Audio version read by George Atherton – Right-click to download

This is a sincere call for an American Revolution against the decadent, vile plutocrats driving our nation into the ground. Super-consumers, sinister bankers, celebrity whores dine on foie gras and truffles while more than 25 million Americans are unemployed and 2.8 million homes are in foreclosure. A cabal of greedy bastards has turned America, the pioneer of modern democracy, into a corporatocracy where a handful of nonhuman megacorps own our government, political parties, courts, schools and media. The opulent one percent are sucking us dry even as they push us, debt-ridden and redundant, over the precipice. Only an insurrection against their monied despotism can save us now.

Making the case for the overthrow of the American corporatocracy is a serious matter. From the perspective of the plutocrats in power, it is a criminal, seditious, treasonous act punishable by a lengthy prison sentence. Therefore we must be absolutely certain that ours is a righteous rebellion. We must be confident that although our revolution may be illegal from their perspective, it is supremely legitimate, commendable and obligatory from the perspective of universal, natural law. And so that we may guard against recklessness, we must be judicious and put the actions of the American government on trial before deciding if the sentence of execution by popular revolution is necessary and just.

Our case for a forceful disbanding rests on the charge that the American regime is illegitimate and antidemocratic because it is a danger to Americans as citizens, to America as a nation and to Homo sapiens as a species. Acknowledging that insurrection is only warranted when there is no other avenue to fully removing the corrupt from power, we will contend that all other tactics have already been tried unsuccessfully.

Every politician in office today, Democrat and Republican alike, accepts corporate bribes and is therefore corrupt. Their election is perverse evidence that they groveled before corporate lords and do not serve the will of the people. We know this because on January 21, 2010, the US Supreme Court told us who runs the nation by granting corporations the freedom to donate unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. As it is already an established statistical fact that the candidate who spends the most money wins in 9 out of 10 races, it is undeniable that we live in an era where anyone genuinely opposed to the corporate takeover of America, and unwilling to compromise, will never be elected. That makes the government a dangerous enterprise that is a hazard to individual freedom.

Not content with stripping us as citizens of our sovereignty, our corporate-backed rulers have instituted a foreign policy that delights in permanent war and international instability. From cynically squandering billions of dollars of taxpayer money each year in gifts to the apartheid state of Israel or in military support given to keep Arab tyrants in power, everything about America’s foreign policy is wrong, pro-war, anti-freedom and unjust. Two preemptive wars in the last decade … ongoing occupations with new war crimes daily … secret drone attacks on civilians … military bases encircling the world … a nefarious, unelected military-industrial complex sows discord abroad and guarantees that our nation will never live in peace.

And then there is the deepest charge of all: America’s corporatocracy is committing a crime against humanity. Nature is dying, sentient species are disappearing, catastrophic climate change threatens us all. And yet the ideology of rampant consumerism reigns supreme in America. Ecocide is the official policy of these mammon worshipers who use their military might to keep the oil flowing and industrial pollutants pumping. Glaciers are melting, oceans are acidifying, climate wars are looming. If America is not overthrown, the cancerous growth of capitalism will not end until all life on Earth is extinct.

Everywhere we look there are signs of moral decay, political corruption and fascistic tendencies. However, activists have not been passive. For decades, since the end of democracy in America first became undeniable, we have tried every tactic to avert catastrophe. We have voted, written letters, donated money, held signs, protested in marches, clicked links, signed petitions, tweeted websites, written books, taught classes, knitted sweaters, learned how to farm, turned off the television, programmed apps, engaged in direct action, committed petty vandalism … All this has been for naught. Popular revolution remains the only reasonably viable tactic remaining.

In the 18th century, America’s founding fathers were in the same situation as we are today. They also sought justification to start a rebellion against a despotic empire that claimed to be their rightful government. They knew that what they intended to do was illegal from the king’s perspective, but they found solace in a higher law, a universal law that takes priority over temporal authority. The thirteen colonies made the case for insurrection in the Declaration of Independence of the United States and thereby permanently enshrined as inalienable “the Right of the People to alter or abolish” the government. The precedent of our own history grants us the right to revolt. Further, the seriousness of corporate America’s threat to the world puts us under obligation to act. Now we will sweep the parasites out of power and reinstate the rule of the people.

Micah White is a contributing editor at Adbusters