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Where Does America's Fear Come From?
An anonymous reader writes "While far from a dictatorship, the United States has employed a number of paranoid tactics that delegitimize its democracy. And the motivation for doing so is — fear. That seems to be a long way from 'So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself: nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.' Where is the U.S. heading?"
Same answer as always: You've Got to Be Carefully Taught.
Your post is merely confirmation that the biggest problem we have in the US is really stupid fucking people who can only regurgitate bumper sticker talking points, and who prefer to be lied to like two dollar whores instead of using their brain to actually think. People like you are why the fucknuts get elected who go out of their way to pass crap like the Patriot Act, and to invade other countries for no reason.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
For the hundredth time.
Capitalism does not reward hard work.
It rewards marketability and cunning investment.
The whole point of the "capital" in "capitalism" is to NOT have to work hard. It's an economic system which takes advantage of human laziness. You may think this is good or bad, workable or unworkable, but that's still how it is.
The hardest workers I've ever met are all dirt poor. They either lack the fortune or the inclination to make money - IOW they're either disabled, dumb or idealistic. (And note well that there's nothing wrong with being any of these, with the proviso that being thick does not include wilful ignorance.)
If you're going with that analogy - some of us prefer to be sheep dogs. Sheep are just sheep, after all. Some of us are not sheep, and are incapable of reacting as sheep. Of course, we run into another problem - the government is incapable of distinguishing between wolves and dogs. Anything with fangs must be a predator, and dangerous.
I'll keep my fangs, and damn the government. And, damn the mindless sheep as well.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
In the sense of merging of corporation and state, America's as close as the world has got to sustained Italian corporatism, i.e. fascism in the pre-Hitler sense.
(Hitler wanted the same thing, but he also wanted a land war in Asia, and that's where he went too fa.. oh wait. Seriously though, America is fascist, for the traditional European definition of fascism.)
America has largely stood alone, with only two neighbours whom it outnumbers or out classes technologically there has never been anything to fear from them.
The American people have lived in a fortress surrounded by (vast) ocean.
Pearl harbour penetrated that and look at the response.
Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh attacked from within and look at the response.
Same with the 9/11 attacks.
Americans haven't ever lived with the threat of violence, except sporadically. The response is disproportionate, but that's largely natural to unfamiliar circumstances.
When the soviet union imploded the USA needed to invent other enemies, they found: terrorists and paedophiles.
This is not about protecting human life, the number killed so far by the USA in drone attacks in Pakistan (2,830) is about the same as the number killed in the 9/11 attacks (2,978); then start counting the number killed in Afganistan (Coalition casualties: 3,395 civilian casualties (an order of magnitude more).
We like our oceans, it keeps us away from all the "crazy" people in the world.
Note, I know they aren't all crazy, but considering that most Americans don't even have a passport, much less have ever left the country, to a large number of Americans, the USA is the center of the Universe.
If anyone even makes noise about coming over here, the general reaction is, "bomb them". And if that doesn't work, then you aren't using enough bombs.
The irony is that much of the hate towards America is caused by America's own actions. On the flip side, we do need to protect our interests overseas, the world is very much smaller than it was 100 years ago.
There are no easy solutions.
Capitalism does not reward hard work. It rewards marketability and cunning investment.
Actually, what it rewards most is having capital. And what it punishes most is not having capital.
If I have capital, I can invest it, not particularly cunningly, in S&P 500 ETFs and get a not-terrible return for doing no work at all. At worst, I'll be pulling in 0.5% from my bank with it. If I collect enough capital, then I don't need to do any work whatsoever and I'll be able to live comfortably by demanding other people's work in the form of purchases.
If I don't have capital, then anything that I buy will be done on credit, making it more expensive than if I had bought it outright. For example, if I use a credit card to buy food and don't pay it off right away, than the cost of my groceries is at least 25% higher due to the payments to the credit card company. So that means that because I started with less capital (for whatever reason), I actually have to work harder to pay for the same things that the person with $150K lying around can just buy.
An example from my day-to-day: I was lucky enough to be born into a family that could afford to pay for my bachelor's degree. That gave me an income of $2400 or so higher than classmates who started out earning about as much as I did. 2 years later, that translated into the just under $5000 I needed to buy a car to get to a better-paying job, saving me about $3000 a year in car loan payments. So now I'm basically earning $5K more than an equally-hardworking and responsible colleagues and classmates, and that allows me to save up for all sorts of things more easily than they can. The uneven playing field happens to be tilted somewhat in my favor, solely because I started with assets rather than debts.
I am officially gone from
That looks at the percentage factual reporting vs. opinion reporting. That's a completely different question from the accuracy of the facts.
Example:
Foo reports: "The most powerful person of the U.S. is the president. The American president has green skin. Only Martians have green skin. We should not let the fate of America be controlled a Martian."
Ratio of "fact" reporting to opinion reporting: 3:1 (three "fact" sentences, one opinion statement). Number of actual facts: 1.
Bar reports: "The most powerful person of the U.S. is the president. However his power is not absolute. But his power should be absolute. It is not a good idea to divert some power to the congress."
Ratio of fact reporting to opinion reporting: 1:1 (two fact sentences, two opinion sentences). Number of actual facts: 2.
The fact/opinion statistics would prefer Foo. However Bar, despite its higher and obviously stupid opinion part, has only actual facts, and even more of those than Foo, where two of three "facts" are fake.
Now I have no idea about the quality of facts of Fox vs. MSNBC. All I wanted to point out is that the statistics you quoted is completely unrelated to this question.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
TFA sez:
And the motivation for doing so is â" fear
Dunbal sez:
Nothing has changed because basic human nature is the same. This is the way it will always be. So you get to choose whether you want to be part of the herd near the edge looking for the wolves, or oblivious somewhere the middle, or if you want to be a wolf. Being near the edge isn't a problem because you see the danger coming, so you get a head start. Being in the middle, you don't even realize the danger is there until the whole herd is moving.. And of course being a wolf has its own unique advantages: you get to eat mutton and you get to watch the whole herd fear you. But you have no herd for protection and in trying times, the other wolves don't mind eating wolf, too
Both the above have failed to realize that there is another entity in the picture --- the one who puts ***FEAR*** in the midst and use it for its own dastardly agenda.
A true analogy : Fish farmers who ship live fishes in flexitanks used to be troubled by the large number of fish turned belly up during the transit, and finally someone found a simple way to solve the problem --- they put a live crab inside the same flexitank with the fish.
Because of that one live crab, the fishes were pre-occupied with fear throughout the journey, and as a result, up to 95% of the fishes arrived at the destination still alive.
Same thing happens in the United States.
Because of the fear that has been instilled by the government the people forgot about everything else and willingly surrender their rights, their liberty, their privacy, just so they can remain "protected".
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !