Reply #24: More than voting [View All]

[jbutsz]

The Republican party is content with their voters waking up only to vote and rally around making war. They are content and thrive within a population only coming to life to vote and support war. The majority of their voters are not political in any meaningful sense, nothing even close to the activism we know.

That has to stop. A Democratic society cannot remain Democratic with a de-politicized population. Half the population is not enough for a Democracy. It will be a long struggle, but we have to each bring political life out of our hearts and minds and share it with others who are not - not only to engage them, but to discover what is really true in our own hearts and minds.

Telling people who they should vote for will not work; we have to show them why they should bother paying attention at all, and show them that their perceptions are manipulated and manufactured by a system that is ultimately screwing us all.

None of what we do as individuals will work effectively until we get the media out of private-wealth hands. We must have a free press. We have to get corporate cash away from our "representatives," taking the profit out of the political system so that the already-corrupt are not attracted to it.

We have to fiercely demand especially these two changes from candidates and accept nothing less, recalling every one who slips into office and refuses to represent the People who elected him/her, or none of what we do will be strong enough to overtake the opposition in effectively re-politicizing the entire nation.

We have to be "Tough on Politicians," and demand the government we want and hold them to it, rather than accept the government they propose to give us. Accepting what they give us to work with, rather than we setting the terms, is us playing within their parameters, by their rules. That's how we've lost control of our government to concentrated powers over these many decades.