Originally Posted by rostasi

It would seem that way if the person hearing it was acting like an empty
vessel into which anything can be poured. Yeah, there are way too many
people like that - hearing and/or looking for the reduced versions of things
that they can use to emotionally come to conclusions - and that's why an
educated populace is a dangerous populace to fanatics.

Generations that were older than me used to unequivocally trust people in
various professional positions. That included various kinds of doctors (even
psychiatrists) and all kinds of media types, and even lawyers. There's all kinds
of reasons for that to have changed, somewhat, in the past 50+ years especially,
but you still have a slight variation of that same ideal when it comes to the
acceptance or not of what's being fed to you on a daily basis thru all of these
media channels.

If someone is being told that democracy needs to be saved and they just
swallow that statement without question ... and then they're told it again and
again, yeah, of course, they'll become cynical and stop believing. The point is to
investigate the claim (if it's your first time hearing it) or if you've been hearing
it again and again and you have a history of, at least, basic rational analysis,
you'll know right away whether it's crap talk or not. The signs for all of this have
existed for a long time and too many people take the most basic of basics way
of dealing with things. Basic can be good in some instances, but really not good
when it comes to most areas satisfying the body politic.

Why did we have 7 million more votes for the Dem, but didn't have anywhere
near an equal percentage rise in the Congress? Yes, some complex reasons,
but also a simple one exists where people didn't understand the importance of
Congress for the whole of democracy. Kind of like: "Oh, Joe will take care of it."

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.