almost half sees DaGubmint as a threat.
but almost no one is willing to do anything about it.
Uhm. Gee, because not much that can be done, honestly.
Let me put this first. I served in the military, have been involved in politics, have done lobbying, have donated funds to groups, have volunteered at groups, have protested, etc. Admittedly, never did or wanted to do any violent sort of political activity like the anarchist twits that burn something whenever the WIPO or G8 meet, and I don't want to.
Having done all the stuff you can legally do to make a positive change in government, I came to a sharp realization. Except to feel good, it's only temporary gains. You might make headway in one area, but you'll lose it in a dozen other areas. For every one dollar you can use to buy a politician or bureaucrat, the government has thousands of dollars it can use to bribe itself.
The government is rigged to only allow two parties. It's nowhere in the Constitution, but that's only sometimes respected anyways. Throw out one party, you'll get the other one which is just as bad when it's in power. Good luck getting good candidates, because those are also largely controlled by the parties. Good luck "working within the system" to reform either party. It's not a 100% system. Sure, you can get a Ron Paul or some other wild card not endorsed by their party. But the point is that the system does not have to be 100%. Just being even 98% effective means for 50 to 1 odds against the wildcards. Most of those wildcards get absorbed anyways into corruption, crony capitalism and all the other perks of the job.
You play by rules stacked against you, don't be surprised when you lose. Each and every time. You need to change the rules of the game. Try to do so with elections and you'll lose. Try to do so with money, and you'll have ten times as much extorted as you volunteer in bribes/lobbying. Try to do so with nonviolent protest, and you'll be ignored. Try to do so with violence, and you'll be curb stomped by police, military, intel folks, etc. Try to do so with a civil war and you'll be considered (correctly) as a nut. Even if you were not considered a nut and were successful, you'd be looking at massive piles of bodies.
Ain't worth it. Just get yourself in the best position possible, build up a good network of folks, and let the situation go as it will. Try to make a positive change, so that you can sleep at night if nothing else. But don't be too hard on yourself when you make one mild step forward with freedom, and get kicked a dozen steps back.
Go ahead and call me a defeatist. I'm just not dumb enough to throw money, time and resources down a hole unless I'm getting something out of it. The returns on investment suck, frankly. Exactly how much money has the 2nd Amendment folks dumped in bribes, propaganda, et al over the last two decades or more? We got the Supreme Court to admit that the right exists, and we made otherwise modest returns at the federal level. In exchange for billions of dollars and tens/hundreds of thousands of man-hours. Plus we LOST numerous other rights at the same time we made modest gains. That's sorta the point. We get X dollars taken from us by law, we give up Y dollars to use legalized corruption to not get completely hosed, and we're rewarded with small gains in compensation for major losses. The entire point is to benefit the political folks. They created a system where their side automatically wins, nearly every time.
Disclaimer: State level is another completely different conversation, I'm just talking federal level. Sometimes at the state and local level, properly utilized resources can still make an impact. Due to apathy, more than anything else.
