In America, corporate capitalism is not an economic system, it’s not a sociopolitical structure. It’s a religion.

The Almighty Dollar is the god of that religion, corporations are the cathedrals, CEO’s are the cardinals, politicians are the bishops and journalists are the priests. Profit is sacred, the work ethic is holy scripture, and consumption is the covenant. If the blessings of prosperity never seem to trickle down, it’s because the hurt, lost and blinded fools wandering through this shock doctrine wilderness don’t have enough faith.

Every whisper, of every waking hour, I’m choosing my confessions. I confess that I’ve blasphemed against the Job Creators 666 times a week, I confess that I’ve never listened to any of Holy Father Obama’s sermons about shared sacrifice, I confess that I’ve consorted with fallen women like Elizabeth Warren, I confess that I’d better not confess anymore or the flaming sword of the NSA will appear on my monitor and I’ll be reverse-raptured into the infernal regions and I’ll have to post from there from now on.

Too late. That flaming NSA sword is already starting to glow on my screen. Verily, our friends at the NSA seem to be feeling very insecure lately. I’d better skip past the parts about Boehner trying to part the Debt Sea and Ryan wanting to cast Medicare into the fiery furnace and go right to a quick review of our extended economic journey towards the Promised Land, which has been repeatedly interrupted by those slippery slope detours the cardinals and  bishops and priests call “market corrections.”

Remember these little slips that brought you to your knees, America? That brought you to your knees, pale?

The Panic of 1819, the Panic of 1837, the Panic of 1857, the Long Depression of 1873-1879, The Panic of 1893, the Panic of 1907, the Great Depression of 1929-1939, Black Monday 1987, the Great and Permanent Recession of 2008.

And after every crash, the clergy of corporate capitalism came flailing around with their “market correction” fantasies, and the sound of trumpets was heard above the wreckage, heralding the birth of a new era of “prosperity”, and the homeless were forgotten, and the hungry were abandoned, and only in the distance could the song of a new faith be heard.

I thought that I heard you sing, America. In the crowds for William Jennings Bryan, in the rallies for Eugene Debs, during FDR’s New Deal, in the early days of the Great Society, in the crowds of 2008 hoping for real reform from Obama, in the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011. I thought that I heard you sing. I think . . . I thought . . . I saw you try.

Try to cast that false religion aside, try to shine the light of economic equality in the darkness, try to keep that light from going out.

But that was just a dream.
Just a dream.

That dream will never become reality unless enough Americans consider this . . .

Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy, it is absolutely essential to it.

The hint of the century, courtesy of Howard Zinn..