Democracy's Future

The Koch brothers funded the Tea Party. This early effort reflected too closely the Neanderthal approach of the Kochs, and future efforts will be less outrageous and campy-anger  and gun-kitsch.
Corporate Communications will extend far beyond the present primitive FOX efforts. Successful as they are, they are as crude and tentative as the early motion pictures, and demonstrate a slavish devotion to Politics - just as early films were still uncomfortably bound to the traditions of the stage -  but the Future will see Politics subservient to the Corporate Individuals: the democracies of the future will have Corporates as their citizens.

Corporate entities - not necessarily companies that "produce" consumer goods and utilities - will become more enmeshed in politics and will go beyond the present method of funding candidates, parties, and lobbying efforts. The extension of "personhood" to corporate entities is picking up speed, and will accelerate.
The reason for this increase is the obvious fact that the Government of the USA has been pretty much rendered an invalid for the foreseeable future. The Military and Intelligence divisions of the Government will continue robustly - although not necessarily "successful" in any sense other than continued existence - as a sort of quasi-independent arm of government, but other government services will be handicapped.

Perhaps these other functions, such as maintenance of infrastructure and social welfare, will  be taken up by corporate entities. Notice that we do not say "privatized". The notion of "privatization" is a concept whose time has long passed; corporate entities will not evolve according to those quaint notions of "private"  versus "public". Those are ideas best left on cable TV, the trash bin of ideas.

I can not say whether this extension of the individual from one person to a corporate nature will be good or bad from the stand point of society. It may be beneficial.
From the stand point of religion and morality, the change from emphasis on the individual to the communal corporate entity will be revolutionary.

However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Rome would not have fallen had it possessed corporate entities of sufficient strength and will to continue existence. The tyrrany of the Empire destroyed the independence of any possible corporates in the long run.
If Iraq had indeed been a cake walk, and had the Financial Sector not self-destructed, the history of the American Empire would have gone very differently, and Government would have grown strong indeed. But that is not what has happened.
The Future - I say again - is in our hands. It will not go back to what it was; that has been quite adequately destroyed by a couple generations of ham-handed yet efficient destructors. Now for better or worse, we have to create the Future.