David Corn:"Americans are angry at the financial crisis—just not at the fat cats who caused it."

[brentspeak]

This http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/financial-crisis-wall-street-anger">Mother Jones article tries to answer the question: 'Why aren't The People calling for the banksters' heads?' Lots of interesting reader comments following the piece.

[glowing]

1. Really. Most people I know are calling for their heads.. however, no one listens.

[Go2Peace]

5. I agree, Right and Left, most everyone I know wants indictments

[Turbineguy]

2. The situation is diffused.

I'm pretty sure somebody got at least a Ferrari out of what I lost in my pension fund, but I don't know who.

[jwirr]

3. And that is the key. I don't know who. Most of us know our local banker and

if he is rich it is not the kind of wealth that we are worried about. We also do not know who the stockholders are and if they control it all or if they just own a few stocks. There is a buffer between us and the bigger owners of these banks. As long as that is true there is not a defined target for the anger. Thus it is easier to turn it on the political leaders. They are visible.

[Turbineguy]

4. And what's more

I suspect many in the financial business do not view their bonus as putting people out on the street with a cardboard "please help" sign.

But in a zero sum economic system where no wealth is created, it has to be taken from others.

[asdjrocky]

6. Because middle class America has been taught to worship the rich.

Trust me, there's a lot of poor folk that would like to see their heads on the make believe stake, but you're not likely to see man on the streets interviews conducted in Detroit, or Compton or Stockton.

All the shows on TV are about the rich, or about becoming rich or about the cribs of the rich or the parties of the rich. The newscasters are rich. The politicians are rich. Pretty soon even the muddled class thinks and identifies with the rich. They root for them. A lot of them think they will one day be one of the rich.

The politicians are put into place to give us something to hate and focus our attention on, while the WTO and it's minions rule the world.

Quick, who heads the WTO? See what I mean.

[Goldstein1984]

7. The Middle Class and the American Dream protect the rich

from the poor.

And there is always that chance that the average Joe or Jane can make a fortune overnight by winning a lottery, giving a ride to a hitchhiker who happens to be a wealthy man with a terminal illness and no family, or getting on a game show and winning a million dollars for emptying a box of tissues with one hand or carrying 20 M&Ms from one jar to another on the tip of a straw in 60 seconds or less.

And there is always ESPN and Budweiser to add to the fog of poverty.

I don't think Americans are mad AT the economic meltdown, they're mad ABOUT the economic meltdown, and they are properly mad at the Wall Street clowns who made it happen and the Washington clowns that stood back and let it happen.

[Vinnie From Indy]

8. This is not a difficult question

Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck/Fox News and the rest of the mainstream media spends thousands of hours each week distracting Americans from issues like this. Modern America media has primarily become nothing more than the propaganda arm of the corporate elite. It is not too difficult evidently to distract the crowd. It worked for a while in Rome with "bread & circuses" and now it works in America with American Idol and Survivor.