The scariest thing I've read in ages
POSTED BY: Wishimay
UPDATED: Tuesday, July 23, 2024 18:05
VIEWED: 4839
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fred-wertheimer/the-koch-brothers-magic-
t_b_8142424.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592&ref=yfp
This is what I keep trying to tell y'all.
Voting is a JOKE.
If you don't get that what you do DON'T MATTER A DAMN after reading this succinctly written article, you never will.
"This "experiment" in "democracy" is unheard of in American history. Two unelected private citizens with huge financial stakes in government actions and decisions are planning to control the spending of an unheard of amount of money in order to obtain the government they want.
The Supreme Court majority had no idea about the political shambles that would result from its 5 to 4 decision in Citizens United (or even worse, the Court majority did). The Court has given the country a new political system increasingly focused on billionaires, millionaires, Super PACs, corporations and nonprofit corporations."
But, hey, go vote if it makes you FEEL like you've contributed.
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Quote:
As for the 1%, what would you like me to do about it? They don't care about me and I don't care about them. I don't have any authority over who prints out what either. All most of us can do is hope to change a policy, because changing the 1% ain't gonna happen. We'd have better luck staging a coup and killing them all than we ever would changing their minds or the way they operate. People will always act like people do, like they always have since the beginning of civilizations...
The REAL problem, WISH, isn't the government. It's the capture of the government by the top 0.01%. Since the government defines right and wrong through the passage and enforcement of laws, the ultra-wealthy have a clear interest in writing laws to benefit themselves.
Now, the FF devised a scheme by which governments COULD be under the continuous guidance of the citizenry, rather than just during the occasional revolution, and that is THE VOTE.
SOME people claim that voting is just an exercise in picking Tweedledum versus Tweedledee. If you're only thinking about the major parties, that is indeed the case most of the time. But there are two parts in the process where that doesn't occur:
During the primaries, when a much higher diversity of opinion is expressed.
The presence of third parties. Because, I don't know about where YOU come from, but where I come from there is always more than two parties on any ticket!
Now, I know that the very wealthy do their very best to influence the process, by buying advertising time and so forth. Clearly, the wealthy would like a system in which having lots and lots of $$$ works to their advantage. But - should people really be voting on their government on the same basis that they buy a laundry detergent (adverts) and with less examination than if they were buying a smart phone?
The fact that people vote against their own interests, even in the milieu where voting is so safe and easy and offers clearly-delineated POVs between the candidates, doesn't say anything badly about the system, but about the people in it. People are lazy, and they refuse to educate themselves even in the face of rather dire privation.
IMHO, I agree with KIKI- you vote your interests, and you KEEP voting your interests. The last politician didn't work out for you? Learn from you mistakes. DON'T VOTE FOR THAT PERSON OR THAT PARTY AGAIN. Vote 'em out, and KEEP voting them out. Eventually, a candidate will bubble up that represents YOU, not the top 0.01%.
Then, you get to see what the system is really like. IF they survive and take office, good on it. If not ... if the candidate dies in a small-plane crash, for example ... well then, maybe some of the more dedicated voters get to be part of a security detail for the next candidate. Or the next candidate crowd-funds a security detail themselves.
The problem isn't with "the government". And, under democracy, the problem really isn't the 0.01%.
You were right in your first post ... the problem is THE PEOPLE.
So, don't be part of the problem. Use whatever options you have available to move policy and THE PEOPLE in your direction. If you can't ... well, it's the people's fault, isn't it? So stop blaming the system.
--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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Issued today by the Census: 1999 was the peak of real median household income in the United States for all major racial and ethnic groups.
www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/press-kits/2015/20150916_ip
_slides.pdf
Typical baby boomer response to the Census was “What would you like me to do about it?” and “But, hey, go vote if it makes you FEEL like you've contributed.” Ever since the Greatest Generation birthed the Least Generation, the Boomers have done nothing more than hold steady on the same general heading they have been on all their lives until they crash headfirst into something immovable and die as they lived, when they will ask, “Why me?”
“You apathetic time-wasting whiners got better than you deserved,” will be the answer.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“You apathetic time-wasting whiners got better than you deserved,” will be the answer.
Someone got it, albeit totally by accident.
Apathy.
How do you make people... CARE? Patriotism is a crutch of the weakminded. It doesn't work for our generation, and it's not going to work for the next ones.
Our generation is barraged by causes DAILY.
The world as a whole holds no meaning, unless it directly affects US.
We waste OUR time, because it's ours to waste, and it's all we have plenty of.
Older generations HAD to build to survive, we no longer HAVE to.
Until necessity becomes a driving force again, and I mean life-or-death necessity, expect the status quo.
P.S.
Who of YOU would go against $889 MILLION dollars, when you don't even know how it's spent or WHERE TO FIGHT???
Fighting blind is a cute movie trick, but it doesn't work in real life!
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You were right in your first post ... the problem is THE PEOPLE.
So, don't be part of the problem
Sorry, I would like to not be "people" anymore, but I settle for being a hermit
Yanno, Shakespeare got it four hundred years ago.
That whole "To be or not to be" basically says that however bad life is we’re prevented from doing anything about it by fear of the unknown.
People's fear must be greater than their comforts for an actionable event to occur.
Let me know when the Public Fear-O-meter hits "Let me put down my cellphone and DO something" and I'll join up, until then -it's just a waste of effort.
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Quote:
Polls in the last year turned up higher-than-expected support for Texas secession from the USA, up to 34 percent.
That's scary? I kinda wouldn't mind that.
If they wanted to secede, then I guess they could put into action their own ideas about immigration control without federal funding, create religious requirements and family planning institutions, and arrest as many fourteen year old clockmakers as they liked.
I need to have somebody to laugh at, and this seems as good an option as any. Let them secede, with all their nuclear weapons, and me not caring. They try to use them, the whole world will wreck them.
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Quote:
The Supreme Court majority had no idea about the political shambles that would result from its 5 to 4 decision in Citizens United (or even worse, the Court majority did)
Oh, I think they did.
Welcome to the beginning of the end. It's been fun, might as well ride that bomb to the ground.
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Ukraine: a market access review over two years of war
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-market-access-review-over-12533
2841.html
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