"The powers that ruled him had not fitted him with a knapsack, any more than they had fitted him with a future—or even a present. The destitute Englishman, so far from hoping to become anything, had never been allowed even to be anything....for the English it was the bottom rungs that were knocked out, so that they could not even begin to climb. And sooner or later, in exact proportion to his intelligence, the English plutocrat began to understand not only that the poor were impotent, but that their impotence had been his only power.The truth was not merely that his riches had left them poor; it was that nothing but their poverty could have been strong enough to make him rich. It is this paradox, as we shall see, that creates the curious difference between him and every other kind of robber."G. K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils
This is the heart of the problem, why there has been no significant reform, no meaningful programs of infrastructure rebuilding, and why the US is suffering this mysterious, secular stagnation.
Part of it is the credibility trap. How can long time insiders talk meaningfully about reform, when they were very much a part of the things, the changes, the repeal of long time safeguards and reforms from the past that created the problems?
They thought they were voting for change, and instead the two party system gave them another stooge of Big money. And the Congress, despite record low approval ratings, does not seem all that concerned. How can this be?
Big money owns Washington, and they like things exactly the way that they are.
