Reply #49: What you're describing is the classic argument for conformism & a [View All]

[RichM]

general attitude of surrender to the status quo.

Every single NEW social development in history did not exist before it finally existed. Thus, the possibility of every new development could have been scoffed at before it finally came about, by people offering the same argument you're using now.

Before there were liberal democracies, there were monarchies and feudal states. If a dreamer of those times imagined a form of social organization much like the one later codified in the US Constitution, should he have been jeered at & told it was impossible, because it never had happened?

Before the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century, such a thing had never happened. Should those who nonetheless felt the need for it have been jeered at & told it was impossible, because it never had happened? ...

Our society is enmeshed in profound crisis. The system is so sclerotic & dysfunctional that most of the truly important questions can't even be discussed in public. Public discourse has become little more than lies, shark attacks & state propaganda. The government is bankrupt, hated, feared, & criminal. Important changes have to be made in the system itself, or there is going to be one hell of a terrible explosion.

Therefore, the intelligent attitude is not to be so quick to jeer derisively at the possibility of new developments. One should be open to them; give them consideration. Even if you vote for a Democrat, it should be as a temporary tactical measure, done with the awareness that it's an insult to democracy that the two parties maintain their unjust monopoly, with both parties representing modestly different versions of the same thing.