READ THE ENTIRE TOPIC BEFORE COMMENTING; I CLARIFY THINGS IN LATER POSTS.Heads up, huge wall of text incoming.
Ok, if you live in America, you know that we're in the middle of a recession and we're struggling to get back on track. What you might not know? The president DOES NOT call all the shots, people! Congress does, and they are so polarized and deadlocked that the only things that happen are things that don't matter. Republicans refuse to vote for any bill that Democrats made and vice versa, even if it's for the good of the country. Lobbyists essentially use a legal loophole to bribe Congress. Congress is doing a godawful job and they are getting paid more than us to do it. Do you see a problem with that?
Furthermore, Congressmen have no term limits. They can run for congress AS MANY TIMES AS THEY WANT. They will NEVER put in ANY bill to lower their own benefits or put term limits on themselves, they're getting rich at the expense of the nation! Politics was not meant to be a CAREER, people, it was meant to be PUBLIC SERVICE. Prettymuch all the congresspeople, and everyone running for congress, is corrupt, and why?
I'll tell you why: THEY ARE THE 1%. These days, if you want to run for government office, you can't get your name out there if you are not independently wealthy! The highest any independent candidate has ever gotten was something along the lines of 14%, and he used up prettymuch all of his fortune trying! We need to overhaul the system. We need to put term limits on congress, elect more independents to office, and eliminate the adversarial government method. Political ads full of half-truths, lies, and outright fraud occupy the TV at all hours. It's ridiculous. Nobody will actually ANSWER any of the damn questions. And yet, we can't change anything on our own because THEY are the ones with the power. We need one of two things to happen:
A) An independently wealthy, independent candidate (Note that the Tea Party is NOT independent, they're just a bunch of radical goons for the Republicans) to run for office and get in and FIX stuff. This is incredibly unlikely because without support of a huge corporate and private special interests pack, nobody can get their name out, and besides, most of the rich people out there are only concerned with ammassing even more wealth at the expense of others.
The second option, B) Get every freaking person in America to get up and do something about it, is just as unlikely, because so many people are idiots. I saw a hundred posts on Facebook saying that America's new healthcare system was so socialist they were moving to Canada. Protip: Canada has a more socialist health care system than america does. Idiots, idiots, idiots. And that girl who asked what Obama's last name was. Honestly, what the forget?
TL;DR: Most of congress needs to be removed from office and their pay slashed to pieces, excepting those who are doing a good job.
Now, more problems I've observed:
1. The "gay rights" debate:
I think the following image will sum it up nicely.
(Note that this is not the original source; I save a lot of images on my computer and that's faster than hunting everything down on Google)
And a wise man once said: "I hate the word 'family values'. It's not a phobia. You're not scared. You're just an starfish."
2. The abortion debate:
People seem to believe that human life is so damn sacred that even a collection of cells which are genetically human are oh-so-important. "Theyre not as smart as us but they still need protection!" In response to that, I can only point out that humans ourselves are but a collection of cells, and therefore any shed hair, feces, and skin that comes off amounts to murder under that logic. I know there's a good comeback to that, but I should also point out that chimps are self aware and more than capable of using tools, but the hyper-conservative-religious-types don't seem to care about them. After looking over how many religious nuts are also human-supremecy nuts (indeed, many major religions depict humans as "special" and "more important than anything else", "humans are the only things with souls", etc.), I can only conclude:
Humans are apparently the 1% of God's economy.
(Yes, I mentioned that in another thread.)
3. Organized Religion:
You knew we were getting to it. I'd like to point out how ridiculous our current organized religion is. Who is to say who's a prophet and who's not? Who is to say who goes to heaven and who goes to hell? Honestly. Wanna know something? Christmas isn't even about the birth of Jesus. If you look at the descriptions in the Bible, it evidences an Autumn time of the year, as opposed to winter. So why December 25? It's because when the church was going around "absorbing" other groups, they decided that the Winter Solstice Festival (I'm pretty sure it's the Feast of Stephen) needed to be removed from people's minds, and so they "moved" Christmas to smack on top of it, so it would "replace" the Winter Solstice festival. Therefore, Religion = Politics. Remember back in the middle ages, when the Roman Catholic church was selling people tickets to heaven? And remember just now when a suspiciously high percentage of Roman Catholic priests are suspected or confirmed child molesters?
My friend goes to a bad Catholic school. She was repeatedly physically assaulted by other students. Administration didn't do a damn thing. Not to mention she's got a "Morals" class, and the teacher is an starfish. So much for morals.
Also, all you anti-Muslim people: Not all muslims are terrorists, not all terrorists are Muslims. Every major religion has had times when the radical extremists among them went out and killed people. It's like the Crusades. A few of these people are giving an enormous number of other people a bad name. This brings me to my next point:
4. Group judgement:
A wise man once said, "Do not judge the many by the actions of the few."
Just because some members of an enormous society, institution, group, demographic, etc. are a certain way, that DOES NOT mean that ALL of them are that way. It is important, therefore, to take all such things as isolated incidents unless you can prove a much greater connection to everyday people. And even so, don't judge someone till you know who they are and what they stand for. Here's some examples of people who ruined stuff:
Westboro Baptist Church: While these people are extremist, hateful bigots, not all Baptists are. I'm pretty sure I know a few Baptists, and they're just fine.
Al Quaeda: Saw that coming, didn't you? Al Quaeda gives Muslims everywhere a bad name. I've known several Muslims, they're great people. They don't deserve to be judged for what a few jerks did. I might point out that Muhammad was a great SUPPORTER of women's rights, and that if he were alive today, he would be ashamed of Al Quaeda, the Taliban, and the other extremist groups.
Catholic Priest Molesters: While many Catholic types are way too relaxed on the topic of loveual harassment, NOT ALL OF THEM ARE.
Lord Tony: Didn't see this one coming, did you? Here's the thing: Tony was not a brony. He was a troll who called himself a brony. He simply wanted to piss off as many people as possible, and sadly he did a good job of it. Most bronies are not like Lord Tony; I'm half-brony, I have brony friends IRL, and they're all wonderful people. They are not like Lord Tony.
The 1%: This one is a bit different because in my experience and the experiences of others, an excessive number of these people are greedy bums, but again, NOT ALL OF THEM ARE. Steve Jobs was a nice guy, for example. And furthermore, he got paid in stock, so if he had steered his company into a ditch, he would NOT have gotten rich for it. Congress has issues, but the difficulty with Congress is, they're so busy trying to cover their political asses that it's impossible to figure out what any of them are actually like (in my experience).
national socialists: Believe it or not, I know ignoramuses who think all germans are national socialists and all national socialists are germans. I shouldn't need to explain how wrong that is.
There are obviously many, many more; I was simply citing the examples that came to mind.
5. love:
Let's face it, there are far too many people who think with the wrong body parts. I'd go further into detail, but I'm not quite sure what the policy on this is on the forums, so I'm gonna just stop right here. The people who act this way know who they are.
6. Media bias
We all rely on the news for our information (well, most of us do) but all the news seems to be nowadays is sound bytes and overgeneralizations as opposed to well-reasoned logic and information. Nowadays I see mostly "Scare stuff". Not all scare stuff, fortunately. However, each news station seems biased toward a particular political viewpoint, intentional or not. It's hard to be truly unbiased. This section needs to be expanded.
I'd go on, but I spent about an hour typing this up already, and I'm probably boring all of you.
So TL;DR:
Congress is doing a bad job and we need to fire them all and cut their salaries and benefits and add term limits,
I support gay rights, go read the image.
Humans are apparently the 1% of God's economy.
Don't judge the many by the actions of the few.
Think with your head, not with your richard/pusillanimous individual/whatever else you might have.
Discuss.
Poll