Reddit reviews The Anti-American Manifesto

Posted on techdirt, will post here. This situation is already covered:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government. . ."

I have been reading a lot about this option on the web lately, and not just from the far right, either, from the 10th amendment folks to Ted Rall's new book, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583229337/ . It appears that the people of this country may be starting to explore the limits of what shit they're willing to take from a corrupt government that has been bought by private interests, to the injury of the public good. Interesting times. . .

I see the point you're trying to make, but you're wrong.

It's like people who equate Putin to Hitler. I can see the point they're trying to make, but it doesn't mean the point is valid.

The point you're trying to make is that both western and Russian media are equally biased... the difference is in the west I can read comments like yours, I can voice my dissent, I can be honest with how I feel without worrying about befalling an "accident" or being "randomly assassinated" in a totalitarian country.

I haven't spoken to a single Russian about recent events who was actually provided a complete, clear and unbiased summary of those events. Russian media is all smoke and mirrors; there are no independent journalists without bias remaining alive in the country; people who speak their dissent towards the government are brutally murdered.

Question: How much public information regarding the US government has been banned following its release? Russia has banned, among many other things, multiple books that recount the claims of government officials illegally killing dissenters, and covering it up. One of these is called "Red Notice", which regards the corrupt jailing, torture, and eventual death by beating of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian dissenter. If you asked the average Russian, that book was "imperialist western pigdog propaganda", right? Yet here in American, I'm free to buy The Anti-American Manifesto without worrying that I will be jailed. Will you continue to argue that both are the same?

Hard to take an excerpt from a book by a cartoonist seriously. I agree with this quote from an editorial review on Amazon.com

>...most Americans don't want to revolt, a fact about which Rall seems oblivious, making his Manifesto inadvertently ridiculous.

It is ridiculous. The United States has some of the most amazing infrastructure in the world, whatever it's state of disrepair may be. Its citizens also have some of the best living conditions humanity has ever known. Why the fuck would they flush that down the toilet by starting a violent war which would sunder most of it?

I'm not saying there shouldn't be change and I don't really see how that change will happen within the current system. It's owned by corporate lobbyists and special interests. The only way things are going to change for the better for the majority of the citizens is by changing their level of participation in their own communities. Bottom up change that fills city, county, state and then ideally federal government positions with people who are focused on what their true constituents want because they know their constituency is watching and will hold them accountable.