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Originally Posted by Andrewl
Sounds like a consumer society to me.....
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So basically it's not 'being involved in the political process' unless people decide to get on one side of the line or another which has been drawn by O'Reilly on one and Michael Moore on the other? What about people who don't think it's as simple as left and right? You clearly haven't heard of the 'silent majority.' The people who end up deciding who wins in elections aren't the extremists, sure the right and the left division exists but at the end of the day they need to win the support of cooler heads than theirs. Unfortunately, it seems that you have this arrogant view that these 'cooler heads' are just ignorant shoppers. Please go outside. edit...wow man, you've been here for almost over 3 years now with 9,000 posts and it's somehow the rest of society which is insular.
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Again, not what i said. They may have the strongest of political views, but in the end it does not seem translate into political participation. At best it translates into cynicism or just a feeling of helplessness.
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And you come to this conclusion based on what? For god's sake, don't talk to anyone else about 'inaction,' we're talking through an internet forum which can't seriously be labelled 'participation' even by your standards. If this is 'participation' well I guess China must be a democracy.
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And whe you have the opiate of an endless and always in your face consumer culture - why bother... And no, i won't shut up. 
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Consumerism drives economic growth, we live in a capitalist society, what's your point? You seem to think that the existence of this automatically means that because people have to worry about their personal finances that they are insular and don't care about shit. Seriously, maybe when you grow older and have to work and pay your own bills you might realize why not everybody can spend all day on a computer and talk about the news item that popped up 3 minutes ago.
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I said there was a lack of participation, given the size, the education, and the power of a generally free society to effect change. There is what is commonly referred to as a democratic deficit. Leaders are not trusted, in fact they are mostly despised and viewed as scum. what concerns people in polls is not reflected in what the debate is centered around. And the system is really only open to the elite of society. Bush, then Clinton, then Bush, then Clinton..... and so on. Its starting to resemble the mafia. Its pathetic.
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So? People loved George Washington during the war but when he was president, the people didn't trust him then and called him a traitor over the Jay Treaty. Distrust of politicians is NOT by any means evidence of a failing democracy, it's evidence of a skeptical democracy and skepticism is a feature of that.
Bush-Clinton-Bush, who cares? You act like this is a requirement to run for president. And the process isn't 'limited to the elite' either. In the last 4 elections, the poorer candidate won 3 of them. Ross Perot was rich as hell and lost. Huckabee is the poorest Republican and he's #1 in Iowa right now. I think the cynicism which you accuse people of having is coming from you too.
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Wow, i can see i touched a nerve. I said there is a serious lack of political participation in this culture (and there is), and my argument is that this is because we are mainly consumers, not citizens. (which seems true to me).
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Again, if you don't believe people are excercising their individual rights in the past 6 and a half years you're fucking blind. There's no nicer way to put it really. Not a day goes by where I don't hear something about why America sucks or Bush sucks or democracy sucks or Iran and the third world kick ass and here you are in the abyss of cyberspace complaining about people being silent and inactive.
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Your rant does not really touch on those issues. You seem to be in a bit of denial..... accusing me of name calling.. WTF... get a grip man.
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Yes I did, and you did that in this thread saying that people in general are 'ignorant consumers' when there is no factual basis for which you can use to say that 'people in general' are anything when you're referring to a group of 300 million people, by the way and not all of those are eligible to vote yet incase you didn't know. It looks like you're in denial, not me.
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Like i said, ridiculous. Chavez lost the election, it was fair, and he accepted defeat. There is not much more to read into it except he overestimated his popularity, and he underestimated the power of student groups (youth groups) to counter his campaign. That is democracy, and it worked. The most significant act of political violence in modern history in Venezuela was initiated by the opposition.
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Okay, so here we have two views from you:
One, that 110 million people voting, political movies put into the mainstream, regular complaining and protests and lobbying etc of politicians is a 'lack of political participation' and 'consumer ignorance'
Two, democracy is 'just fine' in Venezuela despite its groups armed with baseball bats and pistols beating the piss out of each other and the government shutting down media stations critical of it. You've got it mixed up, and I can just imagine the posts you'd make if these two things happened in our own country..
Just admit it, you were wrong.