Joeseph Stack's Suicide Letter

[Ikeren]

No. Representative democracy is a system to be contrasted with direct democracy. Direct democracy is where everyone votes on every issue. This being unweildly in large democratic or semi-democratic nations, most of them have switched to direct democracy, where the people elect a leader by popular vote (or, in the US case, a system of electing people to elect a leader). Indirect democracies are not less democracies.

Hypothetically, real change could happen within the system, though I agree with you that it is unlikely. I would argue, however, that it is not a result of the government system itself, but the result of the people working in that government system, the conventions that arose around it, and the media.

The issue of Iraq is interesting because there are material conditions. No leader would disengage a war---any war, if they thought it was going to lead to severe counter-attacks. Which political leaders have repeatedly said they believe (whether they do or not is impossible to know).

Representative Democracy exists in a lot of countries other than the US, that have similar trouble with corporate media influences on their people and their government without the military-industrial complex influncing the government as well (Canada, Australia, some EU states that have very minimal militaries).

I feel like we mostly agree that
1) The media is a major problem.
2) The current incarnations of corporate capitalism are a major problem.
3) The current political structure of many democratic nations are a problem.
4) The interactions of these things are a problem.
5) The military-complex is a problem in the nations with it (The US, obviously).

I feel like the point at which we disagree on is the material capability of a good government. *If people were sufficiently educated and aware of what was going on around them, I think real change could come, either by revolution or by simple pressure on political candidates, that realize things have to change.

I think another major difference on where we stand is I think the best way to convince people is reasonable, academic argument, working with ideas they already accept; ie, working within the paradigm that this system has set up (like Noam Chomsky does). Alternative theorists don't do that; and that's my complaint. The same goal, but I'm under the impression that the methods of conspiracy theorists often undermine that goal, not support it.

For example, see the line that says '*If people' up above? Imagine that line finished..."If people broke free from the shackles of corrupt society that have imprisoned them so long and rise up and seize the rotting flesh of totallitarian america and rend it from its bones! Voltaire Those who kill shall be put to death unless they murder in large numbers to sound of trumpets"...think about how much less coherent I'd sound to people who don't already believe me?