Democracy in America is a useful fiction

Chris Hedges writes: "Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d'etat in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. . . .

"Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. . . .

"Our transformation into an empire, as happened in ancient Athens and Rome, has seen the tyranny we practice abroad become the tyranny we practice at home."