- Joined
- Nov 3, 2010
- Messages
- 12,510
- Reaction score
- 12,605
- Location
- New York City
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Socialist
There are people who believe, as I do, that the country should strive as much as possible to not be in debt and that part of the road to this goal is to have rational tax program that while being progressive, demands contributions by all.
There are those who believe that the size of the debt makes no difference and that the need to pay taxes is the responsibility of someone else.
People in the former group take pride in making their own way, paying for their own living and not being a burden on others.
People in the later group demand as a birth right the standard of living that they envy enough to want, but not enough to earn.
So long as this delusion persists about a substantial class of people who refuse to work, and who mooch off the efforts of others, then we will never have real political progress. There is no fact in this assertion. There are not two kinds of people, hardworking and lazy. There's really only the hardworking kind. The latter kind is a fictional construct created to justify blaming poor people for being poor, so as to allow a person to rationalize not helping them. So long as we allow the one of the main political mantras in this country to be that the poor deserve to be poor because they are of low moral fiber and will not take the same opportunities that we take, we cannot make progress. So long as we make decisions based on fantasy, rather than reality, we will never make significant enough to change to bring people up out of poverty, expand the middle class in this country, and build a strong economic force that can keep the United States on top for the next several centuries.
As to a civil war? I don't know. I can think of three situations where one might happen.
All the bigots, crazies, and Tea Party types running around keep threatening to rise up in a revolt, but they would surely lose. Their war would be with the entire structure of the American government, and basically to secure lots of freedoms for themselves and to destroy them for anyone else. It's not righteous and they would be completely alone in it.
Keep kicking the poor so much and they might rise up, and they would have a legit cause that a lot of others might take up. Nothing like desperate times to make people take desperate measures. I don't know if they would be alone in their actions. A lot of people feel that great injustice is being done to the poor of this country, being kept off the social ladder, with no means to advance. But I don't know if they feel that way enough to take up arms when they are not affected. It could go either way.
The increased militarization and "security" of our country might continue and lead to real fascist policies, which could lead to a revolution against the government. That one would be a lot trickier to win, since it's the scenario where there would be the greatest divide between government and people. The former has far more resources. That's the revolution that the gun folks want to fight, but it's the least likely to happen, and also probably the hardest to win, since we would be that much further from a free society by then. Rather than fight it, I'd rather stop it from coming in the first place. I don't see how any political ideology can include more surveillance on people, searching people and invading their privacy. The government should not be in the business of spying on people, not with cameras, not tapping our phones, not reading our e-mails, not scanning our bodies at the airport, nor stopping and hassling us on the street without cause.
Either way, change will come slowly, and slow change is a pretty solid deterrent against drastic actions. I don't think any kind of revolt or civil war is likely to happen.