Voting
I am very skeptical about the state of so-called democracy in the United States. I suspect that we are actually ruled by corporations, many of them multinationals. The legalization of corporate monetary domination of politics by the U.S. Supreme Court bolsters this suspicion.
This leaves me, as a citizen, some options. I can retreat into cynicism and refuse to participate in the political process. I can work for a candidate's election. I can support PACs which represent my values. If I opt out of the political process entirely, I surrender my right to bitch and moan about that process. It is like bitching and moaning about the weather. Why bother?
The rapid rise and decline of the Occupy movement says more about American apathy, enabled by the hypnosis caused by personal interactive media, than American opinion about the direction our politics. Twelve percent of our population may be living in extreme monetary poverty, but a large majority of our population are living with poverty of actual interactive community. Going to the mall to buy things is not community.
I continue to follow politics. I vote. I have chosen this option because I feel I cannot ethically claim to be trying to promote the general welfare of all human beings unless I utilize whatever mechanisms are available to me as an individual to do that. Government is absolutely necessary to promote general welfare in a post-industrial, overpopulated world. Anarchy is the stuff of prehistory, like banging on a rock with the denuded thigh bone of a mastadon.
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