"… Congress represents the constituency of the frightened rich—not the will or the spirit of what was once a democratic republic but the interest of a scared and selfish oligarchy anxious to preserve its comforts in the impregnable vaults of military empire. The grotesque maldistribution of the country’s wealth over the last thirty years has brought forth a class system fully outfitted with the traditional accessories of complacency, stupidity and pride. People supported by incomes of $10 or $15 million dollars a year not only mount a different style of living than those available to an income of $50,000 or even $150,000, they acquire different habits of mind—reluctant to think for themselves, afraid of the future, careful to expatriate their profits in off shore tax havens, disinclined to trust a new hairdresser or a new idea, grateful for the security of gated residential protectorates, reassured by reactionary political theorists who say that history is at an end and that if events prove otherwise (angry mobs rising up in the Third World slums to beg a chance at freedom or demand a piece of the action) America will send an army to exterminate the brutes…
It’s conceivable that we might soon see a change in the program. The American citizenry isn’t as dumb as the American elites condescendingly like to think and believe, and if it can be generally understood that an ill conceived war with Iraq comes to us courtesy of the same feeble-mindedness that set up the Enron and WorldCom swindles, we might learn to elect politicians, who speak to our courage and intelligence rather than our weakness and fear.
From 'Hail Caesar' by Lewis Lapham, Harper’s December 2002"