[WS:] I would not go that far (but I agree with the rest of your posting.) I've seen a lot of people pissed off at banks and fat cats.
The problem is not whether they are angry, but how they vent that anger - by kicking a dog, so to speak, instead of standing up to the boss. Most Americans are in the pockets of banks and corporations - one paycheck away from homelessness. So instead of risking their jobs and their way of life by barking at banks and corporations, they bark at safe targets - the government and the immigrants. It is relatively safe. And if some of them get really angry, they go postal.
Wojtek
On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 2:57 PM, Somebody Somebody
<philos_case at yahoo.com> wrote:
> CB: Truly. The fundamental irrationality in this general American way of thinking is that on the one hand the economy is a natural event entirely beyond human control, yet they blame the government (made up of humans) for its failures. If any human are controlling it , it is the corporations, who should therefore be blamed for crises. This is one of those irrationalities that are immune to logical refutation, which is a sort of secular superstition or prejudice ( cue Ted Winslow)
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> Somebody: The other thing that amazes me is the very common view that corporations can legitimately do anything legal so long as it's profitable. In some other countries, there are, or were until recently, quaint notions of corporate responsibility and noblesse oblige. Not here.
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> That's part of the reason U.S. executives can receive 20 times the salary of European or Japanese executives, for instance. It's also why the idea that corporate campaign donations and paid-for political advertisements are protected free speech is relatively uncontroversial.
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> Consider the common criticism of the Obama administration for the so-called bank bailout (which of course was initiated under Bush, but we can't expect people to remember back that far). Americans don't think through the implications of the belief that the government is spending their tax dollars on propping up the big financial institutions. If that were the case, wouldn't it suggest that it was big finance that was pulling the government's strings and not the other way around? Then, whey aren't people at least calls for more SEC prosecutions, congressional hearings, and so on? No, of course, it doesn't even occur to most people that the banks and other major corporations could possibly be held account for anything they do.
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