GOLDEN AGE OF CORRUPTION — Recent Reflections

Time for the pro-democracy alliances to begin defining the future

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Golden Age of Corruption

“The book I recommend everyone to read to understand Russia — it’s by Mario Puzo — ‘The Godfather’ — it’s the best book on Soviet and Russian history.”—Toomas Ilves, former president of Estonia, RadPod Ep11

While discussing the difference between lower case ‘c’ corruption and upper case ‘C’ Corruption in Thom Hartmann’s chat last weekend, a man who calls himself ‘elementstew’ wrote something quite extraordinary.

He said: It’s the Golden Age of Corruption.

I immediately asked him if I could borrow the phrase while citing him, and he told me to go ahead — no citation necessary.

The thing is, it so summed up what I have been writing about for the past eight years straight. I think it’s nothing short of astonishingly brilliant.

I have not been able to stop thinking about a speech in Sasha Denisova’s play, The Hague, given by a Putin thug about how the KGB and various other three letter agencies set out to infiltrate every corner of America — bringing us to our current state of accelerating diminishment, the brink of a fascist dictatorship.

And what are we doing — we, the pro-democracy allies in this war? I know what we’re not doing. We’re not giving people a shared vision of the future.

As Dr. Ian Garner, the author of Z Generation: Into the Hearts of Russia’s Fascist Youth, explained to me, the MAGA Cult gives its members a vision for the future. It lies and says we’re going to make America great again, by feeding the cult propaganda about a mythic past.

The progressives need to come up with a shared narrative for the future that includes a future of compassion, an emphasis on decency, mandates on privacy protections, regulating Big Tech like public utilities, actively promoting a renewables agenda, which means defeating Vladimir Putin.

“To get to a renewables future, we have to go straight through Vladimir Putin.”—Wes Clark, Jr

We need to proactively plan how we’re going to regulate AI and strategize a future where good jobs aren’t just in the rearview mirror. We need a plan to deal with the Supreme ‘InJustices.’ We need a plan to do get better at dealing with actual treason.

Everything we need to do is achievable, but we’re being forced to fight too many fronts. All the right has is culture wars and unlimited sums of money to wage them. Because they can’t win in an honest fight, they distract from our shared reality — that most of this world is beautiful and people love each other.

As I pondered a series based on the Golden Age of Corruption theme, I realized that my entire archives is already dedicated to that topic. Below I listed some of my recent reports on corruption with a capital C.

In addition, this extraordinary person did have a few thoughts on the subject.

Behold:

Hello Heidi,

Corporate sponsored corruption created The Globalization of Corruption. The East India Trading Company was the first transnational corporation and the tax breaks that corporation got from The Tea Act was the straw that broke the camel's back resulting in the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary war. The irony is overwhelming that so few understand that history considering our situation today. I think that December 19 (anniversary of the Boston Tea Party) should be memorialized as a buy local (noncorporate) week being the week before Christmas. It would be a good time to educate the public...

Corrupting Collusion: When East meets West is reference to the dissolution of the USSR and how corrupt corporatism found new fertile ground. The Monroe Doctrine was the testing and refining grounds for corporate corruption in collusion with our government so it was a high art by the time the Berlin Wall fell. 

And then there's Lewis Powell, his infamous memo and work on the Supreme Court...

I've been persistently working to develop the world's best and most comprehensive plan to "save the world". You can check it out, Integrative Activism.

Be well and keep fighting the good fight,

elementstew

I adore people who read books. And we can all use some integrative activism. Below are some of my recent series that highlight this Golden Age of Corruption and please join me in pondering how we inspire our pro-democracy allies to begin defining a brighter future.

American Monsters: And Then There Were 13

2016 ELECTION ATTACK: The Greatest Crime In American History

As I pondered an image for this post that most defined the Golden Age of Corruption — there are of course so many — I landed on that time a protestor threw Russian flags at Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, yelling:

“Trump is treason! Trump is treason! Trump is treason! Why are we talking about tax cuts when we should be talking about treason! This president conspired with agents of the Russian government to steal an election! We should be talking about treason in Congress, not tax cuts!”—Ryan Clayton, Oct. 24, 2017

More good trouble, please.

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Trump offers a thumb’s up to the Russian flags smh

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