this paragraph in particular illustrates how US is truly in an “emperor has no clothes” point in history

  • krolden
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    22 years ago

    Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d’état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.

    pure insanity

  • @pingveno
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    -62 years ago

    Uh… a lot of this paragraph is objectively untrue.

    • No high speed trains: We’re behind here, but there’s the Acela and California’s new line. This is less a raw funding issue than an issue with how the US builds its lines and cultural attitudes.
    • No universal health care: Very true, and very problematic.
    • No viable Covid relief program: COVID is slowly fizzling out into an endemic mode in the US. People just aren’t dying much from COVID anymore if they’re vaccinated. Compare that to China where they have to shut down large swaths of China because their vaccines are crap.
    • No infrastructure programs: This is not even wrong. Money from a large bipartisan package is being doled out currently. The larger issue is that the infrastructure we do have is built in a way where we have large amounts of expensive infrastructure supporting inefficient building patterns. We can never have enough money for infrastructure built in this way.
    • No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student: Wrong, much of the student debt does get forgiven through one program or another. As for a blanket forgiveness of debt, that would be a massive giveaway to the people with the largest amount of debt.
    • No addressing income inequality: This has been a source of constant discussion for decades. How do we keep a dynamic economy and help people with lesser means?
    • Food insecurity: There are many, many programs to address food insecurity. School lunches have been the most effective. There’s also SNAP, TANF, WIC, food banks, local programs, and the child tax credit. They’re not enough and Republicans love attaching bullshit requirements, but it’s ridiculous to say that there is no program.
    • No rational gun control: I’ve got to agree here. Although it is more inconsistent than an outside observer would think. Up until recently, New York wouldn’t let you conceal carry except under some ridiculously limited circumstances by approval only. Compare that to a more loosely controlled state where they will basically let anyone be toting around ridiculous levels of firepower.
    • Drugs: The US has a drug problem, but there are tens of thousands of treatment centers and initiatives to better work with addicts. “No help”? Yeah, no.
    • It looks like wages are hitting $15 an hour anyway. And many states had a much higher minimum wage.
    • No respite from $6 gas prices: How does this have anything to do with the armed forces?
    • @OsrsNeedsF2P
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      82 years ago

      “A lot of the paragraph is untrue”

      Proceeds to explain how it’s mostly true

      There’s a lot of dumb, obviously anti-anything-that-the-US-touched takes people have on Lemmy, but this wasn’t really that

      • @pingveno
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        -42 years ago

        Nope, the article spoke in absolutes about a nation in shambles. I gave an accurate picture, with problems just like any country has.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OPM
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          42 years ago

          The problems that US has are clearly not present in plenty of other countries. It’s a unique kind of a shithole.

      • @pingveno
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        -6
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        I said a lot of it is untrue and to varying degrees, not that it’s 100% lies. I tried to acknowledge the complexities of reality, whereas the article was painting a false picture of a nation in shambles. I am like this because I would rather live in reality than a crazed fantasy world.

    • krolden
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      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I was going to quote each point you made and write a response but half way through I gave up because of how pointless it would be.