There’s a scene in The Dark Knight Rises.
Bane has overrun Gotham. The rich are panicking. The streets are in chaos. Crane, somehow the judge, hands out sentences like candy.
And then Bane says it:
“We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations… and we give it back to you, the people.”
Bane wants to blow up a city.
But in our world, he’s dismantling Citizens United.
Selling our soul: when did Citizens United pass?
Technically, Citizens United passed on January 21, 2010 — that’s the day the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC.
But really? That decision was decades in the making. Shaped by generations of greed and power consolidation.
It didn’t start with Citizens United. It started the moment we tied free speech to money — and let the rich use their money to yell louder.
Ask our boy Caesar — politics has always been messy. But this was different.
This wasn’t just corruption. It was a codified hierarchy. A system where power isn’t earned or won — just inherited, protected, and dressed in legal robes.
As Pablo would say, “The men of always aren’t interested in the children of never.”
This ruling didn’t create corruption. It legalized visibility. It ripped the mask off. Suddenly, the backdoor deals didn’t need to hide — they had a legal framework.
A constitutional defense.
A gavel slamming down on the heart of America, declaring: “This is fine.”
Citizens United was the final stamp on a process that began long before — when corporations started writing the rules, and public trust was cheap enough to buy.
We can trace this abuse of power back over 100 Years
The rich didn’t just get louder — they rewrote the rules.
In a world where aristocracy was not keen to go the way of the dodo, faux-kings needed a way to consolidate their power.
“Wilson!” Tom Hanks screams at Woodrow Wilson after he does his research.
Woodrow Wilson greenlit the Federal Reserve Act and backed the 16th Amendment — paving the way for income tax and giving private bankers quiet control over public money.
Central banking wasn’t pitched as control — it was pitched as stability.
Ben Franklin believed public-issued money served the people — and warned that handing it to private banks could destabilize the nation. Franklin believed currency should serve the people, not profit off them.
The rich did the sneak-a-roo and created policy that allowed them to lord over the working class.
But pay attention to the media in those decades. You didn’t see the excess. You didn’t see the offshore accounts, the lobbying, the buyouts of public interest.
You saw optimism. Philanthropy. Class.
It wasn’t that the rich were noble.
It’s that you weren’t allowed to see the rot.
Human trafficking: cotillions and debutante balls
The pageantry wasn’t innocent. It was ritualized ownership.
Debutante balls weren’t just about frills and white gloves — they were people auctions in lace.
A stage where wealth dressed up its daughters like assets. Where teenage girls curtsied for the gaze of future powerbrokers. 18th-century bottled bros playing kingmaker.
Catiline wasn’t just a corrupt Roman senator — he was the prototype of performative power. Broke, entitled, and theatrical, he weaponized chaos to regain status. He hosted orgies disguised as political alliances — a legacy of power sealed with bodies, not trust.
This is the dude they named their parties after.
From Roman senators to Gilded Age magnates, the elite have always quantified people — wrapped in language like tradition, virtue, or legacy.
We used to revere kings who fought battles.
Now we applaud billionaires who rent out cities.
Corporations are people too, okay?
It didn’t start in 2010.
Try 1886.
The Supreme Court heard Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad — a property tax case. The court reporter added a headnote — a nonbinding summary — that claimed the Justices agreed corporations had rights under the 14th Amendment.
It defined corporations as people. It gave them the same rights as us.
It became precedent.
No one corrected it. Future courts cited it. And that’s how corporate personhood began — not through law, but through a shortcut.
Boogied right into trickle down disease speak
The ‘70s and ‘80s didn’t just bring bell bottoms and cocaine. They brought policy shifts that danced their way into every corner of American life — especially who got to speak loudest with their dollars.
Buckley v. Valeo (1976) said money equals speech.
First National Bank v. Bellotti (1978) said corporations can speak too — even if they don’t vote.
They didn’t rewrite the Constitution. They just nudged it. One ruling at a time. One case. One loophole.
Until the rich weren’t lobbying — they were legislating.
From PAC to supervillain: the birth of Super PACs
By the 2000s, the dam was cracking. PACs were already muddying elections.
Big donors found creative ways to bend the rules. Transparency was optional. Influence was for sale.
But 2010 allowed these workarounds to mutate.
Citizens United v. FEC didn’t invent corruption — it made it constitutional.
The ruling said corporations and unions could spend unlimited money on political ads — as long as they weren’t coordinating directly with candidates.
We birthed the devil’s preferred career path: lobbying.
It was a green light for billionaires to buy megaphones.
A few months later, SpeechNow.org v. FEC took it further: It ruled that independent expenditure-only committees — what we now call Super PACs — could accept unlimited donations.
No caps.
No accountability.
No clear line between influence and ownership.
And just like that — money didn’t just talk. It screamed.
We lit the fire — then called it freedom
Citizens United wasn’t a hostile takeover. It was a form signed in ink and indifference.
Not with violence — with votes.
With apathy.
Bane never gave the detonator to the people. He pretended to — just like the system pretends your vote or voice matters.
It was an act. The illusion of control.
The real power stayed in his hands the whole time.
That’s the same trick Citizens United pulled.
It looked like freedom.
But it was a rigged detonator from the start.
A spark next to gasoline.
And so tell me… does the fire rise?