"A nation that has lost hope can no longer be democratic. What paralysis is to the individual, the listlessness that comes from hopelessness is to the nation."
--Edward A. Filene, President, Economic Club of Boston, March 9, 1905
The genius of the Corporate United States is the thrall of helplessness that steadily wears down and overwhelms its working subjects. The principle stands enshrined in the phrase "Too Big to Fail". I suspect much of the Tea Party's appeal was simply in its call for action, action that was instantly overtaken and exploited by the very powers its advocates either consciously or unconsciously opposed.
It is this festering urge to fight-- the resistance to being frail and uncertain that makes the current Egyptian rebellion so transfixing for those who gave up trying to find change to believe in. The protesters suddenly finding their voices across the Middle East shame us, for we are reminded what the very notion of democracy once used to mean.
Freedom sold for a pottage and a wide-screen TV
Back in 1905, these were the words that thundered from the lips of a Republican President: "Neither this people, nor any other free people will tolerate the use of vast power conferred by vast wealth and especially wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the government a still higher power ..." Theodore Roosevelt condemning the Railroad Monopoly's corporate rebates.
By choosing subservience to amoral profit over idealism and intellectual independence Americans became witless marks for Wall Street's hustle; their "Can-Do Spirit" broken by the malaise that attends both despair and self-aggrandizement, they were left to grovel at the glittering altar of greed. Now, having failed to heed all warnings, like the oppressed of Egypt, their tardy attempts to revive their democracy will demand much blood and sacrifice.
And moral courage
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