# White America doesn't understand democracy

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america-doesnt-understand-democracy/824169>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [November 8, 2018, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america-doesnt-understand-democracy/824169 "2018-11-08T00:39:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 50

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**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-america-doesnt-understand-democracy/824169/50 "2018-11-08T18:28:45Z")

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> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#):
>
> Perhaps you (royal you, eh) could try doing, oh, anything. Try doing anything other than what you’ve been doing for the past 10 years, which is mostly sitting around and not marching in the streets

There’s been A LOT of marching in the streets over the past two years. Some of the biggest marches ever.

(Just in case you were wondering, marches went out of style among us left-of-center types when hundreds of thousands of us marched against the Iraq War in the run-up to that, and we were barely covered in the news, so of course we made no dent at all on public opinion.)

> [@](#):
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> and not writing letters and not visiting your elected representatives (at any level) to talk about your needs and your desires for our society.

You may have noticed that Congresscritters started getting a lot more calls in 2017. Not sure how that’s holding up, but it happened. Also, you may have heard that people have been showing up at town halls - when Congresscritters have them.

I’ve done some marching, and a lot of phone calling. No town hall opportunities.

> [@](#):
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> Try doing anything other than writing a check once every four years to a couple of candidates and then mostly forgetting about them until maybe you vote.

See above.

> [@](#):
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> Try fighting your real opposition and not fighting with people who are on your side who are trying to get you to realize that you have to FIGHT for things that are important, not hope they come to you.

Yeah well, I’m trying to figure out what **asahi** ’s alternative plan of action IS. We’re doing stuff already, thanks. Like I said earlier, _what’s the opportunity cost of what we’re already doing? What should we be doing that what we’re doing now is getting in the way of?_

In the absence of some answers there, he isn’t on my side; he’s an underminer.

> [@](#):
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> Try not losing focus after you don’t get the results you want immediately. Those are few things that, IMO, the left side of the political spectrum could try, but I expect that some or all of them will be labeled “unreasonable”, thus negating your (royal you, eh) need to even try.

OK, here’s what’s unreasonable:

1. Armed resistance is unreasonable.

2. Magical Pony Plans are unreasonable. You know, the ones that go, “if we only did X, Americans would rise up and almost bodily eject the Trumpublicans from power,” or anything else with similar degrees of wishful thinking. I’m too old for fairy tales.

That’s it.

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