Our country has been almost fully taken over by a ruling-elite 'corporatist Empire' that hides behind the facade of its two-party, 'Vichy' sham of democracy.

This superficial disguise of a domestic empire makes it somewhat more demanding for us to see the reality than it was for the French people in WWII to more easily see that the one-party 'Vichy' government installed by the foreign/enemy Nazi Empire was phony and was not a government working in their popular interest.

But the vast majority of average, 'working class' Americans are starting to understand in their gut and their dinner plate that some kind of corporate / financial empire has 'our' government by the throat with 'their' moneyed hands. [By 'working class' I mean anyone below retirement age who makes more from their work than from their unearned investments. IE. 95+% of those non-retired.]

Admittedly, it's a bit confusing and more difficult to see through the political disguise of this new-style 'corporatist Empire' because the corporate MSM media doesn't tell us anything about any "corporate Empire" (maybe because they are owned by them), and thus the polite corporate media doesn't ever even whisper the word 'empire' --- and neither do many corporate supported politicians. Surprise, surprise, surprise, uh?

Well, what's really not surprising is that all empires in history are basically economically driven, and tend to take over countries by using economics (and military) to take over the political side of government --- and so did this new-style 'corporatist Empire' infecting the us in the U.S.

But the good new is that average Americans have seen this movie before --- but long ago, before 1776.

When average people and their own honest leaders saw that the British Empire was oppressing and tyrannizing both of their intertwined political AND economic interests, they first reasonably resisted the British Empire in both its political/royal governors AND its British East India Corporation economic oppressors --- and then overthrew the British Empire in BOTH its political and economic roles.

This new-style, disguised, and domestic ‘corporatist Empire’ had taken over the American economy first with concentrated money-power of the type that FDR tried to fight in the 1930’s, but now the economic side of empire has been so successful in it’s dominance of our economy that its taken over our government itself with the same money-power.

The concentration of money-power was always recognized as dangerous to our democratic government by Jefferson, FDR and many others, but now the concentration is greater than ever, and has overwhelmed the political side of our political-economic democracy.

The indivisible political economy (as it used to be called) of any country or society forms the basis of how decisions are made and power shared --- and there are only two basic ways. Either a country is controlled by empire (which often goes by several differing names, like monarchy, autocracy, dictatorship, etc), or governance is controlled by the people, which is called democracy (direct, representative, republic, etc). Luckily, our forefathers built a good democracy, called a republic --- of which Ben Franklin said, “Now we have a republic, if we can keep it (from empire)”.

Increasing imperial money-power concentration that concerned Jefferson, Franklin, and others used to be produced on the economic side by investor corporations exploiting resources, technology, and labor to directly make the money profits that could support good developments and progress, but could be misused to gain control over the political side of government. Sometimes big corporate industrial projects to make profits also caused some by-product costs to our country’s environment or people, but that was thought to be mostly by accident (which economists call extenalities --- or outside the scope of the business).

However, in our new world of post-industrial society, some aggressive financial imperialists have discovered and exploited the well known ‘market flaw’ of ‘negative externality cost dumping’ to make money even faster and easier (for them) by intentionally ‘gaming’ the system and actually designing money making schemes that profit them by producing financial products with no real value, but which cause massive costs (like debt bombs) to be dumped/externalized on our society/government/US.

Such elite ‘bad actors’ in the financial side of their ‘corporatist Empire’ are pulling the same dirty trick that industrial cigarette manufactures abused to make private profits, while spreading ‘social costs’ (negative externality costs) into peoples’ lungs by producing an array of physical products, like Lucky Strikes, Camels, Marlboros, etc.

Now instead of these simple and well known ‘brands’ of cigarettes, the financial side of the corporate Empire has manufactured a dizzying array of intentionally complex and deceptive financial products, like subprime and altA mortgages, CDOs, SIVs, CDSs, and derivatives, which pump negative externality cost cancers into both our economic and political lungs.

Luckily, average Americans, well intentioned political leaders, and honest economic experts (not employed by the corporatist Empire) can work together to rebuild our democratic political economy with some simple changes to make our lives of working, saving, and investing into a socially responsible and honest economic system where positive benefits are supported and rewarded --- while negative externality cost dumping schemes and social cost con-jobs are prevented.