A fragment to prove I do my own research. I'm not a sheeple.

Dig out the history books on pre-WW2 Germany and read of how it was accomplished with the German people. But you'll have to dig a little deeper than American history books. After doing that you'll find it all comes together quite naturally. Bearing in mind that they didn't have anybody as outrageous as Limbaugh and Glenn Becke because the people hadn't been preconditioned to accept anything that far out and ridiculously untrue.

 

I think some type of ‘fairness doctrine’ in the media is needed for democracy to even have a chance at working in a money based society.

Wealth brings with it power and influence which can be used to positive or negative effect but on the whole will be used to further the interests of wealth to one degree or another.

They are going to sponsor and patronise organisations and people that further their interests and opinions.

It’s a conspiracy of self interest – not the fantasies of the conspiracy theorists, there is no organisation on meetings in dark rooms or Masonic handshakes - it’s just that the interests of wealth are likely to be the promotion of its interests.

And if there are no balancing mechanisms then the interests of wealth can dominate.

The problem is that this can come into conflict with the notion of ‘free speech’ and wealth can exploit to oppose any enforcement of balance.

 

Balbus, the people in a democratic system will cause the pendulum to shift one way or the other, sometimes too far one way. Then it's up to the people to get off their asses and vote in order to shift it back towards the middle or even more to their way which will give them a piece of the pie.

That's obviously the way a democracy is made to work and so far, nobody should be in serious disagreement with that.

But here's the important part: In the US and to some extent in Canada, the people's interests have been hijacked by the tea party. (US) They have actually come around to thinking that the Koch brothers interests are the same as their interests and that's been done through a great deal of mind control and conditioning. The people really have come to believe that nobody deserves a piece of the pie without slaving for it for something like minimum wage. They happily accept the enormous income inequality and believe that only the wealthy have a right to the wealth because they caused themselves to be wealthy. They don't understand that any possibility of upward mobility in the workforce has been stolen from them.

And so now it's a question of just how much of that bullshit the people will put up with before they take their piece back.

But then the very unfortunate wild card comes into play. Do the people still have the ability and the power to take it back? Have they become disenfranchised by a corrupt system to the point of it now being impossible to grab some back?

Americans need look no further than their neighbours to the south in order to see how the unthinkable is possible. The Mexican people are powerless in a completely rigged and corrupt system.

Americans need to come to their senses soon!

And just as a post script to all this, it's my opinion that Obama being a black man has been the biggest leg up the top 1% could have ever wished for. A good 1/4 of the American people have climbed into bed with their enemy because their racist hate could never tolerate Obama. They're working and voting against their own best interests.

Now try to think outside the box a little. Did the top 1% or 2% want to see Obama reelected for a second term? Of course they did! When Obama is gone the racists will go back into the closets in the US south and they 1% will be back to fighting on more equal terms with a pure white Dem presidential candidate..

 

I think the issue in Canada is more that we have two parties to the left of the Conservatives that split the left/centre vote than any sort of tea party type takeover. Our electoral system needs serious reform. It would be nice to not have majority governments that collect less than 40% of the vote.

 

I agree! Two parties splitting the ordinary people's vote is a complete disaster. And then I have to wonder how much work the CPC is doing behind the scenes to maintain that status quo.

This is only saying that the right's goal is being accomplished in both Canada and the US, but different methods are being used to do it.

Fwiw, the NDP, a party which I had been loyal to my whole voting life, climbed into bed with the CPC in order to try to do harm to the Liberals. Sad to say, Jack Layton who was an honest man for the people, was suckered into doing it by the CPC.

Most Canadians have heard: Never give the Conservatives a majority. Now we have and we may not have the ability anymore to take it away from them.

 

Gray

Oh it goes back a lot further than the Koch brothers or the present 1% they really are just standing on the well tailored shoulders of past wealth.

There was the old idea that wealth and position were divine ordained and then in a more secular age there was the promotion of Social Darwinist ideas that wealth and position was the product of ‘survival of the fittest’.

These ideas still have traction in some quarters, especially Social Darwinism which is the basis of a lot of ‘free market’ and right wing libertarian thought with its emphasis on ‘natural’ competition in a ‘wild’ unregulated market place.

Of course these are all con games corruptions of ideas or reality that the slick tongued have used to bamboozle the unwary but as I’ve said before such ideas have seeped into the culture to such an extent that for many they have become a background ‘common sense’ that is seen as so obvious that it is given unquestioning support.

Time and again those with right wing libertarian ideas come here to promote them and seem shocked that their ideas get criticised – then are thrown in to confusion and consternation when they find they are completely unable to defend the ideas from those criticisms.

And the indoctrination is so deep that even then they don’t question why they can’t defend those ideas, they will hold on to them even knowing they must realise that they seem deeply, even mortally flawed.

It becomes a matter of faith rather than rationally based beliefs, a religion not a reasonable political and economic philosophy.

And this could be one of the reasons behind the data pointed to in the OP.