You may have noticed that here at Brad OH Inc., we tend to cover a lot of issues centering on the politics of the good old U.S. of A. Now, this shouldn’t be overly surprising, as we’re really only following the lead of the news world at large, but an interesting fact is that we are in fact based out of Canada. Now, undoubtedly we’ll eventually relocate to a more convenient tax haven—the Canary Islands perhaps (Source)—but until then we are firmly entrenched here in the great white north.

Given this consideration then, why do we tend to cover so many American issues? Well, the quickest answer is that American issues are world issues, plain and simple. The issue of Corporate Imperialism is a global one, and while many of the relevant stories are centered in America, it is in no way defined by national boundaries. In fact, many of the crucial concerns we have right now with global politics revolve around the obfuscating and intentional subversion of national boundaries.

American Imperialism is nothing new. Under the governing principle of ‘Manifest Destiny’, America has spent its entire existence working to expand its global influence (Source). Now this article is not about American Imperialism per say, but focusses instead on the ways in which the subversive corporate process tends to seize control of not only single governments, but entire global systems.

In ‘Democracy Incorporated’, Sheldon S. Wolin (Link) describes this process as one of ‘Inverted Totalitarianism’. As greater and greater leeway is made for corporations to expand, it becomes easier and easier for such exceptions to be made. The civil ruling in the case of Citizens United (Source) saw corporations legally defined as persons, and their use of money in politics was defined as protected under the freedom of speech amendment.

This allows for corporations to spend unlimited sums of money to fund lobbyists and special interest groups which can affect the political process—thereby ensuring the passing of further laws designed to benefit the corporations while damning the rest of us.

With the power allotted to them, corporations, both American based and otherwise—an especially tricky notion to even define given the ongoing ability for corporations to take advantage of ‘Corporate Inversion’ loopholes, changing the legal base of their operation in order to avoid paying taxes (Source)–can exploit overseas markets to take advantage of indecent foreign labour laws and low wages. This takes jobs out of local economies, while reinforcing a split world notion of what’s good for us is too good for them.

This issue is conflated by political embargoes on trade, such as that placed upon Cuba. Further, because of the global impact of corporate power, laws passed in American court rooms inevitably affect the rest of the world as well. Consider climate change for instance. Here, American courts can pass laws governing the environmental impact of the corporations operating within them, even though these laws ultimately affect the world as a whole. Another easy and timely example of this is the issue of net neutrality (Source).

Meanwhile, the power afforded to lobbyists and the open door between corporate firms and government positions, allows corporate pressures in Washington to go so far as to effect war time policy; destabilizing foreign governments in order to ‘crack open’ new markets.

Clearly then, while the basis of much of what we read in the news is centered in the U.S.A., the system is ubiquitous, and defies any conception of national boundaries.

Neither is this an issue to be solved by American politics. In the same way that the effects of this system have spread to the entirety of the globe like a contagion unchecked, so too is the solution beyond the voting power of the American electorate.

This is not an issue of one misguided leader or party, and therefore the solution will not come from the other misguided leader or party. It is not a calculated, intentional process made by a cartel of greedy and deeply informed plutocrats—although there has undoubtedly been plenty such deals made along the way.

The process leading us here was an understandable though unjustifiable series of small exceptions. It can be thought of as tantamount to favours between friends; ‘well I usually wouldn’t do this, but…’ is the mentality driving it. Politicians accept huge sums of money from their corporate lobbyists, and then pass bills to support them. Few of them, with the exception of the above mentioned Citizens United, have been terrible to the ‘man who sold the world’ extent, but their cumulative effect certainly is. The unnatural coupling of unchecked capitalist ambition with backdoor political deregulations has spawned a new and terrible sort of brute.

Corporate Imperialism is an infectious and wild beast, reared on its own legal momentum, and driven by the cumulative greed of all the snakes writhing at its rotten breast. The ceaseless need for expansion will continue to push the boundaries of what is legally excusable, all the while reinforcing the western world in their role as exploiters, and relegating all the rest to the forgotten underclass of the forgettable exploited.

This is not a political viewpoint or ideology, but an unintentional by-product of ongoing mistakes. It is self-perpetuating, growing cancer-like with utter disregard for consequences. It is the fetishization of money, and money acting with its own power to expand its reach. Greed is the engine behind this, and a system which allows greed to change its workings in favour of its own expansion that has allowed the situation to get to where it’s at.

This is why when I write about America, I’m not writing about the country as a singular problem, but rather the resulting corporate contagion that’s dominating global politics.

In conclusion, let it be known that the mission of Brad OH Inc. is in no way meant to be interpreted as Anti-American. No, we are anti-world at this point, and underlying all is the fundamental belief that greed and self-service shall not be the driving factors in globalization. Equality, decency, and the betterment of humanity are the platforms we are interested in, and if that rings as starry-eyed idealism to you, you might do well to put some serious consideration into the alternatives (Link).

The change that’s needed is not a new political party in America or elsewhere, it’s a global revolution.

-Brad OH Inc.