The United States government has been assimilated into the prevailing corporate power structure.

This is a natural consequence of the evolution of capitalism and its preoccupation with professionalism and free market ideology. Corporate values now dominate our culture and it is easy to see how congress is viewed as an anachronism in the eyes of the corporate elite who see their dual function to be self enrichment and the removal or destruction of any obstacle to the acquisition of maximum profits for their shareholders.

We are seeing the same brazen displays of self aggrandizement and naked exercise of power by arrogant elected officials who are backed financially by corporations that will do anything to avoid regulation and accountability because they believe they should, and their ideology demands, that they overcome any resistance to the pure accumulation of wealth. Any considerations contrary to this monolithic dogma are seen as a threat to the values that underlie and support the ideals embodied in the concept of professionalism.

It is the organic network of interlocking and mutually supporting boards of directors and other major investors who constitute the corporate elite and who are responsible for maintaining a system of economic exploitation that makes continuous war by the United States against the entire world, including its own citizens, inevitable.

It is we who have allowed corporations to become so powerful that they are making us and the world sick . We have bought into the idea of professionalism with the same eagerness with which corrupt officials have bought into the idea of patrimony and free market influence in our government.

By professionalism I mean the aggressive adoption of a set of values and behaviors that are predicated on a belief in the supremacy of competition and hierarchy over cooperation and reciprocity. Professionalism is a conceptual distillation that intoxicates by codifying desire, ambition and self glorification as indispensable components of wealth, privilege and status.