[D]o you - like many others on here - hold out a faint candle of hope that one day...just one day we may get a true sign from above that our bastardised version of a plural democracy is not absolutely rooted (with a capital R)[?]
You answered that for me:
[S]adly I think we live in false hope.
Two epiphanies led me to that conclusion.
First, after about 40 years of watching, very closely, the machinations of government, I realised that when one 'side' wins, both 'sides' win. They do almost exactly the same things: It's just the mates who get the favours that change.
Neither 'side' has an interest in changing the phony competition because, sooner or later, each 'side' will get its turn at taxing like robber barons and spending like drunken sailors. Both 'sides' have put a lot of work into building a 'pliable' administration to passionately dedicate itself to protecting this system.
Secondly, and related to the first, I realised that there are lots of people prepared to work for organisations for which the people have no respect, or even have active disdain, and prepared to contribute to the achievement of outcomes to which those people have personal or moral objections. I don't know how they do it, but there are lots and lots of them doing the politicians' dirty work. I might be naive, because that was quite a revelation to me.
