Hostages of the Government (And the NFL)

America likes football. I know I do.  I would desperately miss the 2011 NFL season. Fortunately, it looks like its going to happen. Players are supposed to vote tomorrow and approve the deal on the table.  Which is great.


Go Packers.


Anyway, I was reading this article on ESPN and I think it's amazingly level-headed. (Probably due in part to the fact that ESPN writers have no obligation to be partisan.)


Like this section:

Sitting here in the corner with the wool pulled down over our eyes, listening to strangers whisper urgently about money and what desperate things they'll do if they don't get it, it's easy to feel like a hostage. Being held for ransom is now the normal state of things for the citizen-consumers of America.

Whether we're talking about the National Football League or the national debt as political football, we've long since surrendered ourselves into the abject care of madmen.

 My point here is that Jeff MacGregor, the author, is right. For the most part, as citizens, we seem to be held hostage by the politicians and businessmen of the country.  I think the responsibility falls on us though.  We need to be more active in day to day operation of our country. Because right now, this quote rings remarkably true:

In what can only be called history's worst case of Stockholm syndrome, not only do we continue to believe deeply in our captors and the institutions and fictions they represent but we go so far as to pay our own ransom. Again and again and again.

It's a brilliant article. Read the whole thing. 


Then help me figure out how we start to wrestle back control of our collective future.