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enough becomes enough when the people sworn to protect the people and their government are asked to turn against the people by the government.

for example, in 1970 when members of the Ohio State National Guard were asked to fire upon students at Kent State University ... that was enough

in the 1960s, when images of the Civil Rights demonstrators in the south being attacked by dogs and fire hoses were broadcast into the homes of the north ... that was enough

what scares me about the here and now is that with all the shit we've seen, we have yet to reach "enough"

I don't know...I give people more credit than that. We are not our media, and it scares me that thats how other countries see us sometimes. Honestly, how many people have any of you met who actually give a rat's ass about Paris Hilton? In comparison to those who do, I mean. You get your wannabes, but I don't think tv represents actual people's thoughts, though they may watch it. However, I do think that the media, and especially tv news, have been very lax in reporting accurately and asking the questions that need to be asked. there's been a lot of commentary on this. Even in the media there's that culture of fear I was talking about...fear that they'll lose their privilages to get information on the white house. So they comply rather than report, they don't ask everything they should be and do some proper research. Those that don't comply are simply ignored during Q&A sessions. Ever since the news has becom a money making enterprise, it has meant that some of it's integrity has been sacrificed. I am not of the opinion that the two are mutually exclusive all the time, but in this case I think that it is very true. If you're cozy cozy with certain organizations, you don't want to get in their bad graces...you don't take the same risks that you would if you didn't have to worry about ratings and profits. I think the print news is slightly better, but people don't read newspapers like they used to and the papers are struggling with the rise of the net.

So without reliable reporting, and with active dilusion of it....it's very hard to get the imediate truth. I think that's one of the reasons that this realization has been so slow in coming to many people.

Because we're competent with soap, toothpaste, and deodorant?

Seriously, though, I think a big problem here is that there's a disconnect between a policy and the results. When you have a law like 'black people are property', it's really easy to point to the law and say 'that law sucks.' But when you have a law which makes CEOs less accountable to corporate oversight and encourages higher CEO at the expense of worker pay, well, I'm not a CEO and I bet you're not a CEO, and neither of us is sitting around reading up on laws which have nothing to do with our lives... until 20 years down the line we're wondering why wages are stagnant while CEO pay continues to rise and dammit I'm going to have to get a second job and I guess I'll just never see my kids again.

The 'War on Terror' has caused significant economic hardship for people, but it's not *visible* to most of us. Higher taxes and stupid gov't spending make life suck. At my last job I made barely more than minimum wage (under 20k a year,) and almost 25% of my income went to taxes. But there isn't a little itemized line on my taxes which says "10% of your money: Halliburton."

I mostly support what naked elf just said, although I think I would say that higher taxes aren't necessarily the problem so much as higher taxes for the poor and tax breaks for the rich...it's the imblance and misapropriation of those taxes that's the problem. Though I definately second the economic hardship bit, having had to deal with it. It's better than it was, but two or three years ago....damn.

Laemkral wrote:The problem is, when does enough become enough?

Personally, I believe that when enough is enough, everyone will know. Yes everyone's very pissed off, but I personally don't think we're at a stage when a rebellion would work. I mean people are pissed off, but if you were to tell them now "Right, go grab the shotgun, it's time to overthrow the government", very few people (in the scheme of things) would actually do it. I just believe that when America is ready for a rebellion, it'll happen pretty much spontaneously. Its a matter of "it's ready when it's ready"

In my opinion, revolutions usually come too late. Not that there aren't people who figure things out in time and start rebelling, but by the time enough of people change their minds/get off their asses to form a critical mass that can cause a change, it's usually too late. Average men will only move when things are desperate and when opression and poverty starts barging into his own bedroom, which are actually indications that that things are very, very bad.
Think about the most obvious example, when did the anti-Vietnam protests start? When did they became serious, and when did the public state of mind reach the point where government figured out that people don't support that project any more? How long was that after USA installed their troups in Vietnam? Years and years.

Well yeah they come too late, but still thats when people are finally willing to get off their fat asses. You can try to start a rebellion earlier, it just won't happen is all I'm saying.

I disagree, because when the country is ready for a rebellion may never occur even though an overthrow of the government may be called for. Individuals, a small minority of the population at best, may recognize it, but the complacency pushed upon us by corporate media control will oppress us past the crucial point of no return. A line in the sand exists, but most people don't even realize that. They think only that while the government may be screwed up that in the grand scheme it can do no wrong.

The whole point of this societal control is to prevent us from ever realizing that we need to do something about our situation, and you'll never get into a position of power to change things by saying the whole thing is broken. Right back to 1984, the time for a revolution had passed. The proles should have risen up and gone "No more, we won't be taking it any longer" but they didn't because they were kept uneducated and distracted.

Similar things are happening today where religion is passed off as a matter of fact rather than faith, science downplayed, and reason ignored. Where tolerance is earmarked as a dirty thing to possess, and mistrust and fear of others is the soup de jour. We're being driven down a road that in my mind within a few generations leads to the United States ceasing to exist as it once did and being replaced by a much worse situation. A fracturing of the nation, political upheaval, or the entire system being permanently damaged.

I don't want to sound all doomsdayish, but it's a very possible outcome. The planet is being raped, and between oil and water, possibly in some of our lifetimes you will see grander scale wars for survival. No one is willing to make the concessions necessary for proper conservation because despite trends towards fuel efficiency, energy saving, and alternative fuels, people still want giant houses with big grassy lawns that get watered every day and require too much energy to light and heat/cool. There's too many people and not enough to go around.

Of course, all that just raises too many other problems and ethical dilemnas I don't want to get into. It's just some days I feel like the world can't be saved, some days it can, and some days it can be saved but only if we're willing to sacrifice essentials like liberty and freedom. I hope to God it's the middle choice.

Laem's right. For instance, from the standing point of an average man, Serbian revolution was a great, spontanious thing that was started only by government's disobey of people's will, but only much later we found out how well-organized, orchestrated action is was, a project that a lot of money was funded into (mostly foreign money) and that oposition used techniques of mass control and mass media, not so different from the ones government used.
Even if nation knew that enough was enough, that doesn't have to mean much. As soon as 1993, all faults of Milosevic's government were obvious; 1995 or 1996 was the year when people massively turned against him because people blamed him for failing to find solution for Serbian minority in Croatia, which resulted in mass force exiless of Sebs. We literally saw that as Milosevic selling out Serbs outside of Serbia, and I can safely say that nation was dead against him at that point. But he mastered forging elections, manipulating information, and in general had army and police force completely under his control.
All mass protest, no matter how massive, failed until 2000 when the organization I mentioned was put to work, and it included not only means of propaganda, plans and tactics, but also secret negotiating with police, army and other institutions. Looking back at it, I think that if we were to rely on spontanious arise of the masses, there would never be any revolution.

One of the problems is that the current population is conditioned such that the best solutions to most of our problems have been made unthinkable.

One party's an awkward coalition of religious socialists and small-government federalists and the other's got social libertarians stuck with veritable Marxists. Dubya's approval rating is in the hole, and the in-duh-viduals in Congress are running at about half of that.
The obvious solution would be to give third and fourth parties some consideration, but thanks to "campaign finance reform", the two-headed Incumbent Party has itself nicely entrenched for the most part, leaving a rational person with only one option: pick a party and hope feebly that they'll pay attention to you instead of assume that they have your permission to keep on doing whatever they feel like doing.
A solution to this could include revising the election process, so that more money could potentially be funneled into minor parties, and making all the ballots of the write-in type, so at the very least, people would have to know their candidate's name instead of one letter of the alphabet.
But that won't happen because first the Incumbents would never let it fly, and second nobody would be able to get past OMG EVUL KORPRATIONS BOUGHT TEH LECTION!!!

Then there's the whole environment thing. The fact is that wealthy, technologically advanced nations are the ones that can afford to give the most consideration to clean air, water, and so forth. Despite how much people perceive it as a necessity, it is in fact a luxury as far as its economic function. So, what do we do?
1. Pick the wealthiest and most advanced nations and whine about how they're not doing enough, according to some arbitrary standard whose practicality may be questioned endlessly.
2. Set up shop in the poorest and least advanced nations and take advantage of whatever they can offer while building up the educational and industrial infrastructure to make them even more useful, and as a side effect wealthy, advanced, and capable of giving consideration to the environment.
All things considered, which path would be the most effective?

As for terrorism, there's no way to completely stop it, but there is a way to maintain security without sacrificing liberty. However it demands the vigilance of individuals, and the next generation would have to be raised with the attitude that the government can't be expected to handle everything. Something the public school system is probably inherently incapable of teaching.

why americans aren't rebeling n stuff...

http://forums.comicgenesis.com/viewtopic.php?t=81248

There's a difficulty in revolution that the cost/benefits to the average person discourage revolution and encourage complacency. I mean, I can sit here and whine that losing 25% of my income to taxes, watching acquaintances come back injured from Iraq, etc. etc. sucks, but in the end, I'd rather deal with all of that than be dead.

And it seems to me that for most folks, especially folks above the age of college students, simply providing for themselves and their families is first priority. (college students are often unmarried/have no kids and depend on others for their food.) You really can't take care of your kids if you're dead.

NakedElf wrote:You really can't take care of your kids if you're dead.

The real question is are you willing to fight, and even die, to secure a better future for your children? Whether the fight is through politics by lobbying for legislation that WORKS and makes SENSE, working through advocacy groups to spread awareness, or taking up arms against an oppressive government is semantics. Providing for your family is one thing, but sometimes you have to set things right or there won't be a future worth having.

Maybe I'm different. Maybe I'm more willing than most to risk everything in the pursuit of a more idealistic future, even if it should cost me my life, but if no one is dreaming of this better world and trying to do something about it....it'll never happen.

A revolution isn't always violent, it can happen peacefully. Remember that, because that's the best way to change the world.

Oh God Laemkral is about to break into song..

If my kids end up homeless because there's no one to take care of them, I don't think they're going to give a shit about whether or not my death made life better for someone else.

God has smiled upon you this day
The fate of a nation in your hand
And blessed be children
Who fight with all our bravery
Till only the righteous stand!

-South Park, La Resistance Medley.

I dunno, I think if I heard that my dad died so that even though I'm fucked, 100 other kids are better off, I'd be happy with it. If he got himself killed because he was mugging someone, or he got killed because he was being a freedom fighter, its 2 completely different things.

NakedElf wrote:If my kids end up homeless because there's no one to take care of them, I don't think they're going to give a shit about whether or not my death made life better for someone else.

It's not the matter of making life better "for someone else", it's a matter of making it better for the very same kids you're talking about. What if your country gets into war and your kid gets mobilized and send away there? (Granted, that's far fetched in case of USA, but so it the idea that you would die while rising a revolution in USA.)
That kind of thinking is similar to more earthly example: you watch other workers being laid off, and don't react to that because you fear that you'd be laid off and then you wouldn't have money to provide to your kids any more. But eventually, you get laid off anyway but by then it's already too late to do anything about it.
You can say that it's a matter of calculated risk. Whether it's worth it. If you have a government that is opressive and that would kill you, then you don't rebel because of higher gas prices. But such government always gives you more serious reasons to rebel, like starting wars and sending your children to said wars. But if you have a non-opressive government and you don't rebel because of gas prices, that's nothing about your personal safety, that's simply oportunism.

Beh. I wasted ten years of my life under a tyranic government, most of that time I was a grammar-school kid and those who were old enough to do something, were either too apathetic or blinded by propaganda. I'm not exactly thankful for that, I believe that if they were really concerned for well-being of my generation, they would've done back then what my generation did in 2000.

The situation in USA as I see it (and don't hold me for a word because I haven't been in USA and I might be getting it all wrong) is that it's slowly sliding away and away from democracy. The process is so slow that to an average person, nothing changes until you take a look back and see what things were like ten years ago. But that's also why there won't be a breaking moment when people will say "this isn't a democracy anymore!" and chances for any kind of revolution are very small.

Man, guy, things don't change, not anymore. It's amazing to watch technology and popular culture keep barreling ahead like there's no tomorrow, but the social structure since the early 80's (possibly even back into the 70's or further) hasn't significantly altered in the US by any means. We've had our slight ups and downs, and there are a few groups who aren't quite as oppressed as they were a few decades ago, but overall it's mostly the same. The only difference is that our new technology and progressing popular culture are allowing us to see that unchanged crap more and more.

Looking back into US history, we get to hear about all these different social and economic upheavals that occurred during the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's . . . and we really haven't had any of that relatively recently. It's the same old shit with faster broadband capability.

Maybe we shouldn't have been called Generation X. Generation You're Getting The Status Quo Shoved Down Your Throat In A Grunge Rock Package Whether You Like It Or Not doesn't really roll off the tongue as well, but it'd probably be far more apt.

Generation A for Generation Apathetic.

Jim North wrote:Man, guy, things don't change, not anymore. It's amazing to watch technology and popular culture keep barreling ahead like there's no tomorrow, but the social structure since the early 80's (possibly even back into the 70's or further) hasn't significantly altered in the US by any means. We've had our slight ups and downs, and there are a few groups who aren't quite as oppressed as they were a few decades ago, but overall it's mostly the same. The only difference is that our new technology and progressing popular culture are allowing us to see that unchanged crap more and more.

Looking back into US history, we get to hear about all these different social and economic upheavals that occurred during the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's . . . and we really haven't had any of that relatively recently. It's the same old shit with faster broadband capability.

Maybe we shouldn't have been called Generation X. Generation You're Getting The Status Quo Shoved Down Your Throat In A Grunge Rock Package Whether You Like It Or Not doesn't really roll off the tongue as well, but it'd probably be far more apt.

YEAH! THE ENLIGHTENMENT TOTALLY CHANGED EVERYTHING OVERNIGHT. GOD, GUYS, WHY CAN'T WE DO IT, TOO?! LAZY FUCKS.