From [Truthdig – Power and the Tiny Acts of Rebellion](http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/power_and_the_tiny_acts_of_rebellion_20101122/):
wherein I likely get added to a few more watch lists… the article is specifically about corruption of the political process in the US, but since we are tied so closely to them, much applies here as well.
*on the shift in power from democracy to corporations:*
> The complete surrendering of power, however, to corporate interests means that those of us who seek nonviolent yet profound change have no one within the power elite we can trust for support. The corporate coup has ossified the structures of power. It has obliterated all checks on corporate malfeasance. It has left us stripped of the tools of mass organization that once nudged the system forward toward justice.
*on shifted morality:*
> We have reached a point where stunted and deformed individuals, whose rapacious greed fuels the plunge of tens of millions of Americans into abject poverty and misery, determine the moral fiber of the nation. It is no more morally justifiable to kill someone for profit than it is to kill that person for religious fanaticism. And yet, from health companies to the oil and natural gas industry to private weapons contractors, individual death and the wholesale death of the ecosystem have become acceptable corporate business.
*on lack of viable responses:*
> The one method left open by which we can respond—massive street protests, the destruction of corporate property and violence—will become the excuse to impose total tyranny. The intrusive pat-downs at airports may soon become a fond memory of what it was like when we still had a little freedom left.
Democracy. Fuck, yeah.
If in the first Renaissance we argued for classical learning and humanism; perhaps in the second one we argue against power. To curtail all those that wish for it, in the first one we only went after priests; and limit power such that no one is much better than any other. The idea of realpolitik needs to go. And our expectations and desires need to be controlled and we need more self-sufficient and self-sustaining systems… rather than unlimited desires… unlimited consumption… to infinity and beyond. We need to forget about “developing” other people and so on.