Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Just What Are You Thinking?


Maybe you don't want to believe that the deck is stacked. Maybe you don't want to believe that you live in a Predator State. Maybe you don't want to believe that the social scourge of our day, inequality, is a Frankenstein's monster stitched together in Parliament and the legislatures of every province. Maybe you don't want to believe that, through a web of trade deals, tax exemptions and deferrals, grants, subsidies, and access to public assets at minimal cost, they have effected a massive transfer of both economic and political power - that once belonged to you - to a new, very small class of people and corporations. Maybe you don't want to believe that liberal democracy is on the ropes and will be finished off by those you have put in office.

Maybe you just can't hear. Maybe you don't want to hear the reasoned and compelling message of people such as Nobel laureate economist, Joe Stiglitz; or economist James Galbraith, son of John Kenneth Galbraith; or Senator Elizabeth Warren or Robert Reich or lesser known voices trying to warn you that the fix is in and this does not end well. Maybe you hear but don't heed.

Maybe you have become so inured to neoliberalism that you cannot imagine anything else. Maybe you have become so tightly enmeshed with this malignant scam that you think it as immovable as the mountains, as unstoppable as the tides. Maybe a "that's just the way it is" attitude is the best thing that very small class of people has going for it.

Maybe you think this isn't going to get worse if something isn't done to make it get better. Maybe you can't imagine your children and theirs becoming indentured to an illiberal democracy far worse than anything you've known. Maybe you're their last, best chance.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Excellent post Mound!