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1) If you have active interest in changing politics for the better, & you haven't yet successfully built consensus sufficient to defeat your & America's foes, it can be simultaneously true that there are dark forces arrayed against you, & that the system still works as it should.
2) Building consensus has always meant that the system moves slowly. This is outrageous from the perspective of any wrong requiring swift correction, promptly & properly executed justice. It is frustrating for anyone fighting corruption: the gaming of a system by the powerful.
3) Think of a car. Those who manufactured it and the ones who drive it have an interest in it running well. Those who have a financial interest in how soon it develops problems and becomes obsolete have another interest, perhaps contrary to those who must use it.
4) Gaming a system, from the perspective of those who use it and depend on it for livelihood and safety, is corruption. Secrets kept from those users, even trade secrets, might seem like conspiracy to them. That's why they are secrets.
5) Just as patriarchal attitudes were seen in recent centuries, even recent decades, as just "the way things are done around here," much of what some see as outrageous corruption and gaming of a system, others see as simply the way to get things done that they deem constructive.
6) Multiplicity of perspectives gives rise to multiplicity of "right answers." Rationalization sometimes reveals constructive rationales. In a democracy, it is the responsibility of those who have constructive ideas to build consensus - support among the people - for those ideas.
7) We have all been manipulated. Learning is the manipulation of our minds by new information. Lawyers are manipulators in court. Sales personnel and advertisers are manipulators in the marketplace. Consent is manufactured every day.
8) So is consensus. And in a democracy, when you want consensus, sometimes you do have to go out and manufacture it. And certainly if you cannot manufacture a sufficient amount to unseat the top dog, or even the top two animals, you can cry "Corruption!"
9) But the simple information persists that you have not yet built consensus. Others may have taken your ideas, or similar ideas, and had more success by playing along with what you see as a corrupted mainstream, and that may irk you.
10) Be cheered that good ideas are being heard. Notice who's hearing them, who's obstructing them, who's at least giving them lip service and who's mounting the smear campaigns against them. Progress is slow in a democracy. Let's all push TOGETHER.
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