A Polling Wasteland

A new, but not too meaningful WaPo-ABC News poll has determined--surprise!--a general public dissatisfaction with the direction of the country. Here are a few astonishing insights from citizenry: "the next president needs to be one who brings us together as a country," and, "there's got to be a change," and, "we're in a terrible mess."
Oh.
As for the economy, the general tenor is one of fear of a recession but respondents apparently don't why they fear this. But we do find a 911 dispatcher, who twice voted for Geo. Bush, express the sentiment that, regardless of the party that proposes a good idea--whatever that might be--"Congress should go for what works for this country. We have gotten away from that."
And nowhere in these observations do we encounter an awareness of the oppression by this nation's political and economic elite on the economic middle/lower classes.
You and me, in short.
It is no wonder we find ourselves "led" by a bunch of jingoists who splutter on about gay marriage, abortion, Islamofascism, and secularism/evolution, to cite but four examples of utter idiocy.
Nowhere in the poll and nowhere in the national debate are matters raised regarding sky-high levels of personal debt (attributable to wage inequality/stagnation and obscene and uncontrolled healthcare costs, to name but two reasons), the determined and steady erasure of our civil rights (illegal wiretapping as one example) and a worthwhile discussion on foreign policy.
We know the source of these obscenitites--an entrenched elite manipulating a malleable public. Would that citizens shake off the shackles of political radio and political television masquerading as the Voice of the People. The crime here, one of many, is the government we've imposed upon ourselves. A government that lets lobbyists set the terms of legislation, from financial groups who are freed from oversight in order to set usurious levels of credit card interest, to a government that explicitly refuses to represent the economic interests of its constituents.
So how can any of us flex our atrophied political muscles? It's really not that hard. The Senate Intelligence Committee was set to give the telecoms blanket immunity for the complicity with the Administration in side-stepping FISA law. Yet senatorial objections began to mount after the outcry from an aware and informed public. And the nomination of Michael Mukasey wasn't threatened until an aware and informed public shouted their disapproval. These victories might still turn to ash but they do reveal a truth: stay silent and you guarantee your loss of rights, your slow descent into poverty and a shortened lifespan courtesy of a healthcare lobby determined to maximize profit even unto the bankrupting of its patients.