Toward the beginning of the second part of today's Podcast, it was mentioned that Americans simply think they can 'vote out the bums' during the next elections and solve all of the problems. This thinking is so solidly entrenched here. My mother simply cannot grok the fact that there is NO 'somebody' who will do 'something' - she keeps saying, "well, they won't get away with it forever, somebody will stop them" - or, "they can't really get away with this, they'll be voted out" - it is the way things work, see, nothing could really go that badly wrong because the voting system will fix it, don't you get it? arrrrggggghhhhhhh.
To my mother's credit, however, of late she simply says, "it could be" - when I explain, because, as she puts it, "I'm not questioning anything you say anymore, since everything you've told me would happen has happened." - That doesn't mean that she really understands what I'm saying or that she viscerally believes it, she simply can't fully deny what I say anymore, due to the facts on the ground. I know that she'll never truly get it, but in her own small way, perhaps some inkling seeps through - for an upper middle class lifetime Republican who was even the first female to run for the State House in South Carolina, that's a pretty far way to come - at least on the purely intellectual level -
