How America REALLY Works - More from Taibbi's Griftopia

[polichick]

"When the economy imploded, the country had for a time been treated to the rare spectacle of a perfectly bipartisan political disaster, with both Republicans and Democrats sharing equally in the decades-long effort at deregulation that opened the door to the Grifter era. And the crisis forced a nation of people accustomed to thinking that their only political decisions came once every four years to consider, for really the first time, the political import of regular or even daily items like interest rates, gasoline prices, ATM fees, and FICO scores.

"The powers that be don't want people thinking about any of these things. If the people must politick, then let them do it in the proper arena, in elections betweeen Wall Street-sponsored Democrats and Wall Street-sponsored Republicans. They want half the country lined up like the Tea Partiers against overweening government power, and the other half, the Huffington Post crowd, railing against corporate excess. But don't let the two sides start thinking about the bigger picture and wondering if the real problem might be a combination of the two.

"Americans like their politics simple, but Griftopia is as hard as it gets - a huge labyrinth of financial rules and bylaws within which a few thousand bankers and operators bleed millions of customers dry using financial instruments that are far too complex to explain on the evening news. Navigating this mess requires a hell of a lot of effort and attention, and few politicians in either party have any appetite at all for helping ordinary people make that journey. In fact, the situation is just the opposite: they'd rather we latched on to transparently stupid Band-Aid explanations for what happened in 2008, blaming it on black homeowners or bad luck or a few very bad apples in companies like AIG.

<snip>

"This is how America works. Our real government is mostly kept hidden from view, and the truly weighty decisions about where our society is going and what rules it is going to live by are made mostly in private, by groups of anonymous lawyers and bureaucrats and lobbyists, government officials and industry reps alike."


GRIFTOPIA, pgs 245-247 (bold emphasis by op)
http://www.amazon.com/Griftopia-Machines-Vampire-Breaking-America/dp/0385529953


I finished Taibbi's well-researched but very readable book today, and highly recommend it to those willing to give up any illusions about who our "leaders" actually serve. All week I've been thinking about the longtime success of "divide and conquer" - if the culture wars are kept alive, the people won't unite against the real powers-that-be. GRIFTOPIA covers a lot more than the recent financial collapse, also taking a close look at the cynical dealing behind the health insurance bill and other scams perpetrated by both parties. More than ever, I think the only hope this country has is for people to say no to "divide and conquer" tactics and join in a populist movement to restore government of, by and for the people - and even then, it'll be a long shot. Hopefully, the Democratic Party will have a role to play in such a movement - WHAT ROLE is anybody's guess.

[TomClash]

1. Excellent book

Well worth the snappy read.

[polichick]

2. So glad someone else here has read it! nt

[Supersedeas]

3. big pictures are hard to come by these days