A video that captured the brutal arrest of a Black college student pulled from his car and beaten by officers in Florida has led to an investigation and calls for motorists to consider protecting themselves by placing a camera inside their vehicles.
The footage shows that William McNeil Jr., 22, was sitting in the driver’s seat, asking to speak to the Jacksonville deputies’ supervisor, when authorities broke his window, punched him in the face, pulled him from the vehicle, punched him again and threw him to the ground.
Yes, yes. Once again they are suggesting we, the people, do all the work, because they are too busy to care about us. We have to do the recycling, because it would be too onerus on the producers of waste to change. We have to do the overseeing of unsafe practices by industry, because it’s too costly for the government and hard to ask their friends to stop doing terrible things to save a few dollars. We now also have to protect ourselves from authority, God forbid we ask the government to remain accountable for something. What is the point of having a government if they are not going to do anything but enrich themselves? Are Americans capable of asking questions, or do you just eat what you are fed without even blinking? Wake the fuck up, you don’t live in a country, you live in a billionaire making machine, and you are the fuel, not the product.
“Social Democracy” countries like Sweden and Norway produce more millionaires and billionaires than capitalist ones like the US. So actually we’re not a billionaire making machine, but a poverty making one.
Sweden and Europe in general has 10 times the generational wealth as America, because it’s been around for centuries longer. American wealth came mostly in the past 250 years, and much of it has been accumulated in the past 30.
We made a lot of barons in the slave era, the railroad era, the oil era, the prohibition era, then there was a lull, we got the new deal, and more importantly WW2 and the manufacturing boom where workers had power and socialized wealth (as long as white anyway). Then the barons found a way to weaken and strip our wealth and power since the 80s and set the country up for our current baron crisis.
Maybe a general strike could do something, but it would have to be overwhelming. Like a minimum of 30% of all workers, for weeks or months maybe more, would be necessary to get attention and not be vulnerable to mass firing and replacement.
Other non Social Democracy countries that have been around for millennia have far fewer billionaires.
Well ain’t that just a cup of tea then, eh. It must be the social democracy that allows them to accumulate vast piles of wealth then, hey?! No wonder Canada is full of billionaires!
Social Democracy countries are run more effectively than others. Not saying those countries are perfect but it’s better than what the US has currently.
Soon there will be a critical mass of people who have nothing left to lose. Historically this is the requirement for most societies to upend these types of structures. It’s what drove the “New Deal”, which was essentially a stopgap to allow the wealthy an opportunity to comply with the requirements of basic human needs and dignity. Same with Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting.
After that they allowed some tinkering around the edges to make our enclosure more habitable, things like the Civil Rights Act and even parts of LBJ’s “Great Society”. All the while continuing to exploit foreign markets and people for our industries, consolidating economic and military power around the globe. Now, not only have all the lines in the map been filled in, but we are starting to see conglomeracies like BRICS form in order to subvert the total dominance of the United States.
The only way for the wealthy business interests to maintain their profit margins was to turn the exploitation inward, to subject the American people to the same type of exploitation they have been meting out in the global south, while desperately enacting last minute and insufficient plans to suppress these rising entities and eliminate them if possible.
The rot has reached the core
The government always has and still does work for wealthy. They all really do. Some just strike a different balance in perception because they need to in order to keep the people working for the benefit of the wealthy.
Yes, but the wealthy create their wealth off the backs of our labour, so if they don’t tend to the flock, the flock gets unruly. Heads will roll…
Yep, always a balancing act. And of course they tend to make sure thier is a scapegoat so it won’t be thier heads that roll. I bet they really love trump for how well he draws attention to himself and off of them.
Suggestions of the nanny state never come up here. The dichotomy of what were expected to do for ourselves vs what they say the nanny state does are a vast ocean filled with bullshit Republican rhetoric