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Show 12 Citizens United, has made issues such as global warming more divisive than ever in Washington because its network of money-as-speech is apparently used to hold Republics hostage for votes that favor what the Rolling Stone has called its "toxic empire" (Dickinson, 2014). Increasing political vitriol between political parties that once easily agreed that climate change is a major threat facing humanity (Toobin, 2014), Koch is now the "gatekeeper for Republic politics" (para. 3). To Toobin, Climate-change denial is now the price of admission to the charmed circle of Republican donors. Indeed, Americans for Prosperity, an organization heavily supported by the Kochs, has created a pledge for officeholders to sign, which promises that they will not support any legislation related to climate change that increases government net revenue. (para. 3) The success of Koch Industries is unparalleled by other efforts to incite rhetoric and social change within the spectrum of American politics, and since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, this corporate actor has set the pace for an advanced system of horizontal governance that is almost entirely dominated by corporate, rather than human, subjects. What Koch is doing, is working. And it is picking up speed. Rethinking Politics So how do we understand this complicated political stasis? Has democracy failed us, or is something else happening here? Perhaps some readers hear echoes of some of the great American debates between journalist Walter Lippmann and public intellectual, John Dewey, over the failures of the "disenchanted" or "eclipsed" public sphere in the wake of its recalcitrance to new political instruments of "direct democracy" that manipulate public opinion and turn the public sphere into a specter eclipsed by big business. Others may direct concerned readers to some of the works of Noam Chomsky (1999) or Alex Carey's (1995) classic manuscripts on how corporations have taken "the |
