[The great experiment of America was certainly not having a go at democracy. An informed and honest reading of the document that emerged from the 1787 closed-door cram session in Philadelphia explodes that myth (to say nothing of how the US has behaved at home and abroad since then). Real experiments on the continent were well underway and bearing fruit when the English arrived in Powhatan territory one hundred eighty years earlier. In time all were eradicated, as they modeled attractive challenges to Old World paradigms which the colonizers were eager to recreate in the New.

To speak of an American experiment implies that the US historically stands for something fundamentally different and positive in the world – a dubious assertion to begin with. If anything different did emerge, it was a country where culture would be the economy and economy the culture. This would make it hard for abstractions like other people, nature, learning, the arts to impede the wheels of profit (euphemistically progress). God, pernicious fossil of ancient imagination, was kept on retainer, then unleashed in mega doses to program widely for the necessary virtues of blind obedience, ignorance, dogmatism. Clear from the outset was that many would have to die to get the new economy rolling. But never mind the details – “hands to work, hearts to God!”

Today the “great experiment” is well established in the land, highly evolved and a catastrophe for the world. In practice it creates flourishing morbidity and ecological destruction in the guise of respectable commerce. This can be done with everything from cluster bombs to health care. But there’s nothing like everyday retail for turning widespread suffering into astronomical profits. All that’s needed is a dangerous, addictive product reinforced by a network of business cartels, monopoly markets, massive advertising, intense lobbying, and no one will know the difference – certainly not the government.

Businesses that sell these products are the building-blocks of empire. Their interests and activities are devastating to human and non-human species alike. For this achievement they are fully integrated into State power. Because they form the constituent parts of its global empire, the US derives great power from them and must adopt their interests as its own. This is why Washington, though ever the great pretender of democracy and always ready to pay lip-service to it, must become, behind this façade, increasingly authoritarian if it wishes to maintain its empire.

On the outside of this inside deal are the vast numbers of ordinary people who live in the US and the rest of the world. Where do they fit in? They must be given little choice but to eat corporate shit and die of the habit. But not before generating huge profits for the business and ruling classes, and leaving behind offspring who will be trapped into repeating the dehumanizing, corporate-dictated life cycle of work-reproduce-consume-die that drives the gears of global capitalism and spells ecocide for the world.

Though obscene wars of aggression plunge millions the world over into terrible desperation from which many never escape, millions of others are brought to ruin by weapons of a different sort – by the products they consume. From the standpoint of empire, this arrangement, as a system for oppressing and controlling populations not touched by war, is too convenient to give up. Hence Washington rarely, if ever, initiates programs or policies that truly benefit Labor, public health, housing, education, transportation.

The freedom and right, which America protects and enforces above all else, is the freedom and right of big business to produce and sell anything, no matter the consequences for people or the environment. In America, the idea of freedom from the corporate model and its economic regime, the right to live unmolested by commercial interests, is a nonstarter. This would approximate true freedom, and might lead to egalitarian societies of healthy, free-thinking people with authentic culture – a vision that could hardly enter Washington except as dead-on-arrival.

Instead the trend is to make all of human flesh craven to a thousand cravings. For every organ in the human body there’s an industry selling dangerous, addictive products to undermine its health and integrity. To consume these products is to overthrow and colonize oneself from within – right down to the cellular level. From this perspective the human body may be the most intensively mined resource in the world. But it will not sustain the assault forever. Indeed the US-imposed global corporate regime – featuring devastating wars, fast foods, fossil fuels, toxic chemicals, nuclear power, genetic engineering, harmful pharmaceuticals, to name a few flourishing morbidities – threatens to overwhelm the DNA of the species.]

You can smoke. But if you do, Big Tobacco
will own your lungs while you with addictive certainty
pay Big Tobacco to destroy them. What morbid
symbiosis that millions pay this industry
to extract health and happiness from human lungs
for a global legacy of addiction and disease.

You can drink. But if you do, Big Liquor
will own your liver while you with addictive certainty
pay Big Liquor to destroy it. What morbid
symbiosis that millions pay this industry
to extract health and happiness from human livers
for a global legacy of addiction and disease.

You can eat fast food. But if you do, Fast Food
will own your heart while you with addictive certainty
pay Fast Food to destroy it. What morbid
symbiosis that millions pay this industry
to extract health and happiness from human hearts
for a global legacy of addiction and disease.

You can slurp up soda. But if you do, Big Beverage
will own your pancreas while you with addictive certainty
pay Big Beverage to destroy it. What morbid
symbiosis that millions pay this industry
to extract health and happiness from human pancreata
for a global legacy of addiction and disease.

You can watch TV. But if you do, Big Ads
will control your mind while you with addictive certainty
pay Big Ads to subvert it. What morbid
symbiosis that millions pay this industry
to extract health and happiness from human minds
for a global legacy of depression and despair.

You can sign up to kill. But if you do, the Corporate-State
will negate your soul while you in profound confusion
pay said State to destroy it. What morbid
symbiosis that millions pay this syndicate
to extract health and happiness from human souls
for a global legacy of murder and miasma.

little big pine
southwest us
january 2009

Little Big Pine: citizen, patriot, poet; may be reached at littlebigpine@gmail.com.