What hope is there for America? Not to mention, the entire world?
As I already stated, I am indeed done with supporting politicians.
I don't care who gets into office, because frankly I don't believe any of them are gonna fix anything. They are all a bunch of corrupt jackasses who are produced by a system that is corrupt.
When you have a society that for the most part is selfish, greedy, arrogant, and who for the most part are only looking out for themselves, that's the kind of leaders your going to produce. Garbage in, garbage out! After all, these politicians don't come from an alternate demention, nor fall out of the sky. They come from the people. So maybe it's not the politicians so much who are at fault, but maybe the fault lies with the people?
And it's not just limited to America. All around the world, there are corrupt, greedy people in positions of power, who quite frankly shouldn't be. And it has been the same thing throughout history - From Ancient Rome, going all the way back to Ancient Egypt.
Nor is it just limited to Government. Even in religion we have corrupt, and greedy hypocrites who say one thing and do the complete opposite. For example, look at the pedophilia scandal that rocked the Catholic Church several years ago. And in order to keep the incident from becoming public knowledge, Pope Benedict moved the pedophile priest around from perish to perish, thus giving them access to more victims. Pope Benedict was more interested in protecting the Churches reputation, as opposed to protecting it's most innocent members - the children.
And now, Pope Francis has instituted a law within the church stating that if a priest learns of a fellow priest being guilty of sexually abusing children, and reporting it to the authorities, they risk being imprisoned in Vatican city! Sounds to me just another way to cover it up. And these cases of abuse are far from recent. There are some that go back as far as the 1930s, and even further than that!
Of course it's not just the Catholic Church who's had it's Church leaders abuse and prey on children. It has happened also in Protestant faiths as well. And in some branches of Islam, that kind of behavior is condoned - Men are allowed to molest both women and children.
So what hope does our country have?
What hope does the world have?
If you have corruption running rampant in every segment of society, what hope do we have that things will improve?
This is something that has been on my mind for months. I kept thinking of ways things could improve, but it always came back to the same thing - corrupt people.
So what do you do about one corrupt person, when there are a million more just like him?
Comments
There's always hope. Just live to the best you can...or riot.
There's always hope. There is only no hope for something if everyone gives up on it. And as much as there are greedy people, there are also good people that actually want to do good.
I have more hope for North Korea at this point.
Well. we must consider that we have come a long way as it is. The world is not perfect - it probably never will be. But it can, and shall by times grace, become better.
If the state and organized religion are irredeemably corrupt, perhaps it's time to cast them aside, at least in your own life.
I recommend reading into Christian Anarchism. You'd find much to like in the works of Tolstoy and friends.
There is nope, there is no hope and never was. One day or another the world is going to end in conflagration, and I'm either going burn or make marshmellows.
Since you quoted George Carlin, I will defer to him on this as well:
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I think we should get ready for the fallout..prepare your pip-boys and your power armors and follow me to the vault.
Btw, sem-pessimistic-turned-optimistic complaints about America are far from novel, also, this is a great series from the 90s and a bunch of the munchins won't know it...
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The have's and the have nots welcome to ameerica. Greed above all and love thyself an not others
Too far an in between.
It's probably never gonna change as greed is human nature, Marina wrote a song about it.
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Seeing as how I and several other people can't take any of this year's presidential candidates seriously in the slightest, much less support them, I'd say it won't be too long before we're laughed at if we're not already. I see so many people with their Trump, Hillary or Bernie shirts on screaming about how this country is the greatest in the world and I just sigh
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Human nature isn't static. It can change based on inherited values and material conditions.
Hope will always prevail if there is a possibility of a better day, the world we live in today is much better than the world before us in many different ways and we can keep improving. Some people give up on politics but I disagree with doing that, if anything it should make people most inspired to join politics, if you hate the current system and people in it then get in it yourself and make the change you want to see.
There's always hope!
To be fair , there are countries that are WAY more fucked up then we are.
I agree with lots of what you say, but to say that in Islam 'Men are allowed to molest both women and children' is frankly rather ignorant, unfair and untrue.
There's plenty of rape in the Christian Bible friend.
First, as you said, corrupted politicians don't exist only in America; it's a worldwide movement. Corruption is mainly a problem in democracies, for in dictatorship corruption isn't that much a problem.
Basically, the question is: "why are there only corrupted people as politicians?"
I can see three answers:
-Mainly men who care for their own interests want power.
-The way to be in power requires to be corrupted if you want to go high.
-The system, led by those men, tries to recruit men of their kind, creating an inbred oligarchy.
I think that the answer is in these three points. Still, sometimes, you can see someone who don't only care for his own good.
I will take an example from my country's history who perfectly fit your question: Robespierre, called the "'incorruptible".
Don't know what people taught you about him, but he's certainly not what one teach you.
"Liberté, égalité, fraternité" came from him. He established a law for poors, the law of the maximum. He gave more rights to jews, wanted the universal suffrage.. He also was against slavery. He helped the french army to have new generals and thus have a real army to fight against others european countries, and so on..
Yet, no street bears his name, no grave bears his body and if people remembers him, it's only to say he's a bloody monster.
Why? Because such characters as Cambon, who cared only for their own properties and interests, acted against him. In one month, they killed half of the total number of deaths with the terror in the name of Robespierre, just in order to make him fall.
The man who was impossible to corrupt then became a Staline/Adolf Hitler in humanity's consciousness. Being corrupted is a natural and good thing, if you would listen to some of them.
I will go full paranoid on this, but one just want you to think that there's no hope, that it's human nature to be corrupted. You won't act if you think it's in human nature to be as them.
The problem is that politicians who care for their own interests are in majority, when people who care for the interest of the people as whole are just a few, and with little means to be heard or to act.
And as long these people are in the power, you can't change things. The question such about climate or paying debts won't matter to them, because most of them will care about their elections and if they can be elected again, not about what must be done.
The thing is: this pretty game won't last. Extremism is rising in every part of the world, and one of the reason of this rising is that people are tired of politics who bear none of their promises. What's the point of democracy if you're not heard?
Either true solutions will be taken, but it would mean such things as a revolution seeing how governments are inefficients to act, either it will end in another dictatorship due to these extremisms who will eventually end up being elected..
Agree and disagree. What you wrote is kind of ignorant too. Rape in the Bible is in context of the time, it doesn't mean that Christians support it, Jesus didn't rape anyone...God didn't tell people to rape, for example. They were just part of the stories/recounts of moments. Just like a history book telling of the Japanese mass raping Chinese cities (literally) during World War 2. It doesn't represent anything, just an account of what happened in the time.
Islamic men raping is purely context, you'll find it's very true in countries with strong Islamic backgrounds, women have hardly any power at all. In Western countries it is not as strong, simply because we wouldn't allow it, and generations of Islamic people have grown up in this system...just as we have. Honest, good, citizens.
Robespierre....that father of revolution and modern liberalism....is reviled in France?
What the fuck is wrong with people? I mean, some awful shit happened during the terror, but it pales in comparison to the reactionary counter-revolution. Well, take comfort in knowing that 99% percent of Americans have no idea who he is.
By the way, how do you Frenchies feel about P. J. Proudhon? If the father of liberalism is hated, I have a hard time imagining the father of anarchism is that popular either.
The difference being the history book isn't proclaimed the word of an omnipotent god.
Not sure if God was just out to lunch or. . .
America is still in a better state than anyone else honestly.
Plenty of Christians take the bible's teachings literally though, just as plenty of Muslims take the Qur'an's teachings ltierally.
And 'it's in the context of its time' applies to literally anything in the bible.
lol no. America's bad status is probably overblown by the media a little, but it's far from the best state a country could be in. I don't think I've ever met anyone who would voluntarily move to the US.
He's completely reviled. If you talk about him, people for the most part will look weird at you or won't believe you if you say he wasn't a bad man. Most of them don't even know what he actually did. Most of the time he's told to be a dictator, while he never had the power in his own hands only..
I can't blame them though; this is the fault of the french national education which taught us that. The "thermidoriens" did a huge propaganda against him, which didn't helped: mentionned by his sister, you can learn that Robespierre in his childhood killed pigeon with a little guillotine.. It's funny, seeing that Guillotin didn't created it yet.
And it didn't stop until there, even if there were some schools who made an opposition to the statement that he was a bloody madman. Today you can hear people mentionning what he has truly done, but they are basically a tiny minority.
However, such men as Danton or Mirabeau, Desmoulins, Lafayette or Napoleon are highly praised..
Today only one politician talks about Robespierre in a good light (the politician is between the extrem left and left). People don't take him seriously on this matter.
I think you won't like the answer about Proudhon either.. Choose randomly a french, asks him who Proudhon is, and he won't be able to answer you.
I don't know that much about him either; studying right I heard about of one of his far cousin, Victor.
The only thing about P.J I remember is that he was quoted by Henri Guillemin about Robespierre. If you could teach me what he had done or give me some links (I understand english better than I write it) it would be nice.
Perhaps you're right, but to be honest America is still in a better state than a lot of other countries at the moment
I've never said it was in the best possible situation for a state to be in, but it is pretty much on the top of the world.
Nobody? where do you even live then lol
Highest proportion of prisoners behind China.
Shittier healthcare than most of Europe.
Education system more interested in taking students money than developing their talents.
Police state
Eroding civil rights.
Workers rights long gone.
Dysfunctional government and bureaucracy, backed up by crumbling infrastructure
Shrinking middle class and struggling entrepreneurs, while the plutocrats get even more obscenely rich, mostly through rent-seeking and shifting money around in the markets.
I'm with @EpicMustacheGuy on this one. America is well off compared to many countries, but it's not the shining beacon of prosperity and liberty that a lot of foreigners think it is. Don't believe the hype.
Man, that's depressing. I've always seen France as one of the last true bastions of workers' rights and such. Shame the reactionaries have so much sway there.
In some ways, we have a similar situation in the U.S, education system. For instance, most students here get a heavy dose of Cold War style propaganda about how Socialism is poop and Capitalism is magical. As a result we have a lot of morons who insist the President is a Marxist and brand any kind of state intervention as "Socialism".
Sure. Proudhon was basically a proto-Anarchist, who came up with a school of economic thought called Mutualism. Mutualism is a compromise of sorts between communism and individualism. Proudhon advocated a society without rent or usury, with a central bank (more like a credit union, actually) that held money and gave loans, while not trying to make a profit and only charging enough interest to cover its costs.
Proudhon also believed that everyone should own a "means of production", either individually or as part of a co-op. He believed that the capitalist system (in which a small number of wealthy elites own the means of production) to be immoral and a form of "theft" from the people. That distaste for capitalist property norms is the foundation of all Anarchism and most forms of Socialism, even though Mutualism itself was never that popular.
Unfortunately, he also really didn't like Jews. Unsurprisingly, modern anarchists have sworn off that part of his ideology.
Hopefully that gave you a decent idea. There's also a Wikipedia page that explains Mutualism. I haven't gotten around to reading "What is property?" Yet, but that's his most important book.
that makes me living in a shit
Trump and Clinton are stranded on an island, who survives?
Maybe, but these people are known as nutcases, and I personally don't believe they have a right to be called Christian, because raping, ISN'T Christian. You say the Bible's teachings, and yet their is nothing in the Bible's teachings about rape. We aren't told to rape. The Bibles kind of a history book, but Jesus' teachings are layered through it. It was never meant to be taken word for word. It's written by numerous people in numerous places in numerous points of time, a recount of events.
Yes, that's because it's a 2000 year old book. Not sure what your point is.
Ideally, neither.
Obviously in a country that's in a better state than the US
If I won a free holiday to the US I'd turn it down. To the rest of the world america is a cesspit
The United States of America,
I saw this on the Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash.
America survives
FTFY
Not sure what you're trying to say.