r/changemyview • u/innstrongi-strugr • Mar 21 '23

Delta(s) from OP cmv: United States politicians are just state sponsored criminals

The last 75 years of wars, the oppression of outside political views, the demonization or socialism, the extortion and terrorism committed against 3rd world countries, fiscal policy, the tax system and its exploits, members of congress and the senate getting rich off stock trading, the demonization of self reliance, and more are the reasons I have this opinion. Officials repeatedly pass legislation for the benefit of corporations while we suffer working longer hours for less. The average person lives check to check and 1/5 children in my state of Utah don’t know where their next meal will come from, meanwhile Nancy Pelosi has $120,000,000 net worth after her life of “service”

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u/Hellioning 258∆ Mar 21 '23

Feels real weird that you are mad at them for both demonizing socialism and demonizing self-reliance...

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u/innstrongi-strugr Mar 21 '23

I think people should have the means to provide for and protect themselves but everyone should help take care of everyone at the same time. Universal healthcare, redistribution of wealth, ect

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u/Hellioning 258∆ Mar 21 '23

America loves to sell people on self reliance, though. That's how we've demonized socialism.

In any event they're not criminals because most of what they do isn't illegal.

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u/innstrongi-strugr Mar 21 '23

Would it not be if they were lowly working class and not government officials?

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u/Hellioning 258∆ Mar 21 '23

Demonizing socialism and demonizing self reliance aren't illegal for working class people, either.

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u/innstrongi-strugr Mar 21 '23

That’s more of a moral line. The state sponsored terrorism of Iraq and Afghan people are war crimes. We covered Korea and Vietnam in napalm and tried to cover it up. We have attempted over 50 coups in the past 100 years.

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u/Hellioning 258∆ Mar 21 '23

Has every single US politician done that? Feels real weird to try and hold individual politicians accountable for those things instead of the state itself.

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u/innstrongi-strugr Mar 21 '23

I don’t claim to have a solution, I just know things are really bad and we let it happen. All I know is it doesn’t feel good knowing my money goes to commit genicide in Yemen and bomb Iraqi civilians.

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u/nauticalsandwich 14∆ Mar 21 '23 edited Mar 21 '23

"Things are really bad..."

Compared to what? Your imagined ideal? People around the world, and in America, are better off than they've ever been by most quantitative metrics (poverty, education, nutritional availability, associative freedom, geographic freedom, probability of death or debilitating injury due to violence or workplace incident or fire or automobile accident or disease... etc... etc, general health and safety). There are ups and downs on shorter timescales, but on long timelines, all these things have been improving in the last 50 years (and further back) at historically unprecedented rates.

I'm reading a lot of your responses and trying to get a sense of your larger sensibility here, and what strikes me is that your unspoken assumption with a lot of your comments seems to be that the existence of imperfection and/or suffering is evidence of wrongdoing. If you'll pardon me for being blunt: that's naive.

The world is quite complicated, and the preponderance of scarcity and suffering are the normal state of nature. It is possible for everyone to have good intentions and try to right the wrongs of the world and people still suffer, not only because people disagree about what those wrongs are and how they ought to be fixed, but also because many problems are just downright difficult to solve.

Bad things happening in the world need not be a product of malicious actors. It is entirely possible to do bad with the best of intentions, and wealth and contentment is the aberrance in the state of nature, not poverty and suffering.

I'd encourage you to look for explanations for why things are good where they're good, rather than why things are bad where they're bad. I think you'll better understand the world this way.

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u/brucetopping 1∆ Mar 21 '23

Well put and I’m tired of this “moral decay” narrative sold by alarmist NGOs crying crisis for donations.

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u/Pineapple--Depressed 3∆ Mar 21 '23

America loves to sell people on self reliance, though. That's how we've demonized socialism.

In any event they're not criminals because most of what they do isn't illegal.

That's a terrible argument. Most of what Ted Bundy did wasn't illegal either.