The World Is Not Falling Apart 208
An anonymous reader writes: As much as we like complaining, and as much as the big media stations like to focus on the most horrible news of the day, the world is actually becoming a better place. Stephen Pinker and Andrew Mack have an article in Slate going through many of the statistics for things like homicide rates, child abuse, wars, and even autocracy vs. democracy. They're all trending in the right direction. Maybe not fast, or even fast enough, but it's getting better.
They say, "Too much of our impression of the world comes from a misleading formula of journalistic narration. Reporters give lavish coverage to gun bursts, explosions, and viral videos, oblivious to how representative they are and apparently innocent of the fact that many were contrived as journalist bait. Then come sound bites from "experts" with vested interests in maximizing the impression of mayhem: generals, politicians, security officials, moral activists. The talking heads on cable news filibuster about the event, desperately hoping to avoid dead air. Newspaper columnists instruct their readers on what emotions to feel. There is a better way to understand the world. ... An evidence-based mindset on the state of the world would bring many benefits."
They say, "Too much of our impression of the world comes from a misleading formula of journalistic narration. Reporters give lavish coverage to gun bursts, explosions, and viral videos, oblivious to how representative they are and apparently innocent of the fact that many were contrived as journalist bait. Then come sound bites from "experts" with vested interests in maximizing the impression of mayhem: generals, politicians, security officials, moral activists. The talking heads on cable news filibuster about the event, desperately hoping to avoid dead air. Newspaper columnists instruct their readers on what emotions to feel. There is a better way to understand the world. ... An evidence-based mindset on the state of the world would bring many benefits."
Have these guys even seen Slashdot Beta? (Score:5, Funny)
World not falling apart my ass!
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Rose colored glasses (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, some things are improving. But others are not. And to say that the things these people picked define "the world" is nothing more than hubris.
There are many things that are not improving. Some of them bode extremely poorly for the future. Climate may be one of those (or not... we will see.) Loss of privacy is another. Militarization of police is another. Constitutional erosion is another. A continuously increasing burden of badly crafted and anti-liberty legislation is another. The US justice system is a horror show from one end to the other. We're presently building a mostly unemployable permanent lower class by the continuing and increased implementation of never forgive, never forget social patterns and supporting technology. The vast majority of wealth has become concentrated in the hands of a very few people and corporations, and those same people and corporations have assumed de-facto control of our political system everywhere it does something that matters to them.
Depending on where you sit in regard to these issues, and others, your world may be sucking harder on an ever-increasing curve.
The world is what it is. Happy-assed optimism isn't called for outside of your own situation, and only then if that's how you see it.
Re:Rose colored glasses (Score:5, Insightful)
How are things compared to aprox. hundred years ago? WWI was in full swing with America about to join, the Constitution was being ignored in many ways, eg people being thrown in jail for distributing pamphlets and the Supreme Court OKing it by comparing free speech to yelling fire in a theatre, wealth was concentrating much like today, the corruption of the government was even more open then now with industrialists openly talking about the Senators they owned. The justice system was probably much worst if you were guilty of being the wrong colour or very poor or pushing for worker rights with jury nullification regularly used to let murderers off. The Prohibition mind set was getting louder and louder which soon led to the militarization of the police and the expanding of federal power.
Things always seem worse in the present and it is always hard to see how things were in the past.
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Some things go up, some things go down....until they don't.
Some things oscillate with various periods including chaotic ones. (e.g. "morality")
Some things go from horrific (e.g. Slavery) to slightly less than average (e.g. low wage slavery/poverty) and vice versa.
Some things have NEVER been acceptable in almost the entirely of recorded human history. (e.g. wealthy elite calling the shots in their favour)
Some
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Continuous improvement is what you and many others strive for. It's also what the statistics show. However, this continuous slow improvement over a large period of time (sure: combined with incorrect media coverage) leads to our world view being largely incorrect. I still thought the whole of Africa was one long hopeless story of poverty, starvation, violence and disease. When I saw the actual figures it completely took me by surprise. The world is in many aspects a lot better than we think it is.
Now ob
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Exactly my point. How things "are" is entirely dependent upon what your own challenges and successes are, and whether they are increasing or decreasing.
Nothing I said in any way denies the advance of technology or the shift of cultural values. My point is, what that means is relative to the individual. Your world view is not mine, and vice-versa. It's just ridiculous for me to say the world is better, or worse, for you. Only you can say that.
One person will rave about the positive aspects of kids having cel
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You are not seeing the big picture, putting all those horrible phantasms of web design and UI into one place makes the rest of the world a better place. The city dump makes the city a cleaner and prettier place.
Yellow Journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Sensationalism sells, and nothing is sensational like the end of the world. Ergo, all news is about the end of the world.
Re:Yellow Journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
And the powers that be can get away with more shit if they keep the populace worried about security...
instead of freedoms.
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The end of the World is happening tonight*. News at 11.
* if you happen to be living in the year 6945023.
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The world will be too hot for mammals by 400000, so "end of the world" for higher order creatures coming much sooner.
Re:Yellow Journalism (Score:4, Informative)
This is an excellent TED Talk about this very topic.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_... [ted.com]
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Sensationalism sells
But on the flipside, everyone also loves videos of kitties, but for some reason the mainstream news is never interested.
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something about the way the videos are presented. If I catch a random person posting a video, recent from memory of a cat trying to catch fish through the ice of a frozen pond, people would think that is funny. If it was on the 5 o'clock news, they'd think, "People are getting shot and there is rioting and this is what they put on?"
I don't know why but it seems if it's coming from professionals it should be bad news.
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Sensationalism sells, and nothing is sensational like the end of the world. Ergo, all news is about the end of the world.
Yet, somehow, I feel fine.
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It's not just news outlets, it's sensational people as well, and there are a LOT of them, especially on slashdot. For example, how many people routinely claim that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer?
Well lets do a little then and now comparison:
Rich 100 years ago meant you owned an actual car, which was likely a piece of shit that poor people of today would even scoff at. Rich 50 years ago meant you owned more than one television, televisions which look like crap and had tiny screen
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Case in point:
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen... [slashdot.org]
And he actually got modded up too. We don't need the media to feed us this shit, it's just average idiots that do it. This person probably isn't even aware that until about 150 years ago, the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government; the state governments could do whatever they wanted, including censorship, banning religions, etc. In fact, in the early days of the US, some states didn't allow ANYBODY to vote for the federal government. In New York
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Imagine if Snowden happened in the pre-internet era, or in the early era of the internet where only nerds where online. the Government(or corporate proxies, i.e. the media) wo
meta (Score:5, Funny)
"An evidence-based mindset on the state of the world would bring many benefits."
Perhaps evidence can be gathered to support that hypothesis.
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The first place they should apply evidence to write news stories and make policy decisions is the one aspect of the world that has a very high likely hood of causing enormous problems in the next 100 years or so. Every other time the government has stepped in to improve the environment it has been successful and that's why we don't have to worry about acid rain and whats in our drinking water (mostly, outside WV). In addition to crime rates, things are mostly good in the environment...except for the thing t
this is news? (Score:2)
So, why does someone think we needed to be reminded of this?
It's not like even the news is particularly bad recently - no major wars, famines, etc. Even the Ebola outbreak only managed to do in 7000 people this year - once upon a time, we could expect a famine in Africa that did worse every few years.
Are we really reaching the point where we consider a few police shootings to be a sign of the end times?
Skeptical about Democracies (Score:2)
The USA is still referred to as a democracy more often than not, but even the ways in which the system is democratic on paper have primarily been subverted. Why should I suspect the situation is any different anywhere else?
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Because in other places 'democracy' is not just a slogan, usually because it was not something took for granted.
The good outweights the bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The good outweights the bad (Score:5, Interesting)
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just be prepared for other historical norms as well then.
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This question (as yet unanswered) raises pretty much the same concern about economic inequality:
http://skeptics.stackexchange.... [stackexchange.com]
"Is racial income inequality currently in US worse than it was in Apartheid South Africa?"
Jon Stewart started this, of course, but he's better at raising interesting questions than he is at applying hard journalism to them.
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I'll propose modifying your "The world is an awesome place now" with "many places in the world are great, but many places are not". It really depends on where you live. We probably won't see it in our lifetimes, but if any luck, our grandchildren or maybe our great grandchildren may see a larger world that's starting to enjoy a lot more what we in the first world currently enjoy. It seems like we're making progress, so I'm hopeful.
In terms of providing economic improvement, I think it's important not to
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Why do you think with evidence against you? (Score:3)
The big thing that is worse, I think, is economic inequality,
If everything is getter better in terms of quality of life, and economic inequality is growing, then how can you EI as bad?
At the very least it's not bad enough to matter.
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The largest place I see ei playing out is in things in limited quantity.
Most the population is being priced out of things which used to be generally free or affordable.
In texas, the beaches were always free but now some stretches are being locked up. On the east coast, large stretches of beach are "private".
Amusement parks are grossly over crowded but if you have money (5x the standard price), you don't have a line.
Collectables that used to be affordable if you saved up are now going for more than your ent
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However, the world has ... cheap and fast global communications, ...
That's IMHO the important bit. People inherently need the world around them to be Just. A little understood implication of that is that the better and quicker we are able to communicate with the rest of the world, the more injustice gets exposed. Injustice is like a fungus: too much sunlight and it burns away.
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The big thing that is worse, I think, is economic inequality
Except that this is not true [voxeu.org] either. There was a huge increase in income from about the 10% to 75% (that is, the two thirds of humanity who earned more than the bottom 10% and less than the top 25% over the past twenty years (actually 1988-2008). This has resulted in a considerable decline in global economic inequality despite the wealthiest managing to grow their portion of wealth over that time.
A few days back, we had a couple of stories about how automation was taking away jobs. It was instructive how
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In the US, yes. *World* economic inequality is falling.
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Lies & Damn Lies (Score:3, Insightful)
A wise politician one said, "Never let a crisis go to waste". If the public isn't agitated, they won't give up their liberties and control to the government.
Crime rates are down, yet cops are more militarized than ever. Police shootings are rare. Gun violence is down. College campus sexual assault rates are actually 0.61%. The earth is not warming in 20 years. There is no missing heat in the oceans. Hurricanes and tornado count are at a historical low. Unemployment counting those not looking for work is at a 40 year high. Inflation in food (not counted) is huge, yet commodities (gold / oil) are deflating. College debt is crippling high, but so is general credit card debt.
If you dig into the numbers behind the "official" numbers, everything is topsy turvy. That's why the public sees doom and gloom - everything they experience is counter to what we are being told, including articles saying "Don't panic".
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If only those articles used a large, friendly font for their titles...
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Crime rates are down, yet cops are more militarized than ever.
I am not certain, but it's possible that the latter is causing the former.
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Hell go back 10,000 years and I'll bet it was -60C in your area.
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Go back a little before that and the average temperature was 12c higher than now for hundreds of millions of years at a time.
http://geology.utah.gov/survey... [utah.gov]
http://geology.utah.gov/survey... [utah.gov]
Basically, we are still in the middle of an ice age that peaked 20k years ago and started about 65 million years ago.
In farenheit terms- we average 58 degrees globally today (and rising) and we averaged 72 degrees globally from 65 million years ago to 185 million years ago.
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Don't tell me those are natural fluctuations because I'm over 40 and the weather hasn't been like that in my previous 30 years.
Those are natural fluctuations. And the weather never has been like it is today and never will be like that ever again.
Good boundary conditions (Score:2)
So, the sum of humanity's problems ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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" We do not have a food problem on this planet."
With every ecosystem used to grow that food degraded or collapsing, and with the means of growing and distributing food producing pollutants and expending irreplaceable resources, we do in fact, have a food problem.
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The arc is long (Score:3)
Its pretty easy to find places where this is clearly not true (eg: Syria). But those are localized places and times. That's like finding a place where entropy seems to be decreasing; you can do that, but that only means elsewhere it increased more. Human society seems to follow Theodore Parker's principle [quoteinvestigator.com]: The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
This seems like a good place and time for my favorite Christmas song, written by Longfellow after he'd lost his entire family (wife included) during the Civil War:
I heard the bells on Christmas day Their old familiar carols play, And wild and sweet the words repeat Of peace on earth, good will to men.
I thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along th'unbroken song Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bowed my head: "There is no peace on earth," I said, "For hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men."
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep; The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, With peace on earth, good will to men."
Till, ringing, singing, on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, Of peace on earth, good will to men!
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Someone seems to have embellished the tale a bit. Longfellow did not lose his entire faimly in the Civil War. The poem was written after his eldest son Charles was wounded, not killed, in battle; he wouldn't die until 1893, eleven years after his father. His wife was burned to death in a household accident in 1861. He wrote a different poem about that death, "The Cross of Snow", eighteen years later.
Spiraling into a Super Massive Black Hole (Score:2)
As I type our galaxy is spiraling into a super massive black hole. It is way past the year two thousand, and we are way behind schedule building intergalactic arks to escape this calamity. We don't even have moon bases, foot prints on Mars, or even personal robotic assistants. Hell, we are still burning fossil fuels and wiping with paper. How is this not the world falling apart?
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And where are our flying cars?
Um... (Score:3)
Slashdots just as guilty of this as anywhere else...
A month or two ago I was getting modded troll left and right for suggesting that Ebola wasn't about to ravage North America and kill millions of people.
Nothing new (Score:2)
The media are not getting any more sensational than they used to be. Just rip open your local turn-of-the-century (e.g. 114 years ago) newspaper archives. They used to report on *everything*.
True, but misleading (Score:2)
The music was probably just getting good on the Titanic as the band warmed up for the evening. There are still nuclear weapons and touchy world leaders in charge of them. Ebola may yet achieve full destructive power, particularly if a terrorist or two decide to self-infect and take a trip to New York City, Moscow or Saudi. Despite the recent developments in oil, "peak oil" or rather gradual hydrocarbon depletion and rising costs is going to bite us very hard in the next 50 years, like it or not. The world e
Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom, and the greatest country in the world
For all the later melodramatic histrionics that did not work, Aaron Srokin hit this subject in the opening of The Newsroom, where just ignoring the evidence for ratings doesn't do anybody any kind of justice.
Transcript and comments from Sorkin:
http://www.gq.com/entertainmen... [gq.com]
"Fine. [to the liberal panelist] Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paychecks, but he [gesturing to the conservative panelist] gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn't cost money, it costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don't like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fuckin' smart, how come they lose so GODDAM ALWAYS!
And [to the conservative panelist] with a straight face, you're going to tell students that America's so star spangled awesome that we're the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. Two hundred seven sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.
And you, sorority girl, yeah, just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world. We're seventh in literacy, twenty seventh in math, twenty second in science, forty ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty six countries combined, twenty five of whom are allies. None of this is the fault of a 20 year old college student, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST period GENERATION period EVER period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about?! Yosemite?!!!
We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn't belittle it; it didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn't scare so easy. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one, America is not the greatest country in the world anymore."
It all started with CNN (Score:3)
Or at least the 24-hour news cycle did when they covered the girl in the well story endlessly. To make matters worse, social media is enabling bogus memes to spread like kudzu. There's an important phrase that people should be taught and that is "Totality of the circumstances." What this means is that these bogus memes are almost always one-sided counting on the gullibility of the viewer to accept it as fact without knowing that there are circumstances and facts that happened which are conveniently skipped lest they burst the bubble of the narrative.
Not misleading (Score:2)
It is falling apart. (Score:2)
both (Score:2)
but for it to find us, we need to take responsibi
Improvement (Score:2)
Well, the world is getting better in the sense that Pinker and Mack thought the world was falling apart and are now better informed like everyone else was all along.
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Actually, I think they just turned that into a mall. With a *starbucks*.
Re:Of course there is a focus on the negative (Score:4, Insightful)
Not always. If the media makes it seem like things are getting worse overall. That would tell people the direction they are going in is wrong and will backtrack to the older ways when they were better.
You have sites like Fox News turning relatively moderate conservatives into extream conservatives. Due to the flood of negativity poison. Where before many issues were not a big deal or some supported it, now have became a polarizing issue.
Most of our judgment is based off of emotions, yes even the pro-science, well educated crowd. So misrepresented facts can cause a call to action where one isn't needed
Interesting. I'd think the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very interesting perspective.
I'd say that the fundamental, defining difference between conservative thinking vs progressive is that while progressives say "let's change things for the better" conservatives say "don't throw the baby out with the bath water". Conservatives think America is basically pretty good, progressives think it needs it be "fundamentally transformed", as Obama put it. Progressives say "we need to do something" (and proposal X is something, so we need to do it). Conservatives think we shouldn't lose sight of the principles that once made this the greatest country on earth.
If you belief, based on the news you see, that the place is falling apart, then indeed "we need to do something" (liberalism) is a reasonable response. If you believe life is pretty good, and slowly getting better, then you should stick with what's been working (conservatism). So I'd come to the opposite conclusion as you.
If having more women in nursing and more men in programming is a terrible, horrible thing, then we have to do something about it. If black people can never succeed, if it's unimaginable that any black person could ever be a judge, a mayor, or a senator, then we need to do something about that. On the other hand, if black people can be judges, mayors, senators, and even president of the United States, then all the liberal progressivism is unnecessary, and indeed their complaints of being "kept down by the man" are just whining, excuses. If the society isn't basically racist, then Al Sharpton is out of a job. Progressivism REQUIRES big problems. If you don't believe there are big problems everywhere you look, you have no interest in liberals' big "solutions".
Personally, I think some things could be improved. Liberals do a pretty good job at identifying the problems. However, they all-too-often fall into the trap of "we have to do something, and proposal X is something, so we have to do proposal X". Conservatives are hesitant to change things, so they don't screw things up. Perhaps the ideal would be for liberals to set the agenda of which problems we want to solve this year, then for conservatives beancounters to get out their calculators and figure out which proposed solutions have worked well elsewhere or in the past, and which ones are economically feasible. So the liberals force the conservatives to do SOMETHING, and the conservatives ensure that the SOMETHING has a reasonable chance of working, and without making us bankrupt.
Re:Interesting. I'd think the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
... progressives say "let's change things for the better" conservatives say "don't throw the baby out with the bath water".
You make some interesting and reasonable points. On the other hand, it often seems to *me* that the positions are more like progressives saying "we've got to do something about this problem" and conservatives saying "it was good enough for grandpa, it's fine, don't change anything". (I'll bet we could agree that both situations occur, and haggle over the percentage.) The polarization mentioned by many leads to an "If you're not with us, you're against us" attitude, which pushes those who might otherwise be moderate and thoughtful (on either side!) to the extremes.
Re:Interesting. I'd think the opposite (Score:4, Insightful)
conservatives saying "it was good enough for grandpa, it's fine, don't change anything".
I think you'll find most conservatives actually saying "it wasn't so terrible for grandpa, so let's see how this new untested idea actually makes it better". There will always be people opposed to any sort of change, of course, but don't confuse evidence-based (as opposed to "it looks good on paper, let's do it") and outcome-based (as opposed to "what matters is the lawmaker's intentions were good") with anti-progress. Any seasoned engineer will tell you that the way you'll make the best progress is to test before you ship, because it's so much less effort to fix mistakes that way.
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Problem is both the above posters are ignorant. Modern publics are so illusioned they don't know which end is up.
Reasoning and the human brain doesn't work the way we thought it did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Manufacturing consent
http://www.amazon.com/Manufact... [amazon.com]
Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.
This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corpora
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progressives say "let's change things for the better" conservatives say "don't throw the baby out with the bath water".
Libertarians say "If it is Rosemary's Baby, through out the baby and the bath water and start over."
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OMG, really? That is how you took that statement?
#1) I have run for state office as a Libertarian
#2) I am a proud supporter of the party.
#3) That was a reference to the 2000 Libertarian presidential TV spots.
Re:Interesting. I'd think the opposite (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that "conservatives" have a huge gap between what they say they want and what they actually achieve.
Were corporations historically people? Did conservatives change that. Yup.
Was america historically a torture state? Did conservatives change that? Yup.
Was america founded on religious principles, being one nation under god? Or did conservatives change that? Yup.
Was hemp and marijuana historically demonized? Did conservatives change that because they feared the blacks and mexicans? Yup.
I can obviously find hundreds of more examples of conservatives changing things for the worse. Saying that conservatives want things to stay the same does not equate with the rise of corporatism in the us in the last 40 years. Nor does it equate with the greed is good and inequality is great mentality which predominates conservative thought.
You might just have to realize that "conservatives" are far from the historical definition of conservatives "resistance to change" and other attributes. Oh how I wish it were so. America wouldn't have killed hundreds of thousands in iraq, corporations wouldn't be people, wealth inequality would go back to 1950s levels, and do nothing bankers would be vilified as the enemies of real working people.
In short, there is absolutely nothing conservative about today's so called american conservatives. It's a fiction, a more friendly name on the pro corporate anti public interest party. I would name it the fascist party, matching it up to a proper historical definition. If anyone was allowed to use that term anymore.
stoned during history class (Score:2)
I guess we know who was stoned out of their mind during history class. Other than me, I mean. :) Corporations you say? The colonists dumped the cargo of the East India Company. The East India Company, founded in 1600, officially ruled countries. No corporation today comes anywhere near the power of the corporations of the founding era. You might also want to look up the words "corporation" and "corporal" in the dictionary.
You might also look up "tar and feather ", a common practice at the time the r
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Conservatives are hesitant to change things, so they don't screw things up.
That might be true of conservative individuals. I think most Americans if you just sit them down for a nice chat are reasonable people. We tend to understand that there is room for improvement and solutions might not be simple or comfortable for everyone.
Politics is a whole 'nother thing though. Politics in America is about nothing more than hot-button issues and campaign posters now. No one wants an actual solution to any problem in Congress. Why? Because if something gets solved, it can't be used
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Nice for a Dicionary (Score:2)
"Conservatives are hesitant to change things, so they don't screw things up."
Your description would paint Bush as a liberal. What with his pet project to fix Iraq, bailouts for failed corporate ventures, trying to sovle all the problems in the world through big government military, spying and toruture programs, expansion of American powers in the bedroom, and bolstering the profiteers of a nearly wiped out American milddle class.
Liberals like Bush should mind their business, focus on domestic affairs l
" Dicionary". Conservatives disliked Bush (Score:2)
> your description would paint Bush as a liberal. What with his pet project to fix Iraq, bailouts for failed corporate ventures
And indeed Bush Jr's approval rating among republicans was nearly as bad as Obama's among Democrats. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity regularly took him to task. They much preferred the elder Bush, who made a clear decision to NOT invade Iraq. I myself criticized junior on national radio, based on the argument that he was not following conservative principles.
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I disagree. The fundamental difference between 'conservative' and 'progressive' thinking is that conservatives assume everyone will misuse new opportunities, and progressives assume no-one will.
Both are very wrong.
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I haven't seen any president being the best person for the job.
Obama won, because he ran flawless campaigns. Greatly reduced the amount of dirt that can be dug up. Any dirt that was, was treated well and marginalized.
2008 - People were tired of Bush, so any democrat had a chance. McCain, was too old, so people needed to judge the VP candidate as well, and Palian was just the worst pick you could make. For a candidate who needed to push a moderate campaign.
2012 - Romney failed to make himself genuine. Being
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Yea the conservatives are becoming extremists. That's why I see chants of "What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now", and then a guy drives to NYC and kills 2 cops.
You had conversations with these people about political philosophy? That must have been pretty interesting. Was that before or after the police officers were murdered?
Also, it seems to me that the level of anti-authoritarianism that would lead to murdering police officers is not what the Republicans typically associate with liberals.
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Yes, them, w/big screen TVs and 22s, 3 yr unemploy (Score:3, Insightful)
> The jobless? The disenfranchised? The dispossessed and everyone else who loves to lick Obama's boot?
Yes, them. Or are you COMPLETELY ignorant of history?
At what other time in history could people take two or three years off work and collect unemployment benefits? Have a look at a picture or film of a low-income or rural area from a hundred years ago. Note the large number of children sick from hunger-related disease. Then drive through a modern low-income housing project. Note all the 22 inch rims.
I
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Agree with everything you said except your unemployment statistic (assuming we're talking USA here). November 2004 it was 5.5%. November 2014 it was 5.8%
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries... [bls.gov]
Yep. well, 5.4% (Score:2)
I had accidentally looked at 2013 rather than 2014. The average for 2013 was 7.5%. BLS says November 2004 was 5.4%, not 5.5% - close enough. If we're trying to compare this year to ten years ago, looking at just November only is a bit misleading, though.
For 2014:
Jan 6.6
Feb 6.7
Mar 6.7
Apr 6.3
May 6.3
Jun 6.1
Jul 6.2
Aug 6.1
Sep 5.9
Oct 5.8
Nov 5.8
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Blast! Misquoted my own quote!
Agree with this post as well...but possibly for a different reason. 2014's downward trend in unemployment is much steeper than 2004's was. For obvious reasons of course, but a good thing(TM) none the less. Thus quoting one month's statistic is misleading because it hides even better news.
Re:better place for whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
You say that like the groups are separate.
Obama's aligned with the typically-liberal Democrat party. Liberals tend to believe that one of the government's jobs is to make things better for the jobless, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed, the poor, the hungry, and the downtrodden, so he's pushed programs that aim to help such folks.
Of course, that's countered by the Republican conservatives, who tend to believe that everyone can make their own fate, so those programs are forced to be either opt-in or neutered. If you want to rebel against the government's control, you have that freedom to forge your own way in life.
The end result is a system where assistance is tied to one's embrace of government. Sure, one can stay independent, but that's likely how he got to be jobless, disenfranchised, dispossessed, poor, hungry, and/or downtrodden in the first place.
Re:better place for whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
real-world policies are designed to entrap those foilks into dependency on the Glorious Liberal State,
Right on brother, the proven ulterior motives of heathcare, unemployment benefits, etc of this administration that hates america are the worst of all time. Things have never been this bad....wait what was this story about again? Something about sensationalism in the media making things look awful when they're really the best in history?
One thing I'm sure you (should) agree with is that today's conspiracy theory's are some of the best ever.
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The jobless? The disenfranchised? The dispossessed? The poor, the hungry, the downtrodden?
Or is it just getting better for the corporate, the military, and everyone else who loves to lick Obama's boot?
You too can be successful! Just lick that boot! Lick it good.
This type of comment says a lot about the people who agree with it. When the headline says "The World", they only talk about the United States.
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Define recent
Many countries that the US invaded, were first invaded by somebody else. For example France was invaded by Germany before the US got into the war.
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Because I let you choose to spread your idiocy that's why.
More people right now are living in peace with their neighbors than between the Yeats 1500-1900
If Iraq was fought like other wars in history the USA' army would be 50 million soldiers. Not 1.2 million.
There are 320 million people in the USA with an army of 1.2 million. That's 1/2 of 1%. There are more homosexuals people in the USA 3-5 million than soliders.
Even China with 1.2 billion people only has an army of 3 million.
Ok... (Score:2)
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There is going to be a huge resource crunch in the next half century as more nations become developed. And unless huge breakthroughs are made in energy storage, solar and wind power is not going to be an acceptable way to make them happy since power grids are horrifically complex. (green energy is already a pain to deal with in developed countries with regards to pushing it back in to the power grid)
Another problem solved by Slashdot. Next.
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The nature of humans is the same today as it was 10,000 years ago. Because of that, we are still in the same boat. The environment has changed, the problems have changed, but the state of things is the same. When someone in The West claims things are getting better, it's because the person is deceived by the wave of western success. If you look at the world as a whole, it's still a violent, scary place.
Well, it is a less violent and scary place. That has changed.