And we’re the good guys? If so, that would make the rest of the world insanely crappy. However, many parts of the rest of the world are not insanely crappy so that only leaves me with one conclusion. We are not the good guys.
The war on satire, we’ve won it.
Your empire is only as good as the people you are torturing.
This is the one of the many rules of hegemony completely lost on Emperors Bush and Obama.
When one gazes into an abyss …
I don’t know what bothers me more in this situation, the fact that we are still committing war crimes (under the direction of a Nobel peace laureate) or the fact that almost nobody cares. Nobody reports on Gitmo, nobody calls Obama a hypocrite, and other countries never bring it up. The US should be sanctioned for kidnapping young men on made up charges, allowing them to be tortured by allies, and then putting them in a never ending prison without charging them. The newspapers should be running articles every day about how much shame we should feel for these violations of basic human rights. I mean, for fucks sake, we built a prison on foreign soil just so that our own laws couldn’t be applied to stop human rights abuses. And then we passed a law saying that we couldn’t close it. Effectively, we made a law saying that we don’t have to follow our laws. We are so fucking far away from being the good guys, it isn’t funny.
Stuff like this is pushing me further toward the idea that the USA (my own country), is evil.
I think it’s a hodgepodge of good and evil.
Evil certainly is in control of the prison & military-industrial complex and they’re overcoming the good within the USA at an alarming, accelerating rate.
But evil has many weaknesses including: megalomania, hubris and unintentionally showing their cards as average Americans observe their hysterical reaction to whistleblowers.
Even some of the more stubborn Americans are finally starting to ask themselves why is there so much angst against those who expose corruption if they’ve got nothing to hide.
Evil is growing, but so is dissent both within our government and among the American public. Don’t get me wrong, they’re amping it up to manufacture consent (and it’s working like usual), but there’s more and more kinks in their armor as average Americans educate one another.
An educated American public will embolden more whistleblowers to secretly expose corruption and come forward publicly. They’re coming. Expect them.
It’s the patriotic thing to do.
Wait, you’re saying that drawing took seven hours? SEVEN HOURS?
You are far more optimistic on this front than I am. With the gerrymandering of districts conducted in 2010, we’re stuck for another 7 years with no or very little change in congressional behavior. Corporations are so entrenched in the power structure that I’m not sure it would matter if we voted in a whole new cast of Mr. Smith type characters.
sigh I’ve got Interesting Times Fatigue pretty bad.
[edit] weird. I put asterisks around the word “sigh” and it came out italicized.
You are far more optimistic on this front than I am. With the gerrymandering of districts conducted in 2010, we’re stuck for another 7 years
7 years?
Heh… you’re actually far more optimistic than I am. I’ve said in many other posts that so much damage has been done, it’s going to take decades (20-30 years) to recover.
Example one, two … (probably 10-20 more posts out there)
The question is, are American citizens in this for the long haul or are we going to continue on this uneducated, vicious cycle where we expect change by voting in a corporatist DINO (Obama) after two solid terms of pure evil (you know who)?
Considering our sketchy past, we’ll be lucky if we can finally manage to consistently and consecutively vote in lesser evil for decades. And, there’d probably be no hope at all if it wasn’t for current and future patriotic, brave whistleblowers that’ll continue to expose corruption and educate the public. Don’t underestimate the growing discontent within our government. Many people within the CIA, NSA and the military are getting pissed (especially within the CIA and you ain’t seen nothing yet).
Whistleblowing is forcing politicians (of all stripes) to choose a side and this educates Americans. It helps to expose whether these politicians mostly represent the protection of profits for a massively corrupt prison/military-industrial complex (unwittingly or otherwise) or more represent the interests of average Americans despite the costs to their careers.
Americans will never vote against greater evil until they are better educated on just who better represents them and, like I said, even so… it’ll take decades of voting in lesser evil consistently and consecutively.
When Americans well over a decade ago voted for Nadar and helped to user in the greater evil GW Bush against the lesser evil Al Gore, they unwittingly led us down a horrific path. If one studies American history closely, there’s considerable evidence Gore would have prevented the World Trade Center attacks by paying attention to dire warnings from the previous Clinton administration. Today, we (very likely) wouldn’t be reeling from extremely costly wars with Iraq, Afghanistan… no WMD lies and all the time/money that wasted… more civil rights for citizens here and abroad … less warrantless wiretapping… single payer system for health care, etc, less dogma, less death and suffering, tremendously better economy and more jobs – Need I go on???
The American public is paying for the sins of our past. We should try learning from our mistakes and see what happens when we finally (we’ve NEVER done this) consistently and consecutively vote in lesser evil over time. This flippity-floppity shit has been a miserable, unmitigated disaster.
As Texas demonstrated, you can now gerrymander districts at any time, not just on census years. And with the Voting Rights Act neutered, I think we are going to see a lot more of that.
gerrymander districts at any time, not just on census years. And with the Voting Rights Act neutered
I think it’s notable that Republicans are by far the worst offenders in this regard. It’s not even close with Democrats. And, that’s why, if Americans ever want to see any hope of a practical third party down the road, it’s foolhardy to vote in most Republicans (or usher them in by throwing away votes on a third party that can’t win in this day and age).
“Molly Crabapple Goes to Guantanamo Bay” - worst beach movie ever.
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