[bombadillo]

Originally Posted by Gnist

The corruption of public life is a gradual process.

Politics in the USA has always been in the hands of an oligarchy. At times it has made modest and temporary concessions to populist outbursts (e.g., early '30s, late '60s). But it has never relinquished control

And even if most people aren't all that smart, I think we will probably get to a point where the bubble of confidence bursts, and people may then adopt a sceptic attitude to the hands that feed them, just as dogmatic as the accepting attitude they used to have.

What generally happens is that frustrated and infuriated mobs lash out at strawmen. They look for scapegoats. Not having the intellect or training to diagnose cause and effect, to ferret out the true villains, this is inevitable. Sort of like the medieval days, when European noblemen used Jews as lightning rods for mob fury. I think the ideas of 19th social theorists like Mosca and Michels remain ever-relevant: a small minority will always control and exploit the large herd.

And there's some truth to it that real politics happen in everyday life, because even if we are a small bunch, we can change other people's points of view. The sceptic line of defense against corrupt politicians takes you only halfway. We need something positive to back it up.

You have more faith in human nature than I do.

Conspiracy theories about what would happen if someone "really radical" gets in aren't very productive in my opinion. And why would "really radical" be "populist"?

The USA has a history of political assassinations.