I remember the days of DU when

[Hortensis]

74. The facile cynical indifference you describe is usually just a mask for

disinterest, laziness and irresponsibility.

Ignorance causes people to be easily frustrated and disaffected and thus easy marks for those who want to discourage voting. The typical "American worker" you describe has no idea if anyone represents him or not because he's ignorant -- a self-made rube, a sucker for manipulation. There are many fine people, in fact, who are fighting for the various working classes, but very few of the people you describe bother to learn that. Or they'd have a lot more respect for people who deserve it -- and a lot of the victories they say they want but refuse to work for themselves.

The more one knows about our democratic systems and our history, the more one tends to respect both and to understand the enormous difficulties that stand between aspiration and reality. It's not just most people "out there" who haven't reached that understanding, but many here. I want! I want now! Don't bother me, just give me mine! Always someone else's fault when their hands remain empty.

The simple fact is that the education that leads to understanding and good citizenship requires investment of time and effort at best, but many people have very little, if any, thirst for knowledge, and for them education is a very irritating and tiresome task. They are just not interested.

Also, only half the people in this country read well enough to handle dense text without tough sledding, such as in a newspaper or on-line journal. For many millions complex ideas must be available in simple sentence form if they are to be understood at all -- but those are wasted anyway on people who avoid reading as much as possible.

Then you have the people who can be fooled most of the time and those who can be fooled all the time. In both cases, we now know it's usually because they insist on it. They want their preconceptions verified, thank you, and anything that contradicts is rejected. The biggest weakness to manipulation of all.

The fact is, for over 30 years the right has used sophisticated advertising techniques to encourage everyone it can reach to be the worst citizen versions of themselves possible. And it's worked. Here we are.

The fewer who vote, the better the right does.

When incomes drop, individual wellbeing drops and people turn more conservative.

When individual wellbeing goes down, so do voting rates.

The more discouraged people are, the less likely they are to pay attention at all, much less vote.

The longer a popular change is delayed, the more people are discouraged -- because ignorance encourages them to believe change will happen quickly if it's going to happen at all and to give up when cynically engineered delays "confirm" that inexcusably foolish misconception.

You get the idea? That is what is happening. The GOP fought a robust recovery from the Great Recession because anxiety works so well for them.

So, when you describe people who don't bother to vote, At Heart, I think you can see that IMO, although some may be fine people in some respects, as citizens they really stink and really should be ashamed of themselves. No excuses for them. Their negligence earns them the results of their many failures of duty, even if their children and the rest of us do not deserve what they do to us all and to what could be a great, prosperous, happy nation -- but is not.