Nader said he feared that the population was so effectively anesthetized by mass culture that it might not rise up against the elites. "The U.S. has developed a society with an almost indeterminate absorptive capacity for injustice, abuse and degradation," Nader said. "There is no civic education in the schools. They don't know what the Constitution is. They don't know what the law of torts is. They don't know where the town hall is. They're living in virtual reality, swinging between big-screen TV and their cellphones. They're wallowing in text messages. To an extent, they're excited by the workings of the minds symbolized by Wall Street and Silicon Valley. That's the young generation. Great changes start with people in their 20s. But look what you've got now. You've got 10 years of internet connection, cellphones available to any child.
"That's one. The second is 24/7 entertainment. The third is the abandonment by the elderly generation. They've sort of given up. They don't know the gadgetry. They don't know the language. They have their own economic insecurity. They're not extending any kind of historical experience to the young that contains severe warnings. Watch out. You don't think it can happen again, [but] it can happen again and again. There's no verbal, oral tradition between the generations. Less and less. Then you have the political system, which is deep-sinking the society. How are people going to mobilize themselves? Is there a strong union, a labor movement? No. A strong consumer movement? No. They're losing their privacy. They're losing their ability to use legal tender. The corporate coercion is, to a degree, now getting rid of cash. Marx never believed that could happen. Why do they want to get rid of cash? They want to drive everybody into an incarcerated penitentiary that is surrounded by mobile payments, credit cards, credit scores, credit ratings, debit cards, constant debt, invasion of privacy, and the ability to assess penalties, charges and unwanted purchases because they control people's money. That's Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo got away with 3 million forced, unknown and unwanted credit card sales, auto insurance sales, repairing their ratings. Some people lost their cars and their homes. They're flipped over into bankruptcy. Nobody has been prosecuted yet."
Compounding the decay is the collapse of the legal profession, a problem exacerbated by Trump's stacking of the federal courts with incompetent and far-right judges selected by groups such as The Federalist Society. The courts, he said, have already destroyed the freedom of contract and the law of torts. They have repeatedly revoked constitutional rights by judicial fiat, ruling, for example, that unlimited campaign contributions by corporations is a form of free speech and the right to petition the government.
Wall Street and the big banks, bailed out in 2008, have returned to the games of speculation that led to the global financial collapse. And when the next collapse comes, the banks and Wall Street will again descend on the U.S. Treasury for trillions more in bailouts.
"The banks are making huge profits," Nader said. "Therefore, they're taking bigger risks. The consumer dollars are being transferred to corporate profits, that are now being transformed into stock buybacks in order to meet the criteria for higher compensation even if it's against the interest of their own company.
"From 2005 to 2014, you had $3.9 trillion of stock buybacks, 50 percent of all corporate net profits," he said. "Fifty percent of the top 500 corporations profited in that decade with stock buybacks. Not to better salaries or shoring up pension plans, not to dividends, not to research and development, not to productive capital and job creation. It's to stock buybacks. The biggest story untold, or minimally told, in the American economy today. With all this money repatriating from overseas and more corporate offices, they're planning more stock buybacks. It's like burning money.
"Walmart, instead of raising wages for its wage-starved masses, has about $65 billion stock buybacks in the last seven years," Nader said. "If you take a million Walmart workers and you give them a thousand dollars more a year, that's $1 billion. Multiply that by 60 to 70 times."
The speculation, which is trashing the country's economy, will continue, Nader said, until the financial system collapses and the U.S. defaults on its bonds.
Nader worries that as long as "10 to 15 percent of the American people are well-off" the elites will have enough support to continue the assault.
"Societies have been repressed by far smaller members of well-instituted upper classes," he said. "That's what we forget. Eighteenth-, 19th-, 20th-century Europe. A tiny clique controlled them. When there's any problem it flips over to dictatorship. As long as the contented classes are not upset, the system of control is in lock, like connecting gears.
"The corruption never ends," he said. "We're a gambling society. We bet on the future. We don't build the future. You've got casinos everywhere, video gambling. They're pushing for gambling on your mobile phone. They're pushing for legalization of gambling in sports. Then you got marijuana. Day after day there are stories about the legalization of marijuana. What's going to happen? It's already a big business. The paraphernalia. They don't write anything about legalizing industrial hemp. Which could be a significant industry in the country. All the farmers want it, and even the paper companies want it. And the DEA has still got it on a proscribed list. You got [Sen.] Rand Paul and [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell supporting legalization of hemp. It's not being pushed in Congress by the Democrats."
Resistance, Nader said, must be local. First we need to organize to take back our own communities, he said. Congressional seats have to be contested by grass-roots organizations that use the power of numbers to overwhelm mass media and corporate money. And we can expect the corporate state to attempt to shut out our message.
"Living wage, taxes, universal health insurance, that have 70 percent support or higher," Nader said in listing campaign issues. "Breaking up big banks, 90 percent support. Cracking down on corporate crime, similar. People need to give corporate crime a face. This is what happens to your credit. This is what happens to your home. This is what happens to your job. This is what happens to you if you have cancer. This is what happens in the hospital. This is what happens when you're denied health insurance; you can't cover your kids. It's pretty crazy when you can't make this kind of a pitch to a large audience."
The greed of the corporate state leaves us unprepared for the ravages of climate change, he warned. And by the time the elites respond it may be too late.
"It's a race," Nader said. "Once Miami gets inundated, especially Fisher Island, it might bring the wealthy class to their senses. The problem with solar is it needs a network. Solar panels are fine, but if you're going to have solar electricity you need a different type of grid system. That requires infrastructure investment.
"Justice needs money," he concluded, calling on enlightened elites to spend a billion dollars to fund resistance movements outside the Democratic Party. "The abolition movement needed money. The suffrage movement needed money. They got it from wealthy people. Civil rights movement. The Curry family. The Stern family. The early 1950s, 1960s. Environmental movements got money from rich people.
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