Yes, an argument can be made that however much Reid and Pelosi and their cohort deserve punishment, the other side deserves even more punishment. That’s assuming that you continue to accept the premises of the system, and dutifully choose between the party that commits the crimes and the party with a leadership that will not actually stop the crimes. However, stepping back and looking at it, the whole system is broken if that’s our choice. The only option, then, is to opt out, and vote for, well, anybody else. (Some would say that revolution is an option, but I say that if you have enough energized people to go and burn down enough stuff, you have enough energized people to vote out the bums and vote in a real opposition.) The fact that most Americans don’t care something about the culture.
“Not me! I’m not just blindly excusing crimes! I’m trying to make a difference!” you say, and you’re probably right. If nobody else is voting third party, it’s irrational for you to vote third party. However small the difference between the parties might be, if there’s any difference at all, and if those are the only viable options, then you are being completely rational by voting for the guys who promised to at least pick the undigested corn kernels out of the sh!t sandwich.
But here we are: Crimes were openly revealed on the front page of the nation’s most important newspaper two and a half years ago, and less than a week ago the ostensible political enemies of the criminals gave them full immunity. And there is no uproar outside a few corners of the blogosphere and a few activist groups. The fundamental significance of this is lost on or irrelevant to most people, and so the crimes will go on.
~Thoreau, blogging at Unqualified Offerings. Emphasis added.
Read the whole thing.
If we don’t understand why this is happening, I assure you that we have no chance of stopping it.