Our democracy allows every individual to voice his or her opinion and persuades every individual to feel he or she has a stake in society. We like to be persuaded that whoever we are voting for has the interests of our society and us at heart. There's only one problem. What if we are so unschooled in our own language, so ignorant in the arts of verbal persuasion that we cannot recognize the rhetorical devices being used to persuade us? We have become so used to advertising and its subtle and persuasive forms of deceit that we no longer are able recognize what is true. Our two political parties have spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours finding the "right" messages because they know how malleable and volatile the electorate is. Patriotism, self-interest, idealism, exclusion are all used to stir the emotional political pot. And then we vote and everything stays roughly the same until change really comes. Nobody likes change. Nobody likes to go to war. Nobody wants the economy or environment to fail. So, we put off change until the real crisis comes. And we live in this no-man's land of inaction and prepare for the real crisis when it may be too late.