You just showed up in the middle of the end of the conversation.
As far a skilled rhetoric goes, you have not refuted that:
a) Our leadership sucks.
b) It's our(American's) fault.
c)That we need to change it.
/johnny
“a) Our leadership sucks.
b) It’s our(American’s) fault.”
the variable in the equation here is the influence the media has with a high % of the voting population. Many of us are very familiar with details of current events and politics (thanks to sites like this), and some others are howling at the moon and hating capitalism on DU, but an awful lot of folks are getting their news from networks, cnn, AP/NYT/gannett, and live in a world where all information is direct from the ministry of truth.
We aren’t going to turn the country into a fully-informed populace, so the media’s ability to mold public perception and opinion has been the trump card and continues to be.
It is a very serious structural problem to which I don’t see a likely positive resolution in a peacetime context.