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I think back to the post 9-11 hangover and how we heard nonstop about how we, as Americans, had to do this, that and the other or else THE TERRORISTS WIN.
Well, we did this, that and the other and look where we are today, 10 years later.
Continue to travel and take vacations, they said. Go to Disney World, go to the beach, go to NYC, spend freely and keep doing what you were doing before. If we sit idle in our homes and communities THE TERRORISTS WIN.
Buy houses, HUGE houses. Hell, buy multiple houses! Buy cars, buy electronics, and go into debt or else THE TERRORISTS WIN.
Trust the government, we'll make you feel safe so you can keep going about your lives as if nothing ever changed. We'll fight the terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here. Because if we don't, THE TERRORISTS WIN.
Fast forward to September 30th, 2011. We keep traveling, but now we have this wonderful new bureaucracy known as the TSA who are charged with making us feel safe whenever we board a plane. We all know now that has gone and I won't bother documenting their abuses and whatnot as it's been done countless times on this forum before. We took out second mortgages on our homes at times when their value was already inflated so the kids could see Mickey Mouse in first class style.
We bought all of those big, new houses in the exurbs along with our shiny SUV's and other toys to make us feel better about our selves, completely ignorant of the fact that we were playing our part in inflating a bubble that would eventually bring our financial system down upon us all. We became gadget-obsessed and while doing so racked up a massive amount of personal debt on ourselves as individuals, leading many to insolvency and bankruptcy court. Keeping up with the Jones' became less of a sprint and more of an all-out war against ourselves and others.
We've become involved in two major theaters of war, one of which had almost zilch to do with the original act of terrorism in the first place and spent trillions of dollars doing so, all spent on our Bank of China credit card which is now maxed out. We passed the Patriot Act which encroached upon our personal freedoms in a way that none of us ever thought possible.
The rich have become richer, the poor even poorer and the middle class is evaporating before our eyes.
Our politicians in Washington DC and the ones in our own backyards are living the sweet life enjoying perks that many of us could only dream of while accepting gifts from lobbyists who then enslave the politicians to vote in their best interests, ignoring their constituents who are too busy at home getting psyched up for football games on the upcoming weekend. They keep their elected positions not because of competency in performing their duties but because when the average lazy citizen gets off their couch to go and vote the pull the lever for the name they recognize the most, not because of a belief that they're the best person for the job.
The exploits of our last two Presidents...don't have to go into that here. We know what they've done.
Our financial system is completely in the toilet. Banks took the TARP money and treated as a boost to their balance sheets rather than actually put that money to work to right the wrongs of the past several years of misbehavior. They wouldn't work with honest homeowners who wanted to try and save their homes after job losses, they looked the other way because they knew that whatever they couldn't bleed out of the homeowner in the foreclosure process would be made up by the Federal Government via bailout money. We bailed out many other industries deemed too big to fail while ignoring those who needed help but were too insignificant to matter.
Government spending has never been worse, corporations use every trick in the book to get out of paying their fare share of taxes, we've got tax dodgers working in all levels of government and neither party is serious about cutting spending or doing the other things needed for the country to achieve something resembling financial solvency.
So we're broke. We've lost millions of jobs with little hope of many of them ever coming back. Thousands of lives have been lost in vague conflicts in foreign lands fighting a vague and nameless enemy while the military-industrial complex laughs all the way to the bank. We can't afford entitlements for upcoming generation and have no interest in reigning in spending on those entitlements. We've got people working 2-3 jobs just to keep their heads above water. Did I mention that this nation is broke?
We can't afford to fight anymore wars (yet we do anyway), we can't afford to take care of our own now or in the future, we can't afford to secure our own borders and we can't afford to even educate our children at the level we once were able to.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
A bit of a reach.
I don't recall the gov saying
BUY BIG HOUSES or the TERRORIST win?!
I dont' remember that. I think what they were saying is DON'T stop living your life the way you always have..
A bit of a reach.
I don't recall the gov saying
BUY BIG HOUSES or the TERRORIST win?!
I dont' remember that. I think what they were saying is DON'T stop living your life the way you always have..
The message was consume, consume and consume a bit more. My point is that maybe, just maybe, we should not have continued to live life like we always had. Perhaps we would be in a different place than we are today.
Unless you're saying we're better off now as a nation and a people than we were then?
Obama is pulling out of Iraq WITHOUT declaring VICTORY!
The sick, twisted joke of the Iraq war was the "Mission Accomplished" moment. It was "Mission Accomplished" for the military-industrial complex because there was absolutely nothing to stand in their way of profiteering over a long, drawn out insurgency, occupation and rebuilding of Iraq for years to come.
Don't we have this thread already? The america trap thread?
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