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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive. Editorial: 12/31/99
The past, and our memories, and the ones we loved are moving away like taillights
in a rear view mirror. Take, for example, the inscription on the tombstone, the special
one you try to visit at least once a year. The date of death says 19--. Up until this
last Friday at midnight, that date was more or less still part of the present. After
all, 1945 or 1967 or 1979 or 1999 were still part of where we existed, the 19 hundreds,
the 20th century.
But now that the celestial odometer has turned over, they all seem much farther in
the past than they were just a few weeks ago. You're reminded that everything passes,
and that their lives, your life, all life sooner or later, belongs to the past. All
of them, and all of your experiences, are still alive in memory, which is why William
Faulkner wrote, "Nothing is past, even the past." But you may find yourself struggling
harder to hold onto them now that they belong to the 1900's, not the 2000's.
The future belongs to us, but not for long. It really belongs to your great-
grandchildren. And the futurists who make money from crystal ball gazing almost
unanimously predict that this century will see multi-national corporations take over
from governments as the primary centers of power.
It's already started, of course. The commerce-happy dot com billionaires already
look at government as something parasitic. But this should give even the most extreme
government-bashers pause to consider that the future may not be a happy one.
Governments like ours are founded on the tennt of the public good. Corporations are
founded on the basis of private greed.
So think about a foreign policy founded only on what's best for Microsoft or
Coca-Cola. The Clinton Administration, as previously noted in this space, has already
privatized foreign policy, and has turned a blind eye to China's nasty behavior simply
because China is such a huge market for Amerikcan corporations.
But even the concept of an "American" corporation is outdated. Modern corporations
care nothing for the national interest. They only exist, like sharks, to swim and feed
and fatten the bottom line. They have about the same concept of the common good as
Jeffrey Dahmer had of table manners.
Take my most favorite recent example, Fruit of the Loom. It's subsidiary, Pro
Player, spent millions to wipe the name Joe Robbie Stadium off the home of the Dolphins.
So their millions went to pamper the new ruling class of selfish athletes, and the
suited commercial ruling class, yakking on cell phones in their luxury boxes while
writing the entire thing off their taxes.
But it gets better. Fruit of the Loom closes almost all of it's U.S. plants,
shipping your drawers overseas to be made by Filipino pre-adolescents or Chinese
prisoners. Then they declare Chapter 11. Then, in a moment that may be a metaphor
for the venality of the corporate stooges who want to become the bottom-line versions
of Churchill and Kissinger, they move their financial headquarters from Chicago to
the Cayman Islands. With all due respect to the good people of the Caymans, their
financial regulations look at embezzlement, tax dodging, and malfeasance the same
way Ted Bundy looked at college co-eds.
As my grandpa used to say, even a blind pig will find an acorn now and then. So
Pat Buchannan has to be right every so often. And Buchannan, for all his astonishing
list of faults, has the soul of the new corporate state pretty well nailed. These
modern monoliths are run by people who could care less if your family starves. They
wouldn't blink an eye if Osama bin Ladin nuked the Space Needle. They think people
like Jefferson and Lincoln and Roosevelt were suckers. They venerate Ayn Rand, not
Betsy Ross. And since concepts like justice and democracy and the common good make as
much sense to them as differential calculus does to your cat, the idea of them taking
over global and national affairs is one that would have been familiar to someone
who lived through Y1K.
They were called the Dark Ages for a reason. Rapicious warlords did what they
did best--pillage. And since everything changes except human nature, the rise of the
corporate state is not exactly the dawn of a new age. More like the sunset of the age
of enlightenment.
But then, we can always hope the futurists are as wrong this time as they were
about living on the moon and commuting to work in our own private hovercraft by the
year 2000.
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