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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?"
My family visited Europe this Fall and were surprised at the level of civility experienced there.
It seems that fear and paranoia drive Americans to give up liberties in trade for some vague promise of security. "Stand your ground" laws and the vast supposedly all knowing NSA wiretapping program are just two small examples of the manifestation of all pervading fear and paranoia.
Other First World Nations have a different balance between liberty and security. It's not that they don't spy on each other. It's not that good people don't die at the hands of bad people. It has to be experienced elsewhere to know that things don't _have_ to be they way they are in the US.
I can't help but feel it has to do, in small part, with basic civility between humans. Too bad America can't/won't follow these better, more secure examples.
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
Meanwhile hippy veggies such as myself are swinging in the trees making suggestive motions with our bananas and flinging shit on the crowd below.
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.)
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).
#4 is largely incorrect. There was a big burst of inflation in the 1970's that basically halved the value of money in 9 years, and that's the kind of thing you fear. But since then, it's been closer to a rate that halves the value of money in over 20 years, which is neither unusual nor particularly harmful. And all you need to do to beat inflation is to hold assets that aren't cash, such as stocks, bonds, a home, land, or commodities.
I am officially gone from
Dude, This is fucking America. We have never, ever all agreed on anything. In this case a significant proportion of the people who fought the Revolution were extremely pro-aristocracy.
Our number three or four guy General was "Lord Stirling," our top trainer as "Baron von Steuben," we received aid from extremely aristocratic France, and the officers of the Continental Army created a hereditary order (the Society of the Cincinnati) at the end of the war specifically intended to become our new nobility..
As for the rest, increasing the House to 30k is simply not practical. There's a reason the Indians, with a population triple ours, have a Parliament that is less then double ours. It's just not practical to run a Legislative body with more then 600 or so members. You'd have to have a working group in DC much smaller then the 30k Congressman, and you'd probably need actual Constitutional amendments governing how that working group was chosen, when the 30k could meet to fire the working group, etc.
As for points 4 and 5, you really don't understand Progressives. At all. It's not that we think sovereign debt is a good thing, or even a not-bad thing; it's that we think the problem with sovereign debt is that it leads to inflation. OTOH the problem with cutting government spending is that it involves firing people, which reduces salaries for everyone by increasing the supply of available labor while reducing the demand for said labor. If the economies doing great, inflation is real, and the employment situation is fine government debt is a bad thing to have.
But we're in the middle of a years-long employment slump, with basically no inflation, it's foolish to cut the deficit. We'd cut everyone's salary, to solve a problem that simply does not exist.
That would be like a guy whose house is currently on fire sealing up his basement because a flood is sure to hit real soon now.
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 !
AD = CE. CE expands as Common Era, and is generally more accepted in a global context, because it doesn't reference a god you may not believe in or adhere to. More than half the world's population does not follow an Abrahamic religion. The dates are exactly the same, just a different name.
You did know that AD means "Anno Domini", right? In English, that's "the year of our Lord". If you want to claim adherence to the Christain God, that's fine. You have that right. But don't expect me to pay lip service to a God that, to me, comes off as a petty, cliquish and vindictive sort, according to your own holy books.
"with basically no inflation"
You are an utter fool if you believe that.
There has been almost double digit inflation during this years long period of low employment. My $1.00 buys only $0.70 today than what it did only 3 years ago.
It's the bulshit made up numbers that the Government releases that people listen to... "we have 7% unemployment!" if you don't count the unemployed that are not getting Unemployment insurance. Actual is near 20% unemployment. under Employment is higher than that, and then what I call the "bullshit employment" People that have skills but are working Mcdonalds,Walmart,etc instead of their skilled labor job the numbers hit near 40%
The cost of living which is the real inflation, has steadily increased. Loaf of the cheapest crap white bread was $0.90 just 4 years ago. Today it is $1.19 That is so close to a 30% increase it's scary. Meat, etc... all up about the same amount. People that actually track their expenses will all see about a 30% increase in costs over the past 3-4 years. And a 0 to -10% change in their income.
Some places can see an almost 50% increase in cost of living over that same time period.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'll keep my fangs, and damn the government. And, damn the mindless sheep as well.
There is more to it than just that. Our civilization has allowed more and more purely physical power to be accessible by average folks --think of any 200-horsepower car as being equivalent to owning a herd of 200 horses, and think about all the work that such a herd might have done before the Industrial Revolution. Well, Power is supposed to be associated with Responsibility. It is Education that provides information about "how to use Power responsibly and ethically" --but there are always folks who either don't pay proper attention to the lessons, or don't care, because they want what they want, regardless of the consequences. Thus did the Power of three jet aircraft become misused as missiles, destroying two tall buildings and severely damaging a third large building. If the overall Trend continues, regarding accessibility of physical Power by average folks, then eventually average folks will have access to Power equivalent to an H-bomb. (Note that already lots of folks seem to have access to Modern Biological Power....) One of the proposed Answers to the Fermi Paradox is that every technological culture will eventually face a challenge regarding how to deal with such Power in the hands of ordinary small-minded selfish (and even psychotic) folks --and that most cultures don't survive that challenge. I will disagree that clamping down on Freedom is the correct solution; there are stories about "mad generals", after all. But we most certainly need a solution, and sooner rather than later.
AD = CE. CE expands as Common Era, and is generally more accepted in a global context, because it doesn't reference a god you may not believe in or adhere to. More than half the world's population does not follow an Abrahamic religion. The dates are exactly the same, just a different name.
You did know that AD means "Anno Domini", right? In English, that's "the year of our Lord". If you want to claim adherence to the Christain God, that's fine. You have that right. But don't expect me to pay lip service to a God that, to me, comes off as a petty, cliquish and vindictive sort, according to your own holy books.
Not my god either, but I see two objections to trying to replace AD with CE:
Firstly, it doesn't achieve your stated aim of avoiding reference to Christianity, because it continues to use what was (probably incorrectly) thought to be the year of Christ's birth as its epoch. Any pretence that the one is not derived from the other is frankly ridiculous.
Secondly, I can't comment about yourself, but most CE proponents are quite happy to use a calendar system that is replete with reference to other deities such as Thursday after Thor, January after Janus and so on. Both July and August are named after gods who we know from our history books were not exactly role models for ethical behaviour. In this context it is hard to believe that aversion to the term AD is driven by a purely secular motivation.
Giffords wasn't shot by a "patsy", and her shooting had nothing to do with her political views. She was shot by a crazy guy who had no coherent agenda at all. The only connection between the way she practiced politics and her getting shot was that she was holding a "talk to the voters" event in a supermarket parking lot when it happened.
This is a simplistic and hence inaccurate view. Government spending on things like large infrastructure projects can contribute to increasing the overall wealth of the nation. In this case, reduing spending can result in reducing the wealth of the nation.
Furthermore, providing a safety net for people (welfare) can allow people to take more risks, so the population can be more mobile, more entrepreneurial, etc.. Such risk taking can result in new businesses and increased GDP.
If you think otherwise, let me suggest that you move to Somalia. I expect tax rates are very low there.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!