>In other words, ELECTED people with avowed intentions to change the system found themselves 'enjoying' the system they found so distasteful!

Did they get reelected?

>So it's very easy for you to tell me I'm a whiner and should get off my butt and do something about it, but the incident outlined and countless others that are similar (but less obvious) have taught me that *I* personally and alone can do NOTHING THAT MATTERS!

Oh, I agree. But if you and the voters who put that group into office to start change elected a different group the next time around then you'd be getting closer. Things will take a wrong turn, especially on the first time out as your story illustrates. The next group to go in to get the job done will have that to learn from. They'll say "Hey, the last guys went to do something and lost sight of that. They also didn't get reelected. We can learn from this."

>And, by the way, with most everyone being hugely beholdin to the banks and so working their butts off just to keep their jobs, it's most difficult to mobilize people to do anything about anything. It's not at all that they're "satisfied/happy" with the status-quo, but rather that they're AFRAID and TIRED.

:-) Remember I said satisified, or at least not pissed off enough to do something about it. I heard that "depression is anger without the enthusiaism." You need anger :-) Or at least, you need to spread this information to a new generation who will have the enthusiasm, which I'm pretty sure is something you've done. So kudos for that.

>Now if you could apply your reasoning to the issue, as I've seen you do so well with some other theoreticals, you just might find the spark that can be grown to a full-blown blaze.

Unfortunately these sort of things don't happen like that. To an outsider a revolution might look like it occurs overnight, but to those in the know they've been steadily building steam through long periods of hard work until a critical mass is reached, and then the blaze ignites.

Not very informative, I know. Just keep remembering that giving the public something to work with is alot better than trying to convince them that what they are working with is wrong. And maybe good things will happen.