I in no way think that our government is perfect.
Because the government in a democracy is nothing more than people representing a less than perfect populace with whatever fickle propensities a populace has from time to time. It inevitably causes turmoil in the governing body proportional to the social turmoil. But let’s understand that elections always highlight these propensities and never before have I seen a more mixed up populace.
We are recovering from one of the worse economic disasters imaginable in modern times. There is no doubt that this was caused by banks and large financial institutions. And yet a great deal of anger is concentrated towards the government as people feel helpless against corporations. The tea party and the occupy movement both recognize that we were robbed by the financial community. However the over simplified worldview of the tea party can only hate the government. And the largely undefined view of the occupy movement that ranges from the very simple (back to nature, drum circle) to the very sophisticated wall street dropouts that represent the movement on TV leaves the impression that there is really nothing but hostility towards capitalism involved here not really a defined direction in which to move. The press of course liked and promoted that image. Unfortunately few with any influence tried to correct that image leaving only the one interpretation and it stuck while the media repeated it over and over again. Damn hippies trying to destroy America again.
So the perception is that we have those that hate the government against those that hate capitalism. Absolute rubbish but this is the meme, and our culture has become little more than a collection of memes. Unfortunately if it stays this way the government haters will win. Capitalism has become sacrosanct here not democracy. Oh, and it helps in that we really can’t influence corporations any more, but we can vote all kinds of entertaining idiots into congress to help us hate the government.
Is there time to promote a progressive form of capitalism? Great to have progressives in government and that is the way I will always vote. But we will lose in the end if capitalism stays wedded to the past and can find no progressive direction.