As a response to a diary currently on the rec list that says that we are at fault for the catastrophe ongoing in the gulf, Juan Cole at the blog Informed Comment offers a good rebuttal to that argument that is worth your while to read. I'll quote a few of them here, but his major thrust is that, since the Reagan presidency (and even before), corporations and the rich simply have the political and media power to dominate the narrative and thus control our collective thinking. We pissants (my term) are simply facing a unified force that has produced the current problem, and through the years have not responded effectively to prevent such disasters.
The following quote is perhaps the major theme of Professor Cole's essay,
"In fact, it is mostly the fault of Ronald Reagan, who so lowered taxes on the rich that he allowed them to capture almost all the country’s increased wealth since the 1980s, depriving ordinary Americans of any real increase in the standard of living. Since our filthy rich quadrupled their wealth in recent decades but most of you don’t have 4 times as much money in the bank as you used to, you are competing less and less well with the rich for access to and influence with your elected representatives."
He also describes the means the corporations and the rich use to control we peons,
"No, the BP oil volcano in the Gulf of Mexico is not your fault, despite what many pundits will tell you. Back in the 1960s when the environmental movement got going, major US corporations responsible for much of the nation’s pollution decided to fight it by paying for television advertising that urged individuals not to litter, thus implying that pollution is produced by anarchic individuals rather than by organized businesses. It was a crock then and it is a crock now."
This is the final quote I've chosen from an outstanding essay,
"Our new business aristocracy, whether Big Oil or Big Banking, taxes us indirectly by legislative capture, by arranging for bought-and-paid-for politicians to subsidize their industries with public tax monies. There is nothing wrong with being wealthy, and often the wealthy have made key contributions to society. But let us face it. Business classes are interested in short-term profit and seldom think in terms of long-term cost-benefit for society. Having a dynamic business class in a society can be a plus if its focus on short-term gain for the company can be offset by other powerful forces in society– labor unions, NGOs, intellectuals and others. But when the business classes get so they own nearly half the privately held wealth, they can overwhelm everyone else and take society in self-destructive directions– as happened with the Iraq War, the economic collapse in September of 2008 and with the oil rig collapse in April 2010."
This is a powerful and informative statement, and one intended to blunt the lies offered by the media and the rich. Please don't help them out by acting like this is our fault. We did not choose the path we've taken as individuals, but because that was how our economy and society were established by our politicians, and one of Dr. Cole's major points is the politician are the "bought dogs" (what movie did I get that from? I did enjoy it: I remembered, it's from the movie "The Wind and the Lion," a very enjoyable movie that speaks to many of the same issues that this diary attempts to address.)
I do hope you'll visit his website to read the whole article, since it is speaking to many of the same ideas we discuss here.