This shit is often far too subtle for most people to spot it or fully understand its impact but can have big effects in the lives of just about everybody in a country and then people for example just go around feeling that their money doesn’t seem to go as far as before not putting two and two together to figure out they’re dieing the death of a thousand cuts as monopolies and cartels which should never have existed without corrupt legislation bleed them out, are dying younger because of avoidable air polution or exploitative private healthcare systems all possible thanks to legislation designed together by crooked politicians and lobbyists, feel their quality of life is much less than before as most public spaces have been made sold to private interest, and so on.
This hits so hard. Honestly your entire thread is fantastic, I’d say you should package this up into an essay and see if you can’t get it published in some op-ed sections.
More people need to understand the difference between big C corruption and small scale corruption and how the former affords the latter legitimacy. In america we are at the crossroads of institutional corruption finally becoming so blatant that the smaller structures will be able to follow suit without fear of stigma. The big guy gets his palms greased; it’s common sense that the little guy should get his too.
Therein lies the “slippery slope” that opens the floodgates to beat cops shaking someone down in a traffic stop for lunch money. It doesn’t come from the bottom up but from the top down. The most powerful officials will have the most leeway to embezzle and defraud and shake down what or whomever they see fit. Those below them are free to find their own means to enrich themselves from their position of authority, and so it goes all the way down to the lowest enforcer of this state of affairs. As long as they don’t disturb the affairs of their superiors, they are free to wheel and deal as they wish.
Once it has reached the general population and begins affecting their daily lives it is already too late. The traffic stop on your work commute is now a natural occurrence and you begin to carry a purse just to ensure safe passage, because you can’t simply report this to the precinct.
I fear we are not too far from reaching this point. A few years may be all we have left to prevent the system being permanently, irreparably damaged.
We had our opportunity to let the power structure play out and it failed to hold the most powerful in the country accountable for any of their crimes. What’s happening in France gives hope that the rest of the world will take this threat seriously and begin strengthening their countries against these threats. America has already proven itself incapable of enforcing the law. I’m not sure how we go about amending that from within.
I’d need to do more study on Portugal to understand how you managed to overturn such a corrupt system in modern times but I hope your message can reach more people and open enough minds to bring us out of this descent into kleptocracy.
The first step, I’d imagine, is making everyone aware. My hope is that it doesn’t take all 300 million people in America personally witnessing the corruption first hand to create a popular uprising for change.
That’s fine and valid criticism! I am not speaking for all members of hamas, simply stating the obvious. The most hateful ideologies and inexcusable actions likely wouldn’t happen if the zionist regime had never been allowed to create the conditions for such hate in the first place.
Zionists openly stated their desire to displace and kill as many native people as necessary to secure their ethnic majority in Israel from its inception. After 40 years of occupation hamas is formed as a radical opposition movement. Their ideology, foundational ethics, and mission was colored entirely by their material reality under a genocidal occupation. I cannot fault them for their methods or rationale under those conditions from my privileged American home.
Unlike zionists, hamas was not formed for the explicit purpose of Jewish extermination but for liberation of the Palestinian people. What they saw as necessary for those goals may or may not be considered acceptable means of resistance to those in the west. It is not our place to morally grandstand about inconsiderate acts committed in resistance to genocide. We would not cast the same aspersions on Nat Turner or John Brown when talking about their fight for liberation even though they explicitly committed unthinkable crimes against the people seeking to benefit from the systems of oppression they were fighting against. We recognize that in the long arc of history that those actions were justified in pursuit of an end to chattel slavery.
What we are encouraged or even mandated by social pressures to decry as evil are actions taken under duress, under occupation, under threat of violent imprisonment with no fair trial even during “peace time.” It’s not so simple as pointing to individual immoral acts and calling them evil, we have to understand the history and escalations to this point. Israel does not respect diplomacy or international agreements, they only respond to force. I cannot fault the people faced with this reality for playing the hand they were dealt. As I said in my original response: had I grown up in those conditions I cannot deny that I would be compelled to risk my life and do whatever is necessary for a chance to save my country and it’s people from extinction.
It was true before October 7th but it is in plain view at this point that peace was never a goal for Israel and genocide is the explicit purpose of this ongoing “war.” The media framing of hamas as evil and terrorists only serves to dehumanize all Palestinians. If terrorism is fighting for freedom from oppression then you should be proud to call yourself a terrorist and stand for the rights of all people worldwide. Rebuke those who try to confuse the term and point out the hypocrisy inherent in promoting Israel’s right to defend itself while dismissing the opposition to their occupation as evil. It inherently biases the conversation. It taints the discussion by demanding fealty to Israel and their bloodthirsty crusade to claim all of Gaza as their territory. That is unacceptable.
That is all I was trying to get across, not directly at you but the royal you. Everyone is gently coerced into feeling the need to condemn hamas before their statements around Gaza, it’s not necessary. Hamas is the result of Israel’s inhumane occupation policy and any evil you percieve is a direct consequence of the conditions forced upon them by a belligerent occupier. We all recognize the human toll of their actions, and it is still so insignificant compared to the industrialized oppression of all Palestinians. They are not evil, their conditions are. We condemn the conditions Gaza has been forced to endure for almost 80 years. We do not condemn their actions.