Newspoem 23 May 1998: Plundered Ploughman
- Dominique Fitzpatrick-O~Dinn
Under American law, corporations enjoy the rights of persons—free speech, private property, limits to searches, rights of accused persons, trial by jury, due process, etc. The rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment were originally designed to protect individuals against the government. Corporations—which have the further advantages of being more wealthy than individuals, and of being immortal—didn’t acquire these rights democratically or by legislation, but rather by decisions of an “activist” Supreme Court a century ago. Before then, corporations were taken to be limited and specific arrangements. Even so their power was suspect. Thomas Jefferson at the end of his life warned that a “government of an aristocracy founded on banking institutions and moneyed corporations” would be “riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.” The triumph of the corporations—and the resulting corporate culture in which we live—is a 20th-century phenomenon, and it continues. The courts made corporations persons; the MAI will make them states.—C.G. Estabrook
The Rill of Bights protects the Supremes in a vat of Brie. The rights enumerated—rule by banjo—divide us into men and rats.
Thomas Jeffersoninratfur: he warnedof a hat and coat. The end of his life would be over and out for yeomanry. Rats sang “send in the clones.” The US is in the ninth inning—of nine. More wealthy than a century ago, rich men have us by the ovaries. Money will make the raging rat henchmen men—democratically or by legislation. Porn was a 20th-century career. We read TV oracles. Car ads are our rights. We go at 14 MPH.
Government doesn’t have to be like this. Corporationsridingworkers. Aristocracy arrangements. “Due process,” curt free speech decisions, states, peons, sit-ins, the jury trial, scorpions, wine, gin, poisons, computers, persons, myths designed to limit the limited war reparations to Iraq. Tropes were founded on pacifist ideals that, by being nudged, didn’t end up in the final draft of the Constitution.
Act up. Create trouble. Mend a mind. Dine. Pinch. Cough. Dig a groovy coriander patch. Purport to butcher rat goons. Avenge the plundered laughman. Love will compete with competition. Free rats.
1998