be rational is to abstract and objectify humanity. This abstraction reaches its highest expression in “professionalism”, which is a synonym for dehumanization. Professionalism is the pure objectivity that reduces humanity to its most fundamental quality, gross survival, which makes possible its exploitation. Engines wear out; people wear out. It’s cheaper to replace a person than an engine.
9/11 gave Corporatism a tremendous boost. Prior to the fall of the towers, we had a Manichean tension between Corporatism’s darkness and a cuddly illusion of the State’s benevolence. 9/11 gave the Big Dick a free pass to have the State join Corporatism on the dark side of the street. With that, America became a Corporatist State as the Big Dick began dismantling the constitutional rights that had been a dead albatross round the Corporatist’s neck.
This leads to Professor Jensen’s second criticism, that Corporatism is undemocratic. Of course it is! Democracy is structurally inefficient; efficiency is the lifeblood of Corporatism. Corporatism plays to our basest emotions; democracy plays to our noblest. There is no profit in nobility.
Jensen’s third criticism is that Corporatist growth is unsustainable. He then cites statistics that refute his argument. The fact that half the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day means that we have three billion potential consumers waiting to happen. Nothing relieves a native’s hunger pangs like watching reruns of Dallas on his plasma TV. Dallas creates a demand for useless consumer products. This gives the native an incentive to accumulate some wealth. For the poor, crime offers a quick profit, combined with a low overhead. Criminal activity has been the traditional uterus in which capitalism is conceived. Poverty is the egg; a crude weapon, the sperm.
The only fly in this ointment is that poverty-related illnesses kill 500 children every hour. A dead baby is one less future shopper. This one area we must address. Besides, it puts a humanitarian gloss on our rank exploitation of the poor.
In all of the criticisms I’ve read, none have addressed the one prop that is supporting this rickety structure—our Military-Industrial Complex. Progressives are reluctant to point out the obvious: the Cold War is no more, and our Military-Industrial Complex is as useless as tits on a boar hog. The only thing that will keep it going is more misadventures like your Eternal War of the Empty Policy.
History is over, George, just has history is over for a petrified fossil. Democracy made a feeble attempt to hamstring the arbitrary power of the tyrant. It is now learning that tyrants wear iron boots.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
9:24:03 AM 
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