Hoist on our own placards…

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So, further to the last several posts… why aren’t more Americans protesting the pass-through of bail-out money as bonuses to the financial executives whose deeds are effectively indistinguishable for those of Madoff or Drier?  Why are we not storming the halls of health insurers who stir opposition to reform in the name of free markets, but collude with the immunity of anti-trust exemption?

Why instead are so many marching against reform, waving placards and asserting “facts”– death panels and the like– that simply are not facts?

Why are so many of us acting against our own best interests and those of our society?

Perhaps (as was so often the case) W.H. Auden nailed it:

We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.

Surely, it is time to climb.

(Thanks to my friend Houston Spencer for his reminder of the quote.)