Chris Hedges explains that the corporate state has not merely confiscated our political system. It stretches much further into our lives. See the following video starting at minute 5:30, where Hedges explains that affected systems include communication, education and culture. In fact, there is an assault upon liberal institutions that once made meaningful political reform possible, such as labor unions and our great universities, the latter of which are oftentimes run as corporate entities uninterested in teaching the humanities and extolling an artificially narrow analytic view of what it means to be "intelligent." What modern education excels at is training up systems managers who strive to be hyper-deferential to authority. Modern education no longer strives to teach students how to think, but rather what to think. Hedges has a "dark" view of what's going on, essentially that the corporate state is "harvesting" what is left to be had of America "on the way out the door." (min. 28:00). At this critical time, there is no mechanism for changing the system by way of voting--Hedges argues that there is no way, in light of the corporate loyalties of Barack Obama, to vote against Goldman Sachs in the upcoming presidential election, which is using tax money to re-inflate the bubble before the next crash. Lawrence Lessig prefers to use all of our resources for reforming the system, "even if there is zero chance of success." Both men are big supporters of the Occupy movement.

Bernie Sanders Points out that every political topic is affected by Citizens United:

If you are concerned about the collapse of the middle class, you should be concerned about how American campaigns are financed. If you wonder why the United States is the only country in the industrialized world not to have a national health care program, if you're asking why we pay the highest price in the world for prescription drugs, or why we spend more money on the military than the rest of the world combined, you are talking about campaign finance. You are talking about the unbelievable power that big-money interests have over every legislative decision.

The corporate coffers are wide open, thanks to a mere 5-4 majority:

It's a virtual certainty that all of this spending will fundamentally distort our democracy, tilting the playing field to favor corporate interests, discouraging new candidates, chilling elected officials and shifting the overall policymaking debate even further in the direction of giant corporate interests and the super-wealthy.

I agree completely. Until we overturn Citizens United (by passing a constitutional amendment -- perhaps one of these), we are incapable of having any honest discussion with our politicians.