Article: The Slow Coup De Gras

Such was this determination that the 2nd act of the Slow Coup De Gras seemed positively nihilistic in comparison to the first. Called "The Business Plot," a consortium of industrial interests had approached well-respected army general Smedley Butler asking him to lead a parade of 500,000 veterans to Washington to seize the government from Roosevelt and install a dictator of said consortium's choosing. Butler balked and revealed the plan to the authorities, prompting a showdown behind closed doors. The conspirators, chastened but unbowed, walked while Roosevelt gained enough power from the undocumented victory to press through a number of "New Deal" reforms with minimal resistance. Nonetheless, the economy was again faltering by 1938 until it was arguably saved by WWII and its consequent bounty to industrial and commercial interests. The corporations were sated for a time. But they weren't done.

The Post-War Era found the corporate interests playing their cards close to the vest, injecting vitriol like McCarthyism where and when they could, but generally prepping for the next step. Eisenhower, by the end of his presidency, had grown rueful of his own participation in the submerged corporate state and warned of allowing such interests to become active in the actual governance of the country. He conveyed this to incoming President John F. Kennedy who consequently called off a potentially disastrous corporate invasion of Cuba and initiated steps to dismantle the oligarchy's designs on Southeast Asia as well when he was assassinated. Act 3.

His successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, cut an arrangement with the victorious corporate conglomerates where he acquiesced -- "You can have your damn war" -- in exchange for social programs and liberal reforms much in the spirit of Nader's remarks per personal and civic freedom. Defeated by the very war he'd agreed to start, Johnson stepped aside to allow a weak candidate, Hubert Humphrey, run against former Eisenhower VP and loser in the close Elections of 1961, Richard Nixon.

In the interim a Tea Party-like movement of monied "libertarians" had coalesced around Arizona uber-conservative Barry Goldwater in an inglorious bid for presidency under the banner of a less than obliging Republican Party establishment. Trounced by Johnson --and the surreptitious corporate cabal he'd come to represent -- by embarrassingly wide margins, the loose confederacy of business interests and the rich again stepped back for a more appropriate opening.

Nixon was supposed to be that opening. And he did indeed have Middle America captivated, justifying the unjustifiable with a somber sincerity no doubt born of countless hours of mirror-bound rehearsal. But Nixon was too interested in constructing own unique personal legacy above and beyond his handler's expectations that he became a liability... and he knew it. His justifiable paranoia became his undoing and his subsequent impeachment heralded Act 4 of the Slow Coup de Gras -- outlined in the aforementioned Kwak and Simon's "13 Bankers," the consolidation of corporate and monied interests acting in concert to achieve today's borderline fascism.

So how did we get here? Other, less media-saturated societies would have been in the streets a generation ago, with far more serious intent than American weekend radicals looking to score a little weed and maybe get laid. Austerity burdened Greece is the latest example of the true street anger brewing behind the facade of corporate "normalcy."

According to Mark Smith in the comments section of Hedge's "Do Not Pity The Democrats" -- "It's the voters who watch tv and are too dumbed down to think for themselves" who are responsible for our present plight. Indisputably true, with solid facts supporting the contention. However, as is my want, I still think there's more to it, succinct as Smith's conclusion may be.

Much of this situation comes courtesy of Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays. An innovative marketing specialist, he pioneered subliminal advertising technics -- called propaganda by some -- designed to influence the victims (consumers) subliminally, touch emotions and impulses heretofore ignored or overlooked by large retail operations and the various corporations supporting them. It was as if Benays could peer inside our own collective malaise, preventing us from acting upon that angst by the distraction of focus.

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