A Short History of Why We Eat Oil, Can't Smoke Pot and Assault Weapons Are So Expensive in Our Hour of Need ...
By Joe Bageant
"Very rich families and corporatists, to whom, as in earlier articles, we shall refer to as "the bastards," have always been with us. Even Tom Jefferson thought periodic revolution against wealth and authority was desirable to keep these bastards in check. Which implies that he figured they would inevitably get us by the throat down on the floor from time to time...
But the bastards scared the hell out of later presidents too. Abe Lincoln feared the large corporations born of business profiteering during the U.S. Civil War -- the military industrial complex of the day -- easily constituted the greatest threat to the American republic...
The fact that the bastards were corporate entities made them more powerful than any robber baron's best wet dream, because their power and reach extended beyond human mortality. Deathless corporations and trusts replaced the mortal thieves such as Rockefeller and Morgan; and despite the advent of income taxes, capital continued to aggregate in the bastards' coffers, particularly financial bastards, at what was seen then as an unimaginable scale. "Money for nothin' and chicks for free ..." "
Joe Bageant: The Bastards Never Die
Joe Bageant: America's White Underclass
By Joe Bageant
"Very rich families and corporatists, to whom, as in earlier articles, we shall refer to as "the bastards," have always been with us. Even Tom Jefferson thought periodic revolution against wealth and authority was desirable to keep these bastards in check. Which implies that he figured they would inevitably get us by the throat down on the floor from time to time...
But the bastards scared the hell out of later presidents too. Abe Lincoln feared the large corporations born of business profiteering during the U.S. Civil War -- the military industrial complex of the day -- easily constituted the greatest threat to the American republic...
The fact that the bastards were corporate entities made them more powerful than any robber baron's best wet dream, because their power and reach extended beyond human mortality. Deathless corporations and trusts replaced the mortal thieves such as Rockefeller and Morgan; and despite the advent of income taxes, capital continued to aggregate in the bastards' coffers, particularly financial bastards, at what was seen then as an unimaginable scale. "Money for nothin' and chicks for free ..." "
Joe Bageant: The Bastards Never Die
Joe Bageant: America's White Underclass
