A friend of mine says he thinks Al Gore got a call in 2000 to back off from pursuing any further recount in FL.
We’ve seen the Dems get voted in in 2006 and basically do nothing. Now we’re beginning to see Obama stray from strong positions to more compromise.
Is it possible we’re fooling ourselves in thinking our elections are enough to really change anything because the economic forces that are in control won’t allow politicians to make any significant changes.
Is it just that our political system tends to corrupt elected officials to a point where they compromise too much, rather than some shadowy figures who pull the crucial strings?
Can we improve things just by voting or will real change require more action from us.
The phone call doesn’t sound right, but apart from that, I don’t think it’s much of a secret. It’s not the Jews, the Masons, or anyone else. Just good ol’ big business running the show (or at least nudging it here and there.
So what happens if a serious leader wants to really change things. Would he or she be threatened? removed? What can we as citizens do? Take to the streets and insist on certain changes?
The slow and cumbersome machinery of the government keeps things from getting out of whack to quickly. I’m sure you’d like quick change for the good, but wahat about rapid change for the worst. The Sentae’s role is to slow things down and not let those short termers in the house muck things up.
Someone who wanted to make REAL changes would never get nominated. They’d be marginalized and laughed at, and the media would treat them like a joke.
Think of Ron Paul. I personally think he is a real nutcase, but his own party treated him abominably, even though he was polling better than some of the “mainstream” candidates.
The way the American government is set up, nobody - including the President - has enough power to single-handedly remake the country. So if he tried to change things too much, inertia (or the secret masters if you prefer) would defeat him without having to eliminate him.
I think someone who wants change has to be smart enough to make gradual changes. To rally the public behind those changes so to apply pressure on reps and senators to back those changes. If by REAL change we mean drastic change I don’t think that will happen either.
I’m thinking at some point even gradual change would be stopped by the powers that be. We can have the illusion of meaningful progress, but not actual lasting progress.
I liked a lot of what Ron Paul said but I think he advocated too much drastic change.
Obama seems sincere to me but I’m wondering if that will change as the campaign goes on. Here’s where the paranoid part comes in. What does a young family man do if, in a private meeting, he’s told he can be a figurehead but he’d better back off certain changes for his families sake? Do we think people who will create a war and send our family members to kill and die for profit would hesitate to take out an elected official who didn’t cooperate.
You’re falling into a common fallacy. You argue as follows: I want changes A, B, C, . . . , Z in our government. A certain candidate wants change A in our government. He must therefore agree with me that all of A through Z are good ideas. He gets elected and only makes change A. Therefore he must have been co-opted by the real masters who prevented him from making the other changes.
It’s not the case that just because you want huge changes in our government most other people want them too. Most people only want small changes in our present goverment. Those people who want huge changes often want changes in opposite directions, so they cancel each other out. We can never expect to make more than small changes in our government over any short period because that’s all that people want.
I’m talking to you, cosmodan. You’re asking why voting doesn’t get you the changes you want. The answer is that other people don’t want the changes you want. The problem is not that there is some secret group of masters that prevents changes even though most people want them. The reason that the changes you want aren’t going to happen is that other people don’t want those changes.
No I’m not. You’ve misunderstood the point and assumed an argument I didn’t make.
In case you missed it, most Americans believe this country is headed in the wrong direction and a whole lot of conservative republicans think GWB is a horrible president who betrayed their trust. It’s not about different political views.
The OP accepts that there may not be a secret group of masters but I think it’s more complicated than what you’ve presented.
> In case you missed it, most Americans believe this country is headed in the
> wrong direction and a whole lot of conservative republicans think GWB is a
> horrible president who betrayed their trust.
Yes, and they differ very much about which way is the correct direction. The notion that most Americans want some one basic change in our government and that there’s something in the electoral system or some group of people who are preventing us from that change is wrong. There is no such flaw in the electoral system and there is no such group of people. That isn’t to say that there may be some such basic changes in our governement that would be good for the U.S. There’s just no way to consistently get such changes in any conceivable democratic system. Democracy is not magic. There is no wonderful electoral system that would allow us to only vote for changes for the good. Mere human beings like us don’t have any consistent intuitive sense of what changes would be best for our government. We can only use our flawed guesses about what changes would be best. Perhaps the majority of those guesses are approximately right, but many of them are wrong.
No, he presents it as a possibility. Then in 2004 there was Ohio which got ignored fairly quickly. Robert Kennedy did a major article on it, but nothing happened.
Before he was campaigning for the support of Democrats. Now he’s campaigning for the support of the entire nation, which is (if you hadn’t noticed) half Republican. He’d be a fool to hold the same positions in his national race as in the party one.