I suspect trangbang’s solution is the workable one.

We see the disasters looming and the twisting of the governing ideals of the country, but I find plenty of people who still believe in the Teleprompter and the power of Leviathan to make all things right. (I work in Madison, if that explains things)

So I don’t talk about revolution. They usually don’t work, and when I look at the factions in the country today I’m certain it would turn out badly.

Think about Chicago. If the citizens arose in wrath and suspended the entire city council from gibbets outside City Hall, nobody but the most die-hard death-penalty foes would object. But after the first glow of satisfaction of seeing justice done, what would they think? The problems aren’t solved. The corruption runs through every city agency. So now they must replace all department heads and aides and half the employees, half the judges and police, and so on. What comes next? I fear that the next step is that the bar owner approaches the new inspector with a proposition, and the homeowner approaches the new alderman’s brother to ask a favor, and so on. The corruption isn’t limited to officials. New ones will succumb.

I think we need a bottom-up transformation.

“Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things work.”

-Robert Farrar Capon