...for the most part, they had no freaking clue as to what they were voting for.
True. There's a good third of the populace who are simply detached from any sense of what's unfolding around them. Bereft of any sense of history - or even any interest in the same - they'll be the ones most surprised by the trainwreck that coming at them. Day-to-day, they jsut don't see it. Although the growing ranks of the unemployed are startign to wonder jsut what the hell's going on. But clueless nonetheless. Trouble is - these are precisely the kind of people who clamor for the 'man on the white horse' when TSHTF. And they're going to get him.
For once they do indeed wake up and grasp the level of deceit and pure destructive evil that they had mistakenly bought into, they are not likely to be fooled twice.
No kidding. and more to the point, there's no one more angry and hankering for a reckoning than someone who realizes that they've been the victim of a swindle. Have our intended masters bee na tad, oh, say, overambitious? Why yes, I believe that they are. It's that vey impatience to usher in the ever-immanent New World and with it, the New Man that makes them so damned dangerous - and so monstrous. Strip away that urge for Utopia and you'll find those 'monsters of the id' that turned out to the surprising bogeyman in a classic '50s science fiction flick. The desire for Utopia - legitimate for some - is merely the maskirovka that our ruling elites use, consciously or not, to disguise their lust for absolute power - and all of the horror, mass murder and atrocity that comes with the gig.
Here's the picture: you cannot rule a free and prosperous people. You must first kill many if not most of them, impoverish the rest and keep them permanently on their knees. This is the goal of the elites who despise us precisely because we are free and not subject to their bidding. Communism, fascism and all of the totalitarian 'isms' are merely the means to an end. Power is the name of the game.
Recall what Orwell's character O'Brien from his prescient 1984 had to say in consideration of power and its uses:
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.That's who we're dealing with. There's only one way this can end. And it won't be in the voting booth.Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.
What pure power means you will understand presently.
We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods,but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
Power is not a means; it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution.
The object of torture is torture.
The object of power is power.
I have to suspect that my lingering shock & disbelief that so many fellow citizens could have been so stupid, lazy, ignorant, and misguided to get us to this point, urges me to grasp at any evidence that says it can't happen again. So yes, I do believe that there are sound reasons supporting the notion that November 2008 will not be repeated in November 2012. But November 2012 will not hold the same level of significance or impact of November 2008.
To me the most sobering argument against pinning our hopes of a ballot box solution comes down to the fact that I doubt that anyone can name more than a handful of Constitutional Conservatives poised to either remain or take office this November, and I for one can't identify ONE candidate for the Presidency that will make a real difference. The very thought that the election of more Progressive Republicans (call them RINOs or your term of Vichy Republicans) as a counter to Progressive Democrats is both futile and ultimately dangerously destructive. The point is that our government bodies at all levels are filled with the evil that parades under the banner of "Progressives" whether they wear the Republican or Democrat mask. And as you so accurately continue to point out to us, the odds of the wholesale cleansing that is required, happening at the ballot box are too small to even measure at this point.
Again, thank you for keeping me focused my FRiend!