Cam was certainly part of it, but what’s currently making the news cycle is Beyonce and her militant half time show. Pretty much everyone agreed she sang the shit out of her songs, but the Black Panther salutes and Malcolm X references were a bit much.
It one thing to make a statement. It’s another to pay homage to groups that advocated violence to push their agenda.
Good thing they didn’t ask Phil Anselmo to do the halftime show.
Aren’t all those places socialist? Why not just vote Bernie?
Perhaps Greenie can weigh in here, but isn’t living the ex-pat lifestyle extremely difficult unless you make tons of money due to the taxation issues? All the ex-pats I know make bank and still complain about over half their income getting stolen from them.
I don’t think socialism can work in a large non-hemogenous culture that lacks a sense of social duty. I look around me at the US and just can’t see working. Plus the whole budget thing.
I think the biggest issue is that everything is dumbed down in the US. So we get dumbed down socialism and dumbed down liberterianism, etc.
Get off FB
I don’t like the ones that are the same ol’ every time.
If you’re going to show off, at least do it Steve Smith or Ocho Cinco style. Those guys could put on a show in the end zone.
I think you’re right that socialism (the lite kind, e.g. Denmark) requires broadly shared social values, so that people can agree on what are proper roles of government vs. society. Though, admittedly, Europe still has the budget problems.
The political division is real and is driven by many themes - for instance, immigration (more hispanics here now than before), millenials (no money, lots of debt, so support socialism), or lingering blame for the government for recent crises. There were probably similarly divisive periods in the past, but not within the past 15 years or the memory of people who are not middle aged. Bloomberg calls this a “historic” opportunity to run as a an independent candidate.
But look, in terms of democracy, which country is better? I wouldn’t say the US government is that great at the moment, but it’s hard to find another entity that provides a stronger representative voice to 300 million people. If you give everyone a chance to participate in democracy (not just through voting, but by being able to broadcast their opinion), then of course a lot of people will say things that are more on the level of the “average person”.
If you don’t care about that and only want the highest standard of living, then maybe there are better opportunities abroad. For the moment, though, I think most people here are focused on wealth accumulation for the time being, and it’s probably still best to be here for that.
i’m immune to this shit because i know what is going on. but there are millions and millions of dummies who share ridiculous political memes/bromides almost hourly. that is not going to stop. it’s going to intensify. and it’s not just facebook. it’s every tv and radio station.
so telling me to get off FB? yea that’s useless advice. why don’t you set up an FB account and broadcast your advice to everyone. see how that goes.
Nahh. I only use FB to stalk guys
FB or not you can never attach your head to other people’s shoulders
Why are people grilling the Fed about black unemployment in the testimony? It’s been about half of the conversation, what is their end game?
Isn’t some Russian doctor trying to change this?
(Looks like it’s not a Russian doctor - it’s an Italian doctor and a Russian patient)
Obviously the Fed not only has the means to control unemployment, but it can actually decide what racial groups get jobs.
That Fed, it sure is amazing.
Why are Americans so Angry: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35406324
Just going to leave this here…
my wife and i are thinking about moving to toronto for few years to get away from all this nonsense. 2008 and 2012 was full of gentlemen compared to this election. Now they are meaner, louder, and dumber.
Maybe Krnyc is onto something. It’s probably always been this fragmented, it’s just easier to see now.
My phone just flashed a banner from USA Today saying that the Justice Department is suing the city of Ferguson for racial discrimination (or something like that).
Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have known that, because it was difficult to get the information. (I mean, you actually had to pay .25 for a newspaper and then open it up.) Now, it flashes on the phone and it has my attention.
(And I’m not a social media junkie. This is compounded if you’re on FB, Twitter, Instagram, and all that other crap.)
I don’t think it is more divisive than it has been in the past. I think because of social media and 24 hour news cycle, the extreme views get more air time, but the US has always had a healthy amount of disdain between people of different views. I think it is healthy and is how a democracy should work.
^i think the pool of candidates rising to the top disproves your theory that we are in a healthy situation.
I had wondered this, but it seems that even people who were around in the old days are finding that politics is more fractured and antagonistic now.
I suspect this is because in the old days, legislators (and other officials) had to take stands on specific key issues, but had more of a free hand to use their judgment on others. These days, information and the diversity of media means that every decision they make is spotlighted and analyzed for coherrence to party positions and their own past. At the same time, the sound byte culture doesn’t allow for any reasons that requre logic longer than one or two sentences. So it’s really hard to say “I voted against position X that my party supports because there was all this other intolerable pork in the bill that made it ridiculous to support without major modifications” without getting slammed in the next cycle for having voted against some issue that makes you soudn like a traitor to every decent red blooded American.
This makes compromise very difficult to achieve because one side (Republicans) see compromise as treason, and the other side (Democrats) see compromise as required by “sensitivity to opposing views,” and so the center gets dragged further and further right until the idea that government should be doing anything other than beating up anyone that looks poor or foreign is considered “socialism!”