Re: What Documentaries Influenced You Most and Why?

[Ron Lindeboom] "we get handed candidates that grow progressively more useless"

I agree with the sentiment, but the fault is our own. We ELECT these candidates.

Surveys show that Americans express high DISAPPROVAL for "Congress," even as they express high APPROVAL for their own representatives.

Why? Because my Representative appeals to my self-interest. He got lots of Defense Department jobs to come here; he even managed to finagle big funding for Chesapeake Bay clean-up into the FARM BILL for crying out loud. So we locals here (the only ones who can actually vote for him) think he's great.

The problem is that the selfishness of all of us Americans (more and more Federal funding for local benefit) is benefiting well-placed lobbyists, increasing the power of the Military-Industrial Complex, ruining the national economy, and worst of all, changing us into a nation where self-interest supercedes the national identity. Jack Kennedy's "What can you do for your country" is gone, baby, gone.

Once you see other localities and fat cats getting theirs, you want YOURS too.

At the same time, most Americans sense that something is wrong here. I think that's one of the reasons that Barack Obama's come-out-of-nowhere candidacy was so remarkably successful. It appealed to people who like to think that they are above all that petty self-interested politics.



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