Discussion for article #224174
And that is just what the NRA is saying and trying to bring about.
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Sheâs 100% right too. Pitchforks and torches for all!
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Income inequality as defined by the NRA: Give gun manufacturers more money and give everyone else less.
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Rising education costsâŚa lot of people talk about it but very few, if any, actually enumerate the causes. It ainât the wealth gap though.
Those who benefit most from civilization wish to destroy it.
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And it certainly is not faculty salaries, except in the case of a select few that academia has made into âstarsâ while adjuncts work for peanuts.
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Hmm. Didnât Lloyd Blankfein just warn about the same thing?
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The social inequality Justice Sotomayor refers to could lead to unrest. Fortunately for the GOPand the 0.01%, that contingency has been planned for.
Recent polling has revealed that Millennials are âboredâ and âturned offâ by politics and even less inclined to vote in this yearâs off-year election than the one in 2010, which, effectively, ended Barack Obamaâs activist phase as President. I am not going to âblameâ anything*** or anyone for this torporâbecause it would lead to pedantic arguments missing the entire point of the danger we are in. Because, in my opinion, âsocial unrestâ would be a good thing compared to what will more likely happen. And what will happen will be a dystopian world of separated classes and racial groups, a more ignorant population connected more by texting than actual direct human contact, more subsistence-level employment, a burgeoning (and profitable) prison population, a more brutal gun-laced social interaction, more sports-like metaphors applied to life (âwinning trumps everythingâ), a population more ignorant of courtesy, literature, history and geography, a Fourth Estate devolved into propaganda-like ânewsâ as entertainment and propaganda, a dangerout, pollution-riddled energy sector, and, finally, an underwater planet (negating the need to even pay attention to Sotomayor in the first place).
âSocial unrestâ is not something driven by angst-ridden Boomers and aging Civil Rights advocates posting on Progressive websites (this describes me to a âtâ).
Social unrest is the Province of the Young and the Vigorous. In the Arab Spring demonstrations in Cairo, I was not looking at mobility scooters and bald heads. I was looking at people my 33 year-old sonâs age.
The U.S. is the only country I know where social advocacy is reversed; where the âenthusiasmâ is the Province of the gun-nuts, the TeaNutts, the abortion-fanatics, the neo-Confederates and the like, all skewed to geriatric cohorts.
While the Millennials sleep, bored from their latest videogame.
DO NOT give me OCCUPY. That was an inspired effort engaged in by only a segment of Millennials.
I mourn for its muted flame.
*** Barack Obama probably mourns his missing the brief window accorded him in 2009. He certainly had a better vantage point than I did, but I believe he was overwhelmed by the Evil lined up against him. I know that was the point at which my view of where the Fourth Estate Center of Gravity lies in the United States shifted.
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Education costs go up and university administrators keep most of the increases for them selves, while the faculty gets another year of no COLA. Governors and state legislators could easily figure out what is going on if they chose to look.
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Roberts you listening? The Fourth Estate consisting of operatives, lawyers, media and the military industrial complex will wreck the country in order to preserve the wealth of the 1%.
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For your kind it is a knowledge gap.
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The complicity of the Fourth Estate in our dystopian political landscape is not only overwhelming but also nearly impossible to overturn.
Television MSM networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN) have an awful lot of hard-earned credibility. Credibility built up over a great many years in which the ânewsâ was less riddled by profit, info-tainment motives. The credibility built by people like Walter Cronkite.
The fact that no person like Cronkite occupies any position in any MSM outlet has not reached the general consciousness of the American people. There is still a certain amount of trust (earned by earlier, more diligent people). Thus Chuck Todd (a brazen, feckless hack) receives a level of respect more than what he deserves for what he does (stenography).
So we have now âtrustedâ people who call themselves ânewspeopleâ and who are now the purveyors of trash, all brought to us by an all-encompassing communications system, creating a ârealityâ highly conducive to the havoc the GOP is wreaking as we speak.
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â[T]hereâs a lot more of kids ⌠across the spectrum who no longer have the hope to attend the schools we did.â
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
Are there no sweatshops, or maquiladoras, or iPhone factories in which they can be chained for 24-hour shifts?
Surely medical experiments and organ donation beckon this fortunate multitude.
Can they not offer their limbs or tissues for a shiny new penny or two?
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Because as those benefits concentrate, it must make the unacknowledged burdens of conscience unbearable. Better to live it up in meaningless luxury and idiotic worship of profit while ensuring the world burns after theyâre gone.
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I would like to see that polling if you have a link.
But even assuming that your thesis is valid, and not another example of the older generation going about those âkids todayâ(young people have traditionally not been all that active politically. Since the voting age was lowered to 18, 18-21 year olds participation is usually among the lowest in terms of age groups),turning their backs on the political system doesnât stop the issue from occurring. The only thing it does is remove political solutions from being the eventual answer.
The problems with income and wealth inequality still exist. And history has shown us time and time againâŚthey do get resolved in no peaceful ways too when the pain for the lower classes becomes too great.
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A Modest Proposal? (with props to Jonathan Swift)
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âWe had to destroy the village. In order, too.â
I think the apathy applies to youth, seniors and those locked out of the mainstream of society. Sorry I did not see your reference to fourth estate before posting or I would have tagged along, here. Good points.
I think weâre using the wrong words to describe the problem. The problem isnât âinequality,â because weâve always had an inequality between the rich and poor in terms of income and wealth. The problem is inequity or unfairness. Increases in wealth have gone disproportionately, historically so, to the already wealthy, while the middleâs income actually shrank and the number of people on the very bottom rung grew exponentially. This is the real problem: the wealthy have captured the system to the point that not only are they taking all of the wealth increases for their own, but they are also grabbing some of the existing wealth from the less wealthy. This is inherently unfair and people know it and people will do something about it if it continues much longer.
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