The Smartest Guys in the Room, a film about the Enron scandal, outlines the events leading up to the collapse of Enron, and what has been dubbed as the largest corporate scandal in the history of civilization.
How could these people be so evil? — that was the question I asked myself time and again. My answer? They thought they were right. Enron executives believed in themselves, that they were right. Once they could trick themselves, it was a matter of time before their employees, Wall Street, Investment Bankers and the general public all followed suit. Sound familiar?
Through use of the media and political lobbying, insanely rich people can pretty much execute any agenda they want. Not only that, they can get away with it. Our current administration is a good example of a group of people who actually believe what they are doing is right. George senior, GW, Jeb — all morally questionable, all rich, all powerful — and all right — it’s not a coincidence, people.
So where does everyone’s conscience go? Is it pooling in some black hole of decency and morality somewhere? A Yucca Mountain of shoulda, woulda, coulda but didn’t? What keeps everyone so oblivious to the people they hurt? Why doesn’t everyone use their vote to change this?
The media won’t let us. Like the lone journalist who spoke out against Enron, Jon Stewart continues to be one of the very few who say on a regular basis that something is fucked up here. So when will everyone start paying attention to the truth? Hopefully before the US self-destructs.
Will we learn from the Enron collapse, or will our country share a similar fate?
morgamic 
Interesting words. I would agree on a number of levels with you. In addition to your argument regarding the power of the current powers that be, I would concede that our current political options are in fact no more than pandering to the wealthy. Let’s face it, both sides (red or blue) have their own lords and kings.
The only way to effectively take the iron septor away (IMHO) is to fashion a new party, one that is constructed of those options that we moderates want. I would submit that there are very few individuals who feel that their party acurately represents their desires. Many of us are sick of the party banterings and extremes.
A group of us here in Seattle, WA (fastly growing) are fashioning a Moderate Party. Our platform is a borrowing of issues from both sides. Effecting legislation is one of the strongest powers after all.
We want to legislate laws that break the strangle hold that our current politicians have on fiscal america, namely intellectual property, dependance on fossil fuels, and litigation driven health care. But neither party wants to touch these with a ten-foot-pole. We’ll be posting our platform in the next few months (still working on spelling them out).
Good luck with your party — I hope it gets things moving in the right direction. I also really liked your post about the faith of reason. Very well written, and in many ways relevant to Enron, the White House, etc. Faith is winning again, and reason is suffering.