[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Glice

I think it's a very weak form of politics that can't propose to alter a culture. Looking to GB, there's a load of things that were engrained in our psyche that have been eroded. We don't actually drink the tea of the stereotype, that's an imperialist-era hangover. Pub culture until about ten years ago was smoking, fighting, pub games and largely woman-less; thanks to a series of Labour legislation changes around health and booze taxation, a pub's more likely to be a bistro type affair with free wi-fi and young mothers drinking shit 'Italian' coffee in the afternoons than it is somewhere for men to go and complain about their Missus.

Similarly, British football culture is very different now. Thanks to a more sophisticated policing of crowds, seated stadia and more punitive measures for football violence, the idea of going to a game for a fight with the other team is severely diminished. There are still remnants, but it's by no means what it was in the 60s and 70s; further, football crowds are no longer primarily populated by working class men.

I would entirely agree that altering gun culture in America isn't going to happen soon; I wouldn't agree that it's impossible. If we take my example of pubs, it is possible to remove fetishised objects like cigarettes from an 'engrained' culture; they'll still stick around in some form, but smoking levels and related health problems have been severely reduced thanks to the (EU-imposed) smoking ban.

I don't think it even requires any notion of changes being 'radical' - health care reform is finally moving in the States - it's not an ideal system, but it is a definite step in the right direction. It's taken a strong leader with a lot of popular support to force through those changes, and they're not as huge as I think the left would've liked, but things can change. So far as I can make out, in spite of a fairly large public and political resistance to health care reform, they have taken place and no-one has rioted.

Yes but again you're missing the mark in assuming that the US should have a STRONG government. It doesn't. It isn't France. It's not the UK either. This is a much bigger country, it's composed of 50 (that's 50) different states each with their own Constitution and laws and local governments that are different from each other. There are overriding federal laws but those are quite limited. Germany might be a closer comparison, or Spain with is autonomous regions-- and you know what happened when Franco tried to ban Euzkera or Catalonian, right?

Here we had a civil war 150 years ago on the issue of "states rights". Not slavery per se, but the power of the Federal government to dictate what states can or cannot do. It was a bloody fucking carnage and the feds won but the distrust of the Federal government remains high in a lot of places.

Besides, there is a HUGE libertarian streak in this country-- it's not necessarily that Ron Paul is going to get a lot of votes, but the ideas are spread much further than his radical fringe. The basic notion is that the government is evil and intrusive and that the best government is the smallest government. Reagan won 2 elections with that platform. Newt Gingrich took over Congress in the mid-90s on a similar platform-- to gut the Federal government to its minimum possible size. Clinton played chicken with him (shut down the government) and won-- but he was still hamstringed on many fronts.

The point is, while in other countries people expect a lot, if not all, from their government, the American government is indeed weak and people tend to put the responsibility on the individual more than on the collective. I don't necessarily agree with this, and I have campaigned for the "godless liberals" (yes, the Bible & the Gun go together like peanut butter and jam), but I know enough to know that the government can only take small steps and that the notion of banning guns in America is utterly laughable-- you might as well try to squeeze orange juice out of chunks of marble.

And then there's the Senate! It's like, imagine if the House of Lords had huge power to entangle and delay legislation forever if not kill it-- sure, Senators are elected, but that's another clusterfuck that's too long to discuss.

See here about the American form of government:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/Am...ts/demrep.html
(I don't endorse that website but it shows well what I'm talking about).

Long story short: Americans like their government weak and small, and Obama is a Black Power Muslim Communist! (You won't believe the things people say here. I hear them every day).

OK, back to work...