America can't be saved from ideology

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Sure let's go back to appointing senators, and let's pick congressmen by lottery.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/ ... story.html



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

You're right it isn't the same. Obama wasn't a crazy person or a Russian stooge.

no, he was a kenyan born communist

There, I fixed your obvious typos...

No need to thank me.

choice has become an illusion and extremism, a distraction.

we are all trapped in the invisible cage and the only way up is to buy in but the only way out is stop distracting ourselves. civil war is the ultimate defense against revolution.

if there is a divine presence about, it's laughing at us.

Democracy, to put it in neutral terms, is just a system of government. There has to be some higher purpose to unite the people. If people start viewing democracy as an end in itself then it's hardly surprising if things soon go to pot, since a defining feature of the system is competing parties engaged in a never-ending custard-pie fight.



All societies have elites. Having elites isn't bad in itself, it depends on what sort of elites they are.

It's just that very distrust and rejection of the media and institutions that had historically led to the rise of fascism. Who says the media lies, or that there has been massive voter fraud? Those sources making such claims, whether they be Breitbart, or Fox, or Alt Right fanatics like Richard Spencer, are all without credibility in their war against the truth. The only "deep state" is the unchecked power of corporate America and their bought-and-payed-for politicians behind the scenes.

Please tell me that statement isn't serious.

It might have something to do with their human rights record/how they treat their own people, especially political dissenters and the LGBTQ community (the torture and murder of gays in Chechnya, for example.) Should we be friends with countries who murder their own citizens for being gay or disagreeing with their completely corrupt government?

That's something for Putin's WP fan club to consider.

I actually know quite a bit about Marxism, which is what communism and socialism are based on. Karl Marx wrote that he did not invent communism- that it was a movement he was already documenting.

It is not a bad idea, but it is a utopian (unrealistic) society, *I* think best imagined as what they lived under in Star Trek: The Next Generation. People in this system would work for their own self-actualization, or self-betterment, not for money or because they were forced. People who could not or would not work would be taken care of by the collective efforts of others (or by the state under socialism). Under this system, it was supposed that some people would not mind pushing a broom for an hour or two every day, then spending the rest of the day doing what they wanted- which was imagined to be things like playing the violin or tending their gardens (NOTE: not playing video games and smoking weed- Marx and Engels lived in a different world, where leisure time was spent differently than what we do these days).

Okay, so the problem with this is like playing any board game. Everyone has to play by the rules. Or at least the vast majority. If one person cheats, they can take advantage of the goodness of everyone else and it VERY quickly turns into a dictatorship. That's why people keep saying that communism has never been put in place correctly- it hasn't in large scale. I believe Alcoholics Anonymous is a successful implementation of a communist organization. Probably not intentionally, but that is the format. People coming together for the sake of helping each other, with no single person in charge. I personally don't believe it is possible in large scale, societal form. You have to have a system in place to deal with people who need to be in power, con men, degenerates, losers, etc. Those are people too. We can't ignore them, expel them, or kill them.

Marx (and Engels) wrote beautiful and brilliant essays explaining society, power, labor, and economics. I personally think anyone interested in these subjects should read them. It helps to explain why and how people work on many levels. I also think it perfectly illustrates why people initially thought communism and socialism were good systems and how, with our modern insight we can see that they cannot work.

I respected the idea of appointment, via lottery, in that is was just honorary. There is no more color of authority, than when someone is given the key to the town or is appointed 'king for a day'.

The problem is in assuming that all of our differences are reconcilable. Different peoples' firmly-held beliefs might be mutually-exclusive, making them incompatible, socially.