Our new Science Fiction Dystopia
I read a lot of science fiction when I was younger. One very popular book, Snow Crash, by Neil Stephenson, predicted a lot about our current world, including social media, live streaming, virtual reality, and . . .
. . . the dissolving of our nation into a group of corporate city-states. That had their own territories, their own armies/security, their own rules and laws.
As I watched the United passenger being dragged off the plane, first screaming, and then ominously quiet, I flashed back on that book and felt the first real fear that this was happening in real time, to us, right before my eyes.
I feel like the state is about to dissolve away, leaving only corporations, who are free to exploit, poison, cheat, and manhandle people as much as they can, with obedience to them enforced at the end of a club and a taser.
Trump's self-destructive cabinet - or rather destructive of their own cabinet departments - signals the end of the rule of law, our government, our self-rule - in favor of the corporate "beings" who we've given more and more power over to since the supreme court rulings in the 70s that began to pave the way for all of this.
It is fascism. It is corporate rule with no appeal. It is the closing of the courts to mere citizens. It is the boot stomping a human face, forever.
United feels it can physically force screaming people to do what they order them to do. And who is going to stop them? Coca Cola? Apple? Halliburton? Because it sure as shit doesn't seem to be the government. How long before other corporations start demanding obedience and immediate compliance? Because our Justice Department is out to lunch.
Welcome to the world of Snow Crash, where corporations aren't merely the most powerful controlling forces of the government, but are indeed governments unto themselves.
= new reply since forum marked as read
many of the themes have been picked up and used in other more recent SF, and movies.
But well worth reading 
And don't think for a minute that 2018 or 2020 will be able to stop it from happening. We'll just delay the installation. Corporations are doing everything they can to ruin our country's institutions - what really makes America great, and are destroying them. I really hope we can turn this insanity around and start holding these fuckers accountable for their actions, but something tells me we'll just delay the inevitable. I really think it might take a war to remove the corporatists from power. And that is a war worth fighting for. 
