Do you believe the American people have a hand in the current...

[Writer]

state of our democracy? Is it really all the fault of our nation's institutions (political, economic, religious, etc.)? If so/not, why?

I will take all comments off-line, thank you.

[Doctor_J]

1. Not that much

In point of fact there isn't much we can do at this point. The media is stacked, the votes are rigged, peaceful protests are ignored, and my vote means next to nothing. The man inhabiting the WH would have a hard time getting a job at Burger King if he hadn't been born into the royal family, yet there he sits, with us unable to stop even the most egregious of his transgressions. Short of a civil war I don't really see what can be done to fix it.

[otohara]

2. My College Freshman Says Not So Much on Campus

at least the majority of his mates don't care much and don't pay attention.

He did say the republican kids are more active, they had an entire week of speakers and other activities, while the liberal kids just smoke ciggies and complain about republican's and do nada.

[Oversea Visitor]

3. Of course yes

You mean those in power not American people?
They speak louder and they fight harder so they win.

So if you like hiding under rock dont whine x(

You either fighting Americans or you Whinning Americans
Take you pick

[Jim Sagle]

6. Hey, it's the comedian.

[Oversea Visitor]

7. Yup

He ask question me give answer.
Answer plain and simple

[Stinky The Clown]

4. I **absolutely** think the people are at fault ... to a degree.

I was only half joking, just the other day, when talking to my business parter and said "we ought to need a license to vote, just to keep stupid people out of the process." Obviooulsy I am not really in favor of that ... well ... mostly not. I know that's how we managed to disenfranchise so many for so long.

But yeah, what right does someone who doesn't know the name of the president have to vote? Amazingly, such people exist. How can **anyone** expect such people to know what the issues are?

Then there are the people who just 'vote by rote'. Tell them what to vote for and they do.

Now, I said, in the titile to this post "to a degree'. And that's where this becomes seriously problematic. Such an electorate is easily manipulated and not interested enough to be outraged when they get screwed.

Yeah .... in many ways the people just abdicated their responsibility.

[Mikimouse]

5. It is a combination of institutions and individuals...

Our social institutions (healthcare, legal, educational, etc.) have as their foundations a set of cultural values that define what is good/bad, appropriate/inappropriate, beautiful/ugly, etc. some examples of our cultural values are: competition, achievement, equal opportunity, success, autonomy, material wealth, etc. Most of these values, as can be seen, are easily defined as the 'gold standards' by which we 'should' live. Nowhere is it listed that we should be compassionate, kind, mindful of the real social environment or of each other(with the exception that we MUST have more than the next person, otherwise we feel somehow belittled). This leaves little room for intellectual progress, which is necessary for social advancement. The social institutions are based on/supported by our cultural value system, which in turn provides the definitions detailed above.
The American people are most definitely involved in the deterioration of our democracy, because we are too involved in our own, individual pursuits of culturally defined success to care much about how those pursuits affect our futures. We are addicted to instant gratification, and feel 'abused' if we don't get what we want, when we want. That is one reason that we ended up with George W. Bush in the White House, because so many people were too lazy to think about the fact that you don't elect someone to have a beer with them, you elect them because they are competent to do the job for which they are elected.
The Bush tax cuts and the overwhelming adoration with which they were received(we can feel more fulfilled by spending that money on material goods, without worrying too much about those beggars on welfare, after all they are clearly not accepting of the socially defined realities/priorities), are a good indication of how most Americans think. We are all at fault to an extent. Myself included.

[stillcool]

8. The fault lies in the nature of man...

"The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting." Milan Kundera

The Origins of the Overclass
By Steve Kangas
http://www.aliveness.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html
The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.

The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA. This is not to say the machine is a formal CIA operation, complete with code name and signed documents. (Although such evidence may yet surface — and previously unthinkable domestic operations such as MK-ULTRA, CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD show this to be a distinct possibility.) But what we do know already indicts the CIA strongly enough. Its principle creators were Irving Kristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family, and more. Almost all the machine's creators had CIA backgrounds.

During the 1970s, these men would take the propaganda and operational techniques they had learned in the Cold War and apply them to the Class War. Therefore it is no surprise that the American version of the machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the foreign versions designed to fight communism. The CIA's expert and comprehensive organization of the business class would succeed beyond their wildest dreams. In 1975, the richest 1 percent owned 22 percent of America’s wealth. By 1992, they would nearly double that, to 42 percent — the highest level of inequality in the 20th century.