How can we ever have a healthy Democracy,

[duforsure]

When politicians are allowed to profit from disasters , and wars? The truth being kept from us what they've done, or giving those in power no or reduced consequences from their corruption and crimes. When they get payoffs from the wealthy for policy's, or protection. We need the complete truth, and equal justice with equal consequences, or it will fail. Corruption still running wild in our government.

[Auggie]

1. The corruptors have us fighting among ourselves using lies and fear-mongering

MSM, for the most part, follows this fight because it's good for ratings. A lose-lose scenario.

Corruptors can get away with almost anything (until they steal from each other).

[Cosmocat]

7. YEP

The average citizen is losing their minds over tertiary shit, fighting each other of CRT and other race related issues, hell, they powers to be have the country fighting over simple, common sense measures to deal with a pandemic. Have Rs so cranked up they took over the nations capital like a prison riot cause MAGA!

Meanwhile ... the $ keeps flowing to the top and our grocery bills keep bumping up exponentially.

10 years ago we could do a family dinner with tip for about $60. Lucky to not drop a $100 now.

[ancianita]

2. Right.

This so-called 'informed electorate' hardly ever finds out enough, or in a timely way, to have any effect on decisions; then Americans get held responsible and blamed as an irresponsible people.

The evils done in our name have been done largely without our consent.

[wnylib]

3. LBJ as a model of openness?

He was a good man overall and accomplished a lot, but regarding openness, there was that Gulf of Tonkin thing.

[ancianita]

4. True about that one thing,

but more true about the civil rights action. Just a toss-off metaphor on my part. I don't want to argue the comparisons.

I just hope you get the spirit of the idea.

Got a better example? I'm open to it. Nah, I'll just delete it.

[Cosmocat]

8. I take your point, but end of the day

We elect the people who make the decisions.

We have some bad apples on our side, but the majority of the country keeps electing Rs who more and more brazenly every day don't even make a pretense to working on their behalf.

Half the country has totally disregarded what is in their best interest to elect assholes for the primary reason of owning the libs!

[ancianita]

9. Okay. And at the end of that day

numbers give us the clearest perspective.

The 74 million record R vote are 23% of the country (per 330 mil of 2010 Census, which is my base population figure).
We can fairly say that other 77% are okay with who's running the nation now -- the number that includes children, undocumented immigrants, independent voters and us Dems, the 81,282,903 who voted Biden.

I haven't yet found my old AP vote tracker, but the last numbers I had were that these votes now represent the
below 18 population (74.2 mil) and undocumented immigrants (10 mil).
Total 2020 registered population (213,799,467 per a linkable source) who voted but did NOT vote for Trump (so Independents + Democratic votes) = 84,172,012, which = 39% of the registered population,
which = 34 % of the voting age population.

Overall, using the 2010 Census count, the total US population that did not vote for Trump = 255,777,407.

It's a numbers perspective about who Americans are (give or take the last six digits).
I prefer it over conditioned media hype, even from our side.
To you we might see their "half" in Congress, but that's not teh lay of the population land.

We keep winning the popular majority. So the way I see Americans, an 'American' is what the popular voting majority does. I do worry, but am not discouraged yet.

[Cosmocat]

10. I agree with your final sentence, but not your assumption of it

The people who did not vote also did not vote Hillary and Joe in both 2016 & 2020.

AND, the choice was REALLY stark, both times.

Either:

Option 1 - a highly competent competent civil servant who was a decent human being.

Option 2 - a completely morally corrupt, pathological want to be dictator.

The people who did not bother to show up clearly were OK with option 2 winning.

Sorry, the Americans who see what is going on and care about it are a hard stop at 84 mil.

The rest either full on want an authoritarian chrisofascist state or are are OK with it.

I don't like it, but this IS America.

[ancianita]

11. I hear you on the hard stop part. Still,

at 84,172,012, which = 39% of the registered population, which = 34 % of the voting age population, they have non-voting family, along with friends in the registered-but-not-voting population, so there is the soft support population that can be influenced, and which equal more than half the nation.

As for the rest, even in two really stark elections, beyond those who are socially connected to voters, they're likely in a gray area, geographically and socioeconomically, of the just too socially unconnected -- too many undocumented, transient, homeless, sick, too busy surviving to make a living -- to even solve life's problems beyond staying functional; in gray areas, too many cannot see what's going on, make sense of it, feel helpless, etc.; add to that the struggle to raise children in a gray area -- unlike that 39%.

Interpret that number in the worst possible light -- that they're okay with "did not bother to show up" or a "full on want an authoritarian christofascist state -- but I'm not buying it. When we think of unengaged Americans that way, we're reflecting the hype of media who constantly blame the victim with "we failed at X or we failed at Y" headlines.
I'd rather err on the side of "doing the best they can with what they've got" Americans.

We won. We grew the numbers of all of Americans who can win because we won. We should appreciate and use our power to influence more voters and voting, right? not misrepresent or stew about what's wrong with those who don't.

[Cosmocat]

12. I appreciate where you are coming from

I would like to think you are right, but my personal experience and observation of those around me inform how I am seeing it.

Now, I still fight the fight, but I have long felt it was losing battle and every day seems to reinforce that.

We will see, my friend.

Hopefully I can say you were right.

[ancianita]

13. Well I've learned that it's not about my 'side,'

and I've learned from my own and others' mistakes.

Yes, to keep up the good fight, make good trouble, is our long, neverending fight. We never let our opponents who don't wish us well believe that we sweat or are losing, even when we are. We fight when we're down; because when we're down, we are never out.

I wish more of the non-voting population will see their way to never go down without a fight, to always make the opponent respect them even as they lose.
That's what the Taliban have done to us. But. I don't want them to be the model for our pro-corporate Republican seditionists, and yet they act as if they have so much in common, don't they, when our American taliban are shallow and venal.

Yes, indeed we will see, my friend.
imo, People are made to feel worthy when we fight for them as if they are.
If they can internalize that 'yes we can' feeling, they can pass that on.
We have our daily example in what President Biden says and does. He dignifies people trapped even in their own non-legitimate suffering. Even misguided Republican leaders have been drawn away from their side by his sense of the fight for the soul of the nation.

Thank you for your thoughtful posts.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Corruption importantly includes dark money funding of politicians ambitions. . . .nt

[betsuni]

6. Republicans Duh. Stop the both-sides bullshit.