The Big Takeover
People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they’re not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.
- The Big Takeover by Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone
Hearkening back to On Conspiracies and Theories and The Paranoid Style, there is nothing new or novel about this revelation – a coordinated effort by a few well-connected individuals acting to secure their own interests at the expense of others’ has been the crux of most every conflict throughout history.
Wouldn’t it be novel if we could stop the madness, demand accountability, and inculcate social responsibility into the minds of politicians and citizens alike?
Fat chance…
