reply to post by Mcupobob
If all the government is going to do is sabotage itself then maybe getting rid of it is not a bad idea. You gave the example of republicans sabotaging
democrats and democrats doing it unto them. So, effectively, government is unable to get anything done because of this divide.
We have police to patrol our streets. THAT IS GOVERNMENT. Why not have 'police' patrol our businesses to ensure that they're not polluting our rivers?
How is it any different?
Can we not police our rivers and air and forests AND police our streets too?
WHEN does government fail? What are we doing wrong?
Can we NOT afford to police everything and must choose only SOME things to police?
If we don't police our air, what happens in 100 or 200 years? What about the future?
Presently, we're policing Afghanistan and we were in Iraq even though they did not present a existential threat to our country. Things do not have to
threaten our very lives to be policed. If you'll note, OBL was never 100% linked to the 9/11 attacks. We went into Afghanistan because there were
terrorists there. But Afghanistan ITSELF never attacked the US. Terrorists are a loose network spread throughout the world. And it's a stretch of the
truth to say that terrorists represent an existential threat to the US. In fact, there're many things that represent a greater threat to the US than
terrorism. And many of them have nothing to do with war or bombs. Terrorism may be one of the more despicable and fearful things, but it's not the
worst.
To put things into perspective... Between 1995 and 2005, about 200,000 people died from coal power pollution in the US - all by itself. Think about
that. How many fathers died? What did their children do without their father? Who payed the bills? What of the psychological trauma?
So coal power committed an act of terrorism by killing 200,000 people between 1995 and 2005?
Between 2001-2004, about 170,000 people died from car accidents. Who replaced the damaged vehicles? The lives lost? Who paid the emergency responders?
The highway shutdowns?
We readily respond to terrorism, but many other things kind of just 'happen'. We accept it. Much of the costs for 9/11 happened as a result of the
choices we made afterwards. Global markets were in shock and it crossed the globe. Much of it was fear of what MIGHT HAPPEN NEXT. But when Jo crashes
his Ford pickup into the oncoming semi-truck and loses his life, we pass by, gaping at the crushed metal and tears, quick to get to work, shaking our
head at the carnage.
Is policing our air and land simply not as important as policing Afghanistan? So 100's of thousands, if not millions of lives, are not as important as
what terrorists MIGHT do in the future? Last I looked, much of the deaht and carnage is in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're waging our bets that if we had
NOT done this then the costs of inaction would have been greater. But is that true.
Who knows? Ask the guy that died from too much arsenic in his water (source: coal power). You see, the difference is THAT guy is DEAD. But the
terrorists haven't posed the kind of threat they tell us they could, not yet. Sure, they COULD, but we're gambling lives by placing this bet.
NEVER forget that guy that's dead from drinking the arsenic poisoned water. Because you're gambling that his life has less value than what the
terrorists MIGHT do at some future time.
edit on 25-10-2011 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)
But I do have optimism 
