The managements of large
corporations attempt and, I submit, often succeed at keeping the most
financially threatening alternatives in public policy off the public’s radar by
pressuring media and using public relations campaigns. As U.S. president Obama’s
health-insurance proposal was being debated in Congress, health insurance
companies deftly either kept the single-payer proposal off the media’s
discussion or relegated the policy as radical. This term, if stuck to a
proposed policy, is the kiss of death in a society of incremental change. Such
change, if the only game in town, can unfortunately come to be viewed as
constituting major change. The gun-control debate in February, 2018 after the shooting
of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida is a case in point.
The full essay is at "The Constricted Debate on Gun Control."
