Bush Is Not The Cause Of Our Loss Of Democracy, Apathy Is.

[ThomWV]

I just spent a week in the midst of a half dozen people I did not know very well at all. We talked about everything, well, almost everything. I was purposefully silent on matters of current politics. On that subject I just listened.

If the loss of our rights and the curtailment of our freedoms is the most important thing going on in our country you could not have told so from listening to these people. About the only thing they agreed to was that last monday they would try to avoid hearing anything at all about 9/11. If you kept the television turned off it was easy to think it had never happened. That was fine with me.

I was amazed how incurious these people were. Every one of them had at least an undergraduate college degree, one was a school teacher, two were in the contraction trades, one a business owner, one retired, a homemaker. Nice mix, bad result.

[Philosoraptor]

1. Great minds think simultaneously.

Agreed, apathy is our number one affliction.

[BootinUp]

2. Sounds like they were holding back too.

[ThomWV]

3. Not Really

When I said I was silent I should have said I was mostly silent. Now and then on observing some horror I'd say, "ain't that some shit?" or something similar to see if anyone had something to say. Generally they'd scratch, burp, and go on with whatever they were doing.

Oh, television seems to be the real opiate of the masses. Deadly even in small doses.

[magellan]

4. Sadly you're right. People do not care

...until it affects them personally. By then it's usually too late.

And after what's happened these last few days, with Bush** having the temerity to demand Congress give him retroactive protection from war crimes, or else, and no one on the Hill calling him a lunatic and criminal for even suggesting it...well, it's already too effin' late.

[mdmc]

5. a nice little quip might have shed some light on those guys.

k/r

[pretzel4gore]

6. the permanent government....

lewis lapham, of harpers magazine, says we are bystanders in our own lives in regards to our governance- while we go through this game every few years to select a 'government' what really happens is that a very narrow choice is given us which relatively few bother with making anyway. the reason is the people dimply perceive that we are 'ruled' by a monster who watches us like a hawk, and devotes its entire energy to monitoring us, and thinking for us etc...this 'permanent' government uses frontmen like regan, bush and even clinton, to some extent, in order to keep up the fiction we do make the choices.....
iow, it's not apathy, it's helplessness, which the mass media create out of thin air, using our own cash to defraud us and sic us on our own sons/daughters, who stand accused of the very fraud we pay for them to commit!
bring back the gullotine, and shuttup the lying liars for a few years so something like understanding (which = power) can take shape..
killem all, let god sortem out

[Danger Mouse]

7. Indeed...

as others have said, the idiot box is largely to blame...it hypnotizes the masses and makes their brains nice and soft. The media is just a nonstop barrage of celebrity worship, garbage culture, with a smattering of jingoism and fear mixed in to give the stew some spice.

[ashling]

8. Plato -

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Plato
Greek author & philosopher in Athens (427 BC - 347 BC)

[lonestarnot]

9. stunted brain development.

[lonestarnot]

10. You had your chance to light fires with six people and just sat there

in silence. What the fuck does that say about you and your study in human behavior.

[Catchawave]

11. Well, I live with a Bush Supporter (groan)

And I can honestly report from the trenches, politics aside, the *hate* for Democrats is much stronger than the *love* for Bushlicans.