Corporations have merged with government, which was basically Mussolini’s definition of fascism:
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” – Benito Mussolini.

I must confess, I wasn’t nearly as impressed with your appearance on Democracy Now! last year.

######KELLEY BEAUCAR VLAHOS: Well, it was becoming clear to me and to others here in Washington in certain circles that the advisers that were emerging for the campaigns, whether it be Democratic or Republican, were part of some seriously pro-establishment cliques. And I say “cliques,” because there is really no other way to describe it. But these cliques generally can be categorized as not only pro-establishment, but more pro-interventionist, whether it be the so-called liberal interventionists on the Democratic side or your war hawks on the Republican side.

But what became clear is that the candidates weren’t reaching outside of these establishment cliques and that they were getting no fresh ideas, no vision outside of these pretty standard parameters. And we thought—me and the editors thought it might be a good idea to explore a little bit under the surface about where these of advisers were coming from, in hopes of maybe deciphering where foreign policy might be going in the future. http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/3/vote_for_change_atrocity_linked_us #######

I’m elated to see that you’ve expanded your frame of reference to–literally–mythic proportions.

Just hours ago, I commented similarly on Gleen Greenwald’s blog, Unclaimed Territory, to wit:

######### “I would like the author to be more expansive in his thought, to use mythology as an heuristic. But his logic? I don’t understand your criticism.

As a devoted student of comparative mythology, my general frustration is with the absolute mechanization, the over zealous secularization, of popular discourse in the West. We talk as if Newton’s physics were the be-all and end-all of conceptions of being in the world.

Natural science is noetic (look it up). Her sister art is poetic. We all talk in terms noetic, never looking up into the poetic.

I am not a machine. Are you? Then why do we talk about our selves and our Source as such? That’s my beef.#########

My revered sister, did you know that Joseph Campbell lectured at the Foreign Service Institute, beginning in 1956? That should send a shudder up the spine of anyone who’s seen the famous interviews with Bill Moyers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth

Here’s the scary part: a warped “power of myth” is being used to power weapons-grade domestic propaganda.

And that’s why I’m so elated to see your superlative myth-busting. That’s the urgent task of we wordsmiths today, in my not-always-all-that-humble opinion.

Obama is likely to find Odierno and other generals arguing passionately that to come close to meeting his commitment to keeping U.S. troops safe, keeping Iraq edging toward stability and maintaining the pressure on extremists, he will need a relatively large force to remain in Iraq for may years.

When asked what sort of U.S. military presence he expected in Iraq around 2014 or 2015 — well after Obama’s first term — Odierno said, “I would like to see a . . . force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000,” with many troops training Iraqi forces and others conducting combat operations against al-Qaeda in Iraq and its allies.

Things go bad in Iraq, we require more troops; things go “well” in Iraq, we require more troops.