Dear George,
I always knew Simone de Beauvoir was a great philosopher, but I did not realize she was a prophet, as well. She certainly foretold the Corporatist State when she said:
To protest in the name of morality “excesses” or “abuses” is an error which hints at active complicity. There are no “abuses” or “excesses” here, simply an all-abusive system.
Under your guidance, her dream has metastasized because you have known all along that the key to the realization of the Corporatist State lies not in any specific act such as Ronnie firing the air traffic controllers. It must become a systemic state of being in which abuses and excess become parts of the everyday norm.
You made a great start with your deft exploitation of 9/11. This allowed you to erect an authoritarian framework upon which to plan to build an even more comprehensive state. Your finest moment came when you sold a preemptive war with all of the skill of a used car salesman selling a lemon.
However, there is still work to do.
A preemptive strike against Iran would precipitate the chaos that would allow the Corporatist State to come into its own. It would be the greatest application of Milton Friedman’s Shock Therapy the world had ever seen. In the nuclear and financial holocaust that would follow the attack, you could transform America from a democratic republic to a well-run corporation. There would be no more annoying congress or court to obstruct your grand vision, no more irritating demonstrations or snarky blogs, and no possibility of you or your minions being kicked out of office since elections would be an anarchistic remnant of an inefficient past.
And the public is ready, George. In their state of flaccid passivity, they are looking for firm leadership to lead them by their collective noses.
The successful Corporatist State needs an obedient society, and an obedient society is made up of what Zygmunt Bauman describes as “communities of similarity” as opposed to communities of participation which are always problematic for the state.
Bauman describes a community of similarity as a place that,
Promises…some spiritual comfort: the prospect of making togetherness easier to bear by cutting off that effort to understand, to negotiate, to compromise that living amidst and with difference requires. The process of forming an image of community occurs in the first place because men are afraid of participation, afraid of the dangers and the challenges of it, afraid of the pain.
The passive yearning for comfort and security is the Petri dish in which systemic evil is able to flourish. Fear grows as security increases, and the frightened person sees in the state the security blanket that will calm his fear even though his fear will increase in direct proportion to the thickness of the blanket.
That odor of burning rubber you smell is history screeching to a halt as it crashes into the brick wall that is the Corporatist State. As history is totaled, the memory of a country that was once free fades, citizenship goes comatose and the public falls face down in the muck where they worship the heel that is pressed down upon their necks.
Systemic evil is benign, George. Gone is the tension and anxiety born in the anticipation of disaster, for everyday becomes a disaster from sunup to sunset, and anxiety fades in the struggle for day-to-day survival.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
6:41:56 AM
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