thinking to myself

[darkoshi]

how much do you just rely on democracy being there?
what do you do to protect it? what can you do?
if it is taken away, do you just shrug and think, "oh well, i can't do anything about it"?
is that any different from living under a dictatorship?
does writing letters to your (supposedly) elected representatives really affect them at all? it doesn't seem like it.

i rely on others to make a fuss. surely there are people who are in charge of making sure the elections are free of fraud. surely there are people who are in charge of making sure all the votes are counted. surely there are people who would stop the government from doing illegal things. surely the government can't just get away with doing that or that. surely there are Checks & Balances which are supposed to take care of things going bad. and if they don't work, what could i do about it?

fuck, oh well, too bad?

do i care enough about freedom to actually do anything about it, other than what i'm told to do? if things got a lot worse, would i ever publicly object? or would i only do so if i could do so as part of a crowd?

if democracy doesn't work, is it worth struggling for? if so many other people don't seem to care or even notice when it's gone, is it worth struggling for?

what things have i ever been not free to do in my lifetime? what things might i not be able to do, if i were not "free"?

how much guilt/blame do i share for working and paying taxes to a government that does the things it does? if this were a dictatorship, how much guilt/blame would i share for anything the government did? would i just continue to pay my taxes and think "oh, well. that's the way it is. i've got better things to do than struggle against things like that."