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John Joyce's avatar

John Droz reminds us that common sense is uncommon or else we wouldn’t be in this mess.

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TriTorch's avatar

Excellent article. I am writing a similar one based around apathy and the problems it causes in our society, and I will link to this one in the 'Solutions' section.

'Concerned Grammy' replied the following to one of my comments yesterday which sparked the idea:

"I worked our city elections in April. Small, rural town. The mayor was unchallenged (3rd term, he's almost invisible) and 2 (out of 4) city council seats. The 2 city council seat challengers did NOTHING, didn't even put out one sign, no FB page - I mean, NOTHING! Everyone was asking ME about the challengers! After 7 days of early voting and 7am-7pm election day, a grand total of 127 people cast a ballot. There are 2,700 registered, eligible voters in this town! There's a large group that constantly b!tch on FB about how "badly" the town is ran, who runs it, how "bad" the police are, etc, etc, etc. I think there's a large link between people "letting off steam" on social media that prevents "in real life" action."

My comment:

"The people hold the power, despite what government at every level desperately wants you to believe. Town councils can do nothing without the apathy of the populace. Fixing our problems, however, requires up-to-the minute civic participation from a critical mass of citizens. You have to be all over the legislators and enforcers, you have to put every single thing they do under a microscope constantly, and you have to remove them if they do not execute the will of the people. From here, you work your way to county, state, and federal levels.

All of our problems stem from apathy. For too long we've sat back, relaxed, and let the government police itself, and by doing so have given the wolves the keys to the hen house while naively expecting - in our blissful ignorance - for the chickens to be in good hands...

Those chickens have been and are being slaughtered, and the time has come for us to put those wolves in prison and to take back what is ours.

The tinpot dictators feed on both your apathy and absence. Show up as much as you can. Show them they are hopelessly outnumbered. Show them you are watching their every move. Immediately call them on every wrong move they take.

The will shrivel under the scrutiny and recognize that if they screw up they will lose that coveted position of power they worked so hard to acquire."

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