Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube View Post
Right, but everyone suffers when Congress is more focussed on greed and pork than doing a good job. The general public is influenced by the very rich every day, whether they like it or not. As long as people continue to believe that the system is working properly, those with money and bad motives can continue to exploit the public trust. People get really worked up over Super PAC ads, after all, when in reality they should be taken with a titanic grain of salt.

Anyway, I wasn't responding to your point. Just that sentance. You were discounting MRD's point by associating it with a group you didn't like. That's not responsible discourse either.
Yeah, we all have our own flaws and responsible dialogue is actually very difficult. Obviously, I pulled I guess some sort of fallacy by labeling MRD's statement as Occupy Wallstreet silliness. But Americans have shown in the past to be good at making compromises out of reasonable debate when they feel like it.

As a counter-intuitive example, the issue of slavery was probably the biggest conflict of economics vs morality that the country will ever face. We managed to keep our cool from literally before the US was a country until the 1860s when it finally fell apart. To me, keeping a country that was so state (not federal) centered with that kind of inner conflict for 80+ years says something. But maybe I am being ignorant here.