[davesims]

"History and politics and sociology classes are not..."

"its already just a piece of paper..."

"You won't be permitted to change anything..."

"if voting could change anything it would be outlawed..."

"You'll be given..."

"This is the stage..."

"The purpose of a democracy is..."

"its a blueprint..."

A litany of declarative bromides, delivered with pseudo-authority and strung together without forming a coherent thought, call to action or proscription for remedy. Such could only ever be pointless, nihilistic, and and anarchic.

Demagoguery in the making.

[Roboprog]

So what's needed is some kind of reform, perhaps ultimately leading to a sort of "Magna Carta" limiting corporate power over the US government.

Perhaps a first step would be working to get instant runoff voting in place to break the back of the two party system. That would go a long ways to offer more than a difference in noise about narrow social issues (e.g. - abortion, gay rights) which actually have little to no impact on broader economic issues or privacy issues regarding freedom from blackmail or other persecution.

[VLM]

"Such could only ever be ... "

You missed predictive in your list. A model resulting in falsifiable observationally verifiable prediction about the future, resulting in the model either living to fight another day, or being disproven. I'm optimistic about my predictions and model passing the test, how bout you?

Not liking the future results of the theory, doesn't disprove the observation or theory behind it.

Also the "its just a piece of paper" is a quote from a recent former president, not me.

[davesims]

The difference between your declarative and mine is scope. Mine focused on one person's statement; yours was a sweeping historical generalization.

"falsifiable observationally verifiable prediction..."

Go back and read The Open Society and Its Enemies or Objective Knowledge. and you'll find this statement constitutes a fundamental misreading of Popper.

Never mind the fact that Popper was basically wrong and the notion of 'falsifiability' is a non-starter when it comes to practical application of political theory, Soros notwithstanding.