The new "Normal" in America

Originally posted by neo96

Originally posted by beezzer
As long as we stay divided, there will never be another revolution.

2nd.

That's because one must fight the threat that exists within before they can ever begin to think about the threat from outside.

that is not true mate, think about it.

That [outside threat] can be the catalyst that brings about the necessary cohesion from within.

1. 2 cousins fighting until a stranger steps in, then their familial ties kick in.
2 Or, "hey, we really don't like each other, but THOSE guys dude, we cant allow that. When we handle them, then we can get back to squabbling.

The old movie Enemy Mine just popped into my head.

After reading many posts on this thread I've been thinking about how change could occur realistically, the only way I could see it happen is if things got so bad that Hollywood got involved and GLAMOURIZED the process. You have a front line of "A"-listers and other celebrities say Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas, etc. Then the American people would come out to be part of the celebrity circus. They would follow a movie character like Rocky, or Jason Bourne before they would follow Ron Paul. Kinda cheeky I know, but boy do we love our celebrities here in North America.

Originally posted by Kali74

To start healing this country it has to start going beyond liking and respecting people, we have to start agreeing and making concessions. I just don't see how, for instance if we take it down to you and me... you see laziness as one of the most major issues with our people and I see greed as one of the most major issues with our people. How do we reconcile that? They are two very different paradigms and paradigms don't change very easily if ever.

That part is fairly easily sorted out simply by not rewarding the laziness by giving in to the greed.

How do I concede something that is a fundamental truth to me? That a CEO of major corporation is taking home millions of dollars a year, the top execs millions per year but instead of a pay freeze, lack of bonus or pay cut they will lay off hundreds of people and then hire slave labor in China, those hundreds of people helped make that corporation a success, helped that CEO get his ridiculous income, helped the shareholders see nice dividends. How do I let go of this truth I see of these business continuously saying by action that Americans and America mean nothing to them... "Hey thanks for helping making this company great, here's your pink slip, a 12 year old in China is replacing you for $.50/hr... see ya!"

That part is fairly easily sorted out by making the federal government do their job of regulating "interstate commerce" - including that between nation states. I'm not the least bit opposed to punitive tariffs for any company that exports US jobs overseas for WHATEVER reason or excuse. They should not be allowed to enjoy the fruits of the US market by crapping on the US citizens with impunity.

I don't believe I just starred your post. I dunno WHAT this world is coming to when that happens! Still, finding solutions starts with defining the problems in some detail, as you have done from your perspective here. The differing perspectives must be crystallized and defined before acceptable solutions can even be approached, else we all remain at loggerheads.

reply to post by sparrowstail


You mean... like in the movie Idiocracy?


To those calling for a violent revolution, if that was actually a solution to all of this, why hasnt it worked in the past? I think it would result in the same clusterf*** we have today. Where did the american revolution actually fail in this regard? They warned of specifics, wrote documents to prevent known issues, and had both short term and long term plans.

If it didnt work then, what part of it failed? Why would a modern revolution be any more successful?

It seems people think that the only options are complacency or violence, since that is our cultural story. Breaking out of our cultural story and actually writing it ourselves would seem to change things quite dramatically. Those who profit at the great expense of others would actually have a significantly higher quality of life if they took care of the society in which they reside.

Systems to enable and empower, rather than control, seem to be the best option to me. And its something that can be done within all of the current systems of finance, government, education, technology, etc. The issue isnt the system itself, its how we use it.

How do we change that? Is there an option that can appeal to both greed and need, rather than greed before need? I think there is...

Originally posted by beezzer

Originally posted by frazzle
Look at Ron Paul. He hammered on liberty for all and it scared the **** out of half the population.

The hard part is agreeing on a common enemy.

Well, frazzle I respectfully disagree with that, Ron Paul engaged the youth in
learning the political process, and they have had no one else take an interest
in them. I dont think they were scared at all, they were engerized in the cause
of political reform. The scaremongers - Pelosi and Reid - and others were the
ones who framed the independent voters as terrorists.

And beez, I agree, yet its pretty easy to see if we drop the terms ...
Instead of calling out the enemy lets just define what areas of funding
need cut from the huge Federal Beast.

I looked at your list on page one, and its right on.

Simply put, the level of Federal spending, and corrupt operations
has simply brought us to a tipping point.

Originally posted by Serdgiam
Unity is a powerful thing...

Trying to achieve it when we have a cultural story of division would be quite revolutionary.

The big question though is; Once that is attained, what will be done then? Is there a comprehensive plan for short term as well as long term?

I tried to get threads going as an open discussion on what to actually do with the modern tools at our disposal, but I am not so sure anyone actually wants to do anything. I have seen other threads doing the same thing with about the same response. However, the threads which contain complaint after complaint go on for dozens of pages.

We are stuck in some sort of terminal loop

A few post back I mentioned a political system for the US hashed out by myself and a card-carrying communist. Here is the thread. It was bothering me that I couldn't recall the name of it, so I hunted it down.

Now, politically I'm just to the right of Attila the Hun - so far right I wrap back around to the left. if AdAsurdum and I could reach an agreement on how things could be made to work, then there IS hope, in some degree. The theory was hashed out via many lengthy U2U's between he and I, each providing the sounding board for the other until a consensus could be reached. Then AdAbsurdum posted the thread, and I joined in to help him defend the system.

Check it out. I believe it could work, and indeed it may be the only way forward from where we find ourselves now.

reply to post by beezzer


Doggone Beez... you hit the nail and drove it home.

Recalling with fondness now, those days past when it was different... though we didn't appreciate it...

Old normal -

Pay phones on every corner - no cell phones while driving. (Of course, for a short time, everyone had a CB radio and a mic in their hands.)

Foodstamps were a rarity. You could get them if you were in dire need but it took months to get approved and even then, you couldn't stock a castle kitchen with what you got.

Griping was reserved for those who wrote to the newspaper editor... and the opinion page only published a few.

You could fly an American flag (or most any other) and no one tried to have you arrested.

Cops looked like the guys in the old TV shows, Adam-12 and CHiPs... they didn't dress like military commandos and look like professional wrasslers.

If you got puled over for a ticket, you weren't dragged from your car, tasered and beaten before signing the citation.

People bought hot coffee in plastic cups and if they accidentally burned their lips, they'd blow on the liquid and say... 'Damn! I knew that it was hot!'

If your neighbor voted for the 'wrong' person, you'd discuss it over the fence or over a cold beer at a cookout.

On TV, the news was bland and boring because all it did was related the events themselves, without all the mix added today that includes politics, race, politics and race.

If Nixon had been exposed for Watergate today, those who threw light on this would have had to flee to another country to escape persecution.

People seeking asylum and refuge from behind the Iron Curtain would... probably just stay home and count their blessings.

Things have changed... a lot and they are still getting worse.

In my opinion America is Rome 2.0, and we all know how Rome fell, over reaching it's Empire and it's economy eventually tanked. Sound familiar?

Maybe this is all part of the plan though.

But what scares me the most is not necessarily where the country is headed, but how the people are being changed within the country.

Right now I'm attending college and I can safely say that the future does not look bright. Not only do you have the brain less kids who do nothing but worry about what kind of shoes their wearing when they're not having sex with anything with a pulse, that doesn't scare me as much.

What scares me the most is this balatanly passive acceptance of authority and Big Brother. Call it mind control, the sodium fluoride in the water, whatever, people are becoming more passive, docile, and stupider then ever.

I never see people read books anymore. Everyone is on their phone, ipad, laptop, it's sick. I even see families together and sometimes their all own their phones.

WTF is happening! Scary #. People on here keep calling the general population sheep, it's true, this acceptance of authority for bull# safety and overall just becoming less questioning and more stupid, it's just terrible.

/end rant

reply to post by nenothtu


Im going to go read it now.

That said, I dont think any "system" is going to change anything. Its all in how we use them, and that is based in our cultural story. In this way, we could use the entire infrastructure that is in place now, and simply change our approach. And by "our" I am including every human alive. As time goes on, we would be better equipped to truly come up with a new system after we have dealt with the core problem.

The biggest issue in every governing system has never been the system itself, imo, but in how the greedy eventually corrupt it and pursue personal profit at the expense of the society in which they reside.

Until we change that, I feel that all systems will be abused without exception.

Well what can I say, we live in a post 9/11 world.

well it all went to hell when we allowed politicians to be bought by special interests groups.


I am tired of all this distribution of wealth meant to make teh rich richer. all i see from government is the favoring of the rich and the poor at the expense of the middle class.

reply to post by Serdgiam


Any system that CAN be abused WILL be, and humans are wonderfully adept at finding the loopholes to abuse. Safeguards must be emplaced in the system itself to Deal with improprieties as they arise. Note that I say within the system itself - not stopgap legislation foisted on the people, but true blocks withing the system itself to obviate the need for the stopgap legislation in the first place.

As any system, political or economic, proceeds apace, the loopholes are exposed as they are discovered and taken advantage of. Thus, there is always room for improvement, but the focus I believe should be on repairing the system itself rather than legislating the crap out of those subject to it. THAT is what leads to erosion and abuse, by leaving the loopholes exposed and trying to spear the rats as they attempt to navigate them. Close the holes, and let the rats run freely around in their compartments seeking another.

As evidenced in clause #6,the New Normal in America is evidently the accepted misuse and ignorance of english grammar,i.e."for you and I" should be you and ME.Yes,english has cases;and no.it's not nitpicking-ask any lawyer. "Basic English" opened a pandora's box of imprecision further destroying any hope of accurate communication-perhaps we should stick to binary.

reply to post by nenothtu


Instead of constantly putting band aids on the gaping wounds that appear over time, I truly feel it is a better way to look at the core problem rather than controlling its symptoms. At a certain point, we would no longer need those band aids, as we have fixed the actual disease rather than coping with it.

My view of it is that most people put greed over need. While this is present throughout the entire population, it is most apparent when it manifests in a person with power. The goal of this is to satisfy the greed (which is a monster that is never satisfied). The standards for assessing how well the greed is satiated is through the level of quality of life that it brings, which is directly tied to money (and as that thread asserts, fiat money).

The idea that I propose is that by changing our cultural story to satisfy need before greed, we actually satisfy the greed to a much greater extent. It seems to be a paradox, so Ill explain a little.

The drive of greed is to attain as high of a quality of life as possible, and up to this point, the only way to do that is by accumulating vast amounts of wealth. When you have money, you are able to buy anything desired to improve the personal quality of life. In a finite system, this means that the percentage of wealth between the truly rich, and the "rest of the world," is one that grows over time. Eventually, this causes deeply rooted issues since the rich reside in the same society as those they exploit and then an eventual revolution or collapse occurs. For the rich, this peak and valley is only something to exploit and make money from. This power paradigm is maintained by controlling individuals ("the people") and putting in regulations, gating mechanisms, and various other strategies to disable possible competition before it even begins.

So, the next question is; Does satisfying overall need before greed also satisfy the greed? And to what extent? Meaning, is the quality of life attained by monies comparable, superior, or inferior to the quality of life attained by other means?

I think the answer is yes, it does satisfy the greed and the quality of life attained by everyone (including the wealthy) would be far superior to the one that results from a cultural story that is designed to control the people.

By enabling society, using the very same systems that are used to disable it, we encourage the growth of every sector that is present in our world. Everything from science and technology, to medicine, to art, and even the overall capability/ability of individuals would increase drastically. Over time, the results of this would become even more dramatic as our children would be brought up with this cultural story from birth, rather than a change mid-life.

Basically, people are viewed as a resource by the very wealthy. And I am proposing that they could get much, much, much more out of that resource through enabling and educating the people rather than controlling them and having a slow death which increases profits (like cancer). It is actually more profitable to the rich's quality of life to enable and empower individuals to contribute of their own volition and free will, rather than being a resource that is bled dry and thrown away.

I have quite a bit to say about the topic, but I will leave it there. The links in my signature give a bit of a picture of how this could be carried out both short term and long term, with the premise that it is something that would have to continuously adapt to best utilize all of our tools and resources at our disposal. The logical side of me says that nothing will ever change, and there is likely to be a violent revolution. That revolution will just be used to further the greed over need cultural story (at best it will just be new people doing it). The "hope and faith" side of me says that it is worth trying, simply because it leads to a better and more profitable life for even the wealthiest among us.

USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!...........................Please come back.

Originally posted by Merinda
Well what can I say, we live in a post 9/11 world.

The question is... how did we live in a post Pearl Harbor world? We had to win a war and we did.

A post Kennedy Assassination world? We had to recenter and go on... and we did.

A post Watergate world? Nixon was history before his resignation.

All of these things passed and we returned to the nation we never really left.
But... 9.11 seems to have not only been separation, but divorce. The question is not whether we divorced it... but whether our government divorced us.

reply to post by neo96


This is a fundamentalist both from the left and the right.They have ruined our nation.

Originally posted by beezzer
The "New Normal".

The new "Normal" is millions on food stamps.

The new "Normal" is millions on government aid.

The new "Normal" is redistributed wealth.

I think that everything you mentioned is a statement that can be backed up by facts. These three statements though, although they are also true, I would like to say:

I promote a system that gives the poor the option to improve themselves while maintaining a safety net instead of being built to keep them stuck, that's the main problem with the current system.

In fact, I have heard that the current system is built in order to ensure Democrat votes and keep Democrats safely in power.

There are people frustrated with not being able to move forward even when they put in the effort.

reply to post by Serdgiam
Hello. Interesting view of the definition and means of greed vs need. However as I am learning, it seems that this generations race of GREEDY globalists see it a little different. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the human need to obtain all that is needed to have a comfortable and fulfilling life. The problem with your theory is that there are a society of people with so much money and POWER, that the decision was made that they alone are worthy enough to attain such wealth and power. Why would they want to be just like everyone else? Sure, they might preach that they want everyone to be successful, but in reality they are KILLING to keep it all for themselves and on top of that they are lying to the whole world about their so called desire for a healthy, productive planet. THEY WANT TO RULE THE WORLD AND WILL DO ANYTHING TO ACHIEVE THEIR GOAL.

Originally posted by beezzer
Imagine WWII if we were all like;

I'm only fighting the German politicians
I'm only fighting the German bankers
I'm only fighting the German religious leaders

ANY entity that endorses the loss of freedoms and liberties should be looked upon as NOT saviours, but individual(s) that represent the antithesis of what the US Constitution represents.

In WWII the people of Germany, Japan and Italy didn't do much fighting except for their respective governments. if they did fight against the powers that be they were arrested. The powers that be don't do any fighting either. Before complete subjugation a state of total control is erected and enforcement is carried out thru the local police...in other words your fellow americans.

We're so far down the road removed from any semblance of Constitutional law, I doubt you can count on any one enforcing that. Whats being enforced is compliance to the state. By force.

But hey thats not a problem for compliant workers that pay taxes. They have nothing to be concerned about. They don't get pulled over on the road because their newer model, clean washed and compliant vehicle doesn't raise any profiling eyebrows. They don't get rousted outdoors at night because their rent and bills are up to date and they sleep indoors instead of under bridges. They don't walk anywhere, their garage remotes open and close behind their locked car doors and locked and alarmed homes. 911 rescue is always three digits away.

Stay indoors, stay at home, stay compliant and you got nothing to worry about.

Plato's Cave.