{"id":1215,"date":"2012-05-08T06:10:55","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T11:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/?p=1215"},"modified":"2012-05-08T06:11:08","modified_gmt":"2012-05-08T11:11:08","slug":"democracy-aint-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=1215","title":{"rendered":"Democracy Ain&#8217;t Easy&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/MLMG014.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1216\" title=\"Democracy Ain't Easy\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/MLMG014.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"397\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/MLMG014.jpg 560w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/MLMG014-300x212.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gdata.com\/?art=\/2012\/05\/MLMG014.jpg&amp;name=Democracy Ain't Easy...\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/buy.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Originally published in the <em>Ann Abor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News<br \/>\n<\/em>May 6, 2012<\/p>\n<p>It is easy to despair over \u201chow things are in America these days\u201d &#8212; how government is dysfunctional, change is slow, issues are muddled. It makes us feel like something has gone fundamentally wrong with the system. But while there is certainly room for improvement, I think our system is pretty much working the way it is designed to work, which is annoying and uncomfortable but no reason to despair.<\/p>\n<p>And here\u2019s something you can do &#8212; it\u2019s an Election Day, go out and vote!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in the Ann Abor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News May 6, 2012 It is easy to despair over \u201chow things are in America these days\u201d &#8212; how government is dysfunctional, change is slow, issues are muddled. It makes us feel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlive-media-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1219,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}