Both Parties Are Controlled By Big Corporations

Today owning a home, getting quality healthcare, a living wage, or relevant education has become “castles in the air” for millions of Americans.

It’s time for a new kind of governance. Trump’s presidency will be a disaster, just as the Democratic Party has proven to be a disaster, although for different reasons.

Both parties are corporate run. Different sectors of the U.S. ruling class, and I’m talking about the richest, most powerful, and entrenched capitalist powers, have been running the country since its founding, regardless of which party is elected.

With all the supposed disagreements and differences—with one party more right, the other more left; one conservative, the other liberal; one more about democratic means, the other more authoritarian—this social class, or parts thereof, has always run the economy. And therefore, politics.

The Democrats, for all their talk about being an umbrella political party, embracing a wide variety of people and classes, are run by a sector of that ruling class (more “liberal” if you will). As for the Republicans they are now controlled by MAGA, the more extreme right-wing sector.

It’s time to end this charade. I know this is not an easy proposition. But we’re there already. The many cracks in the political structure are showing the “house of cards” our country’s governance is made of. It’s fragile. MAGA will do what it can to tear this down. That’s why they’ve carried a politics of chaos, fear, and hate. They are not doing this for the rest of us.

MAGA is doing this for the most wealthy and powerful to become even more wealthy and powerful. That segment is using the historically rancid ideologies of white supremacy, misogyny, xenophobia, and homophobia as their road to power.

Just look at the administration Trump is trying to build. Presently he’s tapped an unprecedented thirteen billionaires with a net worth of $383 billion (including Trump at $6.2 billion and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, at $36 billion). This is greater than the GDP of 172 countries. Poor old Joe Biden had a cabinet with a net worth of $118 million. They may be missed—but that’s not good enough either.

What runs capitalism, the main tenet of its existence, is to do anything that results in maximum profits. Owners, investors, or stockholders within the corporate class live for that. It makes sense to them. And they’ve done all they can to convince the rest of us to want the same thing. Only we’ve been on the receiving end of a big con—that only the rich and powerful can run things.

What the country needs is a movement of the whole spectrum of the working class, from the discarded poor to the die-hard overworked, for shared well-being, a safe and peaceful world, and a clean and thriving earth. This may seem like “castles in the air,” but until that happens, we wait for billionaires and millionaires to take care of our interests—and they never will.

Today owning a home, getting quality healthcare, a living wage, or relevant education has become “castles in the air” for millions of Americans. I’m with Henry David Thoreau when he said, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

It’s time to run our country in the interest of those at the bottom. When they rise, we all rise.

Luis J. Rodriguez, also known as Mixcoatl Itztlacuiloh, has 17 books in all genres. Luis and his wife Trini Tlazohteotl Rodriguez have a podcast on Indigenous cosmology and visions for modern times called “The Hummingbird Cricket Hour.”