Here's the problem with the loss of democracy: You can't recover it with democratic activities like the one you're suggesting: voting. Collecting signatures, writing Congressmen, assembling to protest, running for office, third parties - all fail to make any difference. And you can't expect the people that stole the government to give it back. If you can't take it back, you won't see democracy again.
To some extent, I think what we're seeing now is what happens when the "powers that be" start to lose control of a situation. Trump is not the only one being analyzed here. Those reacting to him like a pack of wild banshees gives one the indication of what happens when people lose control of a game which had been previously stacked in their favor. They're as indignant as thieves who are outraged at being robbed by another thief.
That seems to be the major Achilles' Heel of the aristocratic mindset. They have an obvious superiority complex and feel entitled to rule and that everyone should mindlessly go along with them. When they are challenged, they invariably revert to a more childish approach, as we're seeing here. The rhetoric taking place these days is reminiscent of those who think they're the "cool kids" picking on the "uncool" or the "mentally challenged." The piling on which is taking place seems as if there is some kind of panicky obsession over Trump.
And you can't take it back as they did in the late 18th century. At that time, it was musket against musket and cannot against cannon. Today, there is no hope of defeating an oppressive American government. While modern day minute men are loading their assault rifles, the government is cutting off their power and water, rolling tanks down their streets, seizing their bank accounts, cancelling their credit cards, and if they feel like it, launching a missile from low earth orbit up your dog's pitoot. As I see it, you'd pretty much need the majority of the military to mutiny, as well as to get most government employees to refuse orders.
Perhaps, although the one thing that's evident in all this hullabaloo over Russian hackers is that our government
is quite vulnerable in multiple ways. Snowden's defection caused major ripples which would not be possible for a single individual to do in a government which was stable and solid.
I don't really believe that anyone has any hope of defeating an oppressive American government, although what's more likely to happen is a continued sense of malaise and torpor across the board. Workers will just go through the motions. Quality of standards and service will diminish. There will be more breakdown, deterioration of infrastructure, more potholes, more traffic jams, slower mail, slower internet, more dropped calls and electric outages. People will just stop caring.
The military might still be formidable, and there might be tanks rolling down the pothole-ridden streets. But the mechanisms by which we are governed will work even more poorly than they do now. But on the plus side, the military will soon no longer have the wherewithal to engage in multiple overseas operations as they do now.
Of course, what we have now are different factions within government at odds with each other, so whatever political disputes exist in the US would also be played out within the government and military itself. Another potential vulnerability is that the government has privatized many functions upon which they depend.
So, if what I just described is correct or approaching correct, what to do? I say it's still love it or leave it, where by love I mean accept the new reality and try to adapt to live with it as the people of all unresponsive states do.
Some people are leaving it, although I don't really see it as either/or question. One can still love America without loving its government. When it's no longer a government "of the people," and "the government" and "the people" somehow become at odds with each other, with whom should we side: The government or the people?
The government is not there for you and me. it now serves corporate interests. The corporations are its citizens, and the common man capital that serve the corporations and the uberwealthy. Isn't that what the proposed changes in the tax code and the ACA tell us? Poor people with health problems are like a work horse with a broken leg. They have no more inherent value to these people than that.
Yep, although the trouble with running things in this manner is that it never really lasts. There's an air of short-sighted recklessness in a lot of what these corporate interests are doing. The corporate overlords of yesteryear were just as bad, if not worse, than the current generations, but at least the ones from the 19th and early 20th centuries had a plan for the future which is conspicuously absent nowadays. It's just like how Hollywood can do nothing but remakes now. The corporate interests and ruling classes have no imagination anymore, and they've pretty much run out of ideas.
I agree with whomever it was that said that Trump is not the problem. He's just another symptom of a nation with multisystem failure: government, the media, the schools, corporate America, and most importantly, the intellectual and moral reserve of the American people, who 35-40% of which think still approve of Trump. Where is the cavalry coming from? Nowhere, I say.
Too pessimistic? Too defeatist?
I suppose it could be seen as pessimistic or defeatist, although that's just a matter of perspective. In recent decades, I've heard a lot of people talk about America in decline, "the country is going down the tubes," or "the country is going to hell in a handbasket." Such talk is rather common actually, and it has been for as long as I can remember.
I don't believe that there's any "cavalry" coming to the rescue either. I think the ruling class will continue to try to find ways to keep the lower classes divided against each other, with the neo-liberals playing the identity politics card and the neo-conservatives playing the economic freedom card - while the elite laugh their way to the bank. But in doing so, they may be pouring a bit too much gasoline on the fire. They've engineered a policy where multiple factions now hate each other, but they've ostensibly created a monster which has gotten out of their control. With Trump in the White House, now they're really worried.
