That was good and I shudder to think about it, yet I think about it all the time. There is no stopping this Monster.
When we think we have made some headway, in getting something stopped, we say yippeeeeee, we did it. Not SO., for they have come up with a more sinister mode to continue on with their madness. It's not until years later we find out we have been screwed again.
Billy Graham years ago said the Government is like an Octapus with many tentacles. Which is by design, so that no one entity takes the blame and all cover for the other. Not our fault, look over there.
Example right now: Benghazigate....Fiscal Cliff...Obamacare...make the fiasco so large, continue to throw more and more confusion in our way until we give up. Mission Accomplished. Peons will settle down now and get on with the task of paying what they tell us to pay.
There is no way to stop any of this, never will be.
politics and venality have always been conjoined in our history. Even at the founding of the Republic there was plenty of shady dealings . The following book is a detailed biography of one noted profiteer , William Bingham, Senator from Pennsylvania .and President pro tempore of the United States Senate;
The Golden Voyage: The Life and Times of William Bingham, 1752-1804 , by
Robert C. Alberts, The level of corruption in US politics in the 19th century is proverbial and a good look at it can be gained from another book, ‘The Era of Good Stealings’ by Mark Summers. The difference is that even after the War Between the States the reach of government was still quite limited and while tax payers were defrauded and abused by politicians and government at every level it had a very limited impact unless one was an Indian. What seems to have happened is that the era of global war and the Cold War forced some sort of social discipline onto government and business and these two players did do more than just pay hypocritical lip service to a sort of social contract. The end of the Cold War released American corporate and political leaders from this implicit bargain that while they ruled and profited the actions of government and the economy were in some way tempered with a degree of public spiritedness. The absence of this enforced discipline has returned the culture to what it was before. Unfortunately the reach and impact of government is now truly extensive and profound so that the endless manipulation and corrupt practices by capital, labor and government have a real negative impact. No one in the public culture will discuss the consequences of a general loosening of standards of the permitted. Rank and file Americans only note the brute impact of a decadent and increasingly dysfunctional public culture. The cause of these impacts is not widely understood.