yep.....

So you're going with apathy then? Make up your mind already!

Krass... you're killing me. The thing is, I agree with your gist%u2013 much more so in this specific post than your others. But your lunatic-on-a-soapbox, buckshot approach is making it hard for me.

You portray a system where there is no definitive way out (BTW, we can very easily not buy new cars, play video games and eat at McDonalds, but your point is taken). No matter what choices we make, so long as we are living in this system we support it regardless of how much we would prefer to see it run otherwise. I tend to agree with this.

You posit, as far as I can tell (correct me if I'm mis-paraphrasing) that a government that is honest about its transgressions against its people and the world is better than one that makes the same transgressions but cloaks them in sugar-coated lies. I can see no advantage to the honest yet shitty government scenario. The net effect is the same, it's just that we're not duped. Equally as impotent to change anything, but we're not duped. I'm sure that would create its own frustrations and complexities.

On the other hand, that might be enough for Americans to actually fucking do something.

actually you hit the nail right on the head.

I wish I could paraphrase as well as you do, but yes this is exactly what I was trying to say. if i am going to take part in a shitty government at least an honest shitty government would be (IN MY OPINION) better than a dishonest shitty government.

This is slightly off topic. I ask it all seriousness, though.

it amazes me what happened (or, I should say, "didn't" happen) following the non-election of Bush in 2000. In any other nation there would have been riots in the streets for months after, if not a revolution.

This feeling is similar to my feeling on why we don't have universal healthcare. Any of the nations typically cited that do have UHC have all of the same forces that would otherwise impede the development of UHC (pharmaceutical companies, greedy politicians, capitalism), but were able to overcome these forces.

What is it about the US that blocks us from rioting when massive offenses against our liberties have been made? What's wrong with us and our system that makes us different from other western and industrialized nations that have been able to implement fully functioning UHC programs?

I've picked the 2000 election debacle and UHC as my talking points here, but there's a whole host of topics that are applicable here. There's something evidently very unique and, in my opinion, very sinister about the US that prevents these impulses that thrive in other similar nations. What is it?

This is a bit of a sidenote, but anyone with any insight on this, please run it by me. Hopefully I haven't heard your particular take on it yet and it'll all of the sudden make perfect and rational sense to me.

*sigh*...

Responding to the author of this blog (and not having taken time to read everyone's comments): I understand and share your disgust and exasperation. Totally.

But has it not occurred to many of us already that perhaps these cowardly Democrats do indeed have spines to stand up for "what they believe in"? - Only that what they believe in is not what they claim they represent or believe in. The only people who should feel at all surprised by such apparent enablement (if not outright collusion, as I would prefer to see it) are those among us who still think that the two-party system in fact represents two separate interests (that is to say, the Dems ought to speak for 'us' the people whereas the GOP is for the big guys with money and power). If this was ever true, I'll leave it to someone better versed in American history to say when that was the case... but I don't think it's been so for a long time (I can't cite specific references, but Chomsky gives plenty of instances where Bill Clinton's policies and directives were more aligned with corporate and military interests than with human needs and the public good).

Bush has pulled the spectrum of mainstream accepted politics so far to the right in the past six years, with the Dems following closely along, that what passes as 'liberal' today = what was rightwing conservative in Nixon's era. And the vast majority of the relatively small portion of the populace who bother to vote still keep falling for the 'lesser of two evils' argument when ballot time comes because we don't dare abandon the Dems who have long since abandoned us, for fear of letting the more objectionable party take control. We keep believing what the Dems say only because we want to believe them (and we're conditioned to by the mainstream corporate media).

I feel like my point here is so obvious that I'm a bit foolish for even pointing it out. These 'spineless' Dems who betray us again and again have nothing to fear come election time, because we're so stupid we'll likely vote them in again just to prevent the horrible Republicans from winning... or if they do fall from popularity, the Democratic Party will find some other say-one-thing-and-do-another corporate collusionist to run in their place, and we'll vote for their replacements, believing what they say and expecting them to represent our interests and convictions... and the current Dems who fall from favor will get cushy corporate jobs from all the big-money lobbyists who they served during their tenure in office, with nothing to worry about.

Democratic officeholders like Feingold (or Barbara Lee, or Kucinich) who speak out against their compatriots' desertion of their voting base are tolerated and encouraged insofar as they number in a small enough minority that their votes cannot determine public policy, and their personal integrity lends a veneer of integrity to their party in general.

I'm voting Green in the next election(s) and I encourage everyone who feels betrayed by the Dems to defect. If it means the GOP wins and takes the nation and the world further and faster down the shithole, then that's what the majority needs in order to wake up and rise up and abandon this sinking ship of a sham of a democracy and act decisively to create something of valor and integrity outside the box of two-party politics (and established dualistic notions of 'liberal v conservative' and other misleading dichotomies).

I don't think anybody is arguing that it's fun to deal with a government as dirty as the American government. But that doesn't excuse us as citizens from excluding ourselves in pure disgust.

We're can only expect a government as good as the care and thought that [Americans] are willing to put into it. Apathy (which seemed to be you're argument, 'what's the point of participation, might as well ride it out to the end' (and I'm paraphrasing)) allows corrupt to run rampant.

As bad as things are now, it could be a lot worse, and we have those willing to give a shit thanks.

Fair enough. Let's prop up a candidate for the newly formed "Just as Shitty as the Other Guys, but Honest" Party. I think their animal party symbol should be ALF in s shoulder-shrugging pose.

ok this is great. My point about politics being crap is no better illustrated by anything anyone else has ever said.

What is this? What am I talking about?

this is someone taking a small piece of something someone said and trying to misconstrue it to mean something else. Politicians who have been resoundingly shut down, or fear that they are being shut down, do this all the time. So do lawyers sometimes.

I rest my case, thank you for sticking your foot in your mouth for me. I didn't really want to keep sticking mine it it, I am getting sick of washing your saliva off of my toes.

and no I was not actually trying to bait you, you did this all on your own and you did a spectacular job.

here is your gold star.

That's a very interesting question, which I've addressed before... some of the answers to that take us down the rabbit hole so to speak, but author Barbara Marciniak has written perceptively about this circumstance. It is indeed 'very sinister'...

oh oh my turn at quoting bits,

so this makes it ok to continue lying and killing for those lies?

now who is being apathetic.

Some of those dead soldiers were family of friends of mine, how do you think they feel knowing their family was sent to die for a lie?

BINGO!

Amen man amen

this is so right on the money I could kiss you....erm not that i will. You get my point, and people like patricky and kungfoo WHO ARE TRAPPED IN THIS VERY THING will constantly outcry against and belittle those those who know the truth and accept it!

Once again, I didn't say your politics are crap. I'm saying your original argument is crap. How could anybody read that and now come away with an opinion of; "this guy doesn't give a shit"?

It's also pretty pathetic on your part that you keep dissolving the debate to personal attacks. It cheapens the CE forum and I'll flag the next one.

I'm making an argument for those progressives that gave a shit and that's apathy? Talk about misconstruing. And I don't know how you got the idea that I'm for the war in any way? But I guess you're generalizing me as a Democrat or a Republican.

BTW, I'm a 8 year OIF/OEF military veteran and a IVAW member, and I have a close family member in Baghdad, Iraq right now, so don't go waving that shit in my face.

Honestly, I think you're mad you got called out on your initial post and not you're just trying to defend yourself and the subsequent posts lie in miscommunication.

OMG I almost pissed myself, this is pure genius i love it!

But who should we prop up for the running?

Thank you for that, Shapeshifter. My third eye has just been squeegeed (man, I fucking miss Bill Hicks).

Seriously, I can get down with all of that. I, too, believe that these meta-mechanisms are in place to control our thought and to convince us that our thoughts are our own.

Which brings me to my catch-22: if this system has created us and cultivated us through our lifetimes, wouldn't this same system allow for dissenters? That is to say, in such a powerful and far-reaching system, those who rebel must also serve the system's purposes for they were created and allowed to stray farther from the fold just as the most obedient one stays on the course he was given.

If I started an avalanche of meta-discussion, my apologies to those of you who wanted to stay more on topic.