We Talk, They Act

I’ve blogged before about the ability of people to vote against their own interests, and after reading George Montbiot’s great article in the Guardian, I decided to write about it again. Montbiot has some interesting perspectives that are worth spending a few brain cells pondering.

The simple idea is that the right wing persuades people to fight for things that either don’t affect them, or indeed, harm them. Sample quote:

[The new conservatism] blames the troubles of the poor not on economic forces – corporate and class power, wage cuts, tax cuts, outsourcing – but on cultural forces…The anger of the excluded is aimed instead at gay marriage, abortion, swearing on television and latte-drinking, French-speaking liberals. The working-class American right votes for candidates who rail against cultural degradation, but what it gets when they take power is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

Behead them all

This is a follow-up to my previous post about wasting a good crisis. The Department of the Interior has been corrupted, and Minerals Management Service is perhaps the most corrupt.

You may have heard of Sun Tzu, a Chinese military strategist who lived around 500 BCE and who wrote the classic book, The Art of War. This book got the attention of King Ho Lu who asked Sun Tzu if he could form the king’s concubines into an army. Sun Tzu said he could, and divided the concubines into two armies, each headed by one of the king’s favorite concubines.

When Sun Tzu gave orders, the concubines simply giggled and did not do as instructed. After a couple of attempts, Sun Tzu had the two favorite concubines beheaded. After that, all orders were followed quickly and accurately.

Of course, we can’t behead the people who run MMS, but Obama should fire those in charge while corruption reigned. Obama needs to get the attention of the people who are responsible for running the government departments and show them that it is no longer business as usual. And he needs to get the attention of the American people and show them that his administration is fixing things.