Not only that, but they’re controlled by lobby groups and a very few people with all the money. The decisions the politicians are allowed to make are the ones that benefit the people who already have all the money and all the power.
Not only are the 99% in the US well and truly fucked, but the rich and powerful worldwide are fucking over every living organism on the planet, all in the pursuit of making even more money. It’s blowing my mind every time I think about it, that a few obscenely rich people getting even more obscenely rich is more important than not making our planet uninhabitable for everyone, but that’s the world we live in.
Okay, back to ranting about Syria and the complete clusterfuck that is the Middle East. and how there is no good option for the rest of the world in dealing with them.
Sadly true. That’s why I said upthread that you guys – though it happens in most other “democracies” as well – didn’t really have a choice. Yes voting for Obama seems like the ‘safer’ choice against the idiot singing “Bomb Iran.” So you and many others – my son included – made that choice.
But as you are saying and seeing, no one in any position of power gives a shit about any of us…and if it starts with Americans, what can you expect can/does happen to 100,00s of thousands of ‘little people’ that stand in the way to the Money Trail? Fuck 'em, that’s what.
But you don’t have a plethora of people to vote for; you have a tall, rich white guy, or a different tall, rich white guy. Well, up until very recently, they were white, and I’m sure they will be again in the next election.
Do you mean that having 19 different flavours of Cheetos to choose from distracts people away from using any of their brain power to think about things that matter?
An interesting point that I read somewhere was that a guy who grew up as an anti-nuclear crusader and is now trying to eliminate nuclear weapons can’t very well just let a nation use WMD on civilians and not do anything. We went through this with the anti-war and arms limitation agreements of the 1920s and 1930s. The whole effort was exposed as useless because no one was willing to stop even fairly weak countries from violating the treaties. So what were the chances that a strong country would feel bound by the treaties a second longer than they were convenient?
That’s how this goes with Syria. An effort to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide will have no credibility if we can’t even punish a little country like Syria for using chemical weapons.
Obama’s an Oreo, and Hillary is…I’m not going there. But we’re still into rich white guys. No, what I meant was there is so much in the USA that needs fixing: infrastructure, basic education quality, healthcare, civil rights, safely managing firearms ownership rights, dissolving middle class, teetering economy, stalemated congress, higher education (un)affordability, plutocracy, stressed ecology, etc. No matter what flavor you deem the most worthy, there are many others that demand equal attention and threaten soak up resources that will keep your own most important cause afloat. We’re divided by design by our leaders, in part, but also by general multiple system failure. And then some A-hole on the other side of the planet is slaughtering his own people and all I can think to do is sigh and say, “Jesus I hope nobody expects US to do anything about it–we’re living our own trainwreck right here.”
Agreed. A few years ago I finally put my foot down and decided the polar bears are going to have to sort themselves out. I can’t help keep enough ice up there (down there?) for them to live comfortably and I have other things to worry about. I don’t mean to be flippant, but really I can’t even spare the energy to worry about any world or US problems, I have my own shit to deal with and so does everyone else.
I really need to be able to count on my government to handle things in a reasonable way so that I can handle my own stuff and that’s definitely not happening. Without some sensible leadership it stops being about the big issues and becomes all about our own tiny experience with the effects of those big issues. So instead of coming up with solutions to the shitty economy we’re all just trying to figure out how to pay rent AND buy groceries, we can’t make any real changes to healthcare because we’re freaking out about what will happen if we get sick without insurance, education is a problem, but worrying about how your own kids will make a life armed only with a sucky public school education is what will keep you up at night.
And so then to hear -Oh, Syrian civilians are being harmed by their government and we have to help them- makes me think well, I may have to toss them on the pile with the polar bears because right now my plate is full.
The worst thing about this whole thing is a decade from now we’ll have a new user called Notfooledbyobama telling us all how he didn’t have authorization to enforce the red line…
You know what kinda bugs me is how often we hear about how we should butt out and they don’t want us anyway and then I hear Syrians on the news crying “where are you America? Why aren’t you helping us America? Why are you abandoning us America? You’re disappointing us America!”
And now he looks weak. Especially today when he tried…laughingly, cringingly tried…to claim that the line he the sand he drew when he opened his yap was not his. It was the world’s. Or the country’s. Or congress’s. Anyone’s but his, the one who opened his yap. He really did look weak and scared. And that is not good for the situation or the country.
And Kerry, if he wants to dial of his blustery grandiloquence even more needs to share this:
“How do you ask a man to be the first man to die in order for someone to save face?”
