As an old man I just try and avoid " the crazies " when I am out and about in American society getting my groceries and such!! I tend to just shake my head when I witness things that are wrong, criminal, or sickening!! " Keeping to yourself " tends to keep you safe from disagreements and violence; besides " no one cares about the opinions of old men anyway, nowadays "!!

Every now and then someone opens a discussion that should be talked about instead of just being avoided. I do not agree with all of this writers comments and positions; but I think that her topic needs to be talked about more deeply!!

http://www.commondreams.org/views/20...ts-are-problem

You are aware that this is a world-wide forum?
How would you react if i wrote something about society in my european country, and title it so?
exactly.

from what you write, things are much better here in europe.
that's what i think about our society.
you are very welcome to come and join us!

That's a bit smug! We had riots in England a couple of years ago and the French seem to have them annually. Similarly, I think you could say that the corruption levels in the Mediterranean countries are even worse than in the USA. What you can say is that our crime levels are much lower and our health care is more widely available.

You are correct Ondoho and I have therefor edited the title of the thread!!

Regarding your link, it always stuns me (to say the less) how quick is the US government (no matter their political trend) to judge the governments of other countries and label them as "autocrats", or say they are "concerned" (they LOVE to use this word!) about the freedom and civil rights in a perfectly democratic country, yet the US is one of the few countries in the world with death penalty and higher rates of deaths related with police brutality. And at the same time, they support countries such as Saudi Arabia (which has a medieval policy regarding human rights) and Israel (which war crimes against the Palestinian people are notorious).

Happy in my own private idaho.

City perspective. Not country wide.

I try to ignore it. Many people, especially in urban settings just accept anything the gov't puts into their empty heads. There are people who yet stand for what they believe in to be right and true in spite of what the gov't says. The gov't will of course try and pass laws to impose their will upon the people, but the truth is that you can't force people to change their minds. It didn't work in communist or other oppressive regimes, it won't work here either. All the time I lived under communism, I didn't believe any of their BS, and neither did a lot of people. But, because they had guns to our backs, we couldn't do much about it. I'm sure many proud Americans believe they can do more, but they can't. You can hoard all the guns you want, you can put as many anti-gov't bumper stickers on you car as you want (as I saw someone did last week), but in the end the tail wags the dog and you can't change that, not today.

I do what I can. I'm politically active in a small way, I support causes I favor as much as I can, and I never miss an election.

If everyone would do what they can and also never miss an election, I think the USA would be in much better shape politically. The failure of much of the citizenry to vote (turnout in Presidential elections is deplorable; turnout in off-year elections pathetic), the polity would be in much better shape. As it is, fanatical minorities have disproportionate influence.

Franklin Roosevelt once said,

Turns out it was a prophecy.

Afterthought: I generally try to avoid politics in this forum, so this is likely my last post to this thread.

Firstly they have to go and register. Then they have to find a polling station within reach that doesn't have an endless queue. And, last but not least, there has to be a chance that their vote will count. The US not only has first-past-the-post voting, but gerremandering on a massive scale. You live in Virginia: a quick internet search shows that the University of Virginia even runs a course on the history of gerremandering in the state!

Whereas I mostly see the efforts of a media enterprise ... which receives billions of dollars from political campaigns each year and which therefore regards itself as "king-maker" ... to endlessly sow the seeds of division and discord.

According to their business model, the nation is divided into two brands: red and blue. (Never mind that both are now two brands of the same sack-of-garbage.) According to them, there is no in-between. The nation is not going along as it was designed to do: it is (of course) going straight to hell.

Once again we see the profound influence of money. More than any other industry, media is the recipient of that money and constantly promotes the urgency to spend more, sooner. (You'd never know that the American Presidential election is twelve months away, nor that any other political decisions would be made during that time.) But I don't take its self-appointed characterization stereotype of the USA as gospel, or even fact. It is only a loudly trumpeted (because it owns a big trumpet) message designed to serve its own devisings and business purposes.

And furthermore, I think that it is quite incapable of detecting the forthcoming and disruptive wave of political sentiment, which is being leveraged by Sen. Bernie Sanders. The "media moguls" of course cannot imagine anything significantly different from what they already know. They don't even want to talk about it.

Hi...

No doubt the problems you spoke of are serious and deserving of attention but the writer of the article you linked to does not address the core issue that is the cause of all that you mentioned: Sin.

This is something in which we are all guilty and that affects each and every one of us in some way or another and the solution is only found in Jesus Christ.

http://www.gotquestions.org/definition-sin.html

http://www.allaboutgod.com/what-is-sin.htm

Regards...

I saw one of the videos. Firstly it's good and bad that there's video. In my kids' high school they would not have been allowed to have a cell phone to make that video, but I'm sure a laptop or tablet could also easily have done so. From the reporting I heard and saw, the girl was out of line in class and refused to listen to her teacher and school administrators, so their next step was to ask the local safety officer to deal with it. I'd imagine that he told her she needed to leave the room and she still refused, so he went to remove her. You can argue all you want, but she didn't want to go and he was of the mind that it was his job to remove her. A tussle like that never works out well. My understanding is that she's not 5 or 8, she's 15 or 16, close to an adult. He didn't mace her, billy club her, or handcuff her on the video, they wrestled and the desk overturned, which is clearly a risk given what they both were doing. That's all I think about what I saw. If she was wrong all the time, she should be disciplined by the school for her wrongdoings. If the cop was wrong and used incorrect force, he should be disciplined. That's all we have.

I'm glad that there's a video for evidence. I'm sad that the whole country is making this national news.

I haven't followed up on the story. Was that girl injured? Was she arrested? Were the events leading up to that reported correctly?

Someone should not openly defy authority and persist. If she was making a stand against an injustice, then the presumption is that she's doing a non-violent protest, and doing so with forethought, and thus some level of intelligent thinking. Therefore an intelligent thing to also do is to understand the limitations of how far one should go for something like that and realize that it's not worth going too far. I haven't heard one comment that her actions were a protest for some horrific injustice in the world. If she was being belligerent on purpose, I don't know what the ultimate solution there is, but if I were her parent I would be displeased that she started it.

Meh, take the sermon to the Faith and Religion Mega-Thread. It simply doesn't belong here.

Fact is, people have never been "condemned by God," nor "doomed by Satan," to make any of the mistakes they have made in structuring and/or running their societies. It's their fault, alone, if any mistakes were made along the way. And, it's their responsibility to fix it.

The citizens of a country can shape that country into whatever country they want it to be ... all without firing a shot. (But, "be careful what you wish for!")

If we drag-out the tired old religious lines of "the wages of 'sin' are what we got," then we just conveniently let ourselves completely off-the-hook and said (a) that we're living this way because we had the misfortune of being born ("in original sin"), and (b) that there is nothing that anyone can do about it except to embrace a particular religion or philosophy and, what, "pray for a deity to save our souls butts?"

I prefer: "Of those to whom much is given, much is required."

If you want an allegory from the Bible, how about The Parable of the Ten Talents: "I want a full accounting of what you did with the country I gave you ..."

But actually, 'God' didn't 'give us' The United States, nor any other country. Countries are the product of human rebellion followed by success at war (and/or genocide ). Once established, they're the property of their citizens "to have and to hold" if they can. Those citizens had better take that responsibility very seriously, discuss matters of mutual concern, regardless of which one of 'the melting pot of religions' if any they ascribe to, and compel their government to work on their behalf. (" ... now, make me do it.")

If 318.86 million people continue to let 700-odd people run roughshod over their lives without taking them to task for it, when the structure of their Government expressly enables them to do so, then to a very real extent, "it's their own damned fault." Having been given the keys to implementing peaceful regime-change, it becomes their responsibility to do it. Wisely...

Remember: the entire "Federal Government of the United States" sits in one room every year to hear the President give his State of the Union Address. The collection of human beings who's sitting down there ... that's it. (And before the night is through, every single one of them will have gone to the bathroom at least once, except the ones who are totally full of ... well ... )

They're human, folks. They're human folks.

Ardvark, I can not think about sin or think about religion without being reminded of all of the hypocrites I have encountered during my life. The human beings that actually practice what they preach are very few indeed!! One of the greatest of my many teachers was a reformed criminal that became a minister and a mentor to the teenagers of my time. All human beings have assets as well as liabilities; there are very few of us true enough to actually look at our true inner selves without excluding our delusional misconceptions!!

Nothing wrong with being old, or young.

This does sort of cause a parallel reminder to me about behaviors in general, and my first example is driving. I was the teacher of my 3. To a person, they eventually commented that nearly all of the people who committed bad road manners and bad driving examples were older people, meaning my age, parents' age. Somebody cuts them off, tailgates, or is flying down the road so that when the student driver enters a road normally, suddenly it appears to be a dangerous situation because cars are flying at each other very rapidly. Nearly all that is caused by 35-55 year old adults, all doing stuff like yapping on their cell phones, or even texting, and basically doing exactly what we're supposed to advise our kids to not do.

So a lot of these situations really are "teach unto others as you would have them behave towards you and the remainder of the world"

Going back to the being old part? Well elder than me, but I'm close, it used to be that if/when the kid did something bad, the family and parents were horrifically embarrassed, because it was a reflection on the parents, the family, and people did take notice and care.