Posts tagged Politics
Posts tagged Politics
Too many thoughts. I made a video. Posted it for the lulz. Fuck Mitt Romney. But fuck Jeff Dunhman ten times more.
It’s fucking bad in Spain right now. Like, really bad. If I’m not mistaken, the youth unemployment rate is somewhere around 50%. I mean, the overall unemployment rate is like 1/5th of the country (which is already insane) but the fact that HALF of the entire next generation of workers cannot find employment is really unbelievable.
That being said, if you take the time to watch this video, I think it highlights something important about how much we limit ourselves when we compartmentalize our thoughts regarding the way society should carry on economically.
It isn’t about “capitalism” being bad, objectively, like some of the workers marching might be liable to tell you. And, it’s not about “communism” or “socialism” being bad, objectively, like the men shouting from their expensive lofts might suggest (or like half of America might tell you, McCarthy-style).
No, it’s about what works and what doesn’t work. Seriously. It’s that simple. Look at their unemployment rates. Look at how things are not improving; they are either stagnating or gradually getting worse. Look at all of these people who do not own land and, most of whom, will probably never own land. For them, this system does not work. For the longshoremen, for most of the people getting their hands dirty or actually sweating for their day’s labor, the system there does not work. It’s a fact, and they’ll be the first to tell you.
The mayor in this video, Gordillo, the awesome looking guy doing the awesome speaking; his town has an unemployment rate of 5 fucking percent. And, lo and behold, there are no mortgages in his town because most property is publicly owned. His region’s (Andalusia) unemployment rate: 34%. Socialism, Communism, whatever the fuck you want to call it— the public ownership of his town and its various workings— it fucking works on that small scale for those people.
Would it work on a regional scale? I don’t know, I just know it works on the local scale. Would it work on a national scale? I don’t know, I just know it works on a local scale. But knowing this— knowing that public ownership makes such a big difference for workers finding and maintaining work as well as elevating the quality of life for their entire community— why would we at the same time make contradictory decisions on the national scale that only serve to hold this same kind of progress back?
If you’re a self-proclaimed Capitalist or Socialist or Communist, honestly, at this point, as far as I’m concerned, you’re a fucking windbag. We need to ditch the pre-established attitudes about -isms and just fucking do what works. I think it might turn out to look a lot like Socialism, but who really gives a fuck? As far as I can tell, empirically, the best functioning economies have strong Capitalist elements as well as substantial institutions that are publicly owned or funded.
Whatever. Being in America makes everything so black and white. Maybe this is more obvious to people across the Atlantic. Then again, this whole EU thing is trying to turn things black and white just like over here, at the expense of the average person who isn’t a trust-fund baby or working in the financial sector or a big business owner or executive.
Bleh.
Synopsis: Crazy white supremacist shoots up Sikh temple and gets killed by cops.
You can read about how he was pretty much a person of interest for several agencies (and these are just the ones we know about) here.
And now, I shall rant.
All this man had was a handgun. I don’t know how he got it, but he easily could have obtained it legally. And that’s what gets me more than anything. I understand crazy people will do crazy things. I understand he could have obtained this gun and the ammunition illegally for all I know. But what gets me is that, without a doubt, a person like this , or even THIS VERY PERSON, COULD have obtained this weapon legally— even with a “background check”— and quite easily.
I’m NOT saying that mass shootings in our country are MOSTLY owed to our gun control standards. But cases like this (in fact, pretty much almost every single mass shooting in our country), are evidence that ease of access to guns is hardly a means of the populace protecting themselves. We’ve had dozens of mass shootings in this country (seriously, dozens), and yet I’ve never heard of one instance where one was nipped in the bud by a concealed carrier.
“Oh this is a tragedy don’t politicize it meh meh meh.”
Go fuck yourself.
“Oh he would have got a gun if he wanted to and if one of the people (IN A FUCKING TEMPLE?) was carrying this could have been prevented!”
Go fuck yourself.
Empirically, and matter of factly, our country is completely and unbelievably off the fucking charts with respect to gun violence. Gun control might not be the only reason for this. After all, cops are actually some of the biggest offenders. But to even suggest that gun control policy has NOTHING to do with mass shootings in the country where they disproportionately happen the most is complete fucking lunacy.
So, to everyone who thinks gun control would have easily prevented this: no. Additionally, if you think having no guns at all is somehow the solution, that’s just silly. Other countries have laws only a few degrees stricter than ours, and yet still get by with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of our gun violence.
To everyone who thinks mass shootings are not the time for us to talk about gun control either because they are sensitive stupid fucks or because they recognize the slightly vague relationship between gun control and these incidents: when the fuck would you like for us to talk about the laws regulating the ease with which a citizen can obtain guns? When guns aren’t being used to kill people? Fuck off.
And finally, to everyone who thinks this is a reason to ease up on gun control, get a time machine and go back to the fucking 1800’s and shoot your fucking rifles at natives and runaway slaves, you backwards neanderthal fucks.
Gun control and gun violence are two complicated issues with an equally complex relationship. But I don’t think it’s complicated that lax laws regarding the procurement of guns and ammunition— by their very nature— only make incidents like this more likely to occur and do almost nothing (absolutely nothing, in terms of statistical relevance), to curb these events. That’s just reality.
You know, reality. That thing we inhabit and share. And shoot each other in. Especially if you’re in the United States. Yet we expend more energy via the NRA trying to keep guns accessible than we expend on making health care accessible.
It’s easier for me to get a gun, even in one of the strictest states (if not the strictest), than it is for my schizophrenic aunt to receive proper care.
But our “rights” are largely decided by dollar amounts lobbying groups spend to secure them. And people will literally go crazy for it.
They’ll even die for it.
Go ahead and check the link in the description of this video for the full backstory.
Essentially, TED didn’t post this talk. TED doesn’t post a lot of talks; they take their sweet-ass time releasing videos that haven’t yet been released every week.
But this one they specifically didn’t post because, apparently, it was not fantastically received like many other talks, and was, according to them, partisan, something they try to avoid.
It’s a barely 6 minute talk about inequality. There’s nothing fancy here. It’s rather full of common sense. There are little to no facts that this man brings up that you shouldn’t know as someone who lives in the US in this day and age, unless you’re someone who selectively ignores them or misinterprets them.
I read the TED spokesperson’s reasons for not posting this video first, and then watched the video. I encourage you to do the opposite. Or the same. Whatever. I simply fail to see how this talk is partisan. He notes that “higher taxes will kill jobs” is a Republican dogma. This isn’t a partisan statement: it is a factual statement.
There is no good reason to forego taxing the richest amongst us the appropriate amount. There is no good reason that the rich comparatively make exponentially more than they once did, while on the same scale, anybody below super rich is making much less. Our economy suffers for it. And with an increasing poverty rate which is largely ignored as an issue, people suffer for it. They die for it.
What a stupid fucking thing to die for. To starve for. To be out on the street for. To not be able to take care of your kids for. A billionaire foregoing millions of dollars that he will never use, or at the very least, that he doesn’t need, while people starve at an increasing rate.
“Oh, it isn’t his duty to help.”
I don’t give a shit. This way of doing things is unsustainable. If the middle classes continue along the decline they’ve been on for the last 30 years, in another 30, we’ll be below the poverty line too. That’s not a model that works. We don’t even need to make a moral claim here. It’s broken.
Let’s fix it.
“Instead of cultivating illusions about change through elections, it would be more sincere to move quickly towards a post-representational system of Direct Democracy.”
What’s happening in Greece is going to rear it’s oh-so-ugly head in other countries in Europe, as well as the US. In fact, it’s been the direction we’ve been headed for about 30 years now, and we’re getting to the tipping point.
Fascist attitudes in the major political spheres are not just around the corner: they are here. They’ve been here for a long time. And sure, they’ll always be around, but the amount of traction that the Republican party still has and the lack of any substantial movement on the part of the people with regards to their continuous loss of civil privilege in this country while wars are carried out with their tax dollars is an indicator to me that Nazi Germany would have had an easy time with us.
This is my rant, about Kony, for my own well-being, and it does a fantastic job of going over exactly why the way this thing has caught on upsets me.
My father was a Republican for the first 78 years of his life. For the last twenty, he’s been a Democrat (he just celebrated his 98th.) What happened? “They lost me,” he says.
They’re losing even more Americans now, as the four remaining GOP candidates seek to out-do one another in their race for…
He makes a point in here about our generation being more tolerant and forward-thinking than our parents.
That’s a tough one. In general, I think he’s right. Concepts like tolerance were really pushed on us in school when we were young, and I personally grew up in a really diverse environment.
But now that I’ve been to college and have been around people who haven’t come from diverse backgrounds and/or are complete idiots, I wonder how much stock I should have in my generation.
Though some of us are sharper and more capable of critical thinking than our parents, a staggering amount of people in this generation are very dogmatic, rather close-minded, and have a very easy time resting in their comforts.
The next decade in this country is going to be an interesting one.
