[Oe List ...] Thomas Berry, the Social Imbalance and the US Supreme Court

[R Williams]

Colleagues,
 
Many will remember the analysis we did of the imbalance of the social process wherein the economic dynamic dominates, the political dynamic is the subservient lackey of the economic and the cultural dynamic has collapsed into relative insignificance.
 
An example of the continuing validity of that analysis is seen in the decision of the US Supreme Court this past week to treat corporations as individuals in terms of their ability to participate in and influence federal elections--and this in an environment where already the pandering of the US Congress, both parties, to special interests has rendered it almost totally ineffective.
 
In that light I ran across this quote from Thomas Berry in his 2006 book EveningThoughts, pages 102-103.  The underlining is mine.
 
The economic corporations--industrial, commercial, financial--now, in a sense, own the planet...
 
The educational (cultural) establishment functions within the context of a plunder-consumption economy...
 
Political decision-making is so extensively controlled by economic powers that the democratic principles of personal freedom and participatory government are subverted.  The money needed for elections must come from corporate wealth in some form.  Legislatures are controlled by the economic powers.  What needs to be understood is that the legal establishment in the United States, including the judiciary, at an early period, bonded with the commercial-industrial establishment against citizen groups and agricultural interests.
 
This is as good a summation of the current situation as I've found!
 
Randy


      
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