Elvis Obama
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- Nov 2, 2015
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- #21
It's all a matter of simplifying things, reducing complex problems and solutions to slogans. Prohibition was a perfect example. Ban the demon drink! Simple. Far too simple, it turned out, but they got their constitutional amendment. Unfortunately you can;t hope to appeal to people's reason, it can only work if you appeal to their emotions. Right now there's enough anger in the country to light the world for decades, and it's being completely wasted, Reduce term limits to "throw the bums out!". Make Madison Avenue do something useful with their persuasive skills.I must have misunderstood the part where you said when the country was founded such a coalition was obtained. I mistook that to mean the people that founded it exemplified those traits. My apologies." irreproachable ethics"
These are the same guys that had a chance to do away with slavery but chose to make it an acceptable practice and the law of the land. This country was founded for white people. There should be zero illusions about that. Based on that fact the people will never get what they want from within.
Well, to be fair, I didn't suggest that irreproachable ethics were found among the founders. I wrote that, "What made it possible to do so was the size of the the country and the number of people involved in forming the nation."
FWIW, and to give a sense of what that entailed, in 1789, the nation had about 4 million people (white, natives, and blacks) in it, and the only ones among them who mattered (because they could vote) were male landowners, who comprised about 93% of white men at the time. So when thinking about the men who represented the various soon-to-be states before the Constitution was ratified, it wasn't at all difficult or uncommon for all the white male landowners in the state to know one another, and thus trust (or not) their representative to "do the right thing."
With all due respect, I think the pessimism you express in your final sentence above is among the key things that can ensure corrections don't happen. I infer from that statement that you have little trust of the folks in the government, and I realize they've not earned it from you. To the extent citizens lack trust in their political leaders, they need to make it clear that they do and act, more than answering a mailed/in person poll or posting in an Internet forum, to show as much.
Correct. My pessimism would indeed make it a certainty that that no change from withing would ever work if I was actually a factor in making that change from within. The length of time needed to turn around the voting process and changing the populace into thinkers instead of sheep appears daunting, time consuming, and frankly impossible. The strength of the grip used by the movers and shakers in government on the minds of the american people has been steadily increasing for centuries. It would probably take centuries to turn around from within.