fwiw.

(Where we may still disagree on the prognosis.. for ever reining-in the Spooks) maybe even more portentous are now the Corporates,
as--as you have noted--Gov. secrecy/Lying has been with us since long before the Cheney Shogunate made it into an art-form.
And ALL of Bizness is suffused with Lying, from the subtle-->humongous. It is inescapable.
Now there are the Googlish who Say, Don't do evil as they proceed apace to expand the domain of Evil into previously inaccessible regions
--all about obscene amounts of $$.

What we are in-for, IMO is the Problem of Time, given the unprecedented Scale of the Planetary crises as dwarf all internecine battles-with-words.
(Might as well wait ... and wait ... and Wait! (for that Revolution-thing)--as we wait.. and wait.. for emergency-class authentic work on The Nest of all.)

I (still) have faith==0 in the creeping gradualism of attempting to work-with a System so premeditatively-Broken, as right now.

Sane as are your points about actually Trying-to-vote amidst the flotsam and detritus of the ambitious, I can sign-on only to extent:
YES, DO fucking-VOTE!, even when you realize that the deck has 100 Jokers planted by the Ruling 0.001% (and their toadies of the 0.01%)
NOT-to-vote is: yielding to the (lowest) brain, the Instinctive one or the (middle?) Emotional brain, for a few moments of satis-fiction.

Some other good stuff in those DG replies/and links! (including this cute 'test' link-about-linking on-site.)
http://driftglass.bl...dget-by-1983.html
IMO we'unses Must ... [a word I try to use rarely] strive to maintain equanimity in the bald-Face of the clear clinical madness now at the throats of
all Muricans (and elsewhere on the endangered Planet.)
Tuning-it-all-Out merits measureless-Shame, which will gnaw at the viscerals of any practitioner of mere avoidism.



(It's also more Fun.. to See the daily allegory, yet/ distance-self from mindless stimulus<-->response negativity.)

Cats.. I find.. help in this. Find Your Own 'cats'.