Bottom line: WHO is responsible for what's happening? WE ARE.

[Tyler Durden]

WE, THE PEOPLE.

I seem to remember it saying that at the top of some sort of document..?

We can blame rePukes or the Pig Bush or Reagan...but it comes down to: THE PEOPLE.

Who's fault is this?

If the populace is stupid...
THE PEOPLE vote for and support schooling.

If the populace believes stupid lies and propaganda...
THE PEOPLE are lazy and listen to entertaining "propaganda" like it's truth.

If idiots and poltroons get elected to public office...
THE PEOPLE either voted for them, or the ones who didn't support them didn't vote in enough numbers.

If the air sucks or the water sucks or housing sucks or cities suck...
THE PEOPLE are the greedy and selfish BASE for the greeding and selfish elected bastards who do it.

If the nation's elections are illegal and stolen...
THE PEOPLE have redress under the constitution; they're just too lazy to use it.

If state-sanctioned evil abounds...
THE PEOPLE are responsible at the bottom line; they DO SOMETHING about it, or silence implies agreement.

When it all comes down to it, if the Government is Stupid, Evil, Illegal, or any of many other myriad ills, who is finally responsible?

THE PEOPLE.

[90-percent]

1. Oh, what to do, y'know?

Yup, we the people are in a democracy getting the government we deserve. This admin could go out and eat our newborns alive and we wouldn't care. No pitchforks and riots in the streets for us. We will all be lead like sheep to live the rest of our lives at CAMP REAGAN, where the names of our crimes WILL BE CARVED ON OUR BACKS.


-85% jimmy

[Tyler Durden]

2. 'Scuse me, Can't talk. American Idol is on....

Seems like that should be written on grave of the Republic.

[xchrom]

3. thank you!

we HAVE to talk about this -- past poking fun at it.

conservative christians, people caught up in consumerism, people asleep over voting illegalities, people who don't read --

we HAVE to talk about the character of american culture, society -- the people.

we're sinking -- and sinking fast.

and we won't reverse it if we don't face some very ugly truths about ourselves and how divided, apathetic, under-educated -- how ever you want to think about it .

if there is to be a Renascence -- an american Renascence -- then it has to be created -- and driven.

other wise any gains liberals and progressives make will be washed away in short order.

[Tyler Durden]

4. Bush: "Ah TRUST the Amurikan People!"

I don't. I'm fresh out of trust.

[xchrom]

9. dude -- you're right not to.

it's so frustrating because it's not a sexy topic.

[DancingBear]

5. My friend, you need to give them a reason to care

The ones that don't vote give the same answer year after year after year:

"There's no difference between the two, and either way neither of them has any idea how to make MY life better".

Now, look at what happened yesterday and ask yourself:

Are they stupid, or crazy like a fox?

[Tyler Durden]

7. My background in history just takes away more hope.

In history when a Republic has entered decline, there has yet to be evidence of one that has rebounded more than temporarily.

See those "TUBES"...?

[DancingBear]

11. Oh, I hold no hope for a rebound

We have crossed the Rubicon, and I have long since believed that the other side (a quaint term for an empty space, don't you think?) will do nothing save to cushion the landing and make sure the jumpsuits match the numbers.

We have been given exactly what we deserve.

One does not fix a condemned house by painting the walls, one fixes it with a bulldozer.

Unfortunately, many here can't wait to buy another gallon of SoWhatMajority Blue come November.



Check your inbox.

[genie_weenie]

6. Selected lines...

Yo, we gotta take the power back!
Bam! Here's the plan
Motherfuck Uncle Sam
Step back, I know who I am

So called facts are fraud
They want us to allege and pledge
And bow down to their God

See right through the red, white and blue disguise
With lecture I puncture the structure of lies
Installed in our minds and attempting
To hold us back

Yeah, we gotta take the power back
Come on, come on!
We gotta take the power back


Rage Against the Machine

[indepat]

8. In the long run, we the people get the government we deserve: case in

point, almost all Congresspeople and Senators running for re-election who voted for torture, unbridled W power, including suspension of habeas corpus, will be returned to office by we the people. We the people are truly fu*ked for we have met the enemy (the fu*kor) and it is us (we the people who keep returning other enemies of the Constitution, and hence we the people) to office.

[The2ndWheel]

10. But that's what people are

We're naturally "lazy". It's why every empire falls. As power expands, you have to put more and more energy into whatever system it is to keep it going. We're in an artifical global system today, and that's only because of cheap energy. Humans weren't made to control things on a global scale. That's why as this country has grown, we experience less and less representation. On average, a House member "represents" hundreds of thousands of people. Senators "represent" million upon million on average.

It's not the people. The system we live in is simply too big.

[meganmonkey]

12. There is a great chance to do something about soon

I agree that ultimately we have the responsibility to change things. Not as an issue of who is to blame or anything else, but a simple pragmatic reality:

The people in power have no reason to give power to the people. In fact, they are better off when more people are disenfranchised. It protects their status quo.

The system is broken. We need to seek remedies in, shall we say, more old-school ways. There is no knight-in-shining-armor. The longer we wait for one, the worse it will get.

It is up to us.

So this is a great start. Events already planned in more than 100 cities:

Announcing a Day of Mass Resistance:

OCTOBER 5, 2006

BRING THIS TO A HALT!

YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

YOUR GOVERNMENT puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

YOUR GOVERNMENT suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

People look at all this and think of Hitler - and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.

We must act now; the future is in the balance.

Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this. There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission from God" will not go without a fight. There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn - or be forced - to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it. And there is a way. We are talking about something on a scale that can really make a huge change in this country and in the world. We need more than fighting Bush's outrages one at a time, constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim to create a political situation where the Bush regime's program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of history. Acting in this way, we join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want this regime to be stopped.

This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop. The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined.

The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.

http://www.worldcantwait.org/

[PATRICK]

13. I have a much better line

We are responsible for overturning what has happened. Victimology is not my theology. Blaming the victims
which strangely includes our leadership is not a useful response except as an attempt to remove the illusions, the denial and apathy and easy despair from the sheepfold(now slaughterhouse). We are human, despite the positive reinforcements of past pop psychology and as opposed to the grim cynicism upon which Cheney depends like a sword of Damocles over human civilization. the choice of the American public, in actual fact, has been against them specifically in real voter choice and generally against their programs and principles. Living under the delusion of Reagan and the easily nose-led American public, the dark years of Nixon has shattered. It now seems just disgusting and lazy that these types ever had it so easy and people ever accepted the moral gutter and their own defrauding and press betrayal.

So we fight and fight determined to hold criminals and their justifiers and toadies and profiteers fully accountable- first in the naked glare of public knowledge and second in whatever courts can instruct them on the true power of justice and the law. We have real law because we are real people. Those in denial are clustering around the dishonored halls of occupied power, retreating toward their own eternal condemnation.

[pat_k]

14. voiceoutrage.com

Don't keep the outrage to yourself!!

http://voiceoutrage.com">voiceoutrage.com

Call this abomination what it is: The War Criminals Protection Act

(And maybe give http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2255629&mesg_id=2255629">this one a kick)