Marjane Satrapi

Graphic novelist Marjane Strapi was interviewed in April 2005 for Salon Magazine (gated, but the full text is here). She says:

If I have one message to give to the…American people, it's that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian. We don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.

This is a compelling insight. It's especially poignant ("We, the people....") that Ms Satrapi can accurately point to the gap between the American government and American citizens. Big government need not necessarily be a problem in itself, but it tends to come with remote government - which, I believe, is. What's more, big government is self-entrenching. It is comfortable dealing with (and accepting campaign funding from) big corporations. Big business of all sorts enjoys explicit subsidies, as well as a favourable regulatory environment, and the implicit subsidies of a government-funded infrastructure and (often) economic protection. Governments confuse the fortunes of big business with those of the wider economy, and those of the wider economy with those of society. One result is that the individual citizen in most democratic western countries feels as remote from decision making as does the average Iranian citizen.