"From crippling income inequality to limitless government spying, modern American life has never fel - Polidicks

[url]http://www.salon.com/2014/11/23/we_are_starting_to_break_down_why_so_many_americans_are_badly_traumatized_by_life_partner/[/url] [QUOTE]All along the watchtower, America’s alarms are sounding loudly. [I]Voter turnout this last go-round was the worst in 72 year[/I]s, as if we needed another sign that faith in democracy is waning. Is it really any wonder? When your choices range from the corrupt to the demented, how can you not feel that citizenship is a sham? Research by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page clearly shows that our lawmakers create policy based on the desires of monied elites while “mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” Our voices are not heard. When our government does pay attention to us, the focus seems to be more on intimidation and control than addressing our needs. We are surveilled through our phones and laptops. As the New York Times has recently reported, a surge in undercover operations from a bewildering array of agencies has unleashed an army of unsupervised rogues poised to spy upon and victimize ordinary people rather than challenge the real predators who pillage at will. Aggressive and militarized police seem more likely to harm us than to protect us, even to mow us down if necessary. Our policies amplify the harm. The mentally ill are locked away in solitary confinement, and even left there to die. Pregnant women in need of medical treatment are arrested and criminalized. Young people simply trying to get an education are crippled with debt. The elderly are left to wander the country in RVs in search of temporary jobs. If you’ve seen yourself as part of the middle class, you may have noticed cries of agony ripping through your ranks in ways that once seemed to belong to worlds far away. -Over 2.7 million children in America have a parent in lock-up, a situation considered traumatic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They are twice as likely to develop mental illness compared to the rest of the youth population, and more likely to experience a host of problems, including asthma, obesity, and academic issues. -Unemployment is increasingly linked to suicide, the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. Researchers find that losing a job is more likely to cause a person to take her own life today than in the past. Increased job insecurity and stagnant wages have heightened our senstitivy to economic distress over the last few decades. -Up to 15 percent of adults in the U.S. over 60 exhibit PTSD symptoms. Homelessness among the elderly is increasing and is expected to leap 33 percent by 2020. Rates of economic hardship among elderly women, in particular, have leapt in recent years — up to 18 percent live in extreme poverty, and that number is expected to rise. The effects of the misguided policies that contribute to these horrors ripple throughout our families, our communities, and ultimately, our entire society. What then, are we supposed to do with our anguish? [I]Part of our despair comes from participating in a system that is so damaging to so many, so brutal to our natures, both the physical environment and our internal selves. I eat a tomato knowing that the person who picked it may well have been an abused undocumented immigrant. I use products like Google knowing that my personal information is being used for purposes of profit and control. I vote for a candidate knowing that inaction and betrayal are the likely outcomes of putting this person in power. I can’t get away from it.[/I] I think we all have many selves, and I know that I have a self that is so angry and disgusted it simply wants to numb out, to immerse itself in the distractions of shallow consumer culture and look away from things it feels helpless to change. As I reflect on the scale of the trauma, I wonder if there is any point in writing about it at all. But isn’t part of our task as human beings to bear witness, to tell each other what we know? Talking about our feelings of guilt and helplessness reminds us of our connections to each other and our desire to confront injustices. It helps us to resist the temptation to withdraw into isolation and denial. Refusing to be silenced is one way to restore a sense of at least some vestige of agency.[/QUOTE]

Is that really a news source? This seems like more of a blog piece

Isn't Salon known to be a rather shit source?

[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;46595690]Is that really a news source? This seems like more of a blog piece[/QUOTE] I guess it's all relative... [QUOTE]Isn't Salon known to be a rather shit source?[/QUOTE] I couldn't know as it's the first time I've stumbled upon this website.

[QUOTE=godfatherk;46595717]I couldn't know as it's the first time I've stumbled upon this website.[/QUOTE] The few times I have they've been really terribly researched articles bashing atheism for random and shit reasons.

It's only going to get worse.

Obviously it's been worse than the times that the US committed biological warfare against an entire population, or the time when there were internment camps based on race. Yep, this is truly the grimmest point in history. Salon is a shit source.

It's not that bad.

What an excellent article. [QUOTE=Salon][IMG]http://media.salon.com/2014/11/american_flag_toilet_paper-150x150.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] [IMG]http://theboomflash.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/emot-911.gif[/IMG]

Yea-no While there is all that shit, there is still a high level of progressivism with regards to things like homosexuality, and add on to that some pretty amazing advances in technology; life in the US is not too bad. Pretty sensationalist article.

[QUOTE=Tmaxx;46595889]It's not that bad.[/QUOTE] Really? Tell me what great thing is waiting for us tomorrow.

[QUOTE=SaltyWaters;46595750]It's only going to get worse.[/QUOTE] the winter is coming isn't it

[QUOTE=SaltyWaters;46596187]Really? Tell me what great thing is waiting for us tomorrow.[/QUOTE] technological advancements

Why do people think that government spying is new ? It's literally as old as politics itself. Whether or not in the age of information and internet is another debate entirely, but people who claim that American spying is somehow both new and exclusive to the US are just making a fool of themselves by showcasing their ignorance.

Let's check out the home page, shall we? [URL]http://www.salon.com/[/URL] [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/c2axveM.jpg[/IMG]

[QUOTE=SaltyWaters;46596187]Really? Tell me what great thing is waiting for us tomorrow.[/QUOTE] The fact that you don't wake up to gun fire, worry about if you're going to live to [I]see[/I] tomorrow. The fact that we have clean water and healthy food. The fact that we can do anything and everything we want. The fact that we can be who we want without being arrested/murdered. Oh you know, just little things.

[QUOTE=Thlis;46595880]Obviously it's been worse than the times that the US committed biological warfare against an entire population,[/QUOTE] Did I miss something in history class? Are you talking about the effects of disease n Native Americans? You seem to be basing this "biological warfare" on the apocryphal stories about smallpox blankets. There are two that exist. One of them supposedly happened during the French and Indian War and was aimed at at French fort that had Indians in it. The other supposedly occurred in the early 19th Century as people started crossing the Mississippi. Both of these events would have happened before the germ theory of disease was ever formulated, so I'm not exactly sure why blankets would have been given to the Natives as the settlers wouldn't have had any way of knowing that they could spread disease that way.

[QUOTE=mecaguy03;46595973]Yea-no While there is all that shit, there is still a high level of progressivism with regards to things like homosexuality, and add on to that some pretty amazing advances in technology; life in the US is not too bad. Pretty sensationalist article.[/QUOTE] Hahahaha. Gay rights is the ONLY victory progressives can point to from the last 30 years. Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama have run governments that are dominated by conservative ideas. Obama's biggest "success" was a regurgitated Republican idea from the 90s. Progressivism is essentially dead in the United States, and that is why inequality is raging and the rich get to crash the world financial system with no consequences. It's why despite 20 years of clear scientific evidence, we aren't just continuing to burn fossil fuels, we're making huge investments in burning [B][I]MORE[/I][/B]. Gay marriage is nice and it makes people feel like they're accomplishing something, but compared to the overall scale of our problems, it is utterly and completely irrelevant. We're never going to free-market our way to solving poverty, climate and state violence. We need big regulation, big taxation, and big social program spending. Instead, Washington continues to preach the corrosive gospel of tax cuts and deregulation. I really think we haven't see anything yet. The surge toward militarized police and downsizing social programs may be because our leaders are smarter than we give them credit for, and they know what's coming. Climate-augmented storms that inflict a trillion dollars of damage. Cities being permanently flooded. Heat waves that kill hundreds of thousands of people. The forced migration of tens of millions of internally displaced Americans as their cities are drowned by the seas. Crop failures. Dust storms. Famines and food riots that kill millions. The eventual abandonment of large areas of the country that simply cannot support human life anymore. The government won't be able to solve those problems, they're pretty much already baked in to the system. The rich will hole up in their walled and gated communities and live off the accumulated wealth they embezzled from the rest of society. Large parts of the world's population will be provided the bare minimum and left to die. I think our leaders understand that they're gonna need intrusive surveillance and heavy-handed internal security to maintain their power base and their own comfortable lives when the country can't afford to house or feed or treat the rest of us. Without it, the masses that get the short end of the stick will tear down and loot whatever remains of civilized society. The forseeable future is locked on a conservative policy trajectory, and by the time progressives ever get another shot at really making their policies happen, it'll be too late to avoid the bad shit that's coming. Think about it! The Supreme Court is 5-4 conservative and that won't change before Obama is out of office. The Democrats are almost certainly going to lose in 2016. The political finance system virtually guarantees incumbent reelection, so it'll be 8 years minimum of Republican rule. The Notorious RBG will almost certainly die or retire in that time, and maybe Bryer. By 2024, the Supreme Court will be 6-3 or 7-2 conservative. As we've seen with the ACA, virtually any policy that is even slightly liberal gets dragged before the Supreme Court multiple times. So, BEST CASE SCENARIO, Democrats go ultra-obstructionist and maintain the current status quo until 2024, when it'll be too late to do anything meaningful about climate change. If they take back control of the government, the Supreme Court will shut down anything that stinks of progressivism. At best, the Supreme Court wouldn't swing liberal until the mid 2030s. That is definitely way too fucking late, climate change beyond any current worst case scenario will be baked into the system. The strain of dealing with the consequences will far exceed any existing social program's ability to deal with the costs, especially when it's around the same time a huge wave of people start getting old and collecting Medicare. We are just so fucking fucked as a nation. It's there in the data, clear for anyone to see. 30 years of conservative policy rule have sealed our fate and it's too damn late to do anything about it.

[QUOTE=Tmaxx;46596755]The fact that you don't wake up to gun fire, worry about if you're going to live to [I]see[/I] tomorrow. The fact that we have clean water and healthy food. The fact that we can do anything and everything we want. The fact that we can be who we want without being arrested/murdered. Oh you know, just little things.[/QUOTE] 1. Speak for yourself. 2. heh 3. hahaha 4. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA You go on ahead and try exercising all those freedoms you're talking about, tell me how it goes for you.

[QUOTE=SaltyWaters;46597047]1. Speak for yourself. 2. heh 3. hahaha 4. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA You go on ahead and try exercising all those freedoms you're talking about, tell me how it goes for you.[/QUOTE] sure im sitting in my nice quiet home, drinking a glass of clean water, programming games and reading sensationalist headlines on a computer i had the opportunity to build, and doing what i want for a living. i'm living a pretty good life if i do say so myself.

Compared to living in the horrific working conditions of the 1900s, or either World War, or the mass unrest during the civil rights movement and Vietnam war, or the Depression, or the decades-long specter of nuclear armageddon, or even remembering the fear after 9/11, I consider myself pretty fortunate to live when I do.

[QUOTE=Gamerman12;46597071]sure im sitting in my nice quiet home, drinking a glass of clean water, programming games and reading sensationalist headlines on a computer i had the opportunity to build, and doing what i want for a living. i'm living a pretty good life if i do say so myself.[/QUOTE] there are a lot of people in this country that don't have those things. obviously it's better than third world and second world nations but since when is that our standard? how come our fellow first world nations don't have the problems we do?

Yeah, just last week I lost my dad to cholera, and we barely forged the river before even that. Plus, I'm never able to carry back more than a fraction of all that buffalo meat I got from hunting.

[QUOTE=Gamerman12;46597071]sure im sitting in my nice quiet home, drinking a glass of clean water, programming games and reading sensationalist headlines on a computer i had the opportunity to build, and doing what i want for a living. i'm living a pretty good life if i do say so myself.[/QUOTE] Disgusting. America is a real shithole.

[QUOTE=Tmaxx;46596755]The fact that you don't wake up to gun fire, worry about if you're going to live to [I]see[/I] tomorrow. [/QUOTE] Since your American, I really doubt that.

[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;46596970]Hahahaha. Gay rights is the ONLY victory progressives can point to from the last 30 years. Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama have run governments that are dominated by conservative ideas. Obama's biggest "success" was a regurgitated Republican idea from the 90s. Progressivism is essentially dead in the United States, and that is why inequality is raging and the rich get to crash the world financial system with no consequences. It's why despite 20 years of clear scientific evidence, we aren't just continuing to burn fossil fuels, we're making huge investments in burning [B][I]MORE[/I][/B]. Gay marriage is nice and it makes people feel like they're accomplishing something, but compared to the overall scale of our problems, it is utterly and completely irrelevant. We're never going to free-market our way to solving poverty, climate and state violence. We need big regulation, big taxation, and big social program spending. Instead, Washington continues to preach the corrosive gospel of tax cuts and deregulation. I really think we haven't see anything yet. The surge toward militarized police and downsizing social programs may be because our leaders are smarter than we give them credit for, and they know what's coming. Climate-augmented storms that inflict a trillion dollars of damage. Cities being permanently flooded. Heat waves that kill hundreds of thousands of people. The forced migration of tens of millions of internally displaced Americans as their cities are drowned by the seas. Crop failures. Dust storms. Famines and food riots that kill millions. The eventual abandonment of large areas of the country that simply cannot support human life anymore. The government won't be able to solve those problems, they're pretty much already baked in to the system. The rich will hole up in their walled and gated communities and live off the accumulated wealth they embezzled from the rest of society. Large parts of the world's population will be provided the bare minimum and left to die. I think our leaders understand that they're gonna need intrusive surveillance and heavy-handed internal security to maintain their power base and their own comfortable lives when the country can't afford to house or feed or treat the rest of us. Without it, the masses that get the short end of the stick will tear down and loot whatever remains of civilized society. The forseeable future is locked on a conservative policy trajectory, and by the time progressives ever get another shot at really making their policies happen, it'll be too late to avoid the bad shit that's coming. Think about it! The Supreme Court is 5-4 conservative and that won't change before Obama is out of office. The Democrats are almost certainly going to lose in 2016. The political finance system virtually guarantees incumbent reelection, so it'll be 8 years minimum of Republican rule. The Notorious RBG will almost certainly die or retire in that time, and maybe Bryer. By 2024, the Supreme Court will be 6-3 or 7-2 conservative. As we've seen with the ACA, virtually any policy that is even slightly liberal gets dragged before the Supreme Court multiple times. So, BEST CASE SCENARIO, Democrats go ultra-obstructionist and maintain the current status quo until 2024, when it'll be too late to do anything meaningful about climate change. If they take back control of the government, the Supreme Court will shut down anything that stinks of progressivism. At best, the Supreme Court wouldn't swing liberal until the mid 2030s. That is definitely way too fucking late, climate change beyond any current worst case scenario will be baked into the system. The strain of dealing with the consequences will far exceed any existing social program's ability to deal with the costs, especially when it's around the same time a huge wave of people start getting old and collecting Medicare. We are just so fucking fucked as a nation. It's there in the data, clear for anyone to see. 30 years of conservative policy rule have sealed our fate and it's too damn late to do anything about it.[/QUOTE] Hyperbole: The Essay

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;46596213]And at the same time there are huge levels of wealth and social inequality that mean that no matter what the advances are, there's going to be a huge section of the population that can't use the advance.[/QUOTE] B-but we have access to clean water (something which most Western/European nations started to address in the 1850s and 1860s), computers that we can sit around on our asses on all day and play video games, and it's legal for gay people to get married! Why should we worry about things like climate change and environmental destruction (we're 69th in ecosystem sustainability according to the SPI), our broken healthcare system, our very poor infrastructure that's well below most of the developed world's in terms of how well it's being maintained, our failing educational system, the fact that nearly half of all people living in this country now are either classified as "low income"/"living in poverty" according to the 2010 census' statistical findings (nearly 60% of all children incidentally live under these circumstances; nearly half of them, 48% to be exact, according to the University of Virginia, RELATE Institute, the NCPTUP, and the last census are born to unwed, single mothers)... not even touching on all the economic problems most Americans are still faced with today more than 7 years after our latest (certainly not our last) financial crisis especially regarding employment and the decline of our middle class in both size and wealth or all the higher education problems we're faced with as well particularly where student debt is concerned... when we still have a handful of very basic things to be proud of? Let's be a bunch of overly-optimistic, self-absorbed morons with absolutely no aspirations or wonderful visions for how we, as the inheritors of this nation, would like to change it for the better and for future generations to enjoy-- and continue to pretend that everything is fine when it's clearly not, and reminisce over how it's at least not as shitty as it was 50-70 years ago! Screw pessimism; what has a critical examination of society's problems ever done to fix them and make life better? Bad things make us sad and uncomfortable and feel scared and vulnerable. Let's ignore/marginalize them.

[QUOTE=ilikecorn;46597192]We're a developed nation, of course we can look at developing nations and say "oh man, it's totally not bad here" but when you start comparing us to other developed nations all of a sudden the reality is far more clear. [editline]28th November 2014[/editline] What sort of comparison is that? Of course we have clean water, tech, and some form of societal freedom. But name a country that's defined as "developed" that doesn't.. Why don't you look at the fact that our education system is pathetic, our society is rampant with racism, our infrastructure is crumbling around us, our politicians could give two fucks about what the common man wants, our corporations regularly fuck us and no one bats an eye at it. Yes we have clean water, but if that's all it takes to be "developed" then there are several villages in African nations that are "developed". Meanwhile the poor regularly get fucked in the US, Healthcare costs are through the roof, You pay taxes and you're getting nearly fuck all from it, you're paying for substandard education, crumbling infrastructure, and a MIC that couldn't give a fuck. On top of that you get to pay for lovely health insurance because the government could give two fucks if you're healthy.[/QUOTE] Compared to everywhere outside the small upper crust that we call 'developed nations', we have it really, REALLY good. Compared to our own nation a hundred or even fifty years ago, we have it really, REALLY good. So with things being significantly, obviously better than they used to be in decades past, and with our standard of living still being leaps and bounds ahead of what the majority of the human population experiences, the most you can say is that A. things aren't as good as they could theoretically be, and B. things aren't quite the best of any nation. We have our problems, but honestly, after spending my childhood in the Middle East and Africa, this kind of thinking reeks of first-world problems.

[QUOTE=catbarf;46597378]Compared to everywhere outside the small upper crust that we call 'developed nations', we have it really, REALLY good. Compared to our own nation a hundred or even fifty years ago, we have it really, REALLY good. So with things being significantly, obviously better than they used to be in decades past, and with our standard of living still being leaps and bounds ahead of what the majority of the human population experiences, the most you can say is that A. things aren't as good as they could theoretically be, and B. things aren't quite the best of any nation. We have our problems, but honestly, after spending my childhood in the Middle East and Africa, this kind of thinking reeks of first-world problems.[/QUOTE] Actually you guys don't have it that great compared to other first world countries, if you think you do then the super rich and law makers will be very happy to have a nice obedient population.

[QUOTE=Swilly;46597367]Hyperbole: The Essay[/QUOTE] Pretty sure Used Car Salesman has a bomb strapped to him that will go off if his discourse level ever drops below "furious rant."