Just because you can't solve everything all on your own doesn't mean you're effectively powerless.
What does make you powerless is refusing to act because you have to be part of a crowd to help, instead of some lone avenging angel who can solve everything with a snap of their fingers.
Also the founding fathers sucked and were constantly drunk slave holders.
Hey now, let a man have his drink now and again, or we'll put another tax on whiskey.
The best Founding Fathers were the abolitionists among them, though. Most of the slave-holders who shat up the founding are long-forgotten by popular culture, except for Jefferson and Madison.
I imagine most would be pleased. They only ever wanted the voice of wealthy men to matter in the first place, and now it's the supreme law of the land.
I don't think so, they were trying to get away from a government that pushed too heavily onto the people. Regardless, it was a question that can never have an answer, since we cannot ask them.
When they created the United States, their Constitution only allowed the vote to wealthy male landowners.
They'd be exceedingly pleased with the way things turned out. They never wanted common people to have any real voice beyond dying for wealthy people's property.
You all deprive yourselves of our votes by failing to follow through on your promises, along with those of the half of this country that can't afford to miss a desperately needed day's pay in order to vote for someone they know is only going to ignore them once elected.
Your party is the problem. You don't get to beat people down and then pretend you're the aggrieved party because they didn't stand up with blood pouring down their faces and ask for more.
The concentration camp was never the normal condition for the average gentile German. Unless one were Jewish, or poor and unemployed, or of active leftist persuasion or otherwise openly anti-Nazi, Germany from 1933 until well into the war was not a nightmarish place. All the “good Germans” had to do was obey the law, pay their taxes, give their sons to the army, avoid any sign of political heterodoxy, and look the other way when unions were busted and troublesome people disappeared.
Since many “middle Americans” already obey the law, pay their taxes, give their sons to the army, are themselves distrustful of political heterodoxy, and applaud when unions are broken and troublesome people are disposed of, they probably could live without too much personal torment in a fascist state — some of them certainly seem eager to do so.
- Michael Parenti. (1996). Fascism in a Pinstriped Suit
Many people have been living under fascism in the United States for decades, suffering under explicitly racist police and judiciary systems, fighting against explicitly fascist foreign policy, and trying to wake people up to the explicitly fascist rhetoric of both democrats and republicans.
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,<— you are here
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.