Next GOP cut victim: Disabled kids.

[JME2]

That is the ultimate act of shooting yourself in the foot- to assume that by definition anyone who says they want to fix things is lying, and therefore refuse to support them.

Considering the bullshit that has comprised American politics since the end of the Clinton era, I don't blame a lot of people for feeling that way.

[Aaron]

Speaking as a cynic, I have no faith that any politician will be able to stem or turn the tide. My feelings are that the entire government is bought, sold and traded as a commodity by the ultra-rich.

From the outside looking in, it really looks like your government (at the very least) finds it's citizens distasteful and no one in it really cares about the citizens enough to look after them. It took Obama two fucking years to ditch DADT for fucks sake and from the looks of it the health care reform was basically an insurance company handout.

I hope that at some point the government unfucks itself but when the choice is between a handout for one set of corporations and a handout for another set, what the hell do you do?

[Simon_Jester]

Addendum: as noted in the Wisconsin thread, staying home as a protest vote is not an option for the left with modern radicalized Republicans on the other side of the agenda. While trying to get real pro-reform candidates into office with all one's might, one must recognize that the other side is perfectly willing to sell out anything and everything, on a scale unimagined a generation ago save in the wildest fantasies of the John Birch Society.

The main ambition of progressives in the post-2010 era should be the takeover of the Democratic Party from corporatist-collaborators. This will mean compromising on certain issues, because we're in the middle of "Panic of 1893: The Reenactment," only without the socialists or protectionists. There are a lot of issues at stake that cannot be allowed to prevent progressives from breaking the hold of oligarchs on the government and the economy, even if they are otherwise important. It's gotten that bad.*

And no, no one said it would be easy. Or even possible. Still needs doing.

*Gun control comes to mind as an obvious candidate; whatever you think about it, the brute fact of the matter is that the American average is either indifferent or hostile to gun control. It is simply not worth fighting over at the moment.

That is the ultimate act of shooting yourself in the foot- to assume that by definition anyone who says they want to fix things is lying, and therefore refuse to support them.

Considering the bullshit that has comprised American politics since the end of the Clinton era, I don't blame a lot of people for feeling that way.

I do.

Serafina is right; citizens in a democracy cannot disown or disavow their government. We do have to take some kind of responsibility for allowing this to happen, and that means remaining active in the political process- becoming more active when it gets worse, not less. I can't hold myself up as a great example of this, but I'm not blind; I have to say that this is a fundamental problem. Nothing gets fixed unless people, and this includes you no matter how cynical and depressed and bitter you are, get up and demand that it be fixed, and indeed struggle to ensure that it gets fixed.

Bullshit reigns in the American political arena because it is allowed to do so. Yes, sometimes the revolt against bullshit will be hijacked by other bullshitters. Yes, standing up and denouncing bullshit in aggressive, confrontational terms in the public arena is difficult. Yes, yes, yes, I know, fixing a country is hard work.

That doesn't make it right, or even sane, to try and punish the system by ignoring it while the bullshitters actively try to take it over and use it to crush you.

[someone_else]

This is outrageous. Fucking unbelievable.

I wonder if Repubblicans will manage to turn the US in a shithole country before any kind of revolution blasts them away (figuratively speaking). That seems the trend, to me.

[Carinthium]

A revolution is very, very unlikely as most of you probably already realise- as much on those on the left may wish for it (and probably right wing extremists, given what they would see as blatant disregard of the Constitution such as federal income taxes), the mainstream are inevitably against it.

I don't want to derail the thread with an argument, but there is also the question of whether people have a duty (the case is undeniable that if such a duty existed it would bear similarities to feudalism) to reform their society towards what is right- particularly when a majority don't want it.

It's less likely the government finds the citizens distasteful (although some might- Winston Churchill's quote about 'The best argument against democracy is a conversation with the average voter' comes to mind) and more that being human beings they are almost certainly corrupted.

[Simon_Jester]

A revolution is very, very unlikely as most of you probably already realise- as much on those on the left may wish for it (and probably right wing extremists, given what they would see as blatant disregard of the Constitution such as federal income taxes), the mainstream are inevitably against it.

There is a certain amount of flexibility here. When I talk about "revolts," I mean at most something like a Color Revolution. Far more likely, I mean a simple 'voter revolt' or 'taxpayer revolt' in the sense of a collective, sustained rejection of bad policies because the public no longer sees them as sustainable.

I'm not talking blood in the streets, I'm talking the general public simply refusing to passively submit to the right's program of alterations to society, when those alterations are aimed at reducing them to a state of wage slavery, while keeping up an eternal state of 'war' against poorly defined and intangible enemies for the sake of maintaining a powerful state apparatus of security and monitoring.

I'm not sure this will happen, but I would hardly be surprised if it did. What's missing is leadership- someone who points out that the average American is not better off for all this, and who can actually mobilize popular discontent in that direction.

I don't want to derail the thread with an argument, but there is also the question of whether people have a duty (the case is undeniable that if such a duty existed it would bear similarities to feudalism) to reform their society towards what is right- particularly when a majority don't want it.

The problem here is that given America's low voter participation and the large fraction of the electorate which believes demonstrable flat out lies told to them by various political factions... "what the majority wants" is a rather schizophrenic animal.

People want enough money to live on, but many of them vote for politicians who want to lock the country into immiserizing growth. People want to be safe, but they vote for politicians who waste massive amounts of soldiers' lives and citizens' time and money on "security" programs that have little or no relationship to our actual security needs.

How do you say what the people want when they themselves routinely vote in ways that sabotage their own interests?

[Carinthium]

There is a certain amount of flexibility here. When I talk about "revolts," I mean at most something like a Color Revolution. Far more likely, I mean a simple 'voter revolt' or 'taxpayer revolt' in the sense of a collective, sustained rejection of bad policies because the public no longer sees them as sustainable.

I'm not talking blood in the streets, I'm talking the general public simply refusing to passively submit to the right's program of alterations to society, when those alterations are aimed at reducing them to a state of wage slavery, while keeping up an eternal state of 'war' against poorly defined and intangible enemies for the sake of maintaining a powerful state apparatus of security and monitoring.

I'm not sure this will happen, but I would hardly be surprised if it did. What's missing is leadership- someone who points out that the average American is not better off for all this, and who can actually mobilize popular discontent in that direction.

To something like that, admittedly, my point doesn't apply- the Tea Party did something similiar for those discontent on a right-wing basis, so a left-wing version could happen.

People want enough money to live on, but many of them vote for politicians who want to lock the country into immiserizing growth.

Evidence for that? Particularly given that the United States is a 'have' rather than 'have not' nation, it seems rather unlikely that it's leaders would want to actually supress growth for the sake of it.

People want to be safe, but they vote for politicians who waste massive amounts of soldiers' lives and citizens' time and money on "security" programs that have little or no relationship to our actual security needs.

That I agree with.

How do you say what the people want when they themselves routinely vote in ways that sabotage their own interests?

Some of them at least probably vote for the Republicans on principle- having been a staunch right-wing extremist myself, I should point out that there is a case for considering income tax morally wrong, and a case for considering abortion morally wrong. The Republicans are at least MORE likely to do something about each than the Democrats.

In addition, a good percentage probably consider homosexuality, for example, morally wrong- they thus refuse to vote for the party of gay marriage.

How do you say what the people want when they themselves routinely vote in ways that sabotage their own interests?

In the most extreme cases, there's a case for treating the common people like children- admit they want what they want, but argue that it's not good for them. On the other hand, when ordinary people (not a majority, but some people who count as working-class no doubt) don't want to 'soak the rich' it can't be discounted so easily.

[Patrick Degan]

I've been in Britain for more than two years, and I haven't - not once - seen any rubbish like this here. I don't like Tory ideas much, especially the way they're going about the cuts. But the Republicans are sociopaths.

That is precisely what they are; as a party, as individuals. They have to know that the consequences of their policies will cause actual hurt and suffering to real people and yet they implement legislative pain quite gleefully, especially upon those with little to no influence in the political system. They pick off whole constituencies like hyenas descending upon a wounded lion and care not one jot for the damage they do to communities and society as a whole and certainly not to any citizen regardless of their already existing disadvantage. GOP ideology can be expressed in a nutshell as Applied Sociopathy.

[Simon_Jester]

People want enough money to live on, but many of them vote for politicians who want to lock the country into immiserizing growth.

Evidence for that? Particularly given that the United States is a 'have' rather than 'have not' nation, it seems rather unlikely that it's leaders would want to actually supress growth for the sake of it.

There are multiple kinds of growth, with different sets of winners and losers.

The CEO set in the US want economic growth, of course, but they want to control the fruits of that growth. Perhaps you are not familiar with the concept of "immiserizing." This means "to make miserable" or, more precisely, "to make poor." Immiseration is the process by which a class of people who are doing well in society are turned into poor people.

Immiserization is a very good way for oligarchs to control a society, if it is done carefully and over time, because it deprives the average citizen of the resources (education, spare time, money) they would need to fight back against the oligarchs' control. There are reasons oligarchies of various types ruled most of the world in premodern times, when most people were poor and constantly busy trying to make a living.

This is already happening to the American middle class. The price of things like education and health care rises, the relative share of the economy controlled by a handful of wealthy people grows, and this happens so gradually and so much due to the invisible hand that it becomes the "new normal." We learn to accept it, while politicians bought out by oligarchs do nothing, or actively collaborate in the process.

And my point is that the policies of the far right (extremely low taxes and negligible government services apart from the security organs, minimal regulation of the corporate sector) lead predictably to this: a mass of poorly educated unskilled workers, a minority of heavily indebted skilled workers (who, because of the costs of things like health care, education, and real estate, are very hard pressed to keep up anything like a "middle class" lifestyle in the long run)... and a smaller minority of well-to-do people who have enough money personally to make up for what the government doesn't provide them.

How do you say what the people want when they themselves routinely vote in ways that sabotage their own interests?

Some of them at least probably vote for the Republicans on principle- having been a staunch right-wing extremist myself, I should point out that there is a case for considering income tax morally wrong, and a case for considering abortion morally wrong. The Republicans are at least MORE likely to do something about each than the Democrats.

In addition, a good percentage probably consider homosexuality, for example, morally wrong- they thus refuse to vote for the party of gay marriage.

I understand that... but on the other hand, why do these voters not insist that the party become what they want- a party that looks out for their economic interests, while also supporting their social agenda? When they want something that benefits the same people already backing the Republican Party, they find ways to get into office in large numbers to push for it- the Tea Party.

Why can't they do the same for an economically progressive but socially conservative movement?

How do you say what the people want when they themselves routinely vote in ways that sabotage their own interests?

In the most extreme cases, there's a case for treating the common people like children- admit they want what they want, but argue that it's not good for them. On the other hand, when ordinary people (not a majority, but some people who count as working-class no doubt) don't want to 'soak the rich' it can't be discounted so easily.

I'm a bit ambiguous about this. Again, the problem is the sheer volume of flat lies that go into the mindset in question, the numbers that don't add up. The people who think we could fix the budget if we cut earmarks. Or who think all the money spent on the poor goes to welfare queens. Or, hell, are simply unaware of the relative balance of who owns how much of the money.

The problem here is that- to use a metaphor, we have people who are hungry, increasingly, desperately hungry. And a large fraction of them are protesting against having society produce food. What do you do in that position? Watch them suffer from malnutrition, or continue to pursue pro-food policies, while trying to spread the word that you have to eat food if you don't want to starve to death?

What do you do when people want to dismantle the education system and replace it with a system of parochial religious schools that teach Darwin is a myth and the End of Days is coming some time next week? What do you do when people want to defund government services to the point where houses burn down because the fire department can't afford to put the fire out? What do you do when people want to fix the deficit, without cutting significant spending, and without raising any taxes on anyone?

You say "no," as loudly and effectively as you can. You don't have a choice if you want to keep living in a functioning civilization.

[Carinthium]

NOTE: Come to think of it, I've been middle-class (child of two lawyers) my whole life so my ideas about the working class should be considered accordingly.

There are multiple kinds of growth, with different sets of winners and losers.

The CEO set in the US want economic growth, of course, but they want to control the fruits of that growth. Perhaps you are not familiar with the concept of "immiserizing." This means "to make miserable" or, more precisely, "to make poor." Immiseration is the process by which a class of people who are doing well in society are turned into poor people.

Immiserization is a very good way for oligarchs to control a society, if it is done carefully and over time, because it deprives the average citizen of the resources (education, spare time, money) they would need to fight back against the oligarchs' control. There are reasons oligarchies of various types ruled most of the world in premodern times, when most people were poor and constantly busy trying to make a living.

This is already happening to the American middle class. The price of things like education and health care rises, the relative share of the economy controlled by a handful of wealthy people grows, and this happens so gradually and so much due to the invisible hand that it becomes the "new normal." We learn to accept it, while politicians bought out by oligarchs do nothing, or actively collaborate in the process.

And my point is that the policies of the far right (extremely low taxes and negligible government services apart from the security organs, minimal regulation of the corporate sector) lead predictably to this: a mass of poorly educated unskilled workers, a minority of heavily indebted skilled workers (who, because of the costs of things like health care, education, and real estate, are very hard pressed to keep up anything like a "middle class" lifestyle in the long run)... and a smaller minority of well-to-do people who have enough money personally to make up for what the government doesn't provide them.

I'd contend that the situation is a bit different- most of them are likely guided by the right-wing ideology that high taxes are either morally wrong or bad for the economy, and that attempting to redistribute wealth is stealing. People who are educated or given healthcare based on government redistribution are profiting from stealing- they should be cut off from it for the sake of those who've earned their money.

If you've got empirical evidence (a CEO admtting it, for example, or some other claim by somebody who'd know that makes it clear) that trumps my argument, of course, but you haven't given any yet.

I understand that... but on the other hand, why do these voters not insist that the party become what they want- a party that looks out for their economic interests, while also supporting their social agenda? When they want something that benefits the same people already backing the Republican Party, they find ways to get into office in large numbers to push for it- the Tea Party.

Why can't they do the same for an economically progressive but socially conservative movement?

Because they are economically conservative- many probably believe that they will someday become rich themselves (I don't know this, but I've read it in places), and they think it unfair to tax people too highly.

I'm a bit ambiguous about this. Again, the problem is the sheer volume of flat lies that go into the mindset in question, the numbers that don't add up. The people who think we could fix the budget if we cut earmarks. Or who think all the money spent on the poor goes to welfare queens. Or, hell, are simply unaware of the relative balance of who owns how much of the money.

Those are the people who I would treat like children. I don't actually know the percentages, though.

What do you do when people want to dismantle the education system and replace it with a system of parochial religious schools that teach Darwin is a myth and the End of Days is coming some time next week? What do you do when people want to defund government services to the point where houses burn down because the fire department can't afford to put the fire out? What do you do when people want to fix the deficit, without cutting significant spending, and without raising any taxes on anyone?

In most cases, I would agree with you. Hypothetically however, if more of them than not believed it so on moral grounds (faith despite the evidence, government services are morally wrong) and were aware of the consequences of their actions I would let them get away with.

Probably not the case in the real world, though.

[Duckie]

Simon Jester and Serafina, I'd like to ask a question.

You've stated that people are not allowed to disown their country, and indeed have a duty to reform their country and prevent it from going down the shitter. Why?

Obviously it's morally incorrect to reap the rewards of living in such a place and implicitly or explicitly support the system. But why is emigration immoral? Is one actually required by right of birth and racial heritage to commit to reforming the country of their parents? In all cases, even for Somalians or people in truly dysfunctional nations? (Is there a distinction on how to tell when your nation is such a nation?)

Surely we can consider an Australian moral even when they don't personally commit to bringing down the oligarchy in America, so why can an American be faulted for renunciation of citizenship and refusing to provide aid, comfort, and tax money to a nation that should not be so encouraged?

Yes, obviously everyone can't emigrate, and it doesn't solve the issues for anyone else, but if we accept an ethical system where you must do the most possible good for the most possible people at all times then there's little reason not to forego all luxuries and donate all one's money to starving africans (of which I doubt few people even come close, as everyone here seems to have video games and read books and spend their free time not working a third job to pay for yet more orphans). That seems like a dead end moral decision process because it restricts all people into varying shades of evil, makes little if anything good, and thus makes the term 'immoral'/'unethical'/'evil' pointless because it can describe almost anything, just like teenager philosophers with their 'every action is selfish' beliefs.

[Serafina]

You've stated that people are not allowed to disown their country, and indeed have a duty to reform their country and prevent it from going down the shitter. Why?

I have stated no such thing, nor is it my opinion. If you were to emigrate from the USA, then their government would no longer represent you in any way, nor would you be responsible for the continued existence (via voting) of that government.

My position is that a democracy is a two-way street: The government is responsible for it's people, but the people are also responsible for their government. They are therefore responsible for the actions of their government. (Please not that this does not necessarily mean individual accountability).
You can NOT remove that responsiblitiy without making democracy meaningless. Nor can you claim that only those who voted for the government are responsible for it, because a democratic government is supposed to represent everyone it governs.

Now of course you, as an individual citizen, can only do a little bit to influence your government - i would argue that your individual influence is so small that you can not be held accountable. Therefore, you are free to proclaim that this governmenet no longer represents you and take the proper action (emigration is one example, revolution another, tough i don't advocate it).

[Duckie]

Then I misinterpreted what you meant when you said "The people [of America] are responsible for their government".

I figured I wasn't saying anything unreasonable. I do agree that continuing to be an American while claiming "Not my problem, I didn't vote" is a dereliction of civic duty, but I suppose I wasn't exactly sure on who exactly "the people/americans" are and what "responsible" means.

(Naturally, such a prompt reply means that it's guaranteed that Simon Jester will think the exact opposite or something, because now I'm not in argument mode and dismissed all the discussion points I was remembering in case of need )

[Cecelia5578]

Surely we can consider an Australian moral even when they don't personally commit to bringing down the oligarchy in America, so why can an American be faulted for renunciation of citizenship and refusing to provide aid, comfort, and tax money to a nation that should not be so encouraged?

Yes, obviously everyone can't emigrate, and it doesn't solve the issues for anyone else, but if we accept an ethical system where you must do the most possible good for the most possible people at all times then there's little reason not to forego all luxuries and donate all one's money to starving africans (of which I doubt few people even come close, as everyone here seems to have video games and read books and spend their free time not working a third job to pay for yet more orphans). That seems like a dead end moral decision process because it restricts all people into varying shades of evil, makes little if anything good, and thus makes the term 'immoral'/'unethical'/'evil' pointless because it can describe almost anything, just like teenager philosophers with their 'every action is selfish' beliefs.

Well, you sorta mentioned it-the number of Americans who could seriously emigrate to another country is probably pretty small-language skills, education, job skills, etc. You'd be talking about a relatively privileged few who would be abandoning the majority of us non-privileged folk. Of course I'm not talking about something drastic happening like a second civil war or some such dark fantasy like that, but I'd argue it could be perceived as callous to abandon such a large chunk of people.

In a related vein, this is why I get so upset at our European and American ex-pats on this board who proudly proclaim there's no difference between O and Bush, no way they are voting for O in 2012, etc. *They* don't have to live here and live with the consequences of those actions.

[Duckie]

Yeah, but we don't perceive it as callous if foreigners don't attempt to improve the US. Shouldn't they have the same obligation as an American citizen to assist mankind? If it's not related to that definition of morality, then what is it? One could say that Americans have reaped the benefits of their system and so are required to pay back the world by mitigating the harm their nation causes, even though no one chooses to be born an American vs born a Swede. That's a valid viewpoint, albeit one that enslaves all citizens to their forefathers nation and condemns all refugees.

Should there be some kind of serfdom inherent in citizenship that requires someone to defend the place of their birth to their utmost merely because one was born there? Again, if we condemn emigration, which is not strictly actively immoral but rather simply not-doing-the-most-possible-good-for-the-most-people-at-all-times, then America isn't the place you'd want to be focused on improving anyhow (by far you could do more good trying to help the third world and for cheaper per person too), unless there is some kind of racial component to morality that requires you to look out for people of your nation first and others second.

[Simon_Jester]

Simon Jester and Serafina, I'd like to ask a question.

You've stated that people are not allowed to disown their country, and indeed have a duty to reform their country and prevent it from going down the shitter. Why?

Obviously it's morally incorrect to reap the rewards of living in such a place and implicitly or explicitly support the system. But why is emigration immoral? Is one actually required by right of birth and racial heritage to commit to reforming the country of their parents? In all cases, even for Somalians or people in truly dysfunctional nations? (Is there a distinction on how to tell when your nation is such a nation?)

Duckie, you are vastly overestimating the strength of what I'm getting at here.

If your nation is not a democracy, you have no responsibility for its actions as a citizen and are totally welcome do whatever you please. Leave, stay, whatever.

If your nation is a democracy, but you would sincerely prefer to live somewhere else, go for it. I won't discourage you.

But emigration for everyone in a First World nation who dislikes the fact that oligarchs and lunatics are trying to turn it into a Third World nation is not a good option for anyone. For most people who talk about it, it's a blatant pose. They say "urgh. Screw it, I'm moving to Canada," and they don't mean it. They say "Urgh. Screw it, I'm staying out of this election as a protest vote..." and they do mean it, but their 'protest' is limited largely to things that don't require them to do anything or spend money.

And which, coincidentally, play into the hands of the very people dicking over the country in the first place; they like it when progressives don't vote.

If you are genuinely fleeing persecution, then fine, flee persecution. But if the situation has not reached that point, then if you want to complain about how horrible and oligarchical the system is getting, by golly you should do something more active than complain about it.

The tools to fix the US system do still exist. They are not used. One of the main reasons they are not used is because of this huge mass of (now disaffected and cynical) young adult voters who seem to derive some perverse pleasure from watching the country go to hell while not doing anything notable to stop it. If one is the sort who says "don't vote, it only encourages the bastards," one is very much part of the problem with the US.

This does not translate into an obligation to do anything and everything and spend one's whole life on politics. I like to think I'm not a flaming moron, and I am not advocating the moron version of utilitarianism here.

But a democracy cannot function if citizens don't participate, and if only one set of citizens participate it stops being a democracy in short order. So citizens frustrated with the breakdown of democracy damn well should participate, stipulating that (like most of the people who want to drop out from politics) they're not actually planning to leave the country in the near future.

I'd contend that the situation is a bit different- most of them are likely guided by the right-wing ideology that high taxes are either morally wrong or bad for the economy, and that attempting to redistribute wealth is stealing. People who are educated or given healthcare based on government redistribution are profiting from stealing- they should be cut off from it for the sake of those who've earned their money.

If you've got empirical evidence (a CEO admtting it, for example, or some other claim by somebody who'd know that makes it clear) that trumps my argument, of course, but you haven't given any yet.

Carinthium, I credit these people with enough intelligence and competence to recognize their own interests. It is not the case that every person backing this agenda is a sociopathic fuck. But it's quite clear, when you step back and look at the pattern and the predictable endpoint of this kind of philosophy, the way it spits on everything government has done in the public interest over the last 150 years, where it stops.

It stops in the Victorian mills, and the Gilded Age. It stops with rich oligarchs lording it over everyone else, and a government so toothless it isn't even worth bribing. We've seen this before.

And I refuse to believe that the entire leadership cadre of the Republican Party, along with the wealthy donors paying the piper and calling the tune for it, has somehow happened to settle on such a strange, novel, and extremist political doctrine without at least a large fraction of them knowing where it's going to end up.

Honestly, though, it doesn't matter much if they aren't aware of this, if they lack the historical frame of reference to predict the consequences of, say, "no public education so those who earned their money can keep it." Because that just means they're trying to break the country down into something like modern Russia (corrupt oligarchic hellhole) without knowing what they're doing.

That hardly makes it less important to oppose them, though it opens up a bit more hope they might be persuaded to stop doing it. Not much, mind, but some.

Because they are economically conservative- many probably believe that they will someday become rich themselves (I don't know this, but I've read it in places), and they think it unfair to tax people too highly.

And therein lies a delusion: you're looking at working class voters, many of them with limited education and opportunities, who vote to lower taxes on the rich expecting that they will become rich in this economy. Some of them are right; 99% of them are wrong. Social mobility hasn't exactly been improving over the past two generations, either.

This kind of mindset is a great example of the problem: active myths that poison people's ability to assess public policy. The only way to counter that is by actively confronting the myths, pointing out that yes there really are thieves in high places, and that the average American is being screwed over here.

I'm not saying "every Republican voter is just believing myths." Please try to understand that. But the mythos, the flat-out lies ("we found WMD in Iraq," "global warming is a hoax," "welfare money goes to buy Cadillacs for welfare queens")... you see an awful lot of those in the Republican base. I think that needs to be confronted, or at least acknowledged and dealt with; you can't run a competitive political system in which one side lies with total freedom and the other side sits back and lets them.

I'm a bit ambiguous about this. Again, the problem is the sheer volume of flat lies that go into the mindset in question, the numbers that don't add up. The people who think we could fix the budget if we cut earmarks. Or who think all the money spent on the poor goes to welfare queens. Or, hell, are simply unaware of the relative balance of who owns how much of the money.

Those are the people who I would treat like children. I don't actually know the percentages, though.

You can look up how many people believe things like this on polls.

What do you do when people want to dismantle the education system and replace it with a system of parochial religious schools that teach Darwin is a myth and the End of Days is coming some time next week? What do you do when people want to defund government services to the point where houses burn down because the fire department can't afford to put the fire out? What do you do when people want to fix the deficit, without cutting significant spending, and without raising any taxes on anyone?

In most cases, I would agree with you. Hypothetically however, if more of them than not believed it so on moral grounds (faith despite the evidence, government services are morally wrong) and were aware of the consequences of their actions I would let them get away with.

Probably not the case in the real world, though.

I would damn well want to keep fighting- there's a reason minority rights are enshrined in democracy, as is the role of a loyal opposition within the democracy. A big part of it is to keep a majority from doing something stupid while caught up in popular hysteria, or to keep the public from electing representatives who then go on to enact a more radical agenda than they originally wanted.

Look at Wisconsin- whatever your personal views, the fact remains that the majority of people in the state didn't actively want to remove the unions' collective bargaining power. And yet they voted in Republicans who did, and that's what they got. That's the sort of thing that a determined minority in office is supposed to prevent: they prevent the majority from overstretching the limits of their popular mandate.

However, this breaks down when there's a mismatch in determination between the two sides, or when the majority starts ignoring the rules and customs of how democracy is supposed to work. The former has been a problem in (for instance) the US Senate; the latter has been a problem in Wisconsin, where the Republican legislature basically decided to resort to whatever legislative dirty tricks they could think of* rather than accept any outcome that left the unions with collective bargaining powers.

*Such as telling the Democrats the legislature would meet at 5:00, then sneaking into the chamber at 4:50 to hold a vote without them.

[Gandalf]

Like the 11/9 victims, is this a story that will go ignored until someone like Jon Stewart brings it up?

I wonder if the Republicans trying to impress anyone with this. Maybe the missile defence/2nd Amendment voting bloc?

[Serafina]

Duckie, i also think you missed the corollary of my first statement:
If it is truly a government elected by the people, for the people and on behalf of the people - then the people are responsible for it.
Therefore, if the people can genuinenly claim that they are not responsible for their government, it is not truly a democracy.

Now this is not a black&white-fallacy. Obviously there are always some people who can claim that they are not at all represented by their government, that the government is not at all acting on their behalf or in their interest.
But the more can claim that, the less that government is democratic. A government that only acts on behalf of rich, white males can still be democratic - but less so than one that also includes black people or women.
Likewise, if someone wants to argue that the US-government is only acting on behalf of the rich, then one would have to consider that it is no longer a true democracy, that democracy has failed in the USA. I would not go that far, but it is unfortunately going into that direction. If a government is no longer acting on behalf of it's people, it is no longer a democratic government.