Citizens United decision<\/a> made companies into “people,” but now it seems as though the reverse has happened to the government itself – government is now a corporation, and is itself subject to a buyout\/aggressive takeover. Companies that go through this process rarely come out the same on the other side, and it is rarely good for anyone (except certain classes of shareholders and top executives, of course) – so I don’t like to imagine how this will go for a country in the same position. <\/p>\n\n\n\nBut I suppose I don’t have to imagine it, because this is the (sad, dark) world we find ourselves in, despite my (and, I hope, your) wishes to the contrary. But you can’t control the past, so all there is for us to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no epiphany to this post; there is no insightful conclusion – other than to say that the days are dark once more and hope is scarce… but it is still out there, and so am I, and so are you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It should go without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that I am very, very, very much not happy with the direction my country is going as of late. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"uspol","activitypub_content_visibility":null,"activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[567,569,568,100,385,392,421],"class_list":["post-6205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-fascism","tag-money","tag-oligarchy","tag-opinion","tag-politics","tag-society","tag-united-states","entry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-1C5","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":496,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/05\/11\/real-id-passes-us-senate-100-0\/","url_meta":{"origin":6205,"position":0},"title":"Real ID Passes U.S. Senate 100-0","author":"Keith Survell","date":"May 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Some juicy quotes from Slashdot members: \"The US was founded on state rights, hence \"The United States of America\". If you don't like a state's rules, move to another state. The federal government is heading toward \"monoculturing\" the US. Pretty soon we'll be 'Former United States of America.'\"","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27175,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2026\/01\/30\/the-book-1984-has-never-been-so-relevant\/","url_meta":{"origin":6205,"position":1},"title":"The Book “1984” Has Never Been So Relevant","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 30, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"1984 was supposed to be a warning, not supposed to be an instruction manual - yet we seem to be treating it as the latter, rather than the former... disturbingly so, especially as of late.","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"doubleplusungood (1984)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2013\/06\/doubleplusungood-1984.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2013\/06\/doubleplusungood-1984.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2013\/06\/doubleplusungood-1984.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2013\/06\/doubleplusungood-1984.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2013\/06\/doubleplusungood-1984.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2013\/06\/doubleplusungood-1984.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6329,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2025\/03\/25\/the-worst-version-of-yes-i-can-no-you-cant\/","url_meta":{"origin":6205,"position":2},"title":"The worst version of “Yes I can \/ No you can’t”","author":"Keith Survell","date":"March 25, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Nuh-uh! \/ Yeah huh!","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4941,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2017\/01\/25\/a-party-in-denial\/","url_meta":{"origin":6205,"position":3},"title":"A Party in Denial","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 25, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Denial has somehow become the political strategy of the Republican Party in the United States, and somehow... it's working?","rel":"","context":"In "My Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"My Opinion","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/my-opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4952,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2017\/01\/31\/the-march-to-tyranny\/","url_meta":{"origin":6205,"position":4},"title":"The March to Tyranny","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 31, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"How quickly a country can fall...","rel":"","context":"In "My Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"My Opinion","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/my-opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":498,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/05\/10\/freedom-is-slavery\/","url_meta":{"origin":6205,"position":5},"title":"Freedom is Slavery","author":"Keith Survell","date":"May 10, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"\"No longer solely concerned with driver safety, state DMVs would also be required to adopt stringent verification procedures (authenticating birth certificates and other documents) to make sure that license holders are not in the country illegally.\"","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6206,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6205\/revisions\/6206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}