by Jack Bragen
Years ago, I was in a public place, and I was approached by a man wanting me to sign a petition to amend the U.S. Constitution. The amendment would have defined a corporation as not a person. Caught by surprise, I couldn’t think through the idea, so I declined. It is unfortunate.
To an extent, I feel that I’ve been cheated by people in government and corporations, mostly because they have stood in the way of me making an honest living and not letting me in through the gate, so to speak.
Just excellence in what you do may not be good enough. As the saying goes, “it’s not what you know, but who you know.”
Corporations—especially limited liability corporations, or LLCs— hide behind masks of institutions, and they feel unaccountable for the harm they do to the innocent. Their status shields individuals from criminal penalties. Even if the corporation is convicted and its shareholders lose money, the executives rarely serve time in prison. Legally, a corporation is considered a person under a Supreme Court decision.
Corporations, particularly large ones, can influence the government to pass legislation by lobbying state and federal lawmakers—and consequently make money off it. That’s how they can reshape society into how they want it to be.
The predominantly corporate white men sit in their boardrooms and make plans for how they will dissect people and make money through their vile acts and for how they will feed on the destruction of human lives and souls.
If evil exists, it comes from knowing that you are intentionally hurting someone.
Predatory people in corporations create various levels of hurt, mostly through economic and social assault, and they feed on the misfortune of their victims. Forcing people to live in poverty is a form of violence.
Human beings feed on one another. One example is the classic schoolyard bully: If the bully wanted something from you, they would raise their fists and demand that they give it to you.
In the adult world, money and status are weaponized rather than raised arms and clenched fists. When nations adopt bullying behavior, it often leads to war.
Violence is real whatever level you find it on or what form it assumes.
Economic violence is where people are deprived of making a living or existing, because they lack enough income, and because the rich can do this to poor people and get away with it.
Victimizing people while you hide behind a corporation is fully immoral.
Many consider fighting in a war to be honorable. If you risk your life on behalf of your country, you are lauded as brave, mighty and heroic. But from the perspective of the family of those you’ve killed, you are considered a criminal.
But politicians start and wage wars, not soldiers who are ordered to fight. It is not a pretty or clean picture, regardless of how much fiction you see on the television screen or read in drugstore books.
Violence is a sickness that’s harming the earth. When we decimate our atmosphere and roll back the environmental clock, the climate will go back to that which caused the dinosaurs to die off, and that’s violence.
Jack Bragen is author of “Instructions for Dealing with Schizophrenia: A Self-Help Manual,” and of three fiction collections. He lives in Martinez, California.
