Corporate-state systems have long employed the mantra “do it for the children” to propagandize on behalf of public acceptance of increased politicization of their interests. The chairman of BP may have expanded on this idea in asserting that “we care about the small people” in their corporate policies. When I first saw this report, I thought that the chairman might have just seen The Wizard of Oz, and was commenting on the Munchkins!
While a BP official tried to pass off the remark as only “a slip in translation,” the “slip” may have been more Freudian than purely linguistic. Perhaps his comment reflected — at an unconscious level — the innate division that separates institutional from human purposes. That distinction was not lost on some Gulf area residents, one of whom stated “BP does not care about us. . . .We are the nickel-and-dime folks of this world.” Another stated: “We are not small people. We’re human beings. They’re no greater than us. We don’t bow down to them. We don’t pray to them.”
By their very natures, institutions have always regarded those subject to their will as “small people,” as “children” whose interests are to be looked after by more dominant systems. Members of the aristocracy used to toss ”nickels-and-dimes” to the common folk, as their carriages rolled through the streets. The means of transportation have greatly changed, but the same hierarchical mindset remains, albeit at an unconscious level.
