I find myself regularly in a minority with what are considered controversial opinions.
I am old enough to rember the old days when congress was "bipartisan", had actual hearings where both sides actually tried to get to the bottom of a situation, parliamentary procedure was followed, party members were less inclined to walk in lock-step with the party leadership and showed mutual respect for one another and hammered out compromise agreements. Given the actual power citizens are given and what they do with what little they have, this might be the most I could hope for. Democracy sucks when an ignorant brainwashed majority mucks everything up. We also had only three networks, so even though media consolidation is worse today, from a citizen's perspective, our point of view was basically being framed. The corporations poured an equal amount of money into both campaigns leaving me with a less than exemplary opinion of my government. I found myself not in the "crossing the isle to find a compromise" but on the side of where the so-called extremes of the parties found themselves.
- against corporate welfare
- against defense spending and endless war
- against the drug war.
- some other shit i can't think of.
Life was less than perfect. In spite of the perennial battle cry that our vote mattered, this, to me just seemed as a way to tell the little people. "You are so lucky to be free. But you must protect your freedom by choosing amongst one or two names, knowing that the result will always and has always been the same regardless of your particular choice and then in two years come back again to do your patriotic duty. Just don't try to involve yourself in actual policy matters, that is for us important pundits and policy makers to decide. See you in two years, where you can show how incredibly devoted you are to your important role of choosing amongst two inherently flawed candidates.
Until Trump, both parties were really good at keeping the rank and file inline. From my perspective this was a good thing when the Republicans were doing it as the rank and file's brand of "populism" was far worse than the alternative which from my point of view was also pretty bleak.
Now, Trump bolstered by this misguided form of populism and his cronies used them to gain access to power and now have abandoned them so they can fill up the swamp, raid the treasury and impose authoritarian rule. The racism and insults and bullying and disrespect still gets these Maga morons excited, but they are starting to realize that they have been duped.
Meanwhile the Democratic establishment maintains control of the party (although yay New York primaries—the grip may be loosening!).
My point is that the old days may not necessarily have been the "good old days" – that we have never really had a functioning democracy in the sense of an active citizenry, with a solid grasp of civics an understanding of the arguments and the ability to think critically driving the nation's policies.
I believe that that core group of elites that maintain their grip on the Democratic party, use the outrages of the Republican party as fodder to raise campaign contributions using Trump's outrageous as the pretext and then funneling the money to beat the progressive opposition, that is free of corporate pac money.
So what does this all have to do with freedom and the SOTU 750 topic? Not much I guess, but when people act like we had some kind of great system before the disaster we are facing now, I would argue that we had a screwed up system that was progressively decaying that was and still is much more of a dollar per vote category than a celebration of the great shining cities and a thriving democracy. I have never voted Republican in my life, but I hold the Democrats at least partially accountable not just for enabling this takeover attempt, but for coopting the resistance to put their own ambitions ahead of the people.
I just don't like an archaiac system that is collapsing at a steady pace to be the benchmark for what a democratic society should look like.
