The public condition...

There are any number of politicians who will unabashedly lie to any and all to pursue their own self interest. We, the people, win only in as much as we can connect their self-interest with ours. For some of these politicians, controlling others is part and parcel of that self-interest. There is now a huge swath of citizenry who either believe they will benefit or are so pitiably ignorant of basic scientific, economic, historical, and parliamentary facts to do anything but follow them blindly. Of course, people in every "sector" of the range of opinion believe that they are THE ones who are not "those" people. Historically, that close mindedness inevitably results in some sort of violent resolution. I am not looking forward to that.