Reply #11: The things you cite can be made relevant

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The common denominator is corporate power. Get people thinking about that, and you can take them anywhere.

Start by pointing out how the corporations want to control everything they see and hear, charge them through the nose for the privilege, wipe out anything they might enjoy which won't make the corporations a buck, and prevent effective control of any nuisance (like telemarketing or spam) that promotes corporate profits.

Then go from there to issues of clean air and water and other ways in which the quality of life has been increasingly degraded because of corporate control.

Then from there to corporate control over the government, and how the corporations may have undue influence over most of our elected officials but the Bush administration is completely indistinguishable from the corporations. How all its policies -- energy, Medicare, taxes -- are crafted to benefit the corporations at the expense of ordinary people. How the real war on terrorism is being neglected so they can wage a phoney war on Iraq that helps only the oil companies and Halliburton.

If they try to argue with you about the free market, tell them the market isn't free -- that corporate control prevents normal market mechanisms from operating, because they would tend to produce real competition and drive down profits.

If they talk about individual freedom, tell that that freedom for corporations comes only at the expense of freedom for real people, and that it's not possible to have both.

In the current climate, focusing the discussion on the functions of government plays into the hands of conservatives and know-nothings, because nobody likes the government. But if you focus it on corporations -- and especially on corporate power and corruption -- we hold all the cards.