The crimes are so huge and so bold, the American people cannot grasp them

[kentuck]

And it's not just the average Americans. It's also many in the American media and newspapers. No one in the highest offices would intentionally be so daring. If they lied about going to war, it surely was not intentional. If they spied on American citizens, it must have been for the security of our people.

Many people cannot grasp the idea that our White House is occupied by liars and criminals who will stop at nothing to get what they want. And what do they want? They want power and wealth. Those are the only attributes they respect.

The people hear the news, such as the admission by Bush this morning, and they rationalize it as simply a "Democratic vs Republican" thing. Because they have been programmed and propagandized to think in such terms. They cannot see what is happening before their very eyes.

[HereSince1628]

1. And each time they get away with one thing they get bolder.

Only Dick Cheney knows the full extent to which the current administration is operating completely independently to the checks and balances that are supposed to limit the excesses of our government.

[StoryTeller]

2. So what do we DO about it?

I've been reading all this stuff all morning, and I'm honestly at a loss for what to do. As you say, many seem to be unable/unwilling to admit what is happening. I, for one, do not want to be like many in Germany who saw similar abuses from a certain popular leader who shall remain nameless (because his name makes me queasy) and chose to do nothing. But what are things that average people like me can do? (Average means things like living paycheck-to-paycheck with children to take care of, jobs to go to, and other daily life obligations that would make it difficult to go march in D.C. for example.)

I'm pretty much brand new to any political involvement other than voting, so forgive me if my question seems ignorant.

[kentuck]

6. Sometimes the only weapon we have is the truth...

And if we can get people to the polls to vote, before all the machines are "fixed", then we may able to salvage something from this disaster.

[WhiteTara]

7. I know it sounds trite but

call your congress critters every day. Call the WH. Write letters to your editors. Join the Democratic Party and send emails and phone calls to tell them what you want. My rep's office says they don't get enough calls. We just think someone else is doing it so we don't need to but democracy is participatory when it is done right. The excercise is vigorous and unrelenting. Welcome to DU Story Teller. :hi: With your name, you are a natural. Jump into the fray with both hands on the keyboard.

[StoryTeller]

8. Thanks for the encouragement. :) (nt)

[LunaC]

15. You can be a stealth Activist

"Dropaganda" (as described in the link in my sig line) is one way of educating the public without drawing attention to yourself. Letter-writing and calls to Congress and the media can ameliorate that helpless feeling too.

[truth2power]

16. Luna, this still won't print.

One page of text and 5 blank pages. I've reported a bug before, but no luck. Just FYI. :)

[LunaC]

18. This link works

It's from the Research Forum

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_oet&address=358x701


And here's two more links just for the hell of it!

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050518223342591

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=printer_friendly&forum=104&topic_id=6909

[Nay]

17. Your question is not ignorant. Most of us are asking ourselves the

same thing, especially those of us who have been in those marches several times in the past few years. We've written letters, marched, talked with friends, wrote LTTEs, to no effect.

Few are willing to go to an out-and-out civil war, because the chances are good that we would simply be slaughtered or thrown in jail forever. There is no outcry now about US citizens jailed illegally, who really thinks we can start a revolution and not just end up like them? We know that's what would happen to us, and things are going to have to get a whole lot worse before anyone will seriously consider that major step. Most people around us have one of these primitive ideas of what freedom is:
1) I can drive to the mall, the bar, across a state line for beer, ergo, I am free.
2) Freedom is for me, not the rest of you unpatriotic terrorists.
3) Freedom is only for people who can buy it, i.e., the rich, and I'm working on that for myself and don't care about you.
4) I don't have anything to hide, why would I care if the govt or the boss spies on me?
5) I can be free AND safe at the same time with no effort on my part, except to go to the mall with my money.

What I really suspect is that many people, including myself, don't feel very free right now and haven't felt very free our whole adult lives. In differing ways, most of us women and minorities have felt the insistent pressure of whichever overlords considers itself our natural masters, and we never get free of that. Few are ever free of the jobs they don't like but must keep for the $$ and the health insurance; economics keeps most of us in chains. In the past 20 years, it has become common knowledge that we can't even walk down the street without coming under the scrutiny of cameras on nearly every corner, at our workplace, etc., and never mind how we are tethered to our driver's license, credit cards, bank account, etc., through computers. They know everthing about us anyway, what's one more thing?

So, a lot of people probably think subconsciously that it really doesn't matter -- they aren't free anyway. Unfortunately, even though this is true, there are a whole lot of very nasty things that the Bush cabal would like to do to Jane and Joe Sixpack that they haven't quite been able to do yet -- like drag off their neighbors to concentration camps, send their children off to die in a draft, force them to work until they die, etc. But they're working on that...and it may take such extremes to make everyday people react. After all, all the police and military power is on the side of the bad guys -- no one wants to die unnecessarily, and there are plenty of us who balk at dying for yahoos who call us LIEberals, traitors, etc. Plenty of people fled Germany when they saw the writing on the wall, and the ones who stayed to fight were wiped out. There is in me a part that says, "let the yahoos suffer greatly, so that their minds may open."

[ladjf]

3. You have made a very profound point. The depth of the admin's

corruption is too terrible for the average person to imagine let alone believe to be true.

[Surya Gayatri]

4. Yes, I think the staggering enormity

of it is beyond the capacity of many average Americans to grasp. The psychological imperative, hard wired into most of us, which is "to seek agreement" at best, or at worst "to arrive at a manageable state of disagreement" makes it nigh to impossible for Joe Public to face this catastrophic betrayal head on. Just too huge (hugh !11!!!) to handle. SG

[savemefromdumbya]

5. 'You hit the nail on the head'

and if the general public finally heard that 9/11 was an inside job.........

[NanceGreggs]

9. Yes, it's been their MO from day one ...

... do something outrageous, and while everyone is up-in-arms about it, do something EVEN MORE outrageous. That way, the outrageous thing you did last week is simply wiped off the news, and out of the minds of the populace.

And it's been working since day one, sadly ...

[OneBlueSky]

10. what may knock many Americans to their senses is the impending . . .

attack on Iran . . . response from the rest of the world will be explosive, and average Americans (excluding fanatics and fundies) may finally come to understand what we're dealing with (emphasis on may) . . .

[Blue_Roses]

21. Do you think this administration is bold enough

to pursue another illegal war (rhetorical question here)...maybe yes, maybe no...whether that be so, I have strong feelings that this year is going to be an explosive one in one way or another and that scares me.

[Beam Me Up]

11. This "Democratic vs Republican" thing happens right here every day.

It's been clear to me for YEARS that we are way beyond politics as usual. How long has it taken many DUers to wake up to what is going on, even though here (unlike the media environment of most citizens) we have daily access to information pointing in one direction: The government of the United States of America has been taken over by a cabal of criminals whose ultimate aim is creating the conditions necessary for the American people to accept without question the need to suspend the Constitution of the United states and put in its place a fascist dictatorship.

Edit to add: Even here, right now, I'm sure many find what I've just written an 'extreme' statement. I don't think it is 'extreme' at all. This is what is happening and we must use every peaceful means at our disposal to stop it. Failure to do so will mean peril for all of us--and the world. These MoFos would like nothing better than to take us into a global conflagration with first strike nuclear options.

[eeyore]

12. My avatar has a question for you, kentuck...

n/t

[kentuck]

14. People are living in the cave...

They don't see the "real" world. They only see the shadows on the walls. They have an idea but they don't see the whole picture. We have to shine the light into the cave.

[Patsy Stone]

13. Sometimes, even we can't grasp it.

And we read this stuff every day. It's going to take a long time (Nixon/Watergate/Deep Throat long time) for everything to come out and fall into place in the full, dastardly picture.

The majority of the people listen to some news, but not all the time. They have lives. The fault is clearly in the hands of a complicit press corps. That will be the second biggest revelation the American people will have to come to terms with: how the "free press" was manipulated and became so lazy.

[in_cog_ni_to]

19. And I think this is all by design. They decided after the 2000 election

THIEVERY, if they could get away with THAT, they could and would do whatever they want, legal or not, because the people will never believe they are so evil and corrupt. If EVERYTHING they do is illegal, no one will be the wiser. Throw caution to the wind, break all laws, dispose of "that damn piece of paper", THE CONSTITUTION, The Bill of Rights and by the time people wake up to the game, it will be too late. We will have our Dictatorship, our little Nazi will be entrenched and Congress will be POWERLESS to do a damn thing about it.

[RazzleDazzle]

20. I actually thought this was a fairly decent -- tho chilling --

overview:

A Ten-Step Program by Jane Smiley
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/a-tenstep-program_b_12451.html
discussed here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5625739#5625768

[Lorien]

22. I was at a party last night with NPR reporters and foreign correspondents

One of the reporters for a British news service (who lives here in the US)was saying "I'm a centrist, not a left winger, but I read these reports that I write on the air, and I'm listening to it-knowing that I MUST present a throughly objective report- but inside I'm screaming "WHAT THE HELL-WHY DOESN'T THIS OUTRAGE ALL OF YOU! THIS IS INSANE!!! LOOK AT HOW FAR THE US HAS FALLEN IN ONLY FIVE YEARS!!! WAKE UP!!!!!" but the next day they just pile on another outrage, and somehow no one seems surprised or does anything to stop them." This guy was the LEAST liberal man in the room, and he couldn't believe how awful BushCo has been for America. The others were also utterly outraged; they said that they are flabbergasted by what this regime has gotten away with, and totally confused as to why most of the Democrats in the house and Senate have bitten their tongues for so long. They know there's a problem with the media-even their media-but they say that even when they get to report on the misdoings of BushCo the rest of the country seems completely "uninspired" by the news (their word). They kept asking; what WILL it take?