I'm not a left extremist, or overly left at all. I agree with you.

I'm just putting forward an extremely unlikely, yet feasible, hypothetical situation.

How exactly was this "Leftist" regime of (I'm assuming) Carter responsible for the problems in the economy? The tax cuts and deregulation enacted by Reagan basically did nothing for the economy, and if anything made it worse (not for the rich of course). It was Paul Volcker, appointed to the Fed by Carter, who single-handedly fixed the problem.

2 distant, high-level considerations you should keep on the desktop as you're formulating this thing:

1) The previously-stated condition whereupon we're all doing pretty damn well, and thus it's hard for average lethargic citizens to get cranked up about things.

2) There's only so much time in the day. Think about what filled a kid's day 20 years ago, and contrast it with the current scenario. Less personal interaction, more video gaming, and what news they DO happen to see has the educational content of an MTV show.

wasnt there a big-ass economic recession in the said period?

we are living in the age when most people int this country are Kantians and utilitarian principles have pretty much fallen by the wayside.

Shouldn't this topic have been saved until tomorrow?

I also want to add that economic improvement Billzebub mentioned that occurred mostly in the 90's was a result of a Republican President raising taxes and due to a Democratic President/Republican Congress dumping mass amounts of money into the tech industry, while also trimming some fat away from Welfare and the Military.

Most of the Reagan and Dubya years were marked by heavy deficit spending that has done/did little for real economic growth.

Billzebub might be referring to a country other than the USA, since we have never really had a leftist regime, but those who want to put Reagan's name and face on everything seem to discount most of his economic failures. His own VP was never really sold on Reaganomics and probably lost his reelection bid due to how Reaganomics was faring in a post-cold war Global economy.

Mgl, have you been to the US? It's fundamentally more conservative than where we live. Hell, i noticed it when i was 8 or 9 and I asked my dad why all the candy bar wrappers had packaging designs from the 70s still, and he replied 'Americans don't like change'. That idea stuck with me.

DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING

But remember, Billz somehow believes that FDR WORSENED THE DEPRESSION, (making him a candidate for most delusional obner )

hahah yeah, their candy wrappers blow. And all the logos for the big companies are really tacky. Y'all need a cultural revolution in the realm of graphic design.

Please educate.

Wait, please change your avatar back to the christmas hat, this scares me!

You're right (or your dad was) In theory I have a degree, which is in advertising. In my studies, we spent a good bit of time discusssing brand recognition, and brand ID. The average American (and most consumers...oh, but aren't american/consumer universal terms ) at the Publix doesn't come out of his coma enough to LOOK for his usual brands, he needs regular/continuous product id to grab them reflexively. All of us kow that a product must pay for eye-level shelf space, don't we?
Think about your last shopping excursion.

Our wrappers just look more appealing (Your's probably look more appealing to you guys though, like how no one likes water from different cities as much as their own).

But just for example:

VS

Hmm.

one day youll all be spouting off about the merits of my candy bar-->politics theory

I'm comforted by the theme of wild hats on avatars, ahhhh, nice
thanks

I'm still waiting for the day we get red Cadbury Energy chocolate over here.

see you dont get red, because you have a centre-right government right now (NB(for americans):everywhere else has red:left and blue:right)

we have centre-left, and thus get red

told you my candy bar theory works

as good a theory as any.

By the same token, did apartheid-era Africa only have white chocolate? Maybe now they have Top Deck. Do any Green states eat that gross cadbury chocolate with the green gooey stuff in the middle? Did the Turkish delight play a prominant part in the decline of the Ottoman Empire? And what about Swiss chocolate? Does it have any relevance to their perpetual neutrality? Or does it just taste good?

nah, the movement's still around... they're just making movies now. I mean what's one to do, you see Johnny Rotten on VH1, Iggy Pop doing Carnival commercials, the Ramones being used to sell Pepsi or God knows what.

Rave was the new punk in the nineties, and to some extent it's still pretty crazy. Rabbit in the Moon using an electric saw against his chest and all that shit.

Pollitcally, I think the modern civilian is so savy and so aware that they don't know what evil to condemn first. Modern day politicians are also savy, but they learned to support business above all else and that's what our country's run on and frankly that's all that matters.

We say we're conservative just like Brits say they their Christian... neither knows what the FUCK they're talking about. It just sounds good you know? Morally we're worse than any time known to modern man... Greed is acceptable, lust is acceptable, hatred and war are acceptable, poverty is acceptable, drugs, violence, degenerating women... all of it has reached a point where only married folk turn their heads, and it's usually with one eye still open.

teenagers being targeted as mainstream sex objects, stone cold killers getting away with murder... from the oval office to Beretta. GTA selling billions to white america. And you say we're conservative? As a child I couldn't play a game where I was pimpin women and shooting cops... and I grew up in the nineties.

The rebellion has gone global... we've just heard it all before. Everyday, you can turn on the news and hear about some woman sacrificing her children to her god... right after the local janitor had his way with them, while down the block a 12 year old is sniping off some pervert who was selling videos of the kid on yahoo. Little do we know the kid was making them himself for youtube... whatever.

I think innocence has been taking out of the picture and we're just callous to the shit we live from birth. We say we're conservative in the board rooms and PTA meetings but when we go home... it might as well be Las Vegas because the next thing you hear is going to be on the news.

Is lying so unheard of? Pastors do it when their at home masterbating like you and me. Politicians do it just out of habit. But we buy it all, cause somebody has to be better than us. Somebody has to deal with immorality better than we do. Somebody has to make our lives better. But what do we really know?

Just wanna say the earlier statement relating Americans who don't overthrow the government with Nazis is preposterous. It is simply a horrible comparison. Actively taking part in Nazi activities and failing to overthrow your government are far from the same thing. I may see your point for those fighting and killing Iraqis, but because an average citizen is unable to achieve violent revolution against the most owerful government the world has ever known does not in any way shape opr form equate him with people who tortured and gassed Jews under the guise of "following orders."

If it seems like everyone you talk to wants to US government to change its ways, and overthrow would thus be easy, you're obviously only talking to a certain segment of American society. Most folks voted for these idoits in 2 elections now, one certainly after they had figured out where they were heading.

Completely agree. And another dimension of that is that, for example here in the protests against voluntary student unionism in universities, these protests get hijacked by people not only wanting to push their own agenda, but who provoke violence, or allow themselves to be put into a position where police can justify using roughhouse tactics fairly easily.

In the end all they do is obscure the whole point of the protest, cos when it gets reported on in a 30 second grab on primetime news, you can be sure that the actual issue isn't going to grab the headlines, but the violent minority and arrests of people. So in the minds of the majority of the population, what is often valid questioning of the government can be pigeon-holed as coming from the "radical left" types, not your average left-leaning person who may also agree with it.

Um, yeah, not sure if that really makes sense but hopefully you get my point. The Socialist Alternative types on campus tend to piss me off even while I often agree with the general thrust of their argument (well, not including the socialist part. I think it's pretty obvious that's not going to work anytime soon)

Go read up on your history. A good place to start would probably be from around 1850 to the early 20th century. Some easy points of interest:

• Bleeding Kansas
• Preston Brooks beating Charles Sumner nearly to death
• Emmitt Till
• The Gilded Age of the United States Senate
• Great RailroadStrike
• How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis
• Mexican-American War or Spanish-American War

I know that from my experience here (in nj) that the reason that nobody rebels against anything can be summed up in one word: apathetic. Only a very small percentage of the people I know care about or are even aware of the world around themselves. They just go through life worrying about whether or not a new episode of Lost or Survivor is on TV or when the next Frat mixer is going to be held. Quite simply, most of the people I know just don't care about anything that doesn't directly concern them. If they say ignorance is bliss, then this must be one of the happiest places in the world.