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Disagreeing with U.S. politics.
rafael melendez wrote:
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Daring to disagree is a vital part of a healthy society, analogous to allowing our human immune system to strengthen by learning from exposure to foreign invaders for, in the same manner in which the immune system learns from these interventions, so does our society from disagreements. Hence, it fundamentally helps maintain the integrity of its fabric by guaranteeing accountability and understanding and clearing of its complexity to realize better solutions to problems. Silence this tool and opportunity to invite concealment in a free society becomes inevitable and with it, the establishment of systems of inequity, partiality and general contempt. The level of lack of disagreement is a telltale of things to come and proportional to the disintegration of this same fabric and the weaving of another, cleverly harmonized for public acceptance.
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...continued in rafael melendez's three bottom-most comments below.
Barry Palmer 50+
I do not see anything to debate in your 11 points, with the possible exception of point 10, which is factual.
It seems to me that we all understand that the USA is democratic in name only and that our elections have become a sham.
Admittedly, the elections could become meaningful if the electorate would wake up, get involved, and look for information and news somewhere other than TV. And if good people would run for office. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.
Have I missed something?
Debra Smith 200+
If I work with the analogy, then, this must be like an allergy where benign substances evoke huge immune responses. I would only like to see the USA healthy. I am sorry if I give you a runny nose BUT I think somebody has to say -HEY you guys- you are asleep at the wheel - wake up!
If I give you a runny nose and you get better you will forget me anyway.
Mark Meijer 100+
Isn't it an interesting tendency for people to get angry at a proper immune response, which is actually a sign of good health, as well as a sign that some issue demands attention.
Here's an interesting passage:
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Now the role of depression in the individual is understood to be to force change that is painful or expensive in the short term but much needed in the long term. Reading up on the truly insane numbers of people on anti-depressants and other psychoactive pharmaceuticals in our society, I cannot help but wonder whether this “unhappiness forces change” principles stops at the individual. Could it be that we’re prescribing anti-depressants to so many people that we are now below the threshold of relatively smart, relatively resourceful but unhappy people needed to bring change?
My sense is that this is a huge story. The story of a civilization destroying its capability to fix itself by making everyone artificially happy. This may not be our field per se, but I feel this is at least as big a story as many of the issues that this community is working on. I think in future we will see a scientific field called “pharmacological political science”. I have a feeling that people of the future cannot really understand our time without it.
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Shamelessly excerpted from this article:
http://rop.gonggri.jp/?p=438
Debra Smith 200+
I pass along a song from our beautiful Helena who passed it to me:
http://youtu.be/vuSig9l3Z4U
Mark Meijer 100+
Debra Smith 200+
Mark Meijer 100+
Oh well. It gets worse, try telling the truth to self-proclaimed truth talkers ;)... One doesn't make many friends that way. Of course when you think about it, the more you see yourself as playing the role of truth talker, and see at the same time that proclaiming truth always involves burning heretics, the more obvious it becomes that such roles are self-defeating. You say: "They will think it was all their own idea if we do get them to wake up". But of course you think it was your own idea too ;). Who woke you up? Woke up to what? Isn't there always more to wake up to? Isn't less more? Can anyone really wake up anyone else? Whose idea is it ever? How can you tell anyone the truth without burning them? Can truth even be spoken? Is your head spinning yet? :P
Cheers
Debra Smith 200+
Mark Meijer 100+
Now I'm not proclaiming that as truth :P... Whether or not it's true is something one can only find out through ones own experience... I can only point at your experience of a world of hurt and how that woke you up, and suggest that you acknowledge it as a case in point.
*rubs chin*
In another conversation a while ago, someone asked something like this: If you could write a letter about the lessons you have learned in life, and send it back in history to your past self, what hardships would you tell your past self to avoid? But of course, that question hinges on the assumption that a simple letter could replace those experiences and still cause you to learn the same lessons. In your own experience, is that true?
Anyway, one thing your experience clearly counts for, is for having learned that trying to have your experience count for others, can get you swatted for your trouble :).
Bedtime for me now...
Best regards
Debra Smith 200+
Robert Winner 50+
The elections in the US have become a match between the best spin doctors. Very seldom do the claims added up to the facts. The sad part is that because the government classes in high school only concentrated on dates ... and in my opinion was very boring .... when the potential was there to make it a great class that prepared us for the future. Instead elections are decided on the "big lie and the amount of mud you can make stick".
As a result we are taught politics at the knee of our parents who are most likey hard liners on one side or the other. That leads to the comment above "informed debates".
It is a fact that people are leaving the US Democratic and Republican Parties and aligning as Independents who refuse to be sheeple who vote straight party lines and tickets. When elections are won or lost by a mere 5% of the popular vote the 15% that are now Independents become a valuable target population.
A better understanding of the duties and limitations of the office would help in this effort. A understanding of the Constitution would help in a "informed" debate and smarter vote.
I wrote down all the promises from the last election and made a report card. I hear the same promises again in this campaign. Fool me once shame on you ... fool me twice shame on me.
Yep I love informed debates ... but that education starts with early involvement. It is not only your right to question your elected officials ... it is your duty.
All the best. Bob.
george lockwood 20+
rafael melendez
Kevin Karam
rafael melendez
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Mark Meijer 100+
Fritzie Reisner 100+
People are much more likely, typically, to criticize those they did not vote for, or the party they don't support, than the one they did. As policy decisions are the result of negotiation among elected officials from different parties, this automatically provides opportunity to criticize those they didn't vote for for being foolish or corrupt or of weak moral stature. It also provides opportunity to criticize those they did vote for for compromising with members of the other party.
Then there is the matter that sometimes people are not thrilled with anyone who wants to run for office and therefore vote for the better of two evils or for the less objectionable.. This situation provides lots of opportunity for lament.
Capable people often choose not to run for office because they don't think they can accomplish what they would like to, given the positions of those they would need to compromise with. Others don't run for office because they would not welcome the invasion of privacy this would inevitably entail here.
I am not a careful follower of politics myself, so anyone who wants to jump in with further clarification, feel free.
Mark Meijer 100+
Btw. I would tend to agree that those who are likely most capable of serving as an actual representative of the people, are those who don't want it.
rafael melendez
rafael melendez
Fritzie Reisner 100+
edward long 100+
You have posted this as a debate. I like civilized, moderated debate. Are the opposing sides of this debate the supporters of the government of the the United States as it exists now on one side, and supporters of Mr. Melendez' manifesto on the other? Thank you!
Mark Meijer 100+
And actually, I don't think one must be opposed to anything in order to contribute something of value to a debate. Quite the contrary, I think opinions tend to get in the way of the naked truth.
edward long 100+
Mark Meijer 100+
edward long 100+
David Hamilton 50+
They tricked us, as they have tricked almost all of you, into advertising driven entertainment, and information content. In doing so, they have set up the system in such a way, that no one who disagrees with big business, or any advertising agency... will ever be allowed to broadcast directly to the citizens.
Podcasting helps. Forum posting helps, sites like Ted. Those are the tools for educated people to fight back with now. There is no way to work within the system and make a coherent political point, you won't generate advertising revenue.
We need to start paying for news, and journalism.
My solution, a worldwide HBO of news.
Kevin Karam
David Hamilton 50+
Most importantly though, even major newspapers are in the pockets of major corporations with heavy influence on US policy. No one will ever reccomend anything that involves locallization, customization, and personallization, all of which are fundaments of a healthy capitalist economy in the traditional sense of the word.
rafael melendez
1. The acceptance of the 9/11 commission report that led to an unjust war, the creation of Homeland Security and the Patriot act even though thousands of licensed architects, engineers, metallurgists, chemists, physicists, demolition experts, fire protection experts and others have completely disproven it using sound scientific methods.
2. The acceptance of Congress to allow unabated executive power to order military intervention on foreign lands, target individuals for killing including American citizens and extend the Patriot Act
3. The acceptance of Congress to enact the Ex-Patriot Act in order to control the capital of citizens
4. The acceptance of the unabated revolving door between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Wall St.
rafael melendez
6. The acceptance of the blatant major media censorship of dissenting voices within the political arena wishing to reestablish the paradigm of citizen liberty set forth by the founders of the nation—a lasting carved symbol of the entrapping character of collusion with financial institutions and their total control of the nation’s system of credit. In JFK’s 1961 speech titled “Media and Secret Societies”, he reminds us that “…no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.” Sadly, this is no longer the case. When, on Sept 11th, George Bush was informed of the attack on the WTC and yet, he remained inside the school for precious minutes while the country was under attack, minutes could have been the difference between losing a country to a nuclear attack or not. Later on that day and for the upcoming days, the media, our trusted pavement-pounding boots on the ground, failed us over and over allowing cover up after cover up to continue its course. All the President’s Men v 2.0 was never realized and the nation has continued to pay a price for it.
rafael melendez
8. The acceptance that it has taken decades to finally observe the House of Representatives vote to audit the cartel of private financial institutions known as the Federal Reserve but, yet, it now remains stifled in the Senate because its partisan majority leader refuses to bring it to a vote even though the bill passed by a 75% margin in the House.
9. The acceptance of politically correct as just correct.
10. The acceptance that any man or woman born in this country and reaching an age of 18 is allowed to cast a vote regardless of his awareness of the duty of citizenship, particularly his civic duty to learn and understand the Constitution of the United States, the rules of the nation to which all legislators and public defenders swear to defend and protect and under which we all live.
11. And finally, the acceptance that being a great consumer and a great sports and music fan sadly defines, in very large measure, what it is to be a great [sheepish] American.
edward long 100+
1) Validated the bogus 9/11 Commission Report even though it was scientifically disproven by a group of experts.
2) Allows President to use military as global assassins, even killing American citizens.
3) Allows Ex-Patriot Act to control people's capital.
4) Allows S.E.C. and Wall Street to freely exchange information.
5) Allows those to blame for real estate bubble debacle to go unpunished.
6) Allows media to censor dissenting opinion.
7) Allows disintegration of constitutional checks and balances.
8) Resisting audit of Federal Reserve system.
9) Accepts Political Correctness in place of actual correctness.
10) Allows uninformed citizens to vote.
11) Defines greatness by accomplishment in sports, entertainment and/or personal wealth.
Please advise, Mr. Melendez. Thank you!
pat gilbert 50+
2) Yup
3) Don't know
4) Don't know but that would be epitome of cronyism make that incestuous
5) Do you mean Greenspan, Barney, and Chris?
6) The media is liberal and don't realize that they are censoring. Sort of like you have to know that you don't know or is it you have to be aware of being aware?
7) yup but that his been going on so long that it isn't newsworthy.
8) yup except that the amendment that creating this organization is dubious as well but an audit would certainly be nice as I have found that is where the real transgressions are.
9) Yup aka group think
10) Hell yup
11) Yup
Oh were you talking to me?
rafael melendez
edward long 100+
rafael melendez
edward long 100+
You have the makings of a series of debates in this one post. Nothing helpful can come from such a shotgun approach. May I suggest you post each of your eleven gripes as individual, sequential debates? Thanks for expressing your thoughts on America's situation. I hope we all have an eye on helping to improve her.
pat gilbert 50+
That is right blame the fox for eating the chickens. What profound thinking.
Spare me the Glass Speigal trope it didn't make any difference.
Like I said Barney Chris and my fellow Radian (in name only) Greenspan, Cra, Clinton are to blame. Any words to the otherwise are ignorant.
rafael melendez
pat gilbert 50+
rafael melendez
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth: http://www.ae911truth.org/
Pilots for 9/11 truth: http://pilotsfor911truth.org/
State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD): http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17922