I have a theory on why Americans over the past fifty years have

[Veggie Meathead]

become a shadow of their former independent selves. The rise of mega corporations have turned us all into more or less dependent wage earners and the corporate cultures are, if anything ,diametrically opposed to the idea of the autonomous self that Western societies take pride in. That culture places a premium on going along to get along with others.It also demands obedience to corporate goals, no questions asked.In this, the closest analogy would be the Armed Forces.

The corporate culture also requires Americans to become unthinking consumers of shoddy products.Not only are they required to follow, lemming like, the fashions of the day, but actually take pride in their ability to buy these products.The incessant din of the media
ensures that skeptical questions are drowned out in noise.

The economic dependency that feeds conformity have made Americans a prime target of con men hawking their wares whether it is a new fashion trend or a new war based on cooked up pretexts.We are all the poorer for it.Note that in the august body of the U.S. senate no one but Sen.Byrd voted against the Iraq War Resolution.It took an octagenarian completely unaffected by our culture's current sorry state and a constitutional scholar to boot to state unequivocally that he opposed the war and the Emperor that took us into that war wore no clothes.Can you imagine what our country would be like if it had even twenty more Robert Byrds?

[bahrbearian]

1. I have been Dreaming that for years.

"Can you imagine what our country would be like if it had even twenty more Robert Byrds?"

[Dogmudgeon]

2. I hate to gainsay it, but ...

... Americans have never been all that independent. A lot of it is myth-making, and anything before 1920 has to take Jim Crow and women being denied suffrage into account.

The "problem" is that today, we get to see in in close detail.

But I have a lot of hope. Most people lament that their fellow citizens are so sheep-like, but they'd all say that they were independent and able to think for themselves. It's a part of the American psyche now, which means that any method for self-liberation will be looked into and pursued, if it's found valuable.

This isn't to let the media and the coporate world off the hook. I just think that a) we've been looking at revisionist history, and b) the corporate Moloch is not going to be around very much longer.

--bkl

[Veggie Meathead]

6. There are certainly hopeful trends but the fact remains that

the firm grip on our economic fates exercised by the corporate giants does not seem to be on the wane.Even the rise of the independent
entrepreneurs is not sufficient to mitigate our dependence.

You may, however, have a point in wondering whether we were ever a ntion of indpendent selves.I think, quite apart from the myths, when America was essentially a rural agrarian country it needed such souls to develop its resources and that is the era that I connect with when I talk about our autonomous selves. In fact, Sen.Byrd, in one of his confrontations with Paul O'Neill in the Senate, referred specifically to his rural upbringing and how that hardship and his ability to overcome the grinding poverty of his early years have shaped his work.

[unkachuck]

3. good theory....

I agree whole-heartedly.....but what are we going to do about it....I sure haven't got the answer....

But definately a new page has been turned when our 'leaders' can take us into a bogus war without even a 'real fake pretext' and still a large portion of the American people don't get it....

This administration tell lies like they were telling the truth and no one dares challenge them.....what is the definition of a dictatorship?....

[bloom]

4. I think more people are getting stuck working for corporations

and it's why it would take a revolution or something to get universal health care.

I think it's part of the plan to keep people dependent minded.

[Stew225]

5. Well-stated and, in my opinion, it

nails it, unfortunately.

[salinen]

7. And corporations teach us

to lie, cheat, steal, and lobby to get what we want. Stepford people.

[Veggie Meathead]

10. You may have added another idea to my rant here.The fact that

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ken Lay are the heads of corporations despite their reputations as liars and crooks tells you something of what is expected by corporations of you if you want to get ahead.Not only are you made economically dependent, your ability to advance in that culture requires you to cut corners, sell your soul and violate evry rule you have been taught since childhood.

As always, there are exceptional corporations that play by the rules and encourage their employees to adhere to strict ethical practices.These are overshadowed by the Enrons, Tycos, Worldcoms and Halliburtons.

Note also while many corporations pay lip service to free enterprise, the corporate culture shuns risk as though it is a plague.The operative word is a sure deal preferably at the expense of the public treasury as in the case of Halliburton.

[stavka]

8. Too many Americans want a nice car, not car that will get them from A-B

America has created a poor class, that doesn't know that scrambling for aid programs, defrauding state welfare programs, and stealing every now and then - Seems totally acceptable to me.

[thebigmansentme]

9. actually

we don't have a 'rise of mega-corporations' really

that was back in the days, with oil giants and monopolies. back then we actually had unrestricted capitalism, which wasn't working too well. russians decided to combat it by red revolution, americans decided to combat it with workers rights and anti-trust laws. in retrospect we probably made a better choice.

[Veggie Meathead]

11. I do not have anything against capitalism;in fact I too think it is a

better economic system.The reality is we do not have a true capitalist system operating in our country anymore.Corporations such as GE,Citigroup,Pfizer are essentially monopolies which need to control the political discourse in oredr to strengthen their chokehold on our economy.This is why we have a Congress that is bought and paid for, unable to serve the public interest.The fiasco of health policy and energy policy are two sad instances where public debate on these critical issues were corrupted by the ubiquitous presence of lobbyists.

[thebigmansentme]

13. no

it's that we are moving towards a true capitalist system now, with corporations having too much power, and it's not a good thing. we need a healthy mix of capitalism and socialism, business and regulations, in order to have a normal society.

[thebigmansentme]

14. what we need

is for the president, and government, to actually enforce the anti-trust laws that we have on the books, and start breaking up these corporations especially those that control the media because they are the most direct threat to democracy.

and we also need to make a whole new code of laws for the white collar crimes to make sure that those that evade taxes and rip people off on mega scale all go to prison for a long long time.

[starroute]

12. That certainly fits with my family's experience

Both of my grandfathers were small independent businessmen. So were many of their brothers and cousins.

My father graduated from college in 1936 with a business degree, but after he failed to find employment he went into the blouse business in partnership with another man. When he came back from World War II, he tried starting a business with his brother, and when that failed he went to work as a salesman for my mother's uncle. He hated that job, but he stuck with it for 30 years, until he retired.

I don't think that was just his individual experience -- I think that after the war, it became harder and harder to be in business on your own. Today, almost the only people who are neither employees of large corporations nor professionals are the owners of nickle-and-dime operations, like pizza parlors and laundromats. Even the last few independent hardware stores and such are being put out of business by the big chains. It just isn't possible to "go into business" the way it was in 1936.

[Veggie Meathead]

15. This is exactly what I mean by the chokehold of the big

corporations on our daily economic life.Do you really think that if your parents wre businessmen in a small community, they would think about putting small producers of goods in the local community and go buy their products in China or India like Walmart? The rise of such corporations has made it impossible for your parents to survive and made it equally impossible for others to start new businesses.This feeds our economic dependency and,in turn reduces our ability to have any say in our country's political policymaking.