IF the USA dealt with the drug problem in their own country it would help enormously. Why are so many taking drugs? Is it because they feel so helpless?
I doubt the U.S. gene pool is so much more hapless than that of other countries, especially given the diversity of our population. The problem in the U.S. is that this nation alone, as far as I can tell, is the only one lacking BOTH the extended family and a meaningful social safety net (due to our predatory capitalist system). One or the other is necessary for children to grow up with some measure of dependable protection and, therefore, good mental health. (For many years Mexico was essentially a dictatorship and materially poor as well, but much more socially functional prior to the drug war, and in many ways even since, than the U.S. The reason? The extended family.) If we could do one single thing to bring down the rates of addiction, violence, and general dysfunction in this country, my guess is that universal healthcare would do it. More would be better, especially paid parental leave, and humanizing our school system would do wonders, but it's access to health support, and the provision of witnesses to children and their lives inherent in it, that explains the more functional populations found in the social democracies. (Israel, of course, is a glaring exception. Their social safety net is made meaningless by the sick indoctrination of its children and the litany of other crazy-making features of that society.) Of course, if we could return to the extended family that would be just as salutary, if not more. The way to do this is to encourage people to live again in multi-generational households. As challenging as this would be for a population addicted to "going it alone," it may be more in reach than ever getting healthcare out of our imperial Congress critters.
great point, the healthcare system in the US is inefficient and exploitative, probably by design. The amount of people who worry about being able to afford medical treatment in a country that spends as much as it does on healthcare, is staggering
Parenting right across the demographic spectrum is a much more stressful undertaking in the United States than in the rest of the developed world. Stressed-out parents are more prone to abuse and neglect their children, who are absolutely not meant to grow up with just one or two caregivers attached to them. Many of us who had two parents in the home grew up with no attachment at all. What do people think happens when these unlucky people grow up to take the reins of power?
Great article by GeoPolitQ that Diana Van Eyk pointed out on her substack this morning (or this morning for myself heh). In it, the author elucidates clearly the impact of the coming increased militarization of Europe and the soulless march toward endless war: https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/the-european-rearmament-plan-a-disaster
Of course not, I'm just refuting the falsehood that there's a single addiction gene. If you will return to my comment and read it with care, you will note the important word "predisposition". In this case, a polygenic background can predispose, and environment provokes penetrance of the trait -- or not. As in all human genetics.
Examples of adverse childhood experiences include:
Natural disasters
Violence
Abuse or assault
Neglect
Life-threatening illness
Loss of a friend or family member
Parental separation, divorce or deployment
Witnessing or being involved in a serious accident
Witnessing the death of another person
Social drivers of health may also cause childhood trauma. These are environmental factors that can lead to adverse childhood experiences with a lasting impact. These factors may include:
My comment was a warning to not become complacent about the trauma attendant with sexual abuse of children, common though it is. The traumatization of children is not just a tragedy for them, but for their societies.
I make no apologies for smoking. I enjoy it, get a clear chest scan every year, and it doesn’t affect my breathing a bit. Might be genetic in my case. I do roll my own cause the price of them in Michigan is through the roof.
I managed to give it up just over forty years ago, wasn't easy but it was costing too much and I hated the smell on my clothes. Funny what can get you to stop.
I couldn’t afford to smoke if I didn’t roll my own. I’ve briefly quit a few times, had a meltdown, first thing buy a pack. Cause sometimes, GF, when you’re hangin on by your fingernails, a cigarette’s the only thing keepin ya there 😉
When I look back it was after the offspring left home ☺️ guess it was less stressful just looking after myself, so not forty years ago nearer thirty. The cost has become horrendous. I tried the roll your own thing but got more on the floor than in the paper, so was wasting more than I was saving.
But we do what we can, and what can't is no one's business but our own, there are worse things, so enjoy it.
It often us but with help, early enough, it doesn't have to become a full blown addiction.
My father was one absolute bastard, and I don't say that lightly,. He was a bully and a violent one, and an alcoholic. For some of us that becomes the one thing we never want to be. It was a clise thing when I realised I had married an alcoholic, thank fully not a violent ine or I would have walked sooner, but he stole money and often left me short on things needed for the children, and that did it for me - if he would do that to his children he wasn't worth being with them.
Some unfortunately can't fight the gene, or use the parent's alcoholism as an excuse for theirs, even if other siblings don't become one.
Maybe some get the gene and others don't, and there are environmental factors too. But I can believe in genetic predisposition, because my family of two parents, two brothers and two sisters was RIDDLED with mental illness--and not a one that ever smoked, or had drug or alcohol problems.
Not only feel helpless, many are helpless. The USA economic and social SYSTEM itself is not something natural, but is man made, and created and currently controlled by a handful of obscenely wealthy Elites - who control USA government, control USA healthcare, control USA Wallstreet Capital wealth, etc.
Ordinary Americans have increasingly less and less control over the paths of their lives. Many can no longer afford to purchase a home for their family, or even buy a new car, or even afford to see a doctor for a checkup. They not only "feel" helpless, they are helpless. Despite the fact you got a boatload of propaganda coming out by the Elites that you can do it on your own - that your poverty is your own fault - that if only you work hard enough, educate yourself more, you too will thrive. That is the big meritocracy lie being propagated by the uber wealthy right now - that they don't have you under their thumb, when in truth, it's never been worse in US history, the level of wealth inequality is greater than the robber baron gilded age. The corruption by the wealthy of the US government is obvious for all to see. The exploitation of American workers in the US rigged market has reached a point where even the much heralded American middle class is dying before our eyes.
As you know Jamenta, I brought up a child in the US.
My daughter was 7yrs old when we went to the USA. At that time she was way ahead of her American friends. To be fair, she was lucky to have visited many countries before this. So she had some idea things were 'weird!'
It wasn't long before she started demanding: shoes/clothes etc to 'fit in'. Very expensive shoes which we did not pay for.
Moving to LA. Luckily there was a fantastic Elementary School in our Canyon. All fine until Middle School outside of our Canyon.
Police on the Campus. How the hell are kids supposed to feel safe! Talk about child abuse.
I no longer believe the US is a good country to raise your children. Perhaps top on my list of why, is the state of US Healthcare. I'm retired now, long past my prime. But if I were younger ... sigh, I would probably pack up my bags and get the hell out.
We had to go to US for my husbands job.............didn't matter to me because I was an artist working from home. I was able to pick up my kid/bring her home and we would have dinner together and discuss things at the table.
We did have decent healthcare in the US BUT when our daughter got into drugs there was little to no help.
We went bankrupt trying to keep her on a 'straight path.'
If you have a child in the US one had to pay money for Private psychologists.
One thing that really shocked me during a meeting with kids and parents was............how many kids knew where their parents stashed their own drugs.
That is so scary. I never even heard the word drugs when I was a minor, not even in highschool. I was eighteen before I had my first cigarette and that was just an ordinary one. The world has changed and not for the better, except for the drug lords and the silly sods who sell for them but, not for the school kids who get addicted and sell so they can buy more.
Movies don't help by not showing the truth of what these drugs do to children, not enough show that it kills the brain before it kills the body.
In reality, drug use is down among young people, as are alcohol use, sexual activity, smoking, driving, and other things. Some of this is good, of course, but the way kids have been growing up since the 1990s is truly maladaptive. The middle-class wraps its kids in bubble wrap for 18 years and makes every single significant decision for them. As a result millions of kids are on drugs for anxiety and depression and many need "adulting" classes just to function as adults. We've banned childhood adventure, and I can tell you that kids today are not only more anxious than previous generations, but infinitely less interesting. It's quite a feat to drain all the blood and vitality out of childhood but Americans (and the British) have accomplished just that. And what for? To make money off the vast market that is children and so we can live through our children by pretending we're their knights in shining armor. We don't get meaning from our jobs since corporate America decided to cut pay and benefits to the bone, so we now get all our meaning by running our kids' lives. But not to worry! We can always blame every blessed problem on iPhones and social media. Thank God for everyone's favorite scapegoat.
This is becoming more true than ever, when it wasn't so much the case in the US. Income mobility is declining. There are less people born in poverty who become rich; and it is also true in the other direction, there are now less rich people who then become poor. Meritocracy is a myth - that the uber wealthy often hide behind to justify their exorbitant wealth i.e. they deserve to be as rich as they are because they or their parents merited it. It's a lie.
In fact, the uber wealthy are a drain upon society, it takes far more work to accommodate their lifestyle than their own personal labor could ever produce. And none of them would be as wealthy as they are without the ordinary working class - the essential workers that keep an economy functional.
Wealth inequality is the most egregious it has ever been in the history of the US. And many current societal problems in this country can be traced back to the obscene levels of wealth inequality.
It's the most self medicating society in the world. From cradle to death. Both legal and illegal. Helpless doesn't begin to describe it. The soul knows and hurts.
"Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism" by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, 2020. Just a few years short of this country's 250th birthday. Something to celebrate, huh?
A healthy society is not a magnet for drug use. American society is ridden with Social Darwinist practices, the public lacks a social safety net, healthcare is obscenely expensive, it is an oligarchy only catering to the wealthy, a society stumbling from one disaster to another and never recognizing it is not a sustainable way of life but a road to perdition.
Yes, that is exactly right my friend. Young people coming out of university are finding ZERO jobs paying over poverty wages. Seeing the financials of the u.s. this coming financial depression will be worse than 1920s-30s. We need the Nation of Caitlin now more than ever.
John Carter has some very thought-provoking answers to that. But please note that the Bloomberg report on which he draws was wrong, because they couldn't do their sums.
"If No One’s Hiring White Guys, What Are They Doing With Themselves?"
I watched an American series, supposedly to help teenagers/ highschool kids survive bullying and rape by school jocks-which is pretty funny in Australia, because jocks are mens underwear. For a programme that's supposed to help it was so much about sex and drugs. If that's common behaviour in US schools it's time they shut them all down and started afresh. I had to stop watching because it was getting worse instead of better. Actually, if that's American society, America needs to shut down and start over.
The point of the War On Venezuela is to show Latin American governments what happens if they think they are in any wise sovereign. "Drugs" are a pretext. Nothing more.
Note how Trump just pardoned the pro-American presidential candidate in Honduras on trafficking charges.
It's not particularly high grade crude, and besides, it would be cheaper to buy oil thN seize it. Hell, Iraqi and Libyan production has never fully recovered.
Agreed, it’s apparently not great crude, but oil is oil and if the largest deposits of oil lie under Venezuelan oil, you can bet your bottom dollar the money hounds will be all over it.
Oh, I am sure that the neocons are whispering plunder into Trump’s ear. You may recall that this is how the occupation was sold to the clown, even though Syrian oil is at most a rounding error.
Still, the idea that Donbass or Afghanistan or whatever are treasure troves of minerals waiting to be exploited, a pipeline route or whatever is a lazy alt-media trope.
You are right on that, Feral. It may be the largest reserve of oil in the world with America having only 8 years left, BUT....it is the hardest oil reserves to process into a final usable product.
Processing Venezuelan oil is expensive primarily because it consists mostly of extra-heavy crude, which is dense and viscous, requiring advanced extraction and refining techniques. Additionally, the country's aging infrastructure and the need for specialized refineries further increase production costs.
However, oil is oil and if it costs more, the cost can always be passed on t the user. It is the quantity that adds to the wealth of a country, oil-wise. Right, Trump?
Venezuela 18% and the USA just 2% and by far, the largest consumers.
Hence US "regime change" in Venezuela, Gaza's yet to be established oil and Gas. Right, Trump?
Do you think that, if Americans can start to see through the Israel lobby, as we are, that we can also unpack regime change and forever wars? Seems to me that the latter is no more difficult than the former.
I think there's evidence that this is currently happening. Maybe not on the scale we need, but I never thought we'd have young white guys questioning JD Vance about our underwriting of Israel.
You are right about that. Can we all avoid the distraction that is coming to keep us from seeing the truth about israel and Venezuela, that is the question.
If it's not Venezuela, then it's Honduras. If not, Washington, D.C., then it's Chicago. The military tentacles are out of control in self-destructive mode.
Yes, but the largest deposits of oil lie under the ground in Venezuela. Imagine a lake 300 miles long by 25 miles wide and 29 feet deep… an oil deposit that big will satisfy many bank accounts..
Call on Pope Leo XIV to do whatever it takes to save Gaza and stop the bombing, and end the starvation. Let him go to Gaza and stand with the suffering people who are being massacred by Israel and the Western posers. He can go to Gaza right now, and insist aid be allowed in. Then on to the West Bank to end the occupation and apartheid.
Is there anything more important in today's world than this?
I am so scared for the people of Venezuela and the people in my country Nigeria. Nothing good comes from receiving "intervention" from the United States
Americans have been brainwashed. Brainwashed with the "work will set you free" ideology. The ideology of extreme individualism and any government at all, with any sort of regulations (also can be known as laws) - including now the US Constitution itself, is bad for you - and instead, deregulated, lawless billionaires, running a business, Wallstreet, and entrepreneurship are the greatest values to your life and others. Competition is better than collaboration. Any collaboration is attacked as free handouts. While huge record breaking corporate profits that are enjoyed by a relatively few, are heralded as a healthy society doing great things. War is a racket that also leads to immense profits. And genocide is just a military action of self defense! Read Orwell, he knew what he was talking about.
Why are these profits so large? Because our governments do not tax them enough on the profits thry make, and some are not taxed at all. Most nurses pay more tax per year than oil companies do ever.
Yes. That's why you're always hearing about all the anti-government, anti-tax propaganda 24/7. Simply because the uber wealthy just don't want to pay the taxes that are proportional to their enormous wealth. They always come back at people with a load of talking points - a favorite, well we pay more taxes than anyone else (true) but in proportion to the amount of wealth you possess it's not anywhere bloody near what nurses or ordinary Americans pay in sales taxes, income taxes, land taxes city fees, etc. It's all propaganda. The sad part is, ordinary Americans are burdened with ungodly amounts of taxes and fees BECAUSE the uber wealthy and the corporations they own, no longer pay the taxes that they ought to be paying into the country. They offshore billions to avoid paying taxes.
And what's worse, these same (excuse my language) motherfuckers who are always screaming anti-government, anti-taxes - then spend millions of dollars on politicians and the government so they can control the government and BECOME THE GOVERNMENT - and make LAWS that only benefit themselves and their corporations. The US government has been controlled by the Uber wealthy now for a couple of decades - and all they do is drive up the budget more, spend trillions on wars and bailing out Wallstreet and have done jackshit for the American people. It's such a fucking scam. Rant off.
Keep ranting, the truth needs to be out there to awaken those poor kids just plodding along in their life, as though on a treadmill, getting nowhere. They blindly vote the same wealthy people into power instead of getting behind independents to start a new leadership because the past and current leadership is for the wealthy only, and if the people don't change it, the wealthy sure as he'll never will. So keep ranting, Jamenta, your future and thise of your compatriots depend on it starting somewhere.
It's just nuts Davina - that the same guys screaming I hate government from the rooftops, are the first to want to get into government and screw We the People while making millions for themselves! The hypocrisy is rancid.
It sure is. Someone said many years ago, wish I could remember who, 'If you want good governance find someone who does NOT want the job.'
I've heard some say to get someone who doesn't need the money, but that hasn't worked because the bribes were too much to resist.
What amazes me is that anyone voted Drumpf back in when he had made it abundantly clear what his intentions were, and brought in all the yes-men he could find that would not try to stop him, as those that came with the job did first time round.
I'm surprised he doesn't sue his turds for being the wrong colour.
Never forget your congressmen/women are very wealthy, not always by their own wealth to start with but with ^donstions^ and bribes, which thay all seem to think is their right. A few, a very few are now saying they've refused ^donations^ but have they?
If any congress person is accepting bribes from a foreign nation, he is working as a foreign agent, and being in pokitics s/he knows that absolutely.
If the French poor had thought that, Feral, they would still be in chains. There is always a way, we just need the right person to stand up, take the reins and the followers will come along.
Oops! Sorry, I forgot that part. And it was they who opened the doors and gates of the Bastille to release the prisoners, not all of whom were poor either.
I saw a film recently that the revolution came about because royalty and the super rich courtiers had become vampires. Funny, but ridiculous.
War is the default psychology in the US. And when we rant against AI and the objectors tell us that we're naive, it's inevitable, it's woven into stuff we're going to be compelled to use, so just accept it — one gigantic reason we rant is that Palanteer fuck-faces like Alex Karp, his CTO Sankar et al. are perennially talking war --- AI war with China, supporting our warfighters, etc etc etc.
Pull your head out of your ass and unless you start shouting "I object", all you'll hear is "war war war". John McCain lives forever in the American psyche.
Slavery has returned. Americans are now, slowly beginning to wake up, and realizing they've become nothing more than wage slaves - what their lives have become.
I don’t even know what to say anymore. The US and world 🌎 is so Fucked now that the only solution is to get rid of 90 % or more of our governments, peacefully if possible and start over again. Wish this were possible.
Agree. The problem the world and the US has right now is shithole leadership, and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a relatively few - and their willingness to ignore all human rights and laws, including the US Constitution, which was written expressly to avoid tyrants trampling on the dignity and lives of ordinary Americans.
Something like 16 to 1 ratio of lobbyists to politicians in DC. And DC is now one of the wealthiest places in the US with plenty of millionaire politicians, and a billionaire POTUS. It takes billions now to realistically run to become a US president, and the US political system is run by two corrupt, propped up by the uber wealthy - political parties, that hold a stranglehold on American electoral processes, regarding who can get elected and who will not, what legislation will be passed, and which will not.
What is apparent is America has become what France was just before it had its bloody French revolution - that then led to Napoleon and years of bloody slaughter across Europe and even Russia. The future outlook for the US, and parts of the world the US still touches (Israel, Ukraine, South America anyone?) - my best guess, will probably end just as horrifically.
You are probably correct on all fronts… I would add one more item to the list of control that govern politics… and it is the physical‘Threats’ from the empire . ….. mafia style….
I understand what you're saying Indu, and I understand that the ethnicity of "white men" is full of historical evils. But I would venture to say, it isn't just "white men" who have historically done immoral things.
I believe each race and ethnicity has done good and bad. It's not all black and white. For each ethnicity, you can point out some amazing accomplishments as well as abysmal racial horrors. Much like the human psyche, ethnicity is often a mixture of good and bad.
I do not find the US Constitition, or the subsequent Amendments in the Bill of Rights evil. In fact, it may be the best document the "white man" ethnicity on American soil every produced. But that is just my old man (with poor eyesight) opinion, which is worth about a two-pence and a half these days! Be well.
Thanks jamenta. Granted that it is not only 'white men' who are lacking in morality. If not for the global south collaborater class the decolonised world wouldn't have been recolonised.
🎯 The U.S. Constitution was written ambiguously (on purpose) so as to leave enough room to interpret it in different ways (and who do you think this 'interpretation' will serve? the moneyed interests, those with power). Also, the U.S. Constitution was written to PROTECT the interests of the Capitalist class (or propertied class), and NOT for the 'protection of the common man'.
The U.S. Constitution was written in a time of 'lack of human rights', 'slave ownerships', 'might is right thinking', 'lack of voting rights', 'in the interests of the ownership class', and more. It may have been 'an achievement' during its time (1776), but is anachronistic for the present times - almost dysfunctional and non-representative of the present realities on the ground.
The U.S. Constitution is one of many 'documents/laws' that does more to hold the U.S. back than progress it forwards (and it needs to be chucked out and rewritten from scratch BY THE PEOPLE) IMHO.
"Two months ago after the so-called 'ceasefire' deal was announced the New York Times editorial board banged out a piece saying that Gaza is going to need 'deradicalization programs' in order to 'remove Hamas’s pervasive radicalizing influence over Gazan society.'"
They should make a LAW - anyone that has ever had Israeli citizenship or worked for the Israeli Govt. in any capacity should be DISALLOWED from working in ANY media organization (or social media platform).
We can cry about new means of exploiitation or invent ways to appropriate them for liberation.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller
Ursula K. Le Guin
“I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.”
Another California libertarian socialist who has provided alternatives to envision is Kim Stanley Robinson, in his trilogy Three Californias "Before Kim Stanley Robinson terraformed Mars, he wrote three science fiction novels set in Orange County, California, where he grew up. These alternate futures―one a post-apocalypse, one an if-this-goes-on future reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, and one an ecological utopia―form a whole that illuminates, enchants, and inspires--collected here as Three Californias.
What if... there was a limited nuclear war that left the United States blockaded, fragmented, the few survivors living in the ruins of a once-great nation?
What if... this goes on, and technology continues to accelerate, and power continues to be consolidated into corporate culture, a developer’s dream world gone mad: an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls, and designer drugs?
What if... a revolution happens, and the US addresses climate change in a responsible way. Is a future green Utopia all that great when you’re young and in love?"
As Fuller advised, righting reality is a losing battle, and as the inventors of Silicon Valley, who began in a model straight out of libertarians socialism, have shown with their model of disruption and replacement, we can use our energy best by inventing new futures, repurposoing the tools that have been used to enslave us to liberate us from the old matrix.
Incorrect. However, individualism taken to the extreme, leads to obscene levels of wealth inequality in a society and is reliably disastrous - historically. Libertarianism feeds into this depraved anti-government ideology.
Disagree. Libertarianism would threaten the wealth and power of the mega-rich, as it would break the fascist link between government and corporations. Libertarianism is based on the non-aggression principle which the mega-rich violate all the time through their cozy relationships with governments.
I might buy your argument if it weren't for the fact that a good deal of Libertarianism in the last couple of decades has focused primarily on attacking any kind of Government and has turned the word "Regulation" into a bad word. Which to me shows that the majority of those who espouse Libertarianism have ended up as unwitting dupes for the obscenely wealthy. And the extremist libertarians (say those who take Ayn Rand seriously) have been the most dangerous to a healthy, working free society here in the US, and have caused a great deal of damage to this once thriving nation.
Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization. If you think you can live strictly on your own, then move to the fucking North Pole, and see how long you'll last.
In Trump's first term he had John Bolton on TV pushing how much the USA would benefit from taking over Venezuela's oil. I was impressed. See for yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wifJII9W6ZI
"Drugs come into the United States from numerous nations in Latin America, and it sure is an awfully interesting coincidence that the one they’re focused on regime changing to stop the drug flow just so happens to be the socialist country with the largest proven oil reserves on the entire planet."
Surprise, surprise! Whoever would have thought the U.S. would start a war over another nation's natural resources?
Whoever, through the banking system, controls money created from nothing through interest-bearing loans, controls the world. If you want to change the world, you must put the money in the hands of those who use it to live and/or work. The rest is just talk. www.dhana.org, www.ekabank.org.
IF the USA dealt with the drug problem in their own country it would help enormously. Why are so many taking drugs? Is it because they feel so helpless?
Gabor Mate, a doctor who works with addicts in Canada, says childhood trauma is at the root of addiction.
I agree with him but the US is going down. More people feeling helpless?
Also the addiction gene is inherited.
I doubt the U.S. gene pool is so much more hapless than that of other countries, especially given the diversity of our population. The problem in the U.S. is that this nation alone, as far as I can tell, is the only one lacking BOTH the extended family and a meaningful social safety net (due to our predatory capitalist system). One or the other is necessary for children to grow up with some measure of dependable protection and, therefore, good mental health. (For many years Mexico was essentially a dictatorship and materially poor as well, but much more socially functional prior to the drug war, and in many ways even since, than the U.S. The reason? The extended family.) If we could do one single thing to bring down the rates of addiction, violence, and general dysfunction in this country, my guess is that universal healthcare would do it. More would be better, especially paid parental leave, and humanizing our school system would do wonders, but it's access to health support, and the provision of witnesses to children and their lives inherent in it, that explains the more functional populations found in the social democracies. (Israel, of course, is a glaring exception. Their social safety net is made meaningless by the sick indoctrination of its children and the litany of other crazy-making features of that society.) Of course, if we could return to the extended family that would be just as salutary, if not more. The way to do this is to encourage people to live again in multi-generational households. As challenging as this would be for a population addicted to "going it alone," it may be more in reach than ever getting healthcare out of our imperial Congress critters.
The number of people who go bankrupt every year because of medical bills:
Norway - 0
UK - 0
Israel - 0
France - 0
Spain - 0
Portugal - 0
Denmark - 0
Australia - 0
Iceland - 0
Italy - 0
Finland - 0
Ireland - 0
Germany - 0
Netherlands - 0
Sweden - 0
Japan - 0
Canada - 0
United States - 643,000
great point, the healthcare system in the US is inefficient and exploitative, probably by design. The amount of people who worry about being able to afford medical treatment in a country that spends as much as it does on healthcare, is staggering
Don't bring in Israel, they get free healthcare via American taxpayers
I'm aware. What a crock that is...
Parenting right across the demographic spectrum is a much more stressful undertaking in the United States than in the rest of the developed world. Stressed-out parents are more prone to abuse and neglect their children, who are absolutely not meant to grow up with just one or two caregivers attached to them. Many of us who had two parents in the home grew up with no attachment at all. What do people think happens when these unlucky people grow up to take the reins of power?
I don't now where you get these numbers from?
It's beginning here in Russiaphobic France.
Great article by GeoPolitQ that Diana Van Eyk pointed out on her substack this morning (or this morning for myself heh). In it, the author elucidates clearly the impact of the coming increased militarization of Europe and the soulless march toward endless war: https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/the-european-rearmament-plan-a-disaster
And anyway, it's not any single addiction gene, as suggested. Addiction genetic predisposition is polygenic.
Do you discount environmental influence on addiction?
Of course not, I'm just refuting the falsehood that there's a single addiction gene. If you will return to my comment and read it with care, you will note the important word "predisposition". In this case, a polygenic background can predispose, and environment provokes penetrance of the trait -- or not. As in all human genetics.
What defines trauma? Following that line of thinking, where does it end? Is it not traumatic leaving the womb?
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/24875-adverse-childhood-experiences-ace
Examples of adverse childhood experiences include:
Natural disasters
Violence
Abuse or assault
Neglect
Life-threatening illness
Loss of a friend or family member
Parental separation, divorce or deployment
Witnessing or being involved in a serious accident
Witnessing the death of another person
Social drivers of health may also cause childhood trauma. These are environmental factors that can lead to adverse childhood experiences with a lasting impact. These factors may include:
Housing instability or frequent moves
Feeling unsafe in your community
Lack of access to good healthcare
Food insecurity
Limited access to quality education
Financial issues
Discrimination
In short, life.
Especially life under late stage capitalism.
Agree, August.
I was sexually abused as a very young child by a non-immediate family member and the only thing I’m addicted to is nicotine.
I hope we never get to the point of saying "Child sexual abuse? That's life!"
Unfortunately Megan, it IS, since one in five US females suffer(ed) sexual abuse as minors.
My comment was a warning to not become complacent about the trauma attendant with sexual abuse of children, common though it is. The traumatization of children is not just a tragedy for them, but for their societies.
The numbers are lower for boys but still disturbingly high.
OH a smoker, me too unfortunately.
Hi Jenny
I make no apologies for smoking. I enjoy it, get a clear chest scan every year, and it doesn’t affect my breathing a bit. Might be genetic in my case. I do roll my own cause the price of them in Michigan is through the roof.
My lung scan is a bit off but got a very good Doc. I have tried so many times to not smoke but I am not stopping now. Got to die of something!
I managed to give it up just over forty years ago, wasn't easy but it was costing too much and I hated the smell on my clothes. Funny what can get you to stop.
Good job Davina 👍
I couldn’t afford to smoke if I didn’t roll my own. I’ve briefly quit a few times, had a meltdown, first thing buy a pack. Cause sometimes, GF, when you’re hangin on by your fingernails, a cigarette’s the only thing keepin ya there 😉
When I look back it was after the offspring left home ☺️ guess it was less stressful just looking after myself, so not forty years ago nearer thirty. The cost has become horrendous. I tried the roll your own thing but got more on the floor than in the paper, so was wasting more than I was saving.
But we do what we can, and what can't is no one's business but our own, there are worse things, so enjoy it.
It often us but with help, early enough, it doesn't have to become a full blown addiction.
My father was one absolute bastard, and I don't say that lightly,. He was a bully and a violent one, and an alcoholic. For some of us that becomes the one thing we never want to be. It was a clise thing when I realised I had married an alcoholic, thank fully not a violent ine or I would have walked sooner, but he stole money and often left me short on things needed for the children, and that did it for me - if he would do that to his children he wasn't worth being with them.
Some unfortunately can't fight the gene, or use the parent's alcoholism as an excuse for theirs, even if other siblings don't become one.
Maybe some get the gene and others don't, and there are environmental factors too. But I can believe in genetic predisposition, because my family of two parents, two brothers and two sisters was RIDDLED with mental illness--and not a one that ever smoked, or had drug or alcohol problems.
Of course. There would be no drug trade in Latin America worth discussing, were it not for the insatiable First World appetite for drugs.
Exactly.
(I made the same point in a comment on National Review when the US began blowing up the boats. I was not well received by the crowd there.)
Not only feel helpless, many are helpless. The USA economic and social SYSTEM itself is not something natural, but is man made, and created and currently controlled by a handful of obscenely wealthy Elites - who control USA government, control USA healthcare, control USA Wallstreet Capital wealth, etc.
Ordinary Americans have increasingly less and less control over the paths of their lives. Many can no longer afford to purchase a home for their family, or even buy a new car, or even afford to see a doctor for a checkup. They not only "feel" helpless, they are helpless. Despite the fact you got a boatload of propaganda coming out by the Elites that you can do it on your own - that your poverty is your own fault - that if only you work hard enough, educate yourself more, you too will thrive. That is the big meritocracy lie being propagated by the uber wealthy right now - that they don't have you under their thumb, when in truth, it's never been worse in US history, the level of wealth inequality is greater than the robber baron gilded age. The corruption by the wealthy of the US government is obvious for all to see. The exploitation of American workers in the US rigged market has reached a point where even the much heralded American middle class is dying before our eyes.
And homelessness is the starkest reminder.
Yes it is.
As you know Jamenta, I brought up a child in the US.
My daughter was 7yrs old when we went to the USA. At that time she was way ahead of her American friends. To be fair, she was lucky to have visited many countries before this. So she had some idea things were 'weird!'
It wasn't long before she started demanding: shoes/clothes etc to 'fit in'. Very expensive shoes which we did not pay for.
Moving to LA. Luckily there was a fantastic Elementary School in our Canyon. All fine until Middle School outside of our Canyon.
Police on the Campus. How the hell are kids supposed to feel safe! Talk about child abuse.
I no longer believe the US is a good country to raise your children. Perhaps top on my list of why, is the state of US Healthcare. I'm retired now, long past my prime. But if I were younger ... sigh, I would probably pack up my bags and get the hell out.
We had to go to US for my husbands job.............didn't matter to me because I was an artist working from home. I was able to pick up my kid/bring her home and we would have dinner together and discuss things at the table.
We did have decent healthcare in the US BUT when our daughter got into drugs there was little to no help.
We went bankrupt trying to keep her on a 'straight path.'
If you have a child in the US one had to pay money for Private psychologists.
One thing that really shocked me during a meeting with kids and parents was............how many kids knew where their parents stashed their own drugs.
Kids are smart.
That is so scary. I never even heard the word drugs when I was a minor, not even in highschool. I was eighteen before I had my first cigarette and that was just an ordinary one. The world has changed and not for the better, except for the drug lords and the silly sods who sell for them but, not for the school kids who get addicted and sell so they can buy more.
Movies don't help by not showing the truth of what these drugs do to children, not enough show that it kills the brain before it kills the body.
In reality, drug use is down among young people, as are alcohol use, sexual activity, smoking, driving, and other things. Some of this is good, of course, but the way kids have been growing up since the 1990s is truly maladaptive. The middle-class wraps its kids in bubble wrap for 18 years and makes every single significant decision for them. As a result millions of kids are on drugs for anxiety and depression and many need "adulting" classes just to function as adults. We've banned childhood adventure, and I can tell you that kids today are not only more anxious than previous generations, but infinitely less interesting. It's quite a feat to drain all the blood and vitality out of childhood but Americans (and the British) have accomplished just that. And what for? To make money off the vast market that is children and so we can live through our children by pretending we're their knights in shining armor. We don't get meaning from our jobs since corporate America decided to cut pay and benefits to the bone, so we now get all our meaning by running our kids' lives. But not to worry! We can always blame every blessed problem on iPhones and social media. Thank God for everyone's favorite scapegoat.
You left out the most critical bit--they also own the media, including the social media and other electronic gatekeepers!
Most of the uber wealthy didn't work hard, their wealth was handed to them by their uber wealthy parents.
This is becoming more true than ever, when it wasn't so much the case in the US. Income mobility is declining. There are less people born in poverty who become rich; and it is also true in the other direction, there are now less rich people who then become poor. Meritocracy is a myth - that the uber wealthy often hide behind to justify their exorbitant wealth i.e. they deserve to be as rich as they are because they or their parents merited it. It's a lie.
In fact, the uber wealthy are a drain upon society, it takes far more work to accommodate their lifestyle than their own personal labor could ever produce. And none of them would be as wealthy as they are without the ordinary working class - the essential workers that keep an economy functional.
Wealth inequality is the most egregious it has ever been in the history of the US. And many current societal problems in this country can be traced back to the obscene levels of wealth inequality.
IMO - it's more hopeless than helpless - it's an escape from the pain of living, the pain of feeling worthless and being seen as worthless in society.
It's the most self medicating society in the world. From cradle to death. Both legal and illegal. Helpless doesn't begin to describe it. The soul knows and hurts.
Hi Jenny
That’s been my argument all along. There wouldn’t be so many drugs flowing into Amerikkka if there wasn’t such a fuckin demand.
Here we prefer jail over rehab.
I wonder how many drug addicts are thrown in prison?
ALL of them, Jenny, unless they’re well-connected.
..........and all waiting for Lawyers I suspect!
Dealers are, for sure. It's a way to make some money until you get caught.
Where are the drug addicts?
On the streets and in prison!
"Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism" by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, 2020. Just a few years short of this country's 250th birthday. Something to celebrate, huh?
A healthy society is not a magnet for drug use. American society is ridden with Social Darwinist practices, the public lacks a social safety net, healthcare is obscenely expensive, it is an oligarchy only catering to the wealthy, a society stumbling from one disaster to another and never recognizing it is not a sustainable way of life but a road to perdition.
Agree. Take our healthcare away here in France, there will be a revolution.
Sadly, there's greater profit in war than in solving the drug problem.
OF course.
Yes, that is exactly right my friend. Young people coming out of university are finding ZERO jobs paying over poverty wages. Seeing the financials of the u.s. this coming financial depression will be worse than 1920s-30s. We need the Nation of Caitlin now more than ever.
Free Palestine so we can all be free.
What you need is a Revolution........stop 'pussyfooting' around and hoping a great person is going to come and save you. This true of France also.
John Carter has some very thought-provoking answers to that. But please note that the Bloomberg report on which he draws was wrong, because they couldn't do their sums.
"If No One’s Hiring White Guys, What Are They Doing With Themselves?"
https://barsoom.substack.com/p/if-no-ones-hiring-white-guys-what
I watched an American series, supposedly to help teenagers/ highschool kids survive bullying and rape by school jocks-which is pretty funny in Australia, because jocks are mens underwear. For a programme that's supposed to help it was so much about sex and drugs. If that's common behaviour in US schools it's time they shut them all down and started afresh. I had to stop watching because it was getting worse instead of better. Actually, if that's American society, America needs to shut down and start over.
The point of the War On Venezuela is to show Latin American governments what happens if they think they are in any wise sovereign. "Drugs" are a pretext. Nothing more.
Note how Trump just pardoned the pro-American presidential candidate in Honduras on trafficking charges.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/us/politics/trump-honduras-venezuela.html
It’s not about Venezuelan drugs, but about the largest deposits of oil on the planet.
"Oil" is another pretext.
It's not particularly high grade crude, and besides, it would be cheaper to buy oil thN seize it. Hell, Iraqi and Libyan production has never fully recovered.
Agreed, it’s apparently not great crude, but oil is oil and if the largest deposits of oil lie under Venezuelan oil, you can bet your bottom dollar the money hounds will be all over it.
Oh, I am sure that the neocons are whispering plunder into Trump’s ear. You may recall that this is how the occupation was sold to the clown, even though Syrian oil is at most a rounding error.
Still, the idea that Donbass or Afghanistan or whatever are treasure troves of minerals waiting to be exploited, a pipeline route or whatever is a lazy alt-media trope.
You’re probably right, but where and when there’s Money to be made, you can be sure the money hounds are following all potential scents..
If and when Money stops dictating the rules of survival, maybe the species can evolve….
You are right on that, Feral. It may be the largest reserve of oil in the world with America having only 8 years left, BUT....it is the hardest oil reserves to process into a final usable product.
Processing Venezuelan oil is expensive primarily because it consists mostly of extra-heavy crude, which is dense and viscous, requiring advanced extraction and refining techniques. Additionally, the country's aging infrastructure and the need for specialized refineries further increase production costs.
However, oil is oil and if it costs more, the cost can always be passed on t the user. It is the quantity that adds to the wealth of a country, oil-wise. Right, Trump?
Venezuela 18% and the USA just 2% and by far, the largest consumers.
Hence US "regime change" in Venezuela, Gaza's yet to be established oil and Gas. Right, Trump?
Even if the US were running out of oil, Venezuela would be delighted to sell for dollars all the oil it can pump.
As would have Iraq and Libya.
Do you think that, if Americans can start to see through the Israel lobby, as we are, that we can also unpack regime change and forever wars? Seems to me that the latter is no more difficult than the former.
"If".
I think there's evidence that this is currently happening. Maybe not on the scale we need, but I never thought we'd have young white guys questioning JD Vance about our underwriting of Israel.
The only people that matter are the rulers.
I will agree my friend with the caveat, for now. What's coming will bring on hate of israelis, 1%, and all currently sitting politicians.
If people only knew the decline in the u.s. dollar as well as the expanding debt that is unable to be funded at longer maturities.
Japan just unloaded much of their treasuries holdings to save the Yen from collapse. War is the last hope of the bankrupt, and we are bankrupt.
As long as the rulers remain united, they'll be just fine.
You are right about that. Can we all avoid the distraction that is coming to keep us from seeing the truth about israel and Venezuela, that is the question.
Landru,
Yes, “Israel & Venezuela” AND oil.
If it's not Venezuela, then it's Honduras. If not, Washington, D.C., then it's Chicago. The military tentacles are out of control in self-destructive mode.
And is there evil cabal planning involved, or is it just that absurd child Hegseth playing with his toy soldiers and posturing?
Give him a break. He was traumatized as a child.
I'm assuming you meant that sarcastically.
Yes, but the largest deposits of oil lie under the ground in Venezuela. Imagine a lake 300 miles long by 25 miles wide and 29 feet deep… an oil deposit that big will satisfy many bank accounts..
Yes, and a couple more data servers to keep the MAIniacs happy.
Joy in HK, The Pope is right now in Lebanon - it is just a hop and a step to Gaza. Do you think he will go there?
I've been asking. If you haven't signed it yet:
Call on Pope Leo XIV to do whatever it takes to save Gaza and stop the bombing, and end the starvation. Let him go to Gaza and stand with the suffering people who are being massacred by Israel and the Western posers. He can go to Gaza right now, and insist aid be allowed in. Then on to the West Bank to end the occupation and apartheid.
Is there anything more important in today's world than this?
https://chng.it/gkvBfY44rq
Please sign the petition and share widely.
I am so scared for the people of Venezuela and the people in my country Nigeria. Nothing good comes from receiving "intervention" from the United States
How can people continue to believe the lies justifying the sabre rattling in Venezuela, Iran, China, etc.? Are we really so thoroughly brainwashed?
Our side is supporting a bloody genocide, FFS. Isn't this a pretty big clue that our leaders are not the good guys?
Americans have been brainwashed. Brainwashed with the "work will set you free" ideology. The ideology of extreme individualism and any government at all, with any sort of regulations (also can be known as laws) - including now the US Constitution itself, is bad for you - and instead, deregulated, lawless billionaires, running a business, Wallstreet, and entrepreneurship are the greatest values to your life and others. Competition is better than collaboration. Any collaboration is attacked as free handouts. While huge record breaking corporate profits that are enjoyed by a relatively few, are heralded as a healthy society doing great things. War is a racket that also leads to immense profits. And genocide is just a military action of self defense! Read Orwell, he knew what he was talking about.
I've read Orwell, and I agree.
Jaments, I think you mistake America for a free country.
But RonJ - they say work will set you free here in America.
Why are these profits so large? Because our governments do not tax them enough on the profits thry make, and some are not taxed at all. Most nurses pay more tax per year than oil companies do ever.
Yes. That's why you're always hearing about all the anti-government, anti-tax propaganda 24/7. Simply because the uber wealthy just don't want to pay the taxes that are proportional to their enormous wealth. They always come back at people with a load of talking points - a favorite, well we pay more taxes than anyone else (true) but in proportion to the amount of wealth you possess it's not anywhere bloody near what nurses or ordinary Americans pay in sales taxes, income taxes, land taxes city fees, etc. It's all propaganda. The sad part is, ordinary Americans are burdened with ungodly amounts of taxes and fees BECAUSE the uber wealthy and the corporations they own, no longer pay the taxes that they ought to be paying into the country. They offshore billions to avoid paying taxes.
And what's worse, these same (excuse my language) motherfuckers who are always screaming anti-government, anti-taxes - then spend millions of dollars on politicians and the government so they can control the government and BECOME THE GOVERNMENT - and make LAWS that only benefit themselves and their corporations. The US government has been controlled by the Uber wealthy now for a couple of decades - and all they do is drive up the budget more, spend trillions on wars and bailing out Wallstreet and have done jackshit for the American people. It's such a fucking scam. Rant off.
Keep ranting, the truth needs to be out there to awaken those poor kids just plodding along in their life, as though on a treadmill, getting nowhere. They blindly vote the same wealthy people into power instead of getting behind independents to start a new leadership because the past and current leadership is for the wealthy only, and if the people don't change it, the wealthy sure as he'll never will. So keep ranting, Jamenta, your future and thise of your compatriots depend on it starting somewhere.
It's just nuts Davina - that the same guys screaming I hate government from the rooftops, are the first to want to get into government and screw We the People while making millions for themselves! The hypocrisy is rancid.
It sure is. Someone said many years ago, wish I could remember who, 'If you want good governance find someone who does NOT want the job.'
I've heard some say to get someone who doesn't need the money, but that hasn't worked because the bribes were too much to resist.
What amazes me is that anyone voted Drumpf back in when he had made it abundantly clear what his intentions were, and brought in all the yes-men he could find that would not try to stop him, as those that came with the job did first time round.
I'm surprised he doesn't sue his turds for being the wrong colour.
Never forget your congressmen/women are very wealthy, not always by their own wealth to start with but with ^donstions^ and bribes, which thay all seem to think is their right. A few, a very few are now saying they've refused ^donations^ but have they?
If any congress person is accepting bribes from a foreign nation, he is working as a foreign agent, and being in pokitics s/he knows that absolutely.
Everyone knows it's all lies, but there is nothing they can do about it.
If the French poor had thought that, Feral, they would still be in chains. There is always a way, we just need the right person to stand up, take the reins and the followers will come along.
Romantic fantasies aside, the French Revolution wasn't the poors but the middle class wanting a bigger share of power.
Oops! Sorry, I forgot that part. And it was they who opened the doors and gates of the Bastille to release the prisoners, not all of whom were poor either.
I saw a film recently that the revolution came about because royalty and the super rich courtiers had become vampires. Funny, but ridiculous.
Strawberry fields, nothing is real...
Well a cult that doesn't care what you think is running everything.
War is the default psychology in the US. And when we rant against AI and the objectors tell us that we're naive, it's inevitable, it's woven into stuff we're going to be compelled to use, so just accept it — one gigantic reason we rant is that Palanteer fuck-faces like Alex Karp, his CTO Sankar et al. are perennially talking war --- AI war with China, supporting our warfighters, etc etc etc.
Pull your head out of your ass and unless you start shouting "I object", all you'll hear is "war war war". John McCain lives forever in the American psyche.
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
~Orwell
We are all enslaved. —- by Money… and its power… which the winners of the game of Monopoly are now using to enslave everybody.
Slavery has returned. Americans are now, slowly beginning to wake up, and realizing they've become nothing more than wage slaves - what their lives have become.
The LBO artists of the 1980s used to say "debt is discipline". They were right.
If you have loans that have to be repaid, you probably aren't going to rock the boat.
Good point.
Caitlyn you are a light in the darkness. I believe Trump’s “Thanksgiving” pronouncement was produced by AI.
Happily I didn't see it.
Trump pardoned two turkeys: Ahmed al-Sharaa and Juan Orlando Hernandez.
Megan Baker, Really good comment! No doubt there will be many more pardons to come - the 'genocider' ... is waiting.
His T-Day pronouncement may as well have been "AI" because he has no "I", empathy or soul.
I don’t even know what to say anymore. The US and world 🌎 is so Fucked now that the only solution is to get rid of 90 % or more of our governments, peacefully if possible and start over again. Wish this were possible.
Nice thought, but if Money continues to be the main source of survival, regime change won’t make much difference.
Agree. The problem the world and the US has right now is shithole leadership, and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a relatively few - and their willingness to ignore all human rights and laws, including the US Constitution, which was written expressly to avoid tyrants trampling on the dignity and lives of ordinary Americans.
When you mention the U. S. The complete sentence should read ‘The Unites States of Israel. It’s their constitution that reigns, not the American one.
Something like 16 to 1 ratio of lobbyists to politicians in DC. And DC is now one of the wealthiest places in the US with plenty of millionaire politicians, and a billionaire POTUS. It takes billions now to realistically run to become a US president, and the US political system is run by two corrupt, propped up by the uber wealthy - political parties, that hold a stranglehold on American electoral processes, regarding who can get elected and who will not, what legislation will be passed, and which will not.
What is apparent is America has become what France was just before it had its bloody French revolution - that then led to Napoleon and years of bloody slaughter across Europe and even Russia. The future outlook for the US, and parts of the world the US still touches (Israel, Ukraine, South America anyone?) - my best guess, will probably end just as horrifically.
You are probably correct on all fronts… I would add one more item to the list of control that govern politics… and it is the physical‘Threats’ from the empire . ….. mafia style….
But jamenta, What good can come out of a Constitution written by white men of property, for white men of property and that property included slaves?
I understand what you're saying Indu, and I understand that the ethnicity of "white men" is full of historical evils. But I would venture to say, it isn't just "white men" who have historically done immoral things.
I believe each race and ethnicity has done good and bad. It's not all black and white. For each ethnicity, you can point out some amazing accomplishments as well as abysmal racial horrors. Much like the human psyche, ethnicity is often a mixture of good and bad.
I do not find the US Constitition, or the subsequent Amendments in the Bill of Rights evil. In fact, it may be the best document the "white man" ethnicity on American soil every produced. But that is just my old man (with poor eyesight) opinion, which is worth about a two-pence and a half these days! Be well.
Thanks jamenta. Granted that it is not only 'white men' who are lacking in morality. If not for the global south collaborater class the decolonised world wouldn't have been recolonised.
🎯 The U.S. Constitution was written ambiguously (on purpose) so as to leave enough room to interpret it in different ways (and who do you think this 'interpretation' will serve? the moneyed interests, those with power). Also, the U.S. Constitution was written to PROTECT the interests of the Capitalist class (or propertied class), and NOT for the 'protection of the common man'.
The U.S. Constitution was written in a time of 'lack of human rights', 'slave ownerships', 'might is right thinking', 'lack of voting rights', 'in the interests of the ownership class', and more. It may have been 'an achievement' during its time (1776), but is anachronistic for the present times - almost dysfunctional and non-representative of the present realities on the ground.
The U.S. Constitution is one of many 'documents/laws' that does more to hold the U.S. back than progress it forwards (and it needs to be chucked out and rewritten from scratch BY THE PEOPLE) IMHO.
Exactly
"Two months ago after the so-called 'ceasefire' deal was announced the New York Times editorial board banged out a piece saying that Gaza is going to need 'deradicalization programs' in order to 'remove Hamas’s pervasive radicalizing influence over Gazan society.'"
Where do they come up with this crap? Oh, wait, is it really any surprise https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-the-israel-lobbyists-writing-americas-news/288575/?
They should make a LAW - anyone that has ever had Israeli citizenship or worked for the Israeli Govt. in any capacity should be DISALLOWED from working in ANY media organization (or social media platform).
The CANCER of Israel/Zionism MUST be purged!
Double thumbs up on that.
Thank You Caitlin
We can cry about new means of exploiitation or invent ways to appropriate them for liberation.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller
Ursula K. Le Guin
“I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.”
Another California libertarian socialist who has provided alternatives to envision is Kim Stanley Robinson, in his trilogy Three Californias "Before Kim Stanley Robinson terraformed Mars, he wrote three science fiction novels set in Orange County, California, where he grew up. These alternate futures―one a post-apocalypse, one an if-this-goes-on future reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, and one an ecological utopia―form a whole that illuminates, enchants, and inspires--collected here as Three Californias.
What if... there was a limited nuclear war that left the United States blockaded, fragmented, the few survivors living in the ruins of a once-great nation?
What if... this goes on, and technology continues to accelerate, and power continues to be consolidated into corporate culture, a developer’s dream world gone mad: an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls, and designer drugs?
What if... a revolution happens, and the US addresses climate change in a responsible way. Is a future green Utopia all that great when you’re young and in love?"
As Fuller advised, righting reality is a losing battle, and as the inventors of Silicon Valley, who began in a model straight out of libertarians socialism, have shown with their model of disruption and replacement, we can use our energy best by inventing new futures, repurposoing the tools that have been used to enslave us to liberate us from the old matrix.
All governments are reliably disastrous.
Incorrect. However, individualism taken to the extreme, leads to obscene levels of wealth inequality in a society and is reliably disastrous - historically. Libertarianism feeds into this depraved anti-government ideology.
Disagree. Libertarianism would threaten the wealth and power of the mega-rich, as it would break the fascist link between government and corporations. Libertarianism is based on the non-aggression principle which the mega-rich violate all the time through their cozy relationships with governments.
I might buy your argument if it weren't for the fact that a good deal of Libertarianism in the last couple of decades has focused primarily on attacking any kind of Government and has turned the word "Regulation" into a bad word. Which to me shows that the majority of those who espouse Libertarianism have ended up as unwitting dupes for the obscenely wealthy. And the extremist libertarians (say those who take Ayn Rand seriously) have been the most dangerous to a healthy, working free society here in the US, and have caused a great deal of damage to this once thriving nation.
Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization. If you think you can live strictly on your own, then move to the fucking North Pole, and see how long you'll last.
Yes.. I think it’s ‘The Peter Principle’ in slow motion…
In Trump's first term he had John Bolton on TV pushing how much the USA would benefit from taking over Venezuela's oil. I was impressed. See for yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wifJII9W6ZI
"Drugs come into the United States from numerous nations in Latin America, and it sure is an awfully interesting coincidence that the one they’re focused on regime changing to stop the drug flow just so happens to be the socialist country with the largest proven oil reserves on the entire planet."
Surprise, surprise! Whoever would have thought the U.S. would start a war over another nation's natural resources?
"But clearly it’s Israeli society that needs deradicalizing".
If Israeli society were completely "deradicalized", there would be absolutely nothing left.
How true that is, because their radicalisation begins the day they are born and never stops. How can they, then, be deradicalised while still alive?
Whoever, through the banking system, controls money created from nothing through interest-bearing loans, controls the world. If you want to change the world, you must put the money in the hands of those who use it to live and/or work. The rest is just talk. www.dhana.org, www.ekabank.org.
And the way you do that is to have an open, democratic government that does not allow its Constitution to be corrupted by the obscenely wealthy.
It depends on the action of the people
Well also its leaders, who do have a major influence and direction the nation will take.
Leaders depend on who controls the money