--- Wojtek wrote:
> Well, what else would you expect? Two thirds of this country's
> population
> believes in angels and hell, recently saw Elvis or an
UFO...<snip-a-lot>
Wow, did the caffeine give us one helluva gross generalization this morning or what! Heh. I'd argue the stats with you, but I live in Texas and...well.
> Every nation has leadership it deserves.
Geez, if that's the case, we might as well all go play in traffic and give up. "Deserve" sounds so judgmental, and I wonder who sets the baseline for those values. Perhaps you meant that nations have leadership that is reflective of where the country is at?
> Stupid people elect
> stupid leaders
Even stupid people will "get one right" on occasion, so couldn't the same be said for non-stupid people? But further, if the people are stupid - a loaded word, at best - how did they get that way? Underfunded education? Corporate manipulation of their sources of information? Poor diet and nutrition? Regressive economic models that squeeze the majority middle and lower socioeconomic classes?
> - and you cannot save them against their own will.
The 2000 presidential election and electoral college process proved that wrong.
> Actually, I
> kind of
> marvel at the Repug extraordinary capability of brainwashing these
> dolts and
> making them give up vast amounts of resources without any coercion.
> Elsewhere, you would need state coercion.
As world history shows us, there is nothing extraordinary about it. The only thing that is extraordinary is that Americans believed - and still believe - that it cannot happen here. We do have state coercion here if you count the government propaganda, secrecy and the campaign of disinformation disseminated by both the government, the GOP and Dem parties and their combined allies in the corporate media. Then throw in the Patriot Act, ridiculous propositions like the marriage constitutional amendment and the mundane but equally repressive "veggi-libel" laws that some states have, and you have coercion, high and low, all around, a vice that keeps tightening the squeeze all the time.
> I have a profound sense of being out of place in this country and
> it widens
> every day. Perhaps it is time to think emigration again.
There are many American citizens who feel equally out of place, self included. Where do we go, if not back to the drawing board?
- Deborah
===== "Don't make me get the flying monkeys!" - Wicked Witch