I sure would like to live in a civilization that conforms to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s idea here. The social democracies of Europe and Scandinavia probably come as close to it as any nations on Earth.
The United States may actually rank at the very bottom of the list. We do a very poor job at pulling people out of the river, and we couldn’t care less about what got them wet in the first place.
The fellow whose remarks are
This guy has a good point, but we all need to recognize that the wheels of justice turn slowly.
It is still reasonable for Americans to believe that rule of law has been restored (at least to the degree that it existed prior to 2016), and that those guilty of crimes surrounding the Trump administration, including the kingpin himself, will be punished.
Social media was certainly a big factor in beginning and expanding the anti-science “movement,” if you will.
But the election of Donald Trump had even more impact. All at once we found ourselves in a world in which the concept of “facts” and “truth” no longer had meaning; the most powerful person on Earth simply made things up if they were to his financial or political advantage.
Did this affect his popularity? Not too much. Four years after this debacle got kicked off, 74 million people, almost 47% of the electorate, voted for a second term. And now, after more than 60 different lawsuits found no evidence of fraud, most of them still believe the Big Lie, i.e., a rigged election.
A reader sent me this gem: If a citizen does not know the language of the nation and unwilling or unable go out & vote DO THEY EVEN HAVE A RIGHT TO A SAY IN THE GOVERNING OF OUR FINE LAND.
I don’t know whether my Hispanic gardener is a citizen or not, but I tell you with great certainty that he has a far better command of the English language than you do. How ironic is that?
From this piece on the death penalty:
In this past 50 years, the US has put to death at least 1,536 individuals, 34 per cent of them Black, and 8 per cent Latino. Study after study has shown the death penalty is used against people of colour in an extraordinarily disproportionate way. Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, a veteran of death row cases who has watched six of his clients put to death, is clear no single fact more greatly impacts whether an individual prisoner will be executed, than the color of their skin.
I’ve also heard an attorney assert that another huge factor is wealth. This guy said that, in all the years he’s defended clients against the death penalty, he’s never seen a wealthy person executed.
In any case, all this is a gross violation of the 14th Amendment and its “equal protection” clause.
And even if that weren’t the case, The United States needs to join the rest of the developed world and simply conclude that the death penalty has no place in a civilized society.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed five new bills into law, each mandating advancements in product packaging, labeling, recycling and waste reduction. The Instagram presentation linked above provides more information.
These new laws are part of what is called a “circular economy,” where the waste of one process becomes the feedstock for the next. Biologists have known for decades that this is the way nature operates. The output of every single biological process becomes the “food” for something else. Waste does not accumulate, simply because there is none.
Humankind will never implement a perfectly circular economy, but we can get much closer to it than where we are now.
From this article: Trump Promotion of Michigan Rally Decried as ‘Childish, Petulant’ and ‘Downright Dangerous’
A senate panel released the most detailed report yet on this subject (394 pages).
For the life of me, I don’t understand why he’s still a free man.
If conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government doesn’t get you locked up, what does?
The point being made here isn’t entirely incorrect, but life in the United States 50 years ago actually was better than it is now in many important ways. What we didn’t have then was technology that makes our lives longer, healthier, and more convenient. But what we also didn’t have was a country:
• Whose president blatantly defied rule of law and attempted to overthrow the federal government (and remains hard at work on it).
• That has an entire political party that still supports this man, and takes extreme backward positions on things like abortion, voter suppression and human rights.
• That is ignoring the quite visible and ever-accelerating collapse of our natural environment.
• Whose population has become so degraded and undereducated that things like mass shootings, anti-mask violence, and riots are a near-daily occurrence.
There have been a few isolated places in which social progress has been made, e.g., gay rights, but in general:
Technology: mostly good. Virtually everything else: terrible.
I’m not one to make fun of the impotence of the United Nations; I wish it weren’t so. But this one does seem to be a bit outside their realm.
What does the UN’s declaring something to be a human right actually do? Let’s say it’s clean water, adequate shelter, or, more recently in the news: healthcare. How much closer does it put people who are deprived of these life-giving commodities from actualizing them?
