Mitt Romney was stunned last week that someone in his audience didn't understand that corporations are people, proving once again that somewhere along the way the Republican mindset - once stamped with the image of rugged individualism, around the time of Teddy Roosevelt - has lost its individual recognizing focus.
I remember around 2002, listening to a co-worker repeatedly ticking off the words, like a blissful sigh, "the morality of George Bush." It made her happy to say the words. They were hardly ever part of a conversation. I wondered who had driven the tick into her head. If you listen carefully to what people on the far right are saying, you can pull out the collective ticks very easily. Emphasis on the word COLLECTIVE. Individualism has faded away.
This loss of individualism showed up on the stage of the debate before the Ames Iowa straw poll last week. The moderator asked all candidates to put aside the ticky sound bytes and address the issues. THEY COULD NOT DO IT. Their minds have become cogs in a collective wheel, so when asked to think outside of their message, there's nothing to say.
There are still lots of people out here who know that corporations are not people. A corporation is not the kind of person I want to be.
If you do, lay down on the side of the road. The corporation makes regular pick ups 7 days a week. They'll recycle you into what they want.
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
Howe'er, let me offer a feeble semi-defence of the corps are people thing. First, that's what the word corporation means: making a 'person' out of a (again!) collecti'e. And, as my late husband, who had some unfortunate right-leaning attitudes (tho here in Canada, right is somewhat left of the American left) used to say, corporations are made up of people, and it's those people - employees, stockholders and CEOs [these days, esp. CEOs & their inner circle] who get the $, not some abstract thingy. Trouble is, those people-who-constitute-the-corporation are benefiting at the expense of other people, who don't work for it or own stocks, when the corp. sucks money out of the economy and doesn't put it back (and ships jobs o'seas).
So corporations may be clumps-of-people, but they ha'e undue pri'ileges under the current system.
Last but not least, politicians need to be careful how they speak, and while it could be (feebly) argued, as abo'e, that corporations are people, it's FRIGGING STUPID to say so.
These poor people have so little of substance to justify their positions, they need to delude themselves.
ALMOST makes one ashamed to be picking on them!