ShaunRyan, I agree with most of what you posted except the "we" part of it. I think most of us did our part by voting and trying to exercise our rights as American citizens. Politicians stacked the deck against us with that two party system and campaign financing. Good candidates could not get on the ballot if tney didnt conform to party lines. You basically had to come up throught tne ranks by demonstrating you were are party loyalist. Only then would you be endorsed to run on the ballot. As a result the choice was between whatever two candidates the parties wanted to run. Most of us voted against the most undesirable candidate. Ross Perot demonstrated what would happen if a third party tried to run a candidate. He was the best choice of the three but we ended up with the worst of the three candidates. Personally, I voted for Reagan and Trump. In every other case I voted against the other candidate.
The"we" is collective and spans generations. The distortion of our political system spanned those same generations. People weren't taught the actual concepts behind the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution in school, only simplistic, paint-by-number, cartoon representations of them. Same with actual history. Those concepts and the warnings that go with them are implicit--and sometimes explicit---in the documents themselves, as well as in the debates leading up to them.
But most people never bothered to read farther than what they were taught in school. I didn't until my mid-twenties, and I've been a lifelong reader.
We sat on the sidelines while the deck was stacked against us. Our shortcoming hasn't been a failure to exercise our rights but a failure to shoulder the responsibilities that come with them.
After WWII we let our guard down, McCarthy and the cold war notwithstanding. The fall of the USSR and the Berlin wall reinforced the illusion. Hell, we
won, right?
It's been nonstop marketing and manipulation ever since, with us falling for it. Radar ranges and Barcoloungers and Hollywood blockbusters became more important than liberty.
Pursuit of happiness is a wonderful thing.
Blind pursuit of happiness not so much.
They used our own optimism and hope against us and we let them.
