Friend and civil rights attorney Bennet D. Zurofsky wrote on Facebook today in response to this picture,
I saw this posted on Facebook this morning and found its irony overwhelming.
The bald eagle would likely be extinct right now if the government had not imposed strict environmental regulations against DDT and other poisons that were killing them off. The government also greatly increased the protection of bald eagles by declaring them an endangered species and by engaging in a wide variety of programs to both conserve and increase their population and habitat. If I were a bald eagle, therefore, I most certainly would trust the government.
As a citizen, I trust big government a whole lot more than I trust big corporations. Indeed, government and unions are the only things that ordinary people have available to them to fight against the abuses of corporate power and the plutocrats who are now running the country. The biggest problem with government is that the corporate plutocrats have way too much influence over what it does (and doesn’t) do. Our big struggle is to make government responsive to the needs of ordinary people rather than to corporations and the rich.
The bald eagle is a great symbol of how wonderful government can be when it works properly.