Originally Posted by
osan
I certainly understand your apparent ire in the matter, but perhaps you are expecting too much of "the system", which includes all of us.
America is now bred to a will for stupidity, not to mention all the other deadly sins. Trump's ascension was at least a potential step in a better direction, if not the right one.
Once again I repeat that which bears it: none of us are likely to see anything even remotely resembling freedom in our lifetimes. Freedom, such as it may have ever existed since the first days of the republic, has been washed away in small but ever increasing stages. It's taken us 228 years to get to this point. It is not going to return to even the sad-but-better-than-this-$#@! conditions of 1789 any time soon.
Seeking purity is an error I have made in the past, but no more. That is why I will continue to support Rand Paul. He's done some rankly stoopid $#@!, but them's the breaks in politics. Not even his father is good enough, if absolute purity is the yardstick. Our ideals need to be tempered with the knowledge that we are not acting in vacuo, but rather in a sea of personalities that often conflict greatly. The choices we have are as follow: give in to the Other, go to war with the Other, or come to some mutual agreement with the Other. I categorically reject the first, am highly reticent to indulge in the second, and am therefore left with the third as the best among disappointing choices.
To be honest, I have no idea whether a concerted effort by a dedicated 3% could negotiate its way toward freedom over the course of the coming generations, but if we wish to avoid war and the disaster of political purges that come in the aftermath of revolution, then we must be prepared to devote lifetimes to regaining that which has been lost to us over 200+ years, and then to move hopefully, even closer to real freedom.
Therefore, we have the choice today of stamping our feet in tantrum at the latest outrage du jour from Trump or whomever, or we can take the thin-slice victories and build on them with more of same.
YOU are never going to be politically free - meaning that you will not be able to act freely with no threat of material consequence from arbitrarily constituted groups claiming authority over you. That is almost absolutely assured fact. The Man is going to have his boot on your neck for the rest of your life. You can try gutting him like a flounder, but that's way risky business, and even when you win, chances are middling to guaRONteed that another low-rent tyrant will replace the one you just buried under the jail. Barring a Reset Event, you and I will live out the rest of our days as slaves, albeit ones with comparatively broad latitude vis-à-vis the chattel of an age well past us. Therefore, unless you are ready to risk death to "restore" a nation whose mean population has less than zero interest in being free, you have only the choices of laying down, or negotiating your ways toward better conditions, moving forward.
Understand that Americans are nowhere nearly ready to be free. If you made America perfectly free this afternoon, by tomorrow morning disaster would already be raising its head. I am afraid that this will have to be a slow process, if vast bloodshed is to be avoided.
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