Re "Mean St. replaces Main St.," Opinion, Oct. 4
Tim Rutten provided an extraordinary moment of clarity about deceptive politicians. Of course, everyone knows that politicians lie -- it's their stock in trade -- so we can hardly feign surprise when they exaggerate their accomplishments or disparage their opponents. What we tend to forget, and what this column reminds us, is that they lie all the time, about nearly everything.
They lied about why we went to war and what might happen if we didn't. They lied about the status of the war in Iraq, just as they lied about Vietnam. They lied to soldiers about how long their tours would be, and to their families about how they were killed.
Now they are lying to us about who we are, with their repeated comparison of Wall Street to a Main Street that no longer exists or may never have existed. Main Street is far more deeply embedded in American myth than American history. If there ever was a place "in which local business and financial institutions (met) local needs according to their own standards," it was, I suspect, a rarity, and it is long gone.
