Bellatrys: We are responsible

Citizens of the World: We Are Not Our Government:

—But We Elected Them

This is the critical problem.

Decent Americans don't want to be despised and rejected for the callous and brutal policies of our leaders. We're not like that, we say.

And it's true - so far as it goes.

But we are in a democracy, and we have chosen our rulers these many generations - and by "we" I mean all the lifelong moderate liberals, who have not been up in arms and getting arrested in front of SAC bases all these years, as well as the nice, soccer-mom'n'dad conservatives, all those people who would never have dreamed of civil disobedience because, after all, there was no need, we're a nation of laws, we believe in human rights, we never go to war except in self-defense, we believe in freedom of speech and science and education and the arts, we're the greatest benefactors the human race has ever known.

And people around the world all envy us, because we're the pinnacle, and that's why they want to come here, except for the ones who want to tear us down. Just the sin of envy.

And now, blinking, we find ourselves in 1915 Berlin [US] or Vienna [UK], watching the train-wreck happen as our leaders' many-years-planned expansionist venture collides with their rivals' many-years-planned revolutionary venture, asking how the hell did this happen, coming out of nowhere as it did--?