Dog Eat Dog World

[Ripley]

There is no doubt that competition between humans has been around since the days of Australopithecus. Back then it was for territory, food, better environs. The business world is such in that it forces competitors to build a better widget or serve the customer faster or with a bigger smile.

But something seems to have gone terribly wrong in America. The current government is moving toward a system that says "you're on your own." Those who are rich enough or smart enough or of the correct ethnicity, religion, neighborhood, current valued "mainstream" set, or are simply born into the right family are given a higher value in our society than all the rest of us. The few and far between examples the Republicans give us of proof that anyone can make it in America are sad.

The current Republican Administration has perverted the true symbols and ideals that America was founded on. America has been evolving her whole life for the better until now. There were bad times and counters to those bad times. Then there was a change in the 1980s. Due to technological changes in information dissemination and sheer blatant cheating, lying and propaganda at it's best, America as an ideal began to be undermined.

I guess it's really not Dog eat Dog...it's more like Hyenas eating the disabled laboratory Beagles or cats or monkeys that were released to the open field weak, sick and bleeding.

I am ashamed that our so-called President has this answer to providing all American citizens with health insurance (like the entire rest of the Western world does): according to him health care prices are going up because of his opponent's Vice Presidential pick. Lawyers. That's not really an answer that solves a problem is it? Mr. No-Accountability cannot ever enunciate a plan to solve a problem like health care reform in America. He always has to do this:

Point his crooked finger at someone else.

While biology may predetermine to an extent the competitive nature of human beings, evolution of the mind has clearly changed cultures around the world where many societies do not live this way.

Why do Americans have to live in this horrible world called dog eat dog?

[Deja Q]

1. Life is what we make of it.

So why do we romanticize movies to be perfect and live with our craphole instead?

[Ripley]

2. Psychology.

It's a big field and lots of people use it to make money and influence people.

Humans are weak is my best guess.

[Ripley]

5. Never

mind.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Don't despair. It's certainly no worse than the "Gilded Age"

when robber barons seized the wealth of the country. There were flat out battles between workers and owners, with the police, the military and private armies such as the Pinkertons supporting the capitalist lords of industry. And out of those battles we got the 40 hr work week, powerful unions, child labor laws, full enfranchisement of our citizenry. It was a struggle that lasted from the late 1800s into the 1940s -- in fact, the civil rights battles of the fifties, sixties and seventies, as terrible as they were, had a certain inevitability about them. It had been proven that mass action by progressive forces could win against the neo-aristocrats and the thugs they got to protect them.

The combination of Nixonion thugism with Reagan economic elitism with Bush religious fanaticism has given us a major setback, but America is a fundamentally progressive and optimistic country. The very concept of participatory democracy is progressive, and even this crowd hasn't reached a point where they are ready to admit their disdain for democracy.

We can, and will, get it back.

[Ripley]

4. How optimistic of you!

That's great to hear. But you and I both know it's different this time.

I don't believe these thugs will install martial law, like some DUers think. It would hurt business. They will continue on their path of dismembering your freedoms, by way of peer pressure. Americans feel the heat, I feel the heat. We (meaning Liberals) fear speaking out, putting stickers on our cars, etc. for FEAR and rightly so fear of physical harm to ourselves, or our properties.

We aren't all 22 years old living in blue areas with liberal jobs.

I think this crowd is certainly admitting their disdain for democracy...by concluding that the so-called President's brother must have made the right decision in Florida in 2000.

Yeah, let's remain hopeful.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. Hey, I didn't say it would be easy. We may well have to go through

those pitched battles again, have our own Haymarket riots and Matewan massacres. I may be over weight and over fifty, but I'll fight before I let these guys create a 'Handmaid's Tale' theocracy in my country. I think most of us would.

As the freepers constantly remind us, Freedom isn't free.