Who is attacking America?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by August

Oh really? Can you name a third party that should have been viable that was kept down by the existing parties? Maybe what you call brainwashing sounds more like a case of sour grapes.

Money. Advertising. Influence. The existing parties control all those. Ron Paul isn't ousted because of popularity. The people believe what their parties tell them. The only way to get anywhere is by playing the party game.

Me, I have no sour grapes. I'm just an observer. I don't like either party, and I don't like any of their candidates. If I don't vote, I'm either lazy or perverse. So I write in the candidate I want, knowing that he doesn't have a chance because everyone else who feels as I do will still vote for the party candidate, because they've been told that if they don't they're "throwing away" their votes, and they "don't count".

Yes, the parties control everything where elections are concerned, and most of the people are indeed brainwashed into believing that's the only way.

As for reserving the right to complain only for myself that is ridiculous. I neither promote or prevent anyone from complaining.

And yet in the same paragraph you did both, which is why I responded as I did.

Y'know Europeans often chide us for complaining about gas prices so furiously when they already pay double or even triple and manage to live with it. My response is it's only our constant bitching about it that keeps those prices lower.

Complaining is good.

That battle like every other American political battle from pipelines to abortion rights these days is not over yet and that is the problem.

That the battle is not over is the problem. So we shouldn't complain?

That may be true about factions Steve but the founders had no problem forming them in spite of what they may have said. Heck the Continental Congress itself was considered a faction, a rebellious faction, by the royal government.

That is quite true. That it's human nature to form factions is undeniable. What is also undeniable is that it seems to be human nature to convince oneself that his faction, his ideal, his belief is the only correct one and then do his best to quash all dissenting opinion. That's what parties do, and that seems to be the case with many here.

[August]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

And yet in the same paragraph you did both, which is why I responded as I did.

Who have I prevented from speaking here Steve?

...quash all dissenting opinion. That's what parties do, and that seems to be the case with many here.

Again which dissenting opinion has been quashed here? Who are these mysterious "many" that you claim are at work here denying your rights?

Seems to me you're inventing a reason to get upset and a shadowy enemy to blame it on. That's a tactic used by every dictator who ever came to power.