William Blum (author of “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2”, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower”, “West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir”, “Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire”) on The Awful Truth and American Democracy (2012): “How many voters does it take to change a light bulb? None. Because voters can't change anything.
So what to do? As I've said before: Inasmuch as I can't see violent revolution succeeding in the United States (something deep inside tells me that we couldn't quite match the government's firepower, not to mention its viciousness), I can offer no solution to stopping the imperial beast other than this: Educate yourself and as many others as you can, raising their political and ideological consciousness, providing them with the factual ammunition and arguments needed to sway others, increasing the number of those in the opposition until it raises the political price for those in power, until it reaches a critical mass, at which point ... I can't predict the form the explosion will take or what might be the trigger ... But you have to have faith. And courage.
Some further thoughts on American elections and democracy:
Richard Reeves: "The American political system is essentially a contract between the Republican and Democratic parties, enforced by federal and state two-party laws, all designed to guarantee the survival of both no matter how many people despise or ignore them."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): "In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from one side to the other, thinking they will be more comfortable."
Alexander Cockburn: "There was a time once when 'lesser of two evils' actually meant something momentous, like the choice between starving to death on a lifeboat, or eating the first mate."
U.N. Human Development Report, 1993: "Elections are a necessary, but certainly not a sufficient, condition for democracy. Political participation is not just a casting of votes. It is a way of life."
Gore Vidal: "How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It's the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It's been 200 years at it. It's superb."
Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius: "The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."
Michael Parenti: "As demonstrated in Russia and numerous other countries, when faced with a choice between democracy without capitalism or capitalism without democracy, Western elites unhesitatingly embrace the latter."” (see William Blum, “Syria, The Story Thus Far”, Countercurrents, 3 October, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/blum031012.htm ).