Alan must have read what was on Michelle’s mind. “Remember Jay’s little verbal spat with Barb at the Lone Star last week?”
Michelle nodded.
“Barb Shull wasn’t the emotionless drone she seemed that night when I first met her a year ago,” Alan continued. “Jay even admitted that to me a few weeks ago. She was always a very career-driven person; one could certainly characterize her as a workaholic. But she totally changed a year ago. Trust me, I saw the change. If you thought she was a corporate drone last week, you would have thought she was a sweetheart a year ago. And back then her employees didn’t think much of her. Now they absolutely loathe her.”
“So you’re saying she became possessed somehow?”
“Possessed is a weak word. I prefer the term hijacked. Taken over.”
“Don’t they mean the same thing?”
“She’s got it right,” Rachel said. She drew on her cigarette. “Especially in light of what we’ve found out in the past two years or so.”
“Hmm, yes, I think you’re right.” Alan motioned to Rachel for a cigarette, which she passed to him. She lit it for him with her lighter.
“What are you talking about?” Michelle asked. She wished they would stop beating around the goddamn bush and just lay it all out.
Rachel Drummond and Alan Perkins traded a glance. Alan looked a little uncomfortable. Rachel drew on her cigarette, her attention focused completely on Michelle. “Take this for what you will… but Tyler and Marstein’s family were involved in the original incarnation of Corporate Financial. Marstein’s family has an interesting history. They’re from Germany; one of his cousins was a member of the SS. Hubert himself wasn’t a Nazi sympathizer, but he took a keen interest in some of the artifacts his cousin Joseph Marstein amassed during the mid-thirties. You see, Joseph was a devil-worshipper. That’s the only term I can use to describe him. Not an occultist, not a witch, a devil-worshipper. And the material he collected while he was a member of the SS was a cache of rare occult volumes, books on black magic and the like. Joseph was killed in 1942, and Herb sought to have his cousin’s belongings brought to the United States. They finally were, in 1945 by a family member who served in the US Army. Hubert stashed the material away and delved into it more fully. I guess you could say Hubert shared his cousin’s faith.”
Michelle didn’t know what to say. She could only listen, spell-bound.
Rachel drew on her cigarette and tapped ashes in the ashtray. “Marstein’s son began to take on a larger role in the family business as the years went by, and when old man Hubert died in 1968, Frank took over as President and Chairman of the Board. By this time he was living in northern California, in the high Sierras, and he maintained offices in San Francisco. He was also well-known in occult circles in the Bay Area to be a very powerful member of a secret satanic organization, one with ties to some pretty sinister groups—the Children of the Night, the Order of the Golden Dawn, groups like that. When he took control of Corporate Financial, the company’s growth began to accelerate drastically. By 1980 they were the largest private consulting firm in the country. Their methods began to slowly creep into the standard everyday practices of corporations across the country, and by the mid-eighties their Human Resources division was beginning to be embraced by their core clients. Ten years later, these methods were widespread, and today they’re spreading faster than you would like to believe.”
“What are these methods?” Michelle asked.
“Complete subservience to the corporate cause of your employer in order to feed it and Corporate Financial.”
“But how does that happen!” Michelle was trying to understand what Rachel and Alan were telling her but she was having a hard time with it. In a way, she did understand some of what they were saying. So many people did what their employers told them to do, no questions asked. Other people (a lot of people, really) had no sense of self-worth or identity and became subservient to their employer as a way of feeling good about themselves. Michelle had never been like this, even when she was working for All Nation. “I understand a lot of people don’t have a mind of their own and—”
“That’s how they do it,” Alan said quickly. “The first converts are those who can’t think outside the box. They target the emotionally weak and vulnerable, those with no sense of self-worth or identity. They also use methods of psychological warfare to get those that are more strong-willed—they’ll spy on employees, keep track of their personal life, find a way to blackmail them.”
“How can they do that? They can’t spy on people!”
“Yes they can.” Alan took a drag on his cigarette. “The Fourth Amendment protects individuals against the government. It doesn’t protect them against other individuals, especially individuals who form a corporate governing body. In the late 1800’s, Congress made various rulings that, in essence, defined corporations. Corporations were given the same rights and status as people, with all the same legal rights as you or I. To make a long story short, after the Civil War, the thirteenth through the fifteenth amendments were ratified to provide full constitutional protections and due process of law to the newly freed slaves in the United States. At the same time, there was a movement against Paine and Jefferson’s rulings almost a hundred years earlier that severely regulated corporations. States had made it illegal for corporations to participate in the political process, made it illegal to lie about their products, and required their books and processes always be open and available to government regulators. They also made laws that gave State and Federal government officials rights to inspect companies and investigate them when they caused pollution, harmed workers, or created hazards for communities. Needless to say, those laws were a constant thorn in the side of many corporations, and with the passage of the 14th amendment, the owners of what were then America’s largest and most powerful corporations—the railroads—figured they’d finally found a way to reverse Paine’s logic and no longer have to answer to ‘we, the people’.”
Alan paused, his eyes seeming to seek a reaction from Michelle, then he went on. “They would claim a corporation is a person. They would claim that for legal purposes, the certificate of incorporation declares the legal birth of a new person, who should have the full protections the voters have under the bill of rights. Attorneys for railroads filed suits against local and state governments on the issue. This went on for over twenty years, and they hammered the same issue. Finally, four different cases reached the Supreme Court in 1886 when a Recorder of the court wrote into his personal commentary of the case that the Chief Justice said that all the Justices agreed that corporations are persons. This was clearly a clerical error on the Recorder’s part. This headnote had no legal standing, yet it was taken by generations of jurists, including the Supreme Court, who followed and read the headnote but not the decision. The ironic thing about this is the Recorder in this case knew the Court had not ruled on this issue. Since then, Corporations have used this case—Santa Clara County vs. The Union Pacific Railroad—to press their cause further and as a result, these non-living, non-breathing persons are now fully entitled to the full protections that shield people against abuse from government.”
Michelle sputtered. “That’s—” Insane was the first word that popped into her mind.
“A few of the largest corporations referenced Santa Clara and successfully claimed the protection of the First Amendment, then lobbied Congress and the FCC so they could take control of our media. Once that was done, they claimed their First Amendment free speech rights to tell us whatever serves their interest and call it news without consideration of its truthfulness or having to worry about giving fair and equal time to other viewpoints. They claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment so they can prevent the EPA and OSHA from inspecting factories or environmental or labor violations without first obtaining the corporation’s permission. They also now have the protection of the Fifth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Companies can delve into your personal records, monitor your private email—even from ISPs you maintain outside of work—dig up a lot of information about you that does not relate to your job and they can do it legally.”