Well I can see Schod's response now...and it ain't gonna be pretty.
As for mine, George Carlin is a cynical bastard (and I say that while absolutely loving his comedy), but to a degree he's right. All canidates are dependent on cash for their campaigns. Where does most of that money come from? Political Action Committees (PACs). Who forms and finances PACs? Corporations. Of course, America has been in this situation before and come out stronger on the other side. During the 1880s and 1890s corporations has just as much if not more hold on the American government than they do now. Yet all it took was one strong president (Go Teddy Roosevelt!) to bring government back to the control of the American people...just so they could screw it up at the end of the progressive era with an alcohol ban (oh well, they did a lot of good things before that hit). I don't think America's problems are insurmountable. Consider the problems that women and blacks faced when trying to win the right to vote. How is one supposed to influence law makers, when the people doing the influence can't even vote? Yet they overcame this. American citizens actually have the right to vote (and with the last presidential and the last mid-term election voter turnout has been increasing...the last mid-term election had the highest turnout for a mid-term election since 1972, this means that more people are actually using their right to vote). One answer would be to vote for politicians who don't take money from PACs or lobbyists (like Obama). Besides, I do think that the American people are becoming fed up with current politics. Notice the increasing trends in people becoming independent, the higher voter turnout (that certainly isn't because of stellar canidates, John Kerry vs. George Bush? That was our choice? Ralph Nader would be a better option than those douches), low approval rating for both the republican president and the democratic congress, movements like Unity '08 (which is trying to get an independent canidate, who will be determined in an online nominating vote by all members, on the ballot in all 50 states), all point to a growing disatistfaction with the current way of governing. People see and emphasize different problems, some like George Carlins put the blame on corporation, some on the partisanship between Republicans and Democrats, some on interest groups, but all these agree the problem is politics as usual. Where this will lead? Who knows. The Progessive movement was highly successful in its aims as was the civil rights movement. Other major movements of disatisfaction, like the Populist movement a few decades before the Progressives, kind of spurted out within a decade or so. So whatever later historians will call this great disatisfaction, we won't have any idea what will happen with it until at least the next presidential race (possibly longer).
