The "power structure" is an elusive term meaning whatever a person's political views want it to mean. Americans pay less (as a percentage of their income) for food and other necessities than they ever have and less than many other developed nations. What do you want food producers to do for you? You can eat out cheaply if you choose, buy and prepare your own food, grow and produce your own food. You have many choices---if you choose to eat out corporations provide you that service, but they are not making you use it.
Conservatives think the power structure is dominated by liberals (media, Hollywood, universities, Eastern elite) and liberals think it is dominated by corporations, Wall Street, and Fox news. Both seemed convinced the "power structure" is controlling their lives and telling them what to do. The most helpless of us also believe astrology, the supernatural, and other forces beyond our control are dominating our lives. Others, with a higher level of self-efficacy, believe they actually have some control over the lives.
Endless war has nothing to do with corporations based on world history.
I’m not responsible for how others use the term "power structure", I have my own views and useage, and of course, the power structure foments partisanshitheadism, racial conflict, wedges over abortion/guns/gays, and all manner of divisiveness; goes all the way back to the aristocracy’s response to Bacon’s Rebellion. Revisit the Powell Memorandum, the system really laid it out there in black and white. Americans used to understand, well, what wage slavery was. Now they accept corporate for profit prisons in a post-industrial society with legalized slavery in the form of convict labor leasing. Here is an example of a corporate enterprise with stocks traded on Wall Street, lobbyists galore and think tank generated legislation with a vested interest in higher societal rates of crime, violence, poverty, recidivism, drug addiction, homelessness, job loss – anything that will keep prisons full and growing with profit margin growth to infinity. Call that observation “liberal” if you like, that’s what the blame and label game is for; distraction. Turns out this was rolled out as a pilot program in TN when now Senator Lamar Alexander was governor and the involved party was CCA. Turns out Lamar and his sweet wife Honey Alexander held stock in CCA at the time, win win. Just an example.
Or take Goldman Sachs', who always has a cabal of execs and operatives in the white house regardless of electoral outcomes by the way, recent advice to investors; cures in the health industry are not what they should invest in. Let’s look at their own words:
“The potential to deliver “one shot cures” is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically engineered cell therapy, and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies... While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.”
This is no surprise to the aware, nor should it be and I’ll leave it to others to quibble over whether this is good, bad or indifferent. It merely is. And it beautifully illustrates american style capitalism’s loyalties and values. It has none to society or the citizenry, at all, not arguing it should.
As to the media, there were 50 some odd companies in the US media arena back in the 1980s. Clinton deregulated the FCC and now we have 6 transnational corporations that control ~90% of the content americans see. So sure, that’s a problem, but “liberal”? In the sense that a “liberal”, Clinton did the deregulation, I suppose so, but concentrated corporate power pushing a “liberal” agenda? Nah, a corporatist agenda that is quite willing to fund “both” sides just as surely as America arms both sides of a given conflict in the middle east.
It’s clear to many, many americans that money = speech means no money = no voice in your own governance. Scapegoating citizens as “helpless” or “losers” who speak truth will not prop this illusion of a system up indefinitely. To assert that there’s no manipulation of the economic system or our corrupt political system tilted to the favor of the substantial people is ludicrous, but must be asserted as surely as the emperor’s stylish clothing.
But really now, what does one expect from a violent society founded upon genocide and slavery that still yet stalks the planet like a 19th century colonial power both at home and abroad. At least now we’re all under corporate state surveillance.
Wall Street gets socialism, corporations get subsidized, the predatory health"care" system gets subsidized, even pro sports team owners get subsidized. As for our endless wars, nothing to do with defense, but rather serving the interests of the Wall Street/donor/"job creator" class and the military contractor and arms industries. We colonize the resources of others and go after leaders who toss out US corporate interests in order to reserve their own resources for their own people. Hell, that's not capitalism, at all! Stocks surge when the missles fly and we just - for the 3rd time - bombed Syria on unsubstantiated rumors that Assad did the gassing while at least one of those other times we bombed them for that was later debunked. No big deal, evabody still got paid.
At some point, the illusion will have to be confronted, america is what it is and does, not what it would rather imagine and pronounce it is. And the rest of the world knows.
America is what it is, and ya know what? It's OK to say it out loud.
