Comment by iambateman
2 days ago
When I was a kid, my parents would say “with that attitude, you’re right.”
We can and should expect a lot out of the people around us and especially the ones who choose civil service.
Our grandparents ended slavery, got votes for women, established a merit-based civil service, fought fascism, passed equal rights legislation, and created the most dynamic large economy in history.
We have problems, too, but we are not powerless to fix them.
You notice this?
It's literally everywhere. So much negativity. Sometimes I wonder how much is enemy action and how much is just depression or some other mental illness.
Producing political apathy and learned helplessness is an explicit purpose of the "Flood the zone" propaganda strategy.
It's a serious requirement for despots. You don't need a large and supportive group. You don't need 80% of the population expressing support for your acts.
All you need is like 20% of the population absolutely Ride-Or-Die levels of support for you, willing to do violence and hate on your behalf, and everyone else just kind of apathetic, unsure, or oppressed enough to stay down.
> We have problems, too, but we are not powerless to fix them.
Indeed. Even as some of the more mainstream methods to address our current problems become less effective, we should be open to other ways change can come about. Among your list, many of those achievements had their roots in various approaches that didn't involve legislators.
Sadly so much of that, people are actively trying to undo it.