binux

We literally have no recourse (outside of the ammo box or absurd amounts of money) against a politician taking office and doing exactly the opposite of what they campaigned on, besides waiting for their term to be over.

Fair enough, this problem is prevalent in a lot of other countries too. But again, a government is nothing without the people. There's nothing (in theory) stopping the sensible majority from making their gripes known and felt at the very least. It might feel like speaking into a vacuum, but political systems do respond to pressure, even if it's negatively. Furthermore, these problems don't come about purely through malicious politicians, constituents are either complicit or they don't take the time to understand the implications. It's harsh, I know, but it's true. This is a universal human problem, and it doesn't necessarily make anyone a bad person.

Due to tons of laws built up over many years, the only way to get a seat at the table is money, and all the community fundraising in the world isn’t going to outspend corporate interests.

Again, constituents have a part in this. We're associating a lack of direct participation in the build-up of these laws with innocence, which isn't necessarily true. Across US history, people with the means to do so had every opportunity to push back against this.

You clearly have a strong opinion that the collective population of the US isn’t doing enough for whatever metric you have...

Not true, at least not entirely. It would be unfair to indict the US population as a whole for not taking enough action, as I said it's human to be hesitant in that regard. The point I'm trying to make is that many people, especially US citizens, seem to victimize Americans and thereby deny that they have any agency. Which, unless we're trying to get philosophical, simply isn't true, or is at least a little disingenuous. I'd be far more accepting of the lack of action if this group were to own Americans' implicit part in their country and its actions.

I just think it’s absolutely rich to try and assign blame to the proletariat for hesitating to throw their bodies on the corpse pile from thousands of miles away, or even from right here but sitting on your ass taking no action yourself.

Again, not I'm not "blaming the proletariat". They have a part in current events. That much is undeniable. To say otherwise would be to separate the mitochondria from its responsibility to the cell, which as anyone who understands a little biology would know that doesn't tend to work out.

If you’re so invested in this, grab a cheap plane ticket and get to work on it yourself instead of trying to guilt others into shedding blood.

Did you actually read my comment? I'm not trying to goad anyone into a revolution.

Basing your take on the will of a country’s people on the multiple times distilled and removed news broadcasts that make it out is just silly.

Well this is just outright strawmanning my point. My argument comes from my understanding of how the government and people work in tandem across all nations, not what I'm observing from the US specifically. The government is an extension of its people and how they've come to react to their environment, it's no different with the US. Governments aren't this separate organism that guides and/or terrorizes the populous. They're (typically) made up of members of the populous itself. They are quite literally dependent on each other.

Look, I get you're frustrated, and I'm sure that you see a lot of unjust hatred and blame directed towards Americans and you're understandably retaliating against that. But this isn't just because of a general lack of understanding for American politics. It's because (essentially for the first time) Americans are taking the heat from foreign countries' citizens that they've been (though not universally) throwing toward other countries with shitty governments in an equally ignorant and misplaced manner. This is world politics, baby. People can be pretty stupid with it. Though it certainly doesn't help that the US is a global hegemony, so there's a proportionally higher amount of pressure placed on the country to not screw anything up. And the past 1.5 years or so have been the biggest American screw-up in a long, long time, if not ever. So there's really no question that there'll be even more of it to come, especially if/when it gets even worse. I do wish you luck though, you seem to be a reasonable American. I hope the people who deserve it get what's coming to them so you and others can pick up from there.

It’s some of the most absurd shit. “I don’t see you actively hunting down child abusers, so you must be a pedophile” ass opinions.

Maybe so, but it's also absurd to think that because the members of the population aren't the ones actively making decisions, they don't assume a proportionate amount of the guilt. Governments are nothing without their constituents, in fact they are shaped by them. It's understandable to be hesitant toward action, that's human. But to do all these mental gymnastics to avoid accepting part of the responsibility for what the US is like right now is disingenuous if not being blind to reality.

Grass lawns started off as a way for pretentious rich people to flaunt how much of their land they could waste on nothing important, so it’s really not worse at all. Just another dumb trend that caught on.

That's ignoring the point. Retributive justice is inherently reactive. It doesn't improve upon any of the circumstances or motivations leading to someone committing a crime, thereby limiting it to a response only after it happens. Criminals don't commit crimes simply because they were "born that way". They do it because their life experiences led them to either a) believing they had to commit the crime to improve their situation, b) believing it's justifiable in their own warped sense of right and wrong, or c) severe mental illness. There's nothing in those causes that can't be accounted for or treated beforehand to prevent the act from occurring at all. All jail time is doing is putting them in a pressure cooker that will inevitably lead to the people sentenced being even further handicapped in their ability to function in society.

Mind you I'm not against separating criminals from society for an appropriate amount of time entirely. It's just that if the primary motivation with their sentence is punishment, you shouldn't expect anything greater than a neutral outcome.

We should bring back throwing rotten fruit and vegetables at people like this. Maybe the pillory too while we're at it.

Cancer is suing the chemotherapy museum, who would have thought.

Jail isn't what's doing that, revoking his license does. The jail time is just an added slap on the wrist to make the people close to Perry feel better (which is absurd considering a guy literally died, retribution doesn't change that.) It doesn't actually solve anything.

This is what the paradox of tolerance is all about. Extending tolerance to those who are intolerant of others only serves to enable the rise and eventual dominance of intolerance, thus undermining the original principle. The only way to combat this is (ironically) to be intolerant of such behaviour on both a cultural and systemic level.

Oh I agree completely. People tend to not realize that we’re still biologically identical to Humans from over 100 000 years ago aside from the odd irrelevant difference. Nothing’s really changed in that regard.

The more pathetic decisions governments push worldwide like this, the more I start to feel like we're still in the middle ages. Of course the difference being now all the power-hungry degenerates know just how much to wring out of the lowly civilians without letting them figure out who to blame.