They'll Take it, and Like It...
...one by one.
First, they were told most people wanted it. This was repeated until they believed it. Then, the weakened among them reinvented their own philosophies in order to accommodate it. They ended up liking it after all.
The end result was that most people wanted it--not out of choice pursuant to critical thought, but out of conditioning programmed into them by none other than the media and "entertainment" industry.
This is how democracy/socialism/communism/fascism/all other leftism works. All you must do is make 51% of the people (more if you're lucky or efficient) weak-minded, passive, and blind. Once that is accomplished, there is no value, no moral, no principle for which they will fight. On a subconscious level, they will adopt your policies as their own so that they do not have to face their own consciences. Consciously, they will actually believe that they do favor your policies--and they will likely fight against the very values, morals, and principles which they probably once held dear. This goal has been accomplished in major metropolitan areas, whose citizens are more effectively subjected to media exposure. Rural areas proved to be a tough nut to crack, however, and most citizens remain opposed to the ever-increasing power of government.
So the leftists brainstormed, and their social engineers came up with what was an admittedly brilliant idea. The result of its implementation is precisely what they sought: reduction of individual liberty with simultaneous increases in government power, spending, and arrogance. And they didn't have to get a single person to change his party loyalty, either. No, their plan was much simpler than that.
No one's vote has made the slightest difference in the overall effect--votes for the R or D only choose who will confiscate liberties, and in which order liberties will be confiscated, but certainly neither the speed at which the confiscation occurs nor the extent to which it is committed is affected. You see, the communists figured out that controlling the representatives of one party alone would never yield them the nation--the People would merely have the choice of electing the other party, and would do so (obviously this party traditionally wore the R). So the communists adapted their approach to incorporate both parties into their expanding influence--nearly all of the Ds, and over half of the Rs. This way, even if the entire People voted every D out of office and replaced them with Rs, they would still get the same result: a majority of elected officials sympathetic to communism, whether unwitting or otherwise (to their credit--and also detriment--often the Rs are unwittingly conditioned).
No doubt most people with more than a few brain cells to rub together have noticed the Souter effect at work in all political and legal circles.
However, this left one last problem. The People could be shocked (by seeing their nation's decline unfold) into thinking independently again, and abandoning both parties altogether. They could elect a third party, consisting of members that still believed in serving one's constituents rather than ruling them and gaining wealthy from their taxation. Interestingly, however, the media and "entertainment" industry were able to preemptively eliminate this problem, by systematically conditioning the People to believe two things:
1. That spending one's vote on anything but an R or a D was merely a waste, as no other party had a chance, and
2. That any other party could never represent the "mainstream," and that "fringe groups" (as every third party is classified by the M and E industries) had beliefs that were undesirable.
The first point is laughably false, as spending one's vote on something other than an R or D--done en masse by the People--was and is the only way not to waste one's vote. Many people acting in concert actually could use the voting system to regain control of the government. However, the leftists' solution was much easier than worrying about the complexities: the people simply had to believe third parties were a waste of time--it didn't have to be true, and it never was. But it would take courage for the people to shift their vote en masse, and courage had been conditioned out of them long ago, having been neatly replaced with materialism and multiculturalism, the latter more accurately known as outright cultural destruction.
The second point, ironically, is true, because of the success of the M and E industries in conditioning the public to believe--through repetition and suggestion, and finally emotional manipulation--that it wanted what they wanted it to have. They convinced the public that it had needs only government could solve. To the objective viewer, this too was laughable. Not only has government miserably failed to fulfill a single need since it took the left turn in the early 1930's, but private citizens and organizations have consistently succeeded, as they have throughout all of history when they were allowed to operate freely.
And so, we have come full circle. The majority of people will accept the behemoth government. They will accept the steady, gradual loss of their rights--and they will like it. Most of the patriots will eventually die one way or another, and the few that remain will have insufficient numbers and arms to stand up to the behemoth.
The patriots, in their failure, will have one last lesson to add to history: you cannot change a system by working within the confines of its own self-preserving rules. Once a system itself has been corrupted to work against its original principles, it cannot be restored to order. Those in doubt can try changing a tire, while being inside the tire. But with any luck, the M and E industries can convince most people to say "why would you want to change a tire? No one needs to change a tire!" anyway. Unappreciated lessons become useless lessons.
One by one.