What’s the Difference Between Cancer and Donald Trump?

So-called “free market" or "unregulated capitalism” is really nothing more than the cancer-stage of capitalism. And that uninhibited cancerous growth has spread, so that now even our political system is infected with the cancer of corporatism.
Donald Trump’s candidacy is an example of how our political system is being eaten alive by the cancer-stage of capitalism.
But to really get what that means, we need to step back and look at the nature of cancer itself. A new study published in “Philosophical Transactions B” titled “Cancer across the tree of life: cooperation and cheating in multicellularity” flushes out how cancer exists across every multicellular organism.
The abstract of the research begins: “Multicellularity is characterized by cooperation among cells...” But cancer, of course, is the opposite of cooperation. It's when a cell decides it's going to suck up all the energy and resources of the organism for itself. And it grows continuously until it kills its host.
It’s not a stretch to look at a society - as well as the economic market and the political system that make up society - as a multicellular organism that could easily become infected with an economic or political cancer.
At the base of a society are individuals. Those individuals divide the labor and form specialized groups, because people working together get more done than people working alone.
George Johnson at the New York Times paraphrased Darwin’s proposal of life beginning in “some warm little pond.” He writes: “a few simple chemicals sloshed together and formed complex molecules […] as the primordial cells mutated and evolved, ruthlessly competing for nutrients, some stumbled upon a different course. They cooperated instead, sharing resources and responsibilities and so giving rise to multicellular creatures – plants, animals and eventually us.”
Societies, economies, and governments could be described as the equivalent of humanity ‘evolving’ from single-cell behavior to multicellular behavior. But, just as researchers found that cancer sometimes pops up in every multicellular organism on Earth, our economy has now spawned its own cancer. And Donald Trump’s candidacy is what happens when our economic cancer spreads to our political system.
Johnson writes in the Times: “In a healthy organism a cell replicates only as frequently as needed to maintain the population and allow for modest growth. Cancer cells begin reproducing wildly, consuming more than their share of resources and spewing poisons that degrade the environment and reshape it to their own advantage.”
THAT sounds like corporatism. We can see it in how corporations consume subsidies and take profits while shirking any of the costs of upkeep for the health of the environment or the health of communities.
The same thing happens in a colony of bacteria according to Johnson: “taking advantage of the sustenance and shelter provided by the biofilm, some bacteria will squander resources and thrive at the expense of the others - a microscopic tragedy of the commons.”
Corporations are protected and nurtured by governments and societies: but their singular profit motive encourages them to “thrive at the expense of others.”
"No wonder cancer has become a metaphor for human excess," Johnson writes, "overpopulation and consumption - environmental pollution - the concentration of resources among a hyperacquisitive 1%"
That's basically a summary of how unregulated corporatism thrives on consuming more and more in order to produce more and more - not for society's wellbeing - but their own. At the expense of everything else in a society.
And what happens when the cancer of corporatism realizes that it can only grow as large as our planet’s governments will let them? It spreads to the political system to destroy regulations and taxes that might ensure that corporations and billionaires don’t consume more than their fair share of the society’s resources.
Ever since we opened the flood gates with the rulings in Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United, the cancer of unchecked greed that first infected capitalism has spread to every level of our political system in the form of anonymous and unregulated campaign donations from corporations like Exxon and billionaires like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson.
So what about Donald Trump? He is a perfect example of the cancer of greed in our society: taking the profits and resources that he concentrated as a result of his growth within a largely unregulated economy, and he’s using those resources to take over the political system.
So how do we heal from a political cancer? We start out by repealing Citizens United with a constitutional amendment that says that corporations aren't people and billionaires can't spend their money to buy politicians or political office.
And then we need to re-instate real financial regulations, like Glass-Stegal and the corporate death penalty, to force corporations to once again serve society rather than just suck up all the money and resources like an economic and political cancer.
Comments


The reason it's hard to think of Lincoln Chafee as a Democrat is that he hasn't held office as one yet. He was governor of Rhode Island as an independent until January this year.

Time to eradicate the cancer. Whatever needs to be done to do that, so be it. Let us start out nice by standing by Bernie Sanders. Then we do whatever it takes to wipe this corporate cancer out. That or continue down the horrible road we are on. It will get much worse if we don't do something and it is past time to do it.

Thom Hartman isn't serious. Everytime he allows an intelligent adversary on his show he gets his ass kicked. No wonder he expends so much effort building straw men to battle.
Loves that mute button, too. What a pussy.

Brilliant analogy, Thom! Unlimited growth = CANCER. The parallels seem endless, the more one looks into this.
And I hear ya, stecoop. Christian, my ass. These are the kind of "Christians" Jesus was driving out of the temple. I feel for ya, working for a miserly old dirtbag Republican. Must be hard having to deal with that, day in and day out.

The exposure of the supression of GcMAF, a treatment for more than thirtyseven serious diseases is what happens Thom. REVEALING NEWS!
What does GcMAF do?
The GcMAF Conference 2013 showed GcMAF is a far more powerful molecule than thought, both in terms of the science, and doctors' results. In stage 4 cancer, some doctors who use the full protocol, listed on "Treatment Strategies," are saving every patient (if they have not had chemotherapy.) Success can be achieved with all tumour cancers including breast, lung, prostate, pancreatic and melanoma. There is no patent here so financial costs are low for the patient and profits are greatly reduced for the phama companies.
INVESTIGATION: Three days before Dr. Bradstreet was found dead in a river, U.S. govt. agents raided his research facility to seize a breakthrough cancer treatment called GcMAF - NaturalNews.com http://www.naturalnews.com/050553_Dr_Bradstreet_GcMAF_cancer_therapy.html
REVEALED: Cancer industry profits 'locked in' by nagalase molecule injected into humans via vaccines... spurs tumor growth... explains aggressive vaccine push - NaturalNews.com
http://www.naturalnews.com/050582_nagalase_GcMAF_cancer_industry_profits...

Reply to #6: Yeah, ain't that outrageous. Doctors discovering cures for cancer, getting murdered by cancer industry's thugs. I read the article already.
But in a "culture" where only MONEY is sacred, that's what we get: a culture of DEATH.

Greed has 2 parts. Part 1: more for me. Part 2. nothing for anything else. The Bible created greed. The Bible Nightmare Stories told to little children and then written down and called Holy Scripture introduced the original nightmare story of greed. Here is a really fun garden. Do not eat this apple. Ooops! You guys ate the apple. You guys can no longer play in the fun garden. Instead you get to have absolutely nothing. From now on all human people get to have absolutely nothing. Worse than absolutely nothing. All human being people get to have limitless pain, torture and suffering for eternity. God gets to have more for him - he gets to live in the fun garden. He keeps making more and more human being people who get to have nothing for ever. Then God says, ok I will make you a deal even though you guys ate the apple. If you really, really believe that I am the most loving, kind and generous being ever, and beg and beg for me to like you again, then you can come back and live with me in the fun garden and together we can have fun watching all of the other human being infants, children and the rest of the human being people have worse than nothing for eternity. Stay Tuned.

Brilliant as always Thom ~ appreciating how you consistently go to the heart of the matter!

Great analogy, Cheerful! God was a Republican.
pitiful clips;
Sounds like you read mein kemph and not the
bible.

You are right there but how do we get Thom and others to take this on. I have NEVER seen a reply here from him, on anything, and this is a great group of loyal followers!

Tax rates after one million should ladder up to eventually 100%.......the golden rule problem, those with the most gold make the rule, would be solved. With all of the wars and problems extreme wealth concentration has caused throughout all of recorded history.....it's down right ludicrous that we the super majority have allowed Trumpish billionaires to happen.

Reply to #11: sounds like YOU read nothing at all.
Reply to #12: Thom might avoid responding here for strategic reasons. Or it could simply be that he's too busy to respond to us... or that he intends this to be a platform for us to speak our minds, so that he knows what people are thinking.
#14
"ditto"
the alogrithm for America! private wealthy solves everything ?

Sarah. How could killing one researcher stop the spread of knowledge about something that's said to be available in many other countries? And why would the people involved in this cover-up have no desire to cure or prevent these diseases in themselves or the people they know? The claim is that the U.S. government did this, not the medical sector, so the agents involved certainly can't profit from the alternative treatments. Why would they care to do this hit job?
This is as illogical and kooky as the Jade Helm crap. I think maybe Thom doesn't come here because many of the commenters believe even more pseudo-scientific junk than he does.

MabalZahare -- I thought I listened to every minute of Thom. Which intelligent adversary are you talking about? Thom used to have intelligent guests. I thought he could not get any of them back because he demonstrated how history proved their theories had never worked.

Simple, Thom. Cancer does not wear a ferret on its head.
Roland
What it comes down to is that human greed needs to be regulated. A little bit of greed is necessary, because that's what drives the economy and innovation; but unbridled, unrestrained, run-amok greed must never be allowed to happen, it is too destructive.
I work for a man who can be so greedy and stingy as to make old Ebenezer look like a spendthrift; he is very anti-government and just doesn't see how run-away greed hurts others. And he's a fundamentalist christian. Where do people like this come from?