I was at a conference having to do with poor women being affected by the relationship between poor countries and rich countries. A woman from one of the islands south of the US, at the end of her talk, when she seemed to feel she could speak a bit more freely than at the beginning, said, "You have to understand. The people who run things aren't smart. They are stupider than you can imagine. They have so much power that they don't have to be smart."

I've noticed sometimes the idiocy of people with big power in the whole thing, and thought that somehow if there are smart people who don't like the set-up, we should be able to be smart in a way that makes a real difference.

It's clearly difficult. If you've grown up in any kind of privilege at all, working against the whole set up is like going from going downhill with just enough wind at your back to be helpful to going up a steep hill with a hard cold wind in the face.

The sheer struggle makes it hard to think at all, much less think in a different way that might lead to a different outcome.

--It surely would be good to quote the speaker by name. A conference, a small conference on that topic held at UC Berkeley in the nineteen nineties before all was listed on the Web. Maybe there's a way to find her name. It hasn't occured to me yet. Also, to quote her, by name I'd need to ask her to do so. Though it was a public event, in was a small public event, and I think she only said what she said because she felt more comfortable than she expected to with the exact people who were there.

It's such a basic scary idea that is thought so much more than said. These people running stuff are unimaginably idiotic. It should create an opening. That they are sometimes unimaginally willing to be vicious creates a pause in saying or acting on the raging dumbness.]