In the last post, we saw that cultural truths are strong. We looked at how cultures of morality in the south, both Christian and Jewish, justified the horrors of slavery.

Now, 150 years after the Civil War, southerners are much better to blacks. Yes, some of the old culture lives on. Some people are convinced that the Confederate flag isn’t hostile to blacks. Why? Their culture says so. Their culture says the war was something to be proud of, or that the war was the kind of rebellion against tyranny that we need today. Their culture blinds them to the incredible evil of the antebellum era and emphasizes positive aspects, such as supporting freedom (for whites), and a culture of civility and fashion (mostly for rich whites).

Many southerners today live in a culture that repudiates that old society. Many now value peace and harmony among racial groups, seeing the humanity in every person (though many make exceptions for illegal immigrants). The old evil culture is mostly gone. Blacks are no longer subject to bad treatment, mostly. Charleston has had almost a full 5 months since there was a mass murder of blacks by someone who ascribed to that evil culture! Of course, many cities are still struggling with prejudice, including such southern cities as San Jose, California, New York and across the country. Our attitudes about race are the ugly tip of the iceberg. None of us are immune to our cultural brainwashing.

We have the same thing in politics. “Everyone knows” that we have a political system influenced by corruption, from gutted campaign finance laws to Congress being wide open to rampant conflicts of interest.

Yet we continue to act like our democracy is sound. A study has found that our government isn’t even democratic, yet we stay locked into our basic beliefs that America is good. We are brainwashed by our culture, and we mostly are blind to it.

The problem is our basic culture about politics, that voting makes politicians accountable to voters. We know that few people vote in primaries, that gerrymandering prevents representation, and that money buys elections, yet we cling to this myth.

This blog exist to call question to, and ultimately break that myth. As I’ve written about elsewhere, there’s much more to political accountability than voting.

Culture is created, by us. It’s time we added a carefully constructed definition of political accountability to our culture, an empowering definition. Share this with others, and support PeopleCount.org.