You asked a couple of weeks ago: "And what about all those Americans who like to be told what to do, and who admire authoritarian institutions like the military, the church, and the cops?" (<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050221/003989.html>). The PIPA survey shows that the largest majorities of Americans support the most socialistic items -- soldiers' pays and veterans' benefits -- among all the budget items concerning the military: "An overwhelming 82% wanted to maintain or increase spending on salaries for military personnel-the highest level of support for any item shown respondents within the defense budget. . . . Likewise, in the general budget exercise a very large majority-83%--either maintained or increased veterans' benefits as a share of the discretionary budget (63% increase, 21% maintain): (Stephen Kull, Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks, "The Federal Budget: the Public's Priorities," <http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/budget/030705/Report03_07_05.pdf>, March 7, 2005, p. 9). It is likely that, when Americans say they trust the military, they are expressing their support for common soldiers, rather than the authoritarian Pentagon establishment, about which they are at best lukewarm: "positive feelings for military personnel were also expressed when respondents were asked 'How do you feel about the US armed forces on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being very negative and 10 being very positive.' The average response was 8.0. Three out of four gave a rating of 7 or above. However, it appears that these warm feelings are differentiated from other aspects of the defense establishment. Asked to rate their feelings about the Pentagon on the same scale, the average rating was 5.4. Only 31% gave a rating of 7 or above" (pp. 9-10).
As for voting, the point of plutocratic US electoral politics is to ensure that the majority of working-class Americans will not vote and that the rich will always outvote the poor. The Democratic and Republican Parties, corporate media, labor union and non-profit officials, etc. work hard to prevent Americans from even considering voting for candidates -- especially those for high offices -- who actually come closest to their values. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>