> > Oh come on, why flatter them?
>
>Because I don't believe in underestimating the enemy. Nothing is more
>stupid than that.
Does it make more sense to overestimate them?
It is merely the obverse of the same mistake you pointed out earlier. Which was, you said, to believe that it is them, not the system that is the problem.
But you are really doing the same thing, in a more subtle way. In claiming that they are bravely standing up for what they believe, you are wrong, as I have easily proved. Barring for exceptional cases, they are neither bravely standing up for their beliefs, nor cowardly in walking away from their beliefs.
Politicians are neither part of the solution, nor part of the problem. Their obscene contortions are the flotsam and jetsam of the problem, the debris that floats on the surface. A symptom, not a cause. They are cogs in the wheel. Would you say that the cogs in a piece of machinery are "courageous", for fitting into place and turning as the system forces them to turn?
Of course not.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas