More Reason For Anger

As a sort of supplement to the other day's thoughts on why we're angry, let's add another; the Supreme Court decision to allow corporations to spend all they want on elections. We're back to the libertarian idea of the best regulation is no regulation, the same basic idea that has helped put the economy in the tank. There has been some bipartisanship on the overall issue of campaign finance, with Senator John McCain being in the forefront of reform and limitations on spending by powerful interests, so this isn't just a liberal or Democratic idea. In fact, if I remember right, President Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, strongly supported restrictions on spending by corporations on political campaigns about a hundred years ago. And taking corporate money is a bipartisan issue, too, with candidates in both parties grabbing what they can, although there's no question that Republicans tend to benefit much more from business interests, but there's also no question, the system is already tied up by special interest money. So folks, if you were angry at the banks and other businesses before, you'll have much more to be angry about now, and even more once the election campaign kicks off in the late summer. Everywhere you turn, big corporations dominate. The corporate powers are not afraid of anyone or anything. If you feel powerless, you're not alone, and the conservative members of the Supreme Court have just handed you another blow.

This President missed an opportunity to don the mantel of leadership of the economic populism that was seething when he took office. One of the criticisms of Obama is that while it's nice to have a president who "thinks," it is also nice to have a president who uses his heart, and he can seem distant at times. If he thought that cutting the banks and other bigwigs a break by not firing up the public against them even more would win them over, he's sorely mistaken. They think ONLY of themselves and whatever serves them at the moment. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think the President can totally regain this issue, as to me, that ship has sailed. Franklin Roosevelt, a politician if there ever was one, was not afraid to use the populism spawned by the Depression against the bigwigs. Unlike Obama, Roosevelt was never mistaken for an intellectual, but he had intellectuals advising him, and HE made the calls on how to bring ideas of change to Americans, which often ran counter to what the wealthy interests supported. Many of the wealthy elites hated him, but much of the public LOVED him!

WORD HISTORY:
Anger-This goes back to Indo European "angg/angh," which had the notion of "narrow, constricted, tight; and thus also, painful." There were/are various forms of this base in many of the other Indo European languages, for instance Latin "angere," means to "throttle/strangle," and Greek "ankhein" means to "to squeeze/strangle." This base also gave Old Germanic "angus," which was passed on to its offspring, including Old English "enge," which meant "narrow," and also "painful, distressed." It seems the North Germanic Norse brought "angr" (from the same Old Germanic base) with them to England (the Danes), and their meaning for the word was "to grieve," but also "to provoke, to cause distress." That latter meaning then took hold in England and has developed into our modern meaning. German and Dutch, very close relatives of English, both have "eng," still meaning "narrow."