OK, reality check time. Conservative or Liberal, who thinks Palin has a chance against Biden in the debate?

My thoughts: This whole democracy thing is a total sham. Both parties are controlled from behind the scenes and working for private interests, not for the vast majority of American citizens, but for a tiny hereditary billionaire elite that controls the government, intelligence agencies, military, the Fed, Wall Street, major corporations, all of the media, etc. Why just 2 parties? Divide and conquer.

With 2 and only 2, they and the media they own can manipulate the masses into 2 roughly equal factions that fight against each other and blame each other for whatever is frustrating them, instead of uniting against the elite that owns everything and has all the power. The middle class was created during the 1930s and '40s, after the Great Depression reduced the majority of Americans to poverty and near revolutionary anger. There were many riots and strikes during that time, and Communism held great appeal, because capitalism obviously wasn't working for the vast majority.

So the elite gave some power to the unions, and forced corporations to share the profits a bit more fairly, so that workers had some measure of job security, reasonable work hours, reasonably safe working conditions, enough money to live a dignified life and save some for emergencies, their children's education and for retirement, and Social Security was created to help elderly who couldn't work anymore. Many public universities were created to give free (yes, FREE) education to people who couldn't afford private universities, and to create a better workforce. Top tax rates on the super-rich were 70% or even 90%, and they didn't all flee to the Cayman Islands - on the contrary, our economy was much better than now.

But as time went on, the elite realized that the masses had been sufficiently brainwashed into hating anything "communist" or "socialist", and so they could start rolling back some of those reforms and taking back more of the wealth. I'm not saying communism was good - not at all. But social democracy, which we had during our golden age, the 1940s through 1970s, was good for most Americans and apparently for the country as well, because we were on top of the world, the envy of the world, with the best economy, low unemployment, the national debt was low and declining, etc. Today, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Germany still have a similar system, and their people are much better off than most Americans these days.

How did the elite start screwing the American middle class? They opened the borders to illegal immigrants, which started putting downward pressure on American wages. They started to undermine union power.

They started to close factories and offices in the US and open them in Mexico, China and India. Inflation is another part. Stagnant wages for the masses is another.

Slashing taxes on the super-rich and big corporations, and borrowing to make up the difference - this was another part, because they could then use the massive and growing national debt as an excuse to cut subsidies to education (so, rapidly rising tuition at public universities), cut Social Security, cut Medicare, radically reform welfare (during Clinton administration), etc. We are headed backwards. Inequality is as high as it was during the 1920s, just before the Crash of 1929 and the worldwide Great Depression and WW II. With rising inequality comes rising crime, division, etc. I could go on, but probably already out of space here... Björn Lindström - I mostly agree with you too, including that we should not close the borders - US is and should remain "the land of immigrants".

I do not trust any politician. They are all - politicians, and that is a messy, comp Keep in mind that statistics can be selectively framed to say just about anything, and are rarely used impartially. Read more history about US economic periods.

Read about how the US used to have a healthier middle class, jobs with benefits, and a booming economy - until the business heads started siphoning off a bigger & bigger % of the profits for themselves. Things haven't always been like this with such economic inequality, & don't have to be this way now. Read more widely about current events.

Simple answers are rarely accurate & are never the whole story. Catch phrases & slogans are worthless for complex political issues. (how could bush blame the economy on a predecessor when the economy was going great when he was elected?

Why would bush's economic disaster be obama's fault after 8 months? Everyone acknowledged it would take more than one 4 yr term to reverse things before Obama even got elected. How much responsibility do you give to members of congress who block everything a president tries to do just because they are in a different political party - read up on Newt Gingrich's congress during the Clinton admin.

In addition to the repubs in congress during the past 4 years - those who even stated their main job was to make obama's 1st 4 yrs a failure).

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.