Norman Solomon: Too Big to Fail and Too Small to Matter

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/17367

Too Big to Fail and Too Small to Matter
by Norman Solomon | September 23, 2008



These times provide a crash course on the corporate state:

If a company like AIG is too big to fail, the government will rescue it. Mere people -- too small to matter -- are expendable.

The insurance industry is too big to fail. A person’s health is too small to matter, so -- when it fails due to the absence or loopholes of insurance coverage -- that’s tough luck.

The Defense Department is too big to fail. The people it’s killing in Iraq and Afghanistan are too small to matter.

The U.S. nuclear arsenal is too big to fail. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, undermined by Washington, is too small to matter.

Overall, the warfare state is too big to fail. The virtues of peace are too small to matter.

snip//

Such priorities and mindsets are in overdrive at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street. But a basic shift in government priorities is possible. That’s what happened three-quarters of a century ago, when a progressive upsurge prevented the re-election of President Herbert Hoover -- and then effectively mobilized to pressure the new occupant of the White House.

After campaigning in 1932 on a middle-of-the-road Democratic platform, Franklin Roosevelt went on to become a president who denounced the “economic royalists” and made common cause with working people and the unemployed. People across the country organized for social change. In the process, you might say, the power of progressive movements became too big to fail.

Something like that could happen again.

[Cronopio]

1. Like Laurie Anderson said in "Home of the Brave".

The problem with "0" and "1" is that there isn't enough space between them for the rest of us.