Enhanced engagement in civic life is the answer? Really? Gosh...why didn't the Russians think of that under Stalin? Or the Germans under Hitler? or The Iraqis under Saddam?
Well, they didn't. Plainly you have not taken the opportunity to study history. So I am not exactly sure of the basis of your opinion. Certainly the Iraqis did better under Saddam than they have done under the US efforts at liberating them.
The Russians had no chance to engage in civic life until the revolution - not that worked out well for a hell of a long time. They got free education and health care in time when states were generally extremely controlling. I am not saying killing millions of citizens intentionally is a a good way to run a nation - but neither is doing so by neglect and incompetence - as is increasingly common in some western countries.
Hitler rose to power because he actually did improve the lot of the German people - and then he went overboard into evil stuff. And that's a message that disturbed the opponents of popularism at the moment.
Some people will assert that President for Life Xi Jinping is a tyrant, and while there are flagrant abuses of 'human rights' in China then improvement of the physical life of Chinese people is undoubted.
Are you sure understand what a tyrant really is?
Without wanting to seem disrespectful to you, I think I have a far better idea than you do, since I have made the effort to inquire, rather than listen to pre-disgested propaganda. I have been reading in politics and economics and sociology for decades. What is the basis for you opinions?
Tyranny is exactly what you have in the USA -as is being foisted upon other countries. The USA has a lot of blather about being the 'home of liberty and freedom'. That's what your tyrants want you to believe. You are supposedly the richest nation on the planet - and look at you. Your levels of poverty and homelessness are a disgrace, your infrastructure is crumbling, your education is a mess and your health care is the laughing stock of the planet. And yet you are armed to the teeth to a ludicrous degree. Let's not even get into your levels of incarceration. Exactly how does this jibe with you claims to be the home of freedom (which, by the way, nobody else outside the US believes)?
What you have is what the Russians had pre revolution. What Stalin did was simply transfer power and wealth to a different class - something Putin has perpetuated. Kindly don't confess the problem with the solutions enacted. Since Reagan your economic well being has declined. You don't need external enemies - your are internally your own worst enemy - something Putin exploited in the 2016 election.
Your domestic tyrants are constantly pointing your attention abroad (incidentally something Putin was recently accused of doing) to imagined external enemies.Your are more armed than the next 10 countries put together in terms of expenditure -despite the fact that, geographically, you are the most remote major nation. You are hardly likely to be attacked by Canada or Mexico.
Why the logic for all those weapons? Post WW2 it became an industry and the perfect commercial scam - funnel the bulk of the nation's 'commonwealth' into private hands - and ensure a complaint milk-cow populace that keep on pumping the financial milk into the pockets of the arms makers.
In NSW, where I live, there are two major zoos - Taronga (Sydney) and Western Plains (Dubbo). They are both zoos, but Western Plains offers spacious acreages, conspired to the cramped quarters of Taronga. This is not just compassionate but smart.
We live in a Western Plains tyranny, and we are fortunate, because for others the alternative is a Taronga not run well at all.
The urban/rural divide in this country is very real; sorry if you don't like that fact. Look at a color coded map of the USA showing voting by county. There's a vast sea of red (indicating republican/conservative) and then these little specks of blue (for democrat/liberal) where the big cities are. The urbanites are dependent on govt. The minorities for their welfare and the elites for power and control.
I know the map. Its a symptom, not a cause. It is the fruit of political machinations and corruption at high level that has worked out over history. Its how things are now, not how they have to be.
Just to give you a reality check here, what you call urbanites are often just as dispossessed and disenfranchised as you are. But what they have is the 'accident' of proximity and the ability to connect in numbers to create community and have influence. There are simply objective facts about cities versus rural communities that mean different kinds of ideas flourish and different ways of influence express themselves. It does not mean that country and city people are fundamentally different. Of course there are predators who will insist otherwise is true.
Yes, obviously the 'elites' engage in power and control in cities because that's where most administrative functions sit. I agree that this is a function of corruption, because its not necessary. In this day and age there is no impediment to 'decentralising' government functions - something my state government does.
I would observe that, compare to here, US state politics are remarkably corrupt. We have independent electoral authorities that determine electoral boundaries. We don't do gerrymandering.
We also have a federal welfare system so 'minorities' are not place dependent on access to welfare services. Now I get that there are major and legitimate concerns about immigration that are not well responded to and, as a consequence generated well-founded concerns.
But there's a standard issue here. Communities exposed to diversity adapt more quickly - so if the greatest exposure to diversity is in the cities the adaption rate is going to be far higher than for rural areas with less exposure. Here I am making no value judgement, just conveying well established understanding. The result of this phenomenon is that a radical divide quickly opens up between city and rural folk - and this usually results in city folk calling rural folk racist and worse.
I am deeply familiar with our city based ABC radio hosts disgracefully lampooning members of the One Nation party established in rural Australia in the late 1990s. It was a disgraceful instance of smug leftist city elites exhibiting all that was arrogant dumb and ignorant about them. That arrogance has driven One Nation into extremes it has not intended, and now we are paying the price, because we have created an extreme right party that has the chance of winning the balance of power in the upper house.
In instances where 'minorities' have been settled in rural communities it does seem that they are generally judge not "by the colour of their skin by the content of their character". At least, this has been the case in Australia. I wouldn't like to think that rural Americans would be any different.
I'm very much NOT interested in discussing your Marxist notions about wealth distribution. Suffice it to say that you are horribly mistaken in that area as well.
You apparently know nothing about Marxism. I have said nothing about wealth distribution other than to observe that a very few of your countrymen have most of it. That's not a Marxist observation, but one of plain fact. As an aside, I have no particular sympathy with Marxism. As a critique of Capitalism I think it has some value because it forces us to be reflective. But that does not mean it has a solution to the problems identified.
Wealth distribution is not a Marxist idea. Evidently you got this from folk whom want you to think that way. Wealth distribution is not about taking wealth away from those who have it. Its about creating a value system in which, for example, the CEO of Disney is not paid $65m a year (whatever the amount was it was around that). That's $178,000 per day, each day of the year. That's $7,416 per hour, or $123 a minute.
You think that's okay? I don't. A Disney heiress thought it was not okay either, and said so, just recently. Did your news feeds cover that? I get a decent wage for what I do. In fact I think I am underpaid when I look at what other people get paid and what they deliver. One thing I like about the American system is that you can better ask to be paid that you worth. But nobody is worth $4 an hour. In Australia we have a minimum wage at US$11.80 (I thought it was higher than that - and it should be).
It isn't socialist to be paid a fair wage, or to expect that the management elites stop deluding themselves that their labour is worth somebody else's years wage in a day or a life's wage in a year. I am stunned that the USX oppressed defend their oppressors with no awareness of the insane inequity.
My point about tyranny is that during the Feudal times it may have been true that some, but certainly not all, vassals believed that the Lords were entitled to their wealth and power, and had the right to impose upon the peasants their right to force labour at poor wages and under conditions they determined. The Black Death put a brake on that tyranny for a time. The Lords died out more than the peasants did, so there was a time when a 'working man' got a decent wage for a fair day's work. But it took until the hard won labour laws of the early 20th century to put a constraint upon the view that workers were disposable components in a production system that paid no heed to their safety or welfare.
It is evident that whoever is educating you does not want you to know the history of worker rights in the US or elsewhere.
I am not a socialist, but I am also not a fool. In my country we have an agreement that some things are paid for by the state with our taxes - health, education (up to tertiary these days), roads, defence of the nation, police, health services - and other essential things. The idea that essential service should be privatised was popular for a time, but reality has shown that such passions were misguided. Now not even our most right wing parties dare go down that path and expect to be elected.
The notion of limited government is greatly favoured by tyrants so long as they get to say what is limited and what is magnified.
While you are entirely entitled to your own opinions, you should draw a distinction between opinions that are crafted by others to express political philosophies that are carefully crafted by master manipulators and ones formed by individuals on the basis of free and informed inquiry. Unless, of course, you are an adherent to the view that any kind of informed or educated opinion would render a person vulnerable to elitist corruption - and hence should be suppressed.
Tyranny is not just what you have been told it is. That's what tyrants do. They say what they give you is freedom and destiny - and anything else is a lie. They tell you that what they say is true is the only truth. These tyrants permeate our cultures, and they aspire to power in politics, in commerce and in religion. There are marxist tyrants and capitalist tyrants. Democracy is the the current best defence we have against them, but it is deeply vulnerable to corruption and distortion. Tyrants encourage non-participation and act to exclude those they think will vote against them. Gerrymandering is what petty tyrants do.
There are many millions of Americans who share a common desire for peace, safety and prosperity, but assuring you will never work together is a highly developed and very lucrative art. Its an art worth investing in - and the people who invest in that art are your tyrants. And, of course, they will always want to misdirect your attention away from what they are doing to whoever happens to be the hate figure of the moment. I had to pause, because right at the moment the tyrants of the world are your President's favourite people.
You are, of course, entirely free to believe as you do - and you will own the consequences of your belief. It is not my intent to persuade you to another way to thinking. I will, however, respectfully, counter your arguments and assertions where I sincerely disagree with them.
I am convinced that a decent understanding of history is a necessary defence against the persistent and pernicious efforts by manipulators and liars to distort understanding and disempower individual liberty. I think I have done a decent job at ensuring I am not prey to predatory actors. Can you say the same thing of yourself? i have to say that none of you comments convince me you have.