If you think that governmental corruption comes from the middle management area then you are naive. Upper level corporate powers now control the government, establish regulatory bodies, finance foreign wars abroad and their idea of "freedom" is domination and control over your mind and labor.

As to independent thought, this is not greatly prized in America today but gone after as seditious. Whistle-blowers are criminalized by those who standto make money (Cui bono), the big companies that pay the electoral bills.

American citizens are the frog in the boiling water, soon to be cooked by the encroaching
heating level of fascism. It can happen here and is.

"First they came for the whistle-blowers, Bradley Mannings, Julian Assanges, the press .....and independent thought.....(to paraphrase Martin Neimoller).

The idea is to punish those who dissent, digress and cry out for the plight of humanity by distorting the news, controlling the media and beating demonstrators.

Romney is Robocorp and plays right into the game.