I have a problem with your post. I don't give a shit what you believe and with how much "flame" you believe it. I give a shit about what you've done. Congress has a 12% approval rating, but in 2012 it had a 90% re-election rate. Did you vote? Yes? Well that's just the tip of the iceberg. I've seen campaigns in action and I've participated in a few. Changing people's opinions is WORK. When I worked on one campaign I sat down with a phone book and called numbers at random for 10 hours straight asking if they had gotten out to vote while pushing my candidate. Write in to your local newspaper with a rhetorically sound op-ed. You might change a few people's minds. Start an organization of like minded individuals and lobby your senator/congressman. Call him or her 300 times until you can buy him dinner and shove your ideas down his throat along with steak for an hour. You have to put the active in activist in order to succeed in this country. During the Civil Rights movement people weren't signing petitions to integrate schools, they were holding sit-ins and delivering fiery speeches in front of active listeners. You should work toward similar strategies. Edit: Upon rereading your post, I wanted to say that this is true for things beyond politics, i.e. other ways of changing the status quo.
I appreciate the re-read, I have a bad habit of not re-reading my own posts before I hit submit and I'm glad that you understand my point isn't just about politics. First of all, I do vote, in every election I have legal right to, and I make a point to be an informed voter and choose my candidates maturely. That being said, I don't think it does a damn bit of good because so few people actually do these things, and it's impossible to convince large portions of the population to actually practice responsible voting. Changing peoples opinions is work and I agree, but I think that it's not actually possible to change people's opinions on issues that are being actively obscured and skewed by those who want to maintain the status quo. With the whole example of sit-ins, a lot has changed in the past few decades about how protesting is charged, prosecuted and reported. If I and a group of like minded individuals, after trying all other forms of peaceful protest, stage a sit-in at an NSA facility (This is just one common, controversial example) we would be arrested on sight, charged with terrorism or some other catch-all offense, all press blocked from the facility or proceedings, or reporters would be 'discouraged' from reporting on it at all. And every bit of virtual dirty laundry that myself or any others in that group had would be hauled out of long term storage and aired to publicly shame us and change the issue into an Ad Hominem logical fallacy. Edit, I also really don't want to spend my entire life working as a lobbyist or running a political action committee.
I agree with you. I don't believe our leaders are doing very much in anyone's favor other than their own. I've been slowly acclimating to reading about how to run for office, and it seems like a lot of work right off the bat. People just are not do think the system enough or not caring enough because they're too "busy". I was set up in a way as to keep the minds of people busy as to take easy advantage of them and exploit them. We would need an entire change up to the system, but what do we do about the people who would die in order to keep the current system alive and well?
I agree with you so much. If you don't know I am the co-founder of an internet privacy movement but what most people don't know here is that I am still a freshman (I know, I've heard all your wows before :P) Anyway I seem to have the "flame of rebellion" What I most agree is that petitions and being an armchair activist don't work in the slightest. Like you said I have been phone banking tonight and it is seriously tough work. It's not easy in the slightest to get something done, much less a lot like awesome people like you have done. I commend you for your actual doing something.