I mean, yea, I have thought some kind of reckoning has been coming for a long time. Factors for me include widening wealth gap (which even conservative economists have identified as a problem), obvious and legalized government corruption (though even the legal corruption isn't enough for them and the SJC may be the final straw), disconne…
I mean, yea, I have thought some kind of reckoning has been coming for a long time. Factors for me include widening wealth gap (which even conservative economists have identified as a problem), obvious and legalized government corruption (though even the legal corruption isn't enough for them and the SJC may be the final straw), disconnected and unaccountable political class, broken party system, defiance of the Federal government because it is incapable of meeting the needs of the current times (marijuana policy), defiance of the federal government based on backwards ideology (Alabama election maps), a stock market which most people agree is rigged and full of shit, wildly fluctuating prices on essential commodities like fuel solely to allow speculators to profit, political parties actively working to reinforce division of the population, no clear national identity/values/direction, endless wars without any clear goals fought solely to drive defense spending, ballooning deficit, completely dysfunctional congress who spends 0 time on issues citizens care about, inability to reach any kind of reasonable compromise on anything, power consolidation at the federal level even as the federal government becomes more dysfunctional, worthless executive branch, political domination by corporations, politically motivated education, ineffective education, increasingly broken and dysfunctional healthcare system, major crises (opioids, homelessness, environment, mass shootings, energy security) which the government is too busy handing out corporate welfare to even make a meaningful attempt at solving, increasing global competition which we are not equipped to counter and are actively crippling our ability to counter, real documented instances of major misconduct by police departments (Baltimore, Chicago), mass surveillance, nonexistent privacy regulation, over-classification destroying government transparency and accountability, broken partisan media which functions more as propaganda than news....I mean how long would you like me to go on?
That people don't see us in a doom spiral absolutely mystifies me, but people do seem to have a lot of trouble piecing together the big picture.
It's all fixable but, with politicians actively promoting division and the idea that compromise is not just impossible but a negative outcome, I don't see it happening without a major nationwide crisis.
A lot of the comments are reflective of exactly the problem - people see this article and take it as ammunition to say "see what the other political party is doing to us??!" There is absolutely no willingness to examine one's own role in the increasingly troubled position we find ourselves in. Asking "what am *I* doing to make this worse is what we need to do, blaming only the other absolutely guarantees failure. Remember - the political class will walk away from a major crisis no problem, the rest of us are the ones who will suffer.
Indeed, the game is rigged by the oligarchs, and the wealth gap is now back at Gilded Age levels. Nothing even remotely sustainable about this at all! And the song "When In Rome" by Phil Ochs comes to mind.
I mean, yea, I have thought some kind of reckoning has been coming for a long time. Factors for me include widening wealth gap (which even conservative economists have identified as a problem), obvious and legalized government corruption (though even the legal corruption isn't enough for them and the SJC may be the final straw), disconnected and unaccountable political class, broken party system, defiance of the Federal government because it is incapable of meeting the needs of the current times (marijuana policy), defiance of the federal government based on backwards ideology (Alabama election maps), a stock market which most people agree is rigged and full of shit, wildly fluctuating prices on essential commodities like fuel solely to allow speculators to profit, political parties actively working to reinforce division of the population, no clear national identity/values/direction, endless wars without any clear goals fought solely to drive defense spending, ballooning deficit, completely dysfunctional congress who spends 0 time on issues citizens care about, inability to reach any kind of reasonable compromise on anything, power consolidation at the federal level even as the federal government becomes more dysfunctional, worthless executive branch, political domination by corporations, politically motivated education, ineffective education, increasingly broken and dysfunctional healthcare system, major crises (opioids, homelessness, environment, mass shootings, energy security) which the government is too busy handing out corporate welfare to even make a meaningful attempt at solving, increasing global competition which we are not equipped to counter and are actively crippling our ability to counter, real documented instances of major misconduct by police departments (Baltimore, Chicago), mass surveillance, nonexistent privacy regulation, over-classification destroying government transparency and accountability, broken partisan media which functions more as propaganda than news....I mean how long would you like me to go on?
That people don't see us in a doom spiral absolutely mystifies me, but people do seem to have a lot of trouble piecing together the big picture.
It's all fixable but, with politicians actively promoting division and the idea that compromise is not just impossible but a negative outcome, I don't see it happening without a major nationwide crisis.
A lot of the comments are reflective of exactly the problem - people see this article and take it as ammunition to say "see what the other political party is doing to us??!" There is absolutely no willingness to examine one's own role in the increasingly troubled position we find ourselves in. Asking "what am *I* doing to make this worse is what we need to do, blaming only the other absolutely guarantees failure. Remember - the political class will walk away from a major crisis no problem, the rest of us are the ones who will suffer.
Indeed, the game is rigged by the oligarchs, and the wealth gap is now back at Gilded Age levels. Nothing even remotely sustainable about this at all! And the song "When In Rome" by Phil Ochs comes to mind.