The OP specifies that you "take certain actions that will result in your own death". The fact that death is an outcome of your actions to save the country, rather than the action that saves the country, might make the choice superficially more palatable, since you can pretend to yourself that you stand a chance of cheating fate.Cao Cao wrote:I'm scared stiff of death.. the mere thought depresses me greatly.. if you really had to make the choice, to plunge into the darkness that final time.. would it really be so black and white?
Ignoring the fact that the hypothetical guarantees that your efforts will succeed...Cao Cao wrote:It is essentially difficult to see how one act could halt the coming storm.
If America were sliding down the path to a bigotted theocracy at best one's sacrifice might postpone it.. but destroy it outright? I doubt it.
Since you're acting in the present to prevent a possible future, you have the advantage that the situation is not yet so bad it can't be salvaged. Imagine you choose to lead an opposition movement - the people you're trying to win over are the people alive at this very moment. You can see what wins them over and what doesn't; hell, just by studying the media and politicians you can see what buttons to push and how to push them. Because you're trying to prevent a theocratic dictatorship rather than postpone one, you start off from the comparatively advantageous position of mildly shifting a status quo. You don't have to fight that dictatorship directly. The populace you are trying to sway aren't a bunch of theocratic drones; the implication is that they are on the fence and can be persuaded. With an appropriately packaged message, a sufficiently large group of people aiding you, and effective dissemination techniques, I see no reason why such an effort is doomed to fail.
Think of it as a political campaign, with you at the head of the Use Your Common Sense and Kick The Unamerican Fuckwits Out of Power Party.
The problem is as much the self-serving character of established parties and career politicans as anything else.Cao Cao wrote: Well that whole partisan politics thing is a heavy blow to democratic elections.
More people should be interested in the leader, not the party.
Large political parties, as obnoxious as they are, serve one useful purpose by lumping together people of vaguely similar ideologies into one mass: they prevent the excessive splitting of the vote.
If, instead of the bloated Democratictic and Republican parties, there were a plethora of smaller parties, the chance that a party's candidate will win an election without having an actual majority of the vote increases - arguably an even less democratic result than people being forced to choose between two or three parties.
Also, don't forget that even though large parties take in crazy fringe groups, it's better for a fringe group to be constrained by the need to compromise with other blocs rather than running around loose. NSDAP, anyone?
