Ignoring The Problem

At “Informed Comment” I commented in response to a post by Juan Cole regarding the bailout of banks which he regards, quite properly, as a sellout of the people. My comment was to the effect that we should be aiming our protest at the legislators who perpetrated the sellout of the people, not the banks who benefited from it, and the response was entirely negative.

“Diffuse the issue, cloud it by pointing fingers at Also Unindicted [sic] Co-Conspirators,” said one response. “The government is just bought property, sir. The beneficiaries are not passive or innocent,” said another and, “Oh, yee [sic] defender of banks,” was the beginning of the third.

It seems that the vast majority of progressive/liberal activism simply does not care about malfeasance in government but has focused on a cause that consists entirely of a bitter enmity against “the Wall Street rich” and an undying determination either to punish them or to make them less rich. Suppose that such effort was successful. Suppose that Wall Street in its entirety was demolished, with every bank and every financial house burned to the ground. Suppose that every person employed in any capacity in every one of those institutions, right down to the secretaries, were thrown in prison. What would we have left?

We would still have the corrupt legislators taking bribes from weapons manufacturers, taking bribes from the health insurance industry, taking bribes from the ship building industry, taking bribes from highway contractors, taking bribes from the oil industry, taking bribes from the drug industry, taking bribes from overseas reconstruction companies, taking bribes from security companies, taking bribes from subcontractors to the Army Corps of Engineers, taking bribes from communications companies… The list is all but endless.

We would have eliminated the beneficiary of a $1 trillion bailout which is the cause celebre’ today, but we would still have a vast array of industries throwing billions of dollars in bribes at corrupt legislators to steal trillions of dollars of taxpayer money every year endlessly into the future.

President Obama pointed his finger at Wall Street because they were an easy target, an easy way to divert attention from the cesspool of corruption which is our government, the government of which he is the Chief Executive. He promised to clean up this cesspool, and all he has done is participate in the climate of corruption and point a finger of distraction, a distraction swallowed whole by his loyal sycophants.