You're being sloppy again, mon seignior. Is the Enron scandal "bold and dramatic" or is it "commonplace"? Or is it "bold and dramatic" to hopeful leftists and "commonplace" to everyone else - including pessimistic, unshockable leftists? Or possibly it's "bold and dramatic" *and* "commonplace"? Is that what you're getting at?
The Enron scandel is illustrative. First off, it was the 7th largest company in the most powerful country on the planet in history and second, it was *the* poster-child for financial deregulation and hence a buttress to everyone's favorite intellectual contagion, neo-liberalism.
<sarcasm>Of course, all of us battle-hardened, experienced lefties know that there's nothing new under the sun and that the battles over governmental regulation and campaign finance reform are merely sideshows. </sarcasm>
I guess we can put Carrol down on the "nothing will come of this" side of the ledger. I'll be courageous and argue that we'll have to wait and see what the Democrats do with this gift horse. Perhaps this scandal will help the Dems take the House this year and then Shrub will keep the White House in 2004?
I'm hopeful that this scandal will slowdown the push to privatize Social Security. It will certainly raise the cynicism level in the citizenry. It's up to us on the left to use/change that cynicism to create a political movement. The trick is how to do that. I doubt it involves the repititious spouting of uninspiring, drab dogma and the dampening of any and all enthusiasm encountered.
Peter
PS (somewhat) new things under the sun department: (a) Republican administration allocates billions in food stamps to legal immigrants who are non-citizens. (b) Repubican administration expropriates/nationalizes part of the private sector (airport security) (c) Europe has a single currency PPS looks like Pakistan and India will "exchange" nuclear weapons. That would be new, more or less, but alas just another instance of the destructiveness of capitalism