Friday, June 24, 2011

What's Wrong With Us? Some ideas.

Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood, politically, but I made a list of what's wrong with America right now.  Enjoy:
  1. Pointless, horrible wars that we won't end.
  2. An assault on our civil liberties, mostly due to the Patriot Act.
  3. A complete lack of initiative and desire to do something about climate change and out-of-control consumption of fossil fuels.
  4. The deterioration of our public school system.
  5. The ever-growing income disparity chasm between the rich and poor.
  6. A broken health care system and no universal health care on the horizon to fix it.
  7. Underregulated crony corporatism.
  8. Insulated, unaccountable politicians.
  9. Incivility and bigotry.
  10. The New York Yankees.
To sum it up: we have a bipartisan assault on peace, liberty, niceness, the poor, and the environment.  Am I missing anything?

5 comments:

Grant said...

I guess it sounds a little partisan, but most of those problems seem to originate as actual platforms of the Republican Party, but then aided and abetted for the most part by the Democratic Party. (FYI, Libertarians aren't much help either at least on 3,4,5,6,7 & 9.)

Jacob S. said...

Yeah, some of this is nakedly partisan or, as you mention, used to be nakedly partisan. As the two parties get closer to each other in actual results and policies the rhetoric, oddly, is heating up. I guess it is the only way to distinguish themselves anymore.

Is this all getting too negative? Probably. I enjoy reading more uplifting things at your blog, so thanks for that.

Grant said...

You're just fine.

Well, I try to stay positive. I shouldn't blow my whole philosophy and reputation by going negative elsewhere, though. But even on my own site I've gotten a few, good body-slams in like on Rep. Ken Ivory in the Utah State Legislature and even Romney (sigh).

Architect said...

1. "War is the health of the state" If you don't like war, you need a smaller government that can't afford to run off to every global hot spot.
2. Civil liberties are under assault by executive orders also.
3. Climate change - why care if the problems are 100 years away (1 degree temp change)? In CA we are still debating whether to go forward with our law passed years ago, because it is so devastating to our economy. Nearly every well established business here is choosing to expand out of state.
4. Public schools spend too much not educating kids. Our curriculum is full of fluff. We spend too much paying for people that do not teach.
5. Income disparity: I don't see this as a problem, when the poor can have nearly everything that the rich have: cell phones, cars, AC, fattening foods, entertainment, Big TVs, Social Security, health care, tutors, travel, housing, ...
6. health care: everyone has access to whatever care they can pay for. We have MANY assistance programs. There are still employers that offer health care for $100/month or less. People that want health care can get it; they just need to make it a priority by adjusting their lifestyle.
7. Crony Capitalism: this is pretty bad. We can only take consolation in the fact that it is not so bad as some other countries. Again, a smaller government would help in this area.
8. Insulated pols: not much we can do here other than let them know that they are vulnerable. They are people with layers of staff.
9. Incivility & bigotry: the problem is not as big as it was. We have the big media and social networks to spread what little there is with a giant megaphone.
10. New York Yankees: they are trending down, but not so bad as the Dodgers.
11. You missed the disaster that is the assault on private property. More taxes, fees and fines, means less for individuals to pursue their dreams and self education

Anonymous said...

http://lrwhitney.wordpress.com/

Wow. There's actually a Mormon Liberal site. My old man would be tickled pinko if he hadn't passed away a couple of years ago. I'll just shamelessly promote my own blog by saying I've hammered out rather a lot of religion and politics there and it turned out to be an online novel that pretty much beats Glenn Beck, Klingon Skousen and the Right Wing of Mormonism into a pulp. It beats up the Christian Right even worse. If ever you needed an argument to explain why Joseph Smith voted Democrat, or why Harry Reid is a Democrat Party leader and a Mormon as well, and just how that might work politically and theologically, you'll find dozens of them at my blog home.

Didn't plan to end up like it did, just came out that way. And it's too late to go back now. Thanks for your time.

Oh, for my money, the biggest problem America has is that too many people on the Right are planning to turn over government to Jesus tomorrow, next week at the latest, and too many people on the Left just want their free government paycheck, tomorrow, next week at the latest...