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Originally Posted by Lone Star Rebel
This is all above my head and thus the reason I stay out of politics. Don't get me wrong, I go and vote like a good citizen but most of the time, I am completely in the dark as to who is who & what is what.
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That's a deliberate, concerted effort on the part of special interest groups trying to keep you off focus and sway your opinion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill To find the truth amidst the din of all this noise pollution is like finding a needle in a haystack. Part of this is because we're taught to think in terms of zero sum games- winners and losers-black and white- us and THEM. People tend to be insecure, and only want to hear someone validate their own views to belong, instead of considering alternate views and making choices that best suit the problem at hand. They don't want to deal with the root causes of problems when it means they have to change their own behavior. People don't want to hear that our military is modelled after communism. They've been brainwashed for almost 80 yrs to hate 'commie pinkos'. The latest hate rhetoric is geared toward liberals, bearing the brunt as the cause of the worlds ills, second only to wicked witch of the cities socialists. Funny how England is socialist, but because they're in the coilition of the willing (willing to beat up Iraq, that is), republicans will be fast friends.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lone Star Rebel
For the most part, the politicians are all liars, thieves and only interested in what they can get out of it and the Hell with the people. "We the People" today means no more to Uncle Sam than a number in the voting booth. They promise the moon and take away our world a little piece at a time everyday.
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Uncle Sam, wasn't he the first deadbeat dad on record? LOL
This won't win me popularity contests, but I wish you'd all just walk a mile in the shoes of a politician before you judge.
Jimmy Carter was an honest man, characterized as being a wimp, economically incompetant, and oblivious to the needs of business. History associates his name with malaise. Americans don't want an honest politician, they might have to hear some bad news. What the media says they want is an authority figure to lie to them and assuage their worries with a never never land future where nobody has to work for a living anymore.
They want their icon John Wayne, mimicked by Reagan or AHnold, the terminator. They don't want to remember how Reagan squandered billions on a science fiction military, abused the nations credit card for flashy displays of prosperity, hamstrung the unions & rendered OSHA law enforcement toothless resulting in carte blanche for the top 5% at the expense of decimating the middle class.
How many americans know that he tried to steal kids lunch money by telling USDA to biologically reclassify KETCHUP as a veggie, so a hamburger could officially be a federally balanced nutritious meal? Will they include it in your kids textbook on american history? Oh, and BTW, how'd that trickle down economics theory work out for you? Have any scraps hit the floor in WV yet?
Who saw between the lines the insult to american workers who were at that very moment being told they may have 'charity' for their labors at the sole discretion of the wealthy patrons who rule this country?
Now, let me smack my own self, because in my language I judged Reagan not by what he did right, but solely by what he did wrong. I'm right, and I'm wrong all at the same time because I put blinders on to ignore what doesn't support the view I am selling. See how misusing education taints reality?
The truth is, it's not the repubs, or dems, or liberals, or conservatives, or even corporations- its the system, our language, our selective attention thats defective.
The truth is that power in DC is in service to itself, all these groups in service to IT, and the noble principles meant to unify us have been used for toilet paper in the process.
The truth is that when a sincere candidate is elected to congress, and takes his lunch pail to DC, the other kids won't play with him if he doesn't play by the system. They shun him, they trip him up, they set him up, or otherwise obstruct his path. When he comes home with his nose bloodied, his constituents put salt on it with complaints. What a crummy saviour you are! (Ah, the lament of husbands with nagging wives and ungrateful children!)
How often does your politician get asked, how can I help YOU to help us?
He might have been a good guy, he might have been in it for all the right reasons, but the same school yard bullies of our childhood are showing up with armani suits and legalese to exploit people on a larger scale. That guy is caught between doing right by the people who need him and making a deal with the devil (so to speak) to make it happen. How many of you have been morally challenged like that at your job in your own efforts to provide for your family? What did you do about it?
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Originally Posted by Lone Star Rebel
The changes I have seen this country make in the last 25 years or so is beyond comprehension. We are slowly losing all of our freedoms and most people are too busy looking out for their own interests to stand up and make a change. Uncle Sam has become no more than big business and we are simply the customers in a world of high finance with absolutely no regard for customer satisfaction anymore & our own government giving away billions of dollars annually to foreign nations while "We the People" are told... sorry, you don't qualify or we can't do anything for you.
Yeah, I guess I am rambling and will probably never make a real difference in this world which is why I stay out of politics and let the pros handle it. Maybe one day "We the People" will get tired of being kicked around and make a stand that Uncle Sam can't ignore any longer but... I really don't see that happening in my lifetime.
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rebs I wish you could meet my 86yr old surviving granny. She's terrified of computers. She looks at it and sees a vortex, an abyss of fonted souls. Her thoughts of those mysterious 'viruses and worms' that might land her in the hospital, or she might even get that HIV she saw in the newspapers! ROFL (Love her to pieces, I gotta shake my head, but I also heed her concerns about the mindgames online. She's wrong and she's right all at the same time, see?)
Some of this is about us getting older, our brains saturated with too much information, and not seeing the point of learning something new when our old way works fine for us. Some of this is our own sense that the world is so big, these forces so huge and invisible, like one ant facing an 80 ft wave- what can it do? Well, what could a 42 yr old black woman named Rosa Parks do? She could say no. And that's just what she did.
What gives an ant a distinct advantage over ME is that it isn't susceptible to self pity the way I am, maybe because their lives are too short to bother? Maybe the work is more important than who gets credit for it? I don't know. I can't help but notice, when the animal kingdom is untouched by domestication of men, depression doesn't seem to exist. That might be an indication of our system, our way of going about things, is unhealthy.
As for the pro's, lets not forget that at one time the "pro's" believed that mental illness could be cured by cutting a hole in your skull to let the evil spirits out, believed 500 diseases could be cured with snake oil, and our planet was flat. Our country wouldn't have been known if not for a few brave souls willing to sail the seas to get here. They'd been taught that if they sailed into the horizon, they'd fall off the face of the earth into the oblivion of space. Galileo was threatened with death from religious figures to recant his truth. Where would we all be if he resigned himself to them? Realize that pro's became pro's when they opened their minds to ideas, and tested them out. They made themselves ignorant when they feared new ideas so much as to refuse to consider them.
Rebs, I don't know what your maker had in mind for you to fix or add to, but from another thread, I'd say you've been an example of how sweet life can be when men and women treat each other right. You may never know that one day a man saw you and your wife together, and realized a better way to relate to his own wife. Rubblewomen of germany didn't wait for a paycheck, equal rights or credit. Johnny Appleseed did his thing humbly, didn't get to taste the fruit of all his labor, but it helped feed our young nation far beyond his own progeny. He was as invaluable as Thomas Jefferson, only he didn't get the accolades.
I don't consider any word you've said a rant. You vocalize the heartbreak most americans feel right now with more brevity than I can manage. Like the rest of us, you don't how to fix it. We'll find a way, if we can stick together and keep on working at it, sharing our puzzle pieces. I don't believe anarchy or getting rid of democracy is the answer, but change must happen. Big business should not be allowed to override the government we elect, unless of course you voted to have our new national greeting sign "welcome to america, a subsidiary of walmart".
Joe Q public needs something loud, how about we try this on for size? I wish the citizens of Morgantown would march down to that pot hole ridden road and post hand made signs.
"This road is sponsored by the 65% of you who didn't care to vote".
and 3 miles later...
"Do you care yet?"
Let them mull it over on their daily commute for a year or 8.
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