Greek Mythology, American Reality

Once upon a time, but not that long ago, a country was founded by some folks who wanted to throw off the yoke of monarchy and see if they could create a democracy or at least a republic of the people, by the people, and for the people.
It grew steadily for two centuries until it became the world’s leading country and leader of the free world. At the time it assumed this lofty status, it also declared that a thing called a corporation could be considered a person and would acquire some of the same rights and privileges that a real person in that society already had. These special “persons,” who had been mere corporations before they were blessed with personhood, began to grow and grow to such gigantic proportions that they began to assume positions in that culture that rivaled the powers of mythological gods of Ancient Greece, had those ancient gods been real.
Unlike those great titans of old, these new “gods” who claimed the status of persons but who were often faceless, unless they were called before Congress, grew in real power to such a great degree that they began to rule not only the country that spawned them but the world itself. Politicians around the world and especially in the homeland of these neo-titans began to serve the titans rather than the people. Eventually the former world nations acquired new names such as, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Exxon-Mobil, Pfizer, Halliburton, Health One, and even General Motors.
Some real people feared these titans and believed that they were conspiring to take over the world, but the reality was they were simply doing what they were born to do: make lots of money for their handlers and followers and eliminate the competition, usually by swallowing them whole.
The real people continued to worship their ancestral gods and prayed that these new “gods” would stop the warring or collapse of their own weight but they were too big to fail. Or they worshipped the products these new gods offered instead of praying to the old gods. Enough privileged real people kept betting on them and reaped great dividends until there were no more resources that the gods could extract.
Finally, these titans fouled their planet to the extent that it was no longer habitable to human kind and the planet died. All that was left was a vast wasteland of boiling water and desert without any sign of life.

Ozymandias (by Shelley, 1818)
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.