are american people responsible for the wars?
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are american people responsible for the wars?
- LuckyR
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
What you are pondering is: are those who are lead responsible for the leadership? Most would say no, the tail doesn’t wag the dog.
- Grecorivera5150
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
Democracy is a good idea, but far too easy to corrupt.
People are far too easy to mislead, divert, confuse and cheat.
Then, too, American culture has two or three fundamental contradictions embedded in it. Contradictory belief is crazy-making, so people ignore those issues - until they're forced to to take a life-and-death stand on one of them, and then the majority line up according to early-childhood indoctrination or Pavlovian response, rather than a considered, informed, rational decision -
which is hard enough to come by, given the special-interest-driven communications network
and the paranoid secretiveness of key government agencies -
so they support whatever party promises to keep them safe from whatever threat they've most recently been scared by.
Yes, they really ought to think more clearly.
But, no, they don't get much time to do that between crises, and they're starved for reliable information to think about.
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
Alias wrote: ↑May 18th, 2018, 12:22 am Yes and No and Yes and No.
Democracy is a good idea, but far too easy to corrupt.
People are far too easy to mislead, divert, confuse and cheat.
Then, too, American culture has two or three fundamental contradictions embedded in it. Contradictory belief is crazy-making, so people ignore those issues - until they're forced to to take a life-and-death stand on one of them, and then the majority line up according to early-childhood indoctrination or Pavlovian response, rather than a considered, informed, rational decision -
which is hard enough to come by, given the special-interest-driven communications network
and the paranoid secretiveness of key government agencies -
so they support whatever party promises to keep them safe from whatever threat they've most recently been scared by.
Yes, they really ought to think more clearly.
But, no, they don't get much time to do that between crises, and they're starved for reliable information to think about.
It is an incoherent answer, but implicitly implies that the American people are very selfish and totally submissive to a hidden dictatorship that they can not escape.
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
I can recall the fury after the U.S. embassy in Tehran was overrun w/ the demonstrators in Nov. 1979 & the staff there taken hostage. The media got folks good & riled up--& they ought to have been riled up--, & I remember some guy peddling "Bomb Iran" bumper stickers out of his car in Washington, DC's Georgetown area. Radio stations that were "all news, all talk" were spinning a parody of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann," called "Bomb Bomb Iran." (Two weeks later, more "students" in Islamabad, Pakistan, burned down the U.S. embassy there, but nobody was singing "Bomb Islamabad.")
But after the wars (e.g., 2003 Iraq invasion) go sour, the media implicate the people: "Well, this is what YOU wanted, isn't it?" They're doing the same w/ Trump now: this is what YOU ("the people") wanted; altho the media were very disingenuous about the two candidates thruout that 2016 campaign: candidates that were boosted by their respective parties on their name recognition alone & which, when it came to the crunch, were more similar (wealthy, white, & loud) than different.
In the main, ALL media deal in alarmism (gossip, intrigue, scandal), & who has a choice but to believe at least some of it?
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
- LuckyR
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
You are correct that the mainstream (lamestream) media is not to blame for the current post-factual world we live in.Grecorivera5150 wrote: ↑June 21st, 2018, 1:45 pm I disagree. Blaming the media is an excuse. There is a wealth of information available to people if they really wanted to be informed and participate in a democratic system responsibly. Being truly informed has become passe because there are so many more interesting things to focus our attention on during our free time, regardless of the socioeconomic level of each citizen. Also many shy away from reality because of the overwhelming existential crises that looms behind understanding power structures, exploitation of weaker nations and the tacit responsibility that lies on each individual who knows but does not choose to act. Facing the idea of being complicit in immoral and contradictory acts is enough to cause many to stop digging and be rationalistic in an attempt to protect their psyche and their world view. Waving the flag becomes an easy choice for most as the concepts of self preservation preservation, patriotism and prosperity ,regardless of who is paying the true cost win out over embracing ideals that are stated during the inception of nations such as the concept that all men are created equal or have human or civil rights. The media is not perfect as many major networks take advertising money from major defense contractors but for them it is the cost of doing business. The media is made of people , the same as those who consume it. Information comes from various political leanings and many programs have bias. Still, this is not the media's fault. They are only one part of a very complex set of psychosocial dynamics that bring the responsibility for war back around to the citizens of the aggressor nation.
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
People tend not to take responsibility. Not only the electors but those elected - deferring the responsibility on to each other. People blame leaders, leaders claim they act for the will of the people, whilst the media feed the dissimulation and obfuscation, building myths and creating enemies.
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
No, that us a stupid position to take. To show how dumb this is thikn about this ... if you see a homeless person and don’t help them is their plight our fault? No, it is not your fault, although you may understand that they have had a lot of bad luck to end up whee they are.
Plenty of people choose to make a stand i the US against the administration when it comes to war. The Vietnam war was an instance of the publics disapproval and to say that merely being born in teh country makes you responsible for the actoins of the government of that country is, to put it frankly, an insane position to take.
That aside as individuals we are responsible toward the fights we choose to fight. Some people may try and do “good” in one area and leave the issue of war to others - becasue they’ll always be people opposing violent conflicts for very obvious human reasons.
Is it a problem in democracy? Well, yes. There are many problems with western democracies, but over all they tend to function well enough and people are free to voice their concerns without fear of being sent to prison (as would be the case in other countries where they monitor public forums and target anyone who says something negative about the government.)
The benefit of democracy is the ability for the public to voice concerns IN PUBLIC and to directly criticise the government. Of course thee are some efforts by government officials to suppress some views and push others. Propaganda is a neccessary “evil” of a democratic country - one I am happy to accept over some overly optimistic vision of a future utopian society (but, that doesn’t mean it is a bad thing to have an ideal target either.)
To sum up ... for question one the answer is NO although this doesn’t mean teh general public should distance themselves too much from what the government does, and that they should take a moral stance (of their choice, against something they feel they can do something about directly/indirectly.) And to the second question, YES, but there has been no other successful system in place to date, and the freedom of speech is a fundamental principle of a democratic system (also, it is a little silly to point the dinger at “democracy” without understanding that there are complex machinations within a government body that dip into numerous other areas such as economic systems and rule of law; democracy touches economics, but it is not the driving force of economics becasue they a set upon different systems - capitalism and socialism being the common poles.)
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
So you think that democracy is the freedom of expression only, even if this expression does not have any effect on government decisions, especially very dangerous decisions such as declaring war on other peoples.Burning ghost wrote: ↑June 22nd, 2018, 4:21 am
Is it a problem in democracy? Well, yes. There are many problems with western democracies, but over all they tend to function well enough and people are free to voice their concerns without fear of being sent to prison (as would be the case in other countries where they monitor public forums and target anyone who says something negative about the government.)
Therefore, you do not consider that democracy is the rule of the people for themselves, as is known in the science of political history since ancient Greek cities?
- Burning ghost
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
This is a growing trend on these forums it seems. Learn to read what is WRITTEN not which you wish to attack maybe?
Do think modern democracy is comparable to “democracy” in ancient Greece? What is more, do you think all self declared “democracies” are all equally democratic and a true representative of the people?
Quite clearly (or maybe not for you?) there is no “pure democracy” becasue people ae not robots. Democracy is the loose idea of each person getting to voice their opinion and ha e their say via a vote. Obviously there are many things that people do not agree on so “freedom” is compromised by accepting the will of others in certain areas of disagreement.
I think Orwell pointed out these points clerly enough in 1984. “WAR IS PEACE” and “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY” frame the poles of the political landscape well enough right?
If you can present an argument to say that every citizen of any given country (that claims to be “democratic”) is fully to blame for the actions of every person in that country then I aleady have a quite obvious counter argument ...
If someone commits a hideous murder and murder is punishable by death (as it is in some “democratic” countries) then all people in that country should be put to death. Or to extend further we can just blame humanity ir eve life itself and annihilate all life on Earth.
Of course, I am being pruposefully OTT. What we’re really asking here is not whether the citizens are responsible for the actions of the government, but how close they are to understanding the repercussions of their everyday actions as responsible people, responsible to many more micro problems such as providing food for their family, looking after friends in need and paying bills. Some people may neglect the wordl picture out of immediate necessity and/or a myopic world view. What is more, if the government encourages propaganda to bemuse and confound the public are they directly at failt for this? It’s a tricky situation for sure.
Maybe you’d be better off outlining what particular “democracy” you are referring to, and/or give a general definition of “democracy” rather than create strawman arguments. Who was who said we should make an “ironman” rather than a “strawman”? Hitchen’s?
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Re: are american people responsible for the wars?
This example is not even close to the subject of discussion.Burning ghost wrote: ↑June 22nd, 2018, 12:51 pm If someone commits a hideous murder and murder is punishable by death (as it is in some “democratic” countries) then all people in that country should be put to death. Or to extend further we can just blame humanity ir eve life itself and annihilate all life on Earth.
The murderer did not have a mandate from the community to commit the murder. I am talking about the democracy in which the people give a mandate to a person to take all decisions in their name. Democracy, if not direct, is parliamentary. If the president does not represent the people, then democracy has lost its intrinsic value. If democracy is prosperity, the people of the Arabian Gulf live in prosperity. Without need for elections.
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