mindless.

The United States today is certainly one that is quite different than the country that the founding fathers envisioned. Rather than being a collection of diverse citizens that are accurately informed about how the government operates, who runs the country, and have a direct say in that process to make sure that corruption and overstepping of political power by a select few does not happen, we have become a nation of mindless consumers and ‘gut-feeling’ voters instead. Are the people of this country not good enough for the version of the United States that the founders envisioned? Have we become this collection of people because we did not want to work hard enough to be the former? No, we have become this way by design and manipulation that is decades in the making. In his online article “Consumer or Citizen?” Dr. Ernest Partridge elaborates on the idea of how we became “America, Inc.” I will discuss his ideas and then discuss what some businesses and people in other occupations and organizations are attempting to do in order to dismantle the current “corporate-nation” culture that has become embedded in our society for decades.

Partridge reveals how instead of the politicians we vote for, a few wealthy oligarchs control the country from behind closed doors. How can he make such a bold claim? I will provide you with his evidence. The American public largely gets its information about politicians and political events in general from news corporations and other media outlets that are owned by people in the top 1% of the U.S. population in terms of wealth (together this small amount of people own over 40% of the entire wealth of the nation). I will note that this article was written in 2002 and unfortunately this statement is even more true today and the pool of people has gotten even smaller as corporations and media outlets have merged. On these channels and in news articles, there has been a trend (that still continues) for politicians to say less detail about their policy plans and state facts about their plan to accomplish what they claim to want to accomplish, and instead focus on their “likeability.” Their likeability is based on nonsense like how good they look on camera and how much any given person would want to hangout with them as a friend. In a common phrase, the media does not sell us the steak but only the sizzle.

Why do these select few controllers of the country want to pull the wool over the public’s eyes instead of having them well-informed decision-makers? It is because they do not care for ideals such as democracy and justice, but rather they care about the amount of money in their bank accounts. They fund politicians that they expect will give them tax breaks and not put laws in place that interfere with the way they run their businesses. Even though the policies that benefit such people undoubtedly do not benefit the American public at large (the 99%), they will still vote in favor of such policies because they are essentially being tricked into doing so. Ernest Partridge points out the fact that the way people vote and the amount of information they have when doing so is similar to the way people shop. The advertising industry does not inform us of what is in the products we buy, how the products get made, how much money it took to make a unit of the product, where the products materials came from, etc. Instead, they just show up the product wrapped up in a bow, come up with a catchy attention-grabbing phrase to go along with it or hire an attractive person to hold the product, and expect us to make our decisions based on our emotions rather than the facts. A mindless voting population and mindless consumer population serve these people well because they do not want people to know about the injustice that they are causing with the way they run their companies and the way they live. If we all knew the truth about what happens behind the scenes, any reasonable or compassionate person would not agree with the current practices. We would demand something different, we would demand a radical change to way things are — perhaps even a revolution. This is exactly why the 1% continues to keep us in the dark — we must stay bamboozled in order to stay pacified.

This way of existing in society has negative effects on the vast majority of people living in this country, people living outside of this country, and the other species on this planet who are just trying to live. How many times have people been told that environmental regulations on business are bad for the economy? This statement is not necessarily true, yet Republicans have been saying it for years because they have essentially been paid to do so. They are purposely spreading misinformation about climate change and causing people to doubt its very existence not because they do not believe in science but because they again are being paid to do so. However, more and more people are waking up to this scary and grim reality every day. People are indeed beginning to demand that politicians have a plan to tackle climate change, to buy products from companies that are doing something to help the planet and treat their employees well, and demanding that certain regulations be passed to protect the environment from greedy corporations. The idea of sustainable business is gaining popularity. While its defiintionmay vary, it basically means that the company take part in practices such as: including ingredients that are fair trade, donating a portion of their protists to organizations that take actions to help the planet’s biodiversity and overall health in some way, are made from recycled materials instead of freshly acquired natural resources which are being depleted at an alarming rate, etc. Also, in addition to things changing for the better in the world of business, there is also a growing trend in the prevalence of environmental lawyers. More and more people interested in law are interested in the ways in which the law can be used to protect the environment and people’s health. They sue companies for pilluting, not complies to environmental laws already in place, for not properly informing the public about the negative health effects that they products cause, and committing many other injustices as well. I have hope that we can change the status quo very soon and finally live in a society of true information that is widely known and respected. How should we get money out of politics? How should we demand more information about our products? Word count: 1120