Get on board...

The New York Times, via Timothy Egan, tries to capture the country's mood. Show that they too, who so often scorn smallness and simplicity, get it:

(C)onsider the consequence of a huge oil leak. If the crew of Apollo 13 had failed, they would have lost their lives. BP had only to look at Exxon. After the worst oil spill in American history, Exxon spent nearly two decades trying to game a legal system that should have brought them to within an inch of their corporate life.

In the end, Exxon prevailed. The Supreme Court of John Roberts, a compliant pet of the corporate world, ruled for Big Oil. The original jury award of $5 billion ended up being around $500 million — a few days’ earnings. Exxon flourished beyond its dreams, reporting in 2008 the largest annual profit for an American company in history.

Similarly, the Wall Street titans who crashed the American economy did not go to jail, or even give up their gilded cocoons. They were rewarded with federal bailouts, and by Christmas of last year, bonuses were back, as if nothing had happened.

It’s not too late to reverse this trend. Congress could pass the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act, which would raise liability caps in a spill from the laughable level of $75 million to $10 billion. That would sting. There is a real possibility that BP could go bankrupt. That would set off alarms in every boardroom. And somebody on Wall Street might still see the inside of a prison.

What’s needed is the return of a basic law of nature, the one used by those Apollo heroes to get home: gravity.

Gravity. The gravity of a situation. That's a word akin to passion, showing you know how to set priorities and take the right tone in leading the way forward.

Because unlike earlier pundits who made light of the situation, how can you expect the corporate people to even try and do the right thing, if they know how easily we're willing to throw up our hands and give up? "Whoop -- nothing we can do. Just the natural consequences of mis-taken risks..."

Look where that kind of attitude has gotten us thus far. All of us, not the select few.