"Out of the Weeds"

[Stinky The Clown]

"Out of the Weeds" is the title of this poll. The intent is to rise above the immediate and look at the nation more broadly and without personalities involved. (The poll is NOT about Obama.)

What is the single biggest problem we face? What you think it is may not be listed, so please feel free to add it with a comment.

[el_bryanto]

1. That's a tight one but fix the electoral system and several of those others might weaken

Of course if the country really is getting more conservative, ending gerrymandering of districts might hurt us I suppose.

Bryant

[HopeHoops]

4. That would help, but it still comes down to money.

There are three problems:

1) You have to raise obscene amounts of money to even have a chance to get elected to national office.

2) You have to spend far more time raising MORE obscene amounts of money to get re-elected than you do actually performing your job.

3) Campaign promises are for the morons who support you and they won't be kept. Actual votes are promises to the contributors with a hand full of cash up your ass.

The last one is what few people seem to comprehend. Why do you think that when BushCo was in the WH and the GOP owned both the House and Senate that they never made any attempt to ban abortion? WAIT! Could it be that if they actually DID ban abortion, then they wouldn't have their strongest moron-grabbing campaign issue? Yeah, that just could be it, couldn't it.

[el_bryanto]

5. I guess when I think of fixing electoral policies i mean public financing of elections

and ending gerrymandering - but i didn't specifically say it.

Bryant

[JuniperLea]

2. Fix the media...

Tell the people the truth, the real stories, and public opinion would probably be very united and a force to be reckoned with. I think this would knock most of the other choices off the poll.

[Stinky The Clown]

7. That's my number one choice, too

For exactly the reason you cite.

[JuniperLea]

8. You're freaking me out, Dude...

:rofl:

But seriously, nothing ends corruption like the shining white light of truth. Cockroaches will scurry.

[Stinky The Clown]

16. Dudette .....

Yup ... we agree.

My somewhat close second is corporate personhood.

[JuniperLea]

19. Mine too... however...

I don't think most people understand this issue or it's ramifications. If the light of truth in media were to be shown on this, I'm betting a whole lotta people would want to see laws changed and corporations go back to being corporations instead of people.

[Stinky The Clown]

24. I agree .....

...... :shudder: ..... did I say that twice? Three times?

:rofl:

Really ..... I agree. That concept is why an honest media is the singularly most important thing we face. I placed corporate personhood a close second because corporate persons get free speech like real persons. The difference is corporate persons own the media.

It is a vicious circle. Reregulating the media is more attainable than a change in corporate personhood, in my view.

[WeDidIt]

3. Other

Whiny assholes who stamp their feet when they don't get everything they wanted RIGHT NOW!

[Stinky The Clown]

17. I bet some people feel the same about whiney assholes who whine about whiney assholes

Really. I'd bet that.

[WeDidIt]

18. I'd take that bet

and would probably win.

[Stinky The Clown]

26. You're right. I'd win.

:eyes:

You sure you understand the bet?

:rofl:

[HughMoran]

21. Or even whiney ass holes who whine about whiney assholes who whine about whiney assholes

I think we're almost to the nub of the problem... :)

[Stinky The Clown]

25. Not quite yet, Nubbins

But close.

[Uncle Joe]

6. I voted other because I see them all as multiple heads of the same Hydra.

Thanks for the thread, Stinky The Clown.

[Chan790]

9. Other...

I really do think it's the constant rightward shift by triangulation. None of those other things are "real problems" IMO, but illusions and windmills thrown up to make us waste time and energy better used to take back our party from cribbage-board centrists...the same idiots who will drag us slowly to the right of center if we don't start hammering back at them.

They're the only issue we really face...win that fight and the rest will fall into place.

[MNDemNY]

10. Corporations need to be controlled for the public good, they are NOT part of "the public".

[jpak]

11. Other - "Out of Weed" is the biggest problem we face

:D

[Echo In Light]

12. Options 2,3,5 and 6, yes. Option 1 doesn't exist in that framing, & re option 4....

I'd suggest that what you allude to isn't so much an increase of "conservatives" within the populace, but of conservative-leaning automatons who are more frighteningly in line ideologically w/hate based movements whose political leaders, pundits and mainstream media efforts have intentionally, strategically aligned w/the notion of conservatism the various tenets and defining characteristics of fascism and other hate based social movements.

[Liberation Angel]

13. Fascism is the single most dangerous "ism" and problem we face as a nation, as human beings

History makes it clear that the REASON we are in the state we are in as a nation and as a planet is that the political/economic movement which has governed most of the last century or few centuries has been fascistic idealogies and methodologies.

All of the globes problems flow from that:

1. the manipulation of the media and public opinion by Machiavellian propaganda

2. The near total control of our economies and political apparatuses and education

3. the rape and destruction of our environment and resources (including human resources)

4. The profiteering of war and hate which dominates all things political (whether by its promotion or opposition to it)

5. The ignorance and brainwashing of most human beings to keep them from seeing or believing that a small group of predominantly WASP fascist entities (not all WASP but predominantly with many capos and collaborators of all ethnicities) control most economies and most resoruces and most media and most politics and most weapons ad power.


This is what we face: fascism pretty much supercedes and trumps the others BECAUSE it usually is at the root of the others.


The Bushes, the Rockefellers and Dulleses and Walkers and Harrimons and Morgans and their elite institutions and financial empires of greed and mammon utilized the Nazi experiment as their foundation for global tyranny, confusion and control.

They assassinated Allende, Lumumba, Diem, JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm, Che and innumrable others.
They are the cause of the wars and horrors in Africa, Latin America and Asia and the Middle East as they were responsible for the Holocaust.

It was their proving ground.

It was their ground for pharmaceutical experiments.

It was their grounds for perfecting their methods of mass death, population control, and corporate "eugenics" and genocide.

It was their proving ground for nuclear death and destruction, experimentation and mutation.

It was their test for whether they could turn a population of civilized and pretty cultured humans into barbarians and lemmings and mindless murdering functionaries like Eichmann and countless Germans and Poles and others.

THEY and IT, FASCISM, are the problem we face and must face as the most serious threat to humanity, humaneness, compassion and harmony on this BEAUTIFUL EARTH.

[Speck Tater]

14. Other: Peak carrying capacity.

We are running out of resources: Clean water, oil, exotic metals, phosphorus, ...

Human population has grown beyond the ability of the planet to sustain it. We are in overshoot. Add to that environmental degradation and global climate change and we will be VERY lucky to survive the next 100 years as a species.

Out biggest problem is that, as a species, we are facing possible extinction. As a globalized, industrial civilization, we are facing certain extinction. If we survive the next 100 years it will be as stone age hunter-gatherers at worst, and a collection of medieval city-states run by feudal war lords at best, but not as a high-tech modern civilization.

And what do we worry about as American citizens? Which celebrity is dating whom, and who's going to win the next round of American Idol. It's no damn wonder we are facing extinction without even realizing it.

[Edweird]

15. We desperately need publicly financed elections.

Nothing will change until then.

[DefenseLawyer]

20. Those things all combine to make one big problem

I don't think you can fix any of them without fixing all of them.

[TheKentuckian]

22. All the options are different faces of the same horror

and substantial contributors to every other problem from poverty to the environment to overpopulation to resource scarcity.

[Echo In Light]

27. True, except M$M doesn't serve its own interests above serving as PR for the corporate/state nexus

It makes big $, yes, but its chief aim is to propagandize the public on behalf of the aims of elites i.e. perception management

[HughMoran]

23. Public apathy has lead to all the others

.

[Cleita]

28. Rule of the majority by minority interests mainly big business.

The rest of us are only chattel to them.