A thought for the New Year …
Question: “Do you still believe that the people have the power?”
Answer: “I’ll always believe that. I think that they don’t know that. I don’t think that they believe that. And I understand why they don’t believe that, because it’s getting harder and harder and harder to penetrate the walls that are built. The corporate walls. I mean the Bush administration — [a k a the BananaRepublicans, with help from BananaDemocrats] — built such impenetrable walls that, y’know, Obama is, like, he’s chipping away with an ice pick. Y’know? And it’s really difficult. It’s hard to keep heart and keep protesting and keep using your voice, but we have to do that. Ralph Nader taught me a long time ago that we have to not be ready to win when we go out and protest against our government. Or protest war. Or protest Con Edison, or whoever else needs to be protested against. We have to be willing to lose. And lose. And lose. And lose. And lose. But still make certain that we are counted, that the opposition or the people who are oppressing us know that we exist, and be a thorn in their side. And keep poking and poking and poking and poking, until finally they bleed. And that, it seems, is all we can do.”
Postscript: Counterthought from Raymond Chandler … in a prescient letter, written in 1954, remarking on the rise of big corporations:
“The point is and always from now on will be, that beyond a certain point of size and power it is more tyrannical than the state, more unscrupulous, less subject to any kind of inspection, and in that end it destroys the very thing it purports to represent — free competition. It can be benign, charming, friendly and full of charity — when it has won the battle. It is not as ruthless as Big Brother because it is too intelligent to think that fear can make men creative; it can’t, it can only make them assiduous. It is technically subject to government control but that means nothing, because we live in an economy of overproduction and if you chastise a big corporation like Alcoa or the Du Ponts or Standard Oil of New Jersey, they can create a serious unemployment situation overnight.”
