We're So Exceptional
America- another way it stands out from all the other countries in the world:
Screenshot from Alice Goffman, via Daily Kos.
The End of Green Eagle?
I started following not just the far right, but fringe religious and scientific beliefs too, in the late 1960's. At first it was an amusement to follow the likes of the National States Rights Party, or Scientology or General Semantics, or lunatic Evangelical religious groups. But around the time of the Reagan administration, I began to see that these perverted people just refused to give up their malign idiocy, and they were starting to attract funding from rich sociopaths that believed they could personally benefit from encouraging the public to detach its political views from rational thinking. At that time I began believing that what was happening, if it remained unchecked, could result in such a right wing surge in the United States that we could find ourselves facing a fascist takeover that could sweep away everything we thought was unalterable about our country. Well, with a couple of exceptions, no one believed me. I even had an acquaintance who is a psy...
Comments
Just take a sec to look at the countries on that graph... (assuming you know anything about the rest of the world). Are you saying Japan and Switzerland are poor countries?
I'm from Australia. Observe where that is on the graph. We're a rich country and we don't execute people at all.
Switzerland has an open carry policy which may also be a deterrent.
Australia it costs $80,000 per prisoner per year compared to $30,000 in the US. I guess it's cheaper to keep them on the streets
I’ve lived in Japan. People there don’t live in fear of going to prison. They probably have not even thought about it for an instant.
With the general lack of poverty the only crime tends to be acts of insanity or the mob or white collar crime.
I don’t know what you base your judgement regarding prisons on, but I’d rather go to prison there than in the US.
“Switzerland has an open carry policy which may also be a deterrent.”
I’ve been to Switzerland for a prolonged period. Never once saw a gun.
It’s not some ski version of Tombstone if that’s what you’re picturing.
They have national service and they’re a tiny country, that’s why the gun ownership is high.
And they’re a rich country, which is why crime is low… are you seeing a pattern here now? Poverty… Crime… Poverty.
“Australia it costs $80,000 per prisoner per year compared to $30,000 in the US. I guess it's cheaper to keep them on the streets”
Well they must be very nice criminals because my chances of being murdered go up 420% when I go from here to the US, where you have more guns than some warzones and all those people in prison.
Maybe our criminals are all at the beach mugging sharks or helping old ladies across the street or something.
You use the word ‘deterrent’ a lot because you are conditioned to see everything in fear-threat and you can’t imagine that anywhere in the world might be as nice – or Lord forbid… NICER – than the United States of America, land of the free (to shoot black people and kids) home of the brave (as long as you are holed up in a compound with a private arsenal). But the facts are you’re killing 30-40 people a day, equivalent to a 10 year underworld war in Australia, you have 25% of the world’s prisoners on 5% of the world’s population, and more guns than people.
And what you also have is endemic poverty and a privatised prison system wherein the rate of incarceration has multiplied many times since the 1980s. To no good effect.
America is still a great place in many ways but parts of it are a shithole and the problems are of your own making. You need to square up to that and stop buying into NRA propaganda and jingoistic myths.
This chat ends here by the way. I only do protracted debates with grown-ups who have some recognition of facts and who have a reality based view of the world. And have seen some of it.
Anytime a black person even speaks of self reliance they are "shot' down by the left
They want people to remain victims as they have kept them in the inner cities for over 40 years remaining hopeless
Our great society has increased poverty in the inner cities by destroying the nuclear family by having men need not be responsible for their families since the government will take care of their kids for them