Blood on our hands

[agnosticatheist]

Do we Americans have blood on our hands?

Unless you live completely off the grid deep in a state park or national park (which is nearly impossible to do), in some way, you participate in the American system.

You pay taxes, you work a job, you draw social security checks, you buy consumer goods, etc.

There's a lot of really wrong, sick, dirty, unfair, unjust, and ultimately evil things that go on in the world, and the American system is either directly involved in, facilitates, or allows, such stuff.

Stuff like sweatshops, dumping waste in Africa, allowing Afghani allies in Afghanistan to continue raping young boys because the Americans don't want to lose the allies, exploiting and stealing the natural resources of third world countries, unjust wars that benefit the military industrial complex, secret operations ran by the CIA which include destabilizing countries so that the world doesn't look too secure and thus allowing the Department of Defense to keep securing a large defense budget, torturing people, supporting rebellions in order to overthrow unfavorable governments and install dictatorships (which treat people horrifically), and contributing to the drug problem in America, most likely faked 9/11, the Boston bombing, the Orlando shooting, and the Vegas shooting (There's no way that was an AR-15, the first barrage was at least 50 rounds. It had to have been some kind of belt fed weapon), only intervening in countries where it benefits the American system, but leaving places that are worse than the places we intervened in alone, doing little to nothing about organized crime outside of the Sicilian-American Mafia, doing little to nothing about police corruption, Fast and Furious scandal, lying as part of espionage, keeping us on fossil fuels rather than switching us to alternative energy, etc.

If we participate in the system, do we have blood on our hands, especially if we know about this mess? I say yes.

Where does this fit in spiritually? Christians, do you think God is ok with us participating in the American system?

[jgh7]

So should we just live completely off the grid so we can at least brag that we don't have blood on our hands?

The greatest albeit most unrealistic thing we can do is somehow change the powers at be to be less bloody towards the world. The most realistic thing we can do is help to make the people around us and our own communities better places.

[dianaiad]

So should we just live completely off the grid so we can at least brag that we don't have blood on our hands?

The greatest albeit most unrealistic thing we can do is somehow change the powers at be to be less bloody towards the world. The most realistic thing we can do is help to make the people around us and our own communities better places.

That's....pretty much it. Unless one dives into the political arena and gains that sort of power, and even then there isn't much one can do.

However, it is amazing what one person can do locally, and through private and religious organizations, how one person can help globally. One person at a time.

Trying to aim a mob in the way you think it should go is hard. Getting one or two of the members OUTA there so that they will do something else? A lot easier, and in the long run, probably works better.

[Mithrae]

I didn't even remotely suggest that. Resolutions regarding world peace and conflict are currently determined primarily by Russia, France, Britain, USA and China and - not surprisingly - those countries have also decided that they are therefore well-positioned to make a killing off the arms industry.

They should be. They are the only ones big enough to be armed that well, AND the only people who can make their edicts stick if someone tries something dumb, either one of the smaller nations not as well armed, or one of group you mention.

They make their edicts stick? Really? So... there's been peace in Israel, there was no 2003 invasion of Iraq, Ukraine remained unmolested by Russia, North Korea and Iran stopped pursuing their nuclear ambitions...?

Nothing is likely to stop the big powers from perpetrating 'minor' violations like the invasion of Iraq, but a system which a) generates legitimate fear of a 'might makes right' process, b) encourages the proliferation of arms, c) creates a direct conflict of interest for the nations given the responsibility for peace and d) lacks any kind of moral or democratic legitimacy can only make the world more unstable. It's like saying that the justice system should be run by the biggest gangs and militias. The most that can possibly said for it is that fear of mutually assured destruction has so far kept the big boys from directly going toe to toe with each other, a 'virtue' which would not be lost by trying to correct all the other systemic problems.

I'm not talking about US debt.

WHERE did the money to lend it to foreign nations come from, again?
If THOSE nations do not pay it back, who gets it in the neck when they don't?

Again, I really did think that this was amazingly simple and noncontroversial: Folk who think they can make a few extra bucks by lending money for a brutal dictator in some African country to buy more weapons do not have any legitimacy in continuing to hold that crippling debt over his victims once he's gone. If you think that this is a legitimate process then, again, our perspectives are seemingly too different to have much hope of agreement.

My own opinion? We could figure out another way to bribe dictatorships into making it safer for US wherever they are, or we could stop making stupid decisions about whom. But right now, the options are: send money, send troops.
Which would you rather loose?

Why do I get the feeling that you're missing the point. I'm talking about concepts like basic justice and poverty relief for some of the world's poorest countries, while you're talking about how to leverage US interests overseas. If a totalitarian or corrupt regime borrowed money, requiring their victims to repay that money after they're gone is utterly obscene. Isn't it? Complaining about how that might affect the poor innocent lenders who only wanted to make a few bucks off that corruption doesn't really change that fact. Does it? Please try to address the actual issue here.

In many cases they're the same company, of course.

And in most companies they are not. Now tell me WHY some American companies outsource their work to other countries, and why other countries DO NOT outsource their work to ours?

Could it be that, until extremely recently, we had among the, if not THE, highest business taxed in the world? No, getting rid of tarrifs won't help. Lowering taxes for cororations HERE might.
Wait, it already has. How about that.

And while in many cases low wages paid in poorer countries constitute exploitation, strictly speaking in international terms it is fair competition, yes. If India can produce those goods more efficiently than America, complaining about how unfair that is doesn't suddenly make it so.

I thought that the goal was to raise the standard of living or others, not simply ensure our own.

If we wanted to add extra rules and regulations to address the exploitation of third world workers, the solution is not to keep doling out billions of dollars to the American branches of these massive conglomerates, nor to extract huge sums of money from poorer countries for the privilege of selling in America. Both of those measures actively prevent poorer economies from improving their position through trade, and continuing to complain that they are in fact poorer economies with lower wages while actively perpetuating that situation would not be very wise. But a real solution to third world exploitation would probably involve another one of those scary boogeyman reforms of the World Trade Organization - oooh, it's even already got a W and O in it! - because trade agreements between nations are so easily subject to a) disparities introduced by the bigger nation's negotiating power, b) undue influence of the biggest companies involved which can even circumvent democracy itself through the secrecy and complexity of the negotiations and c) bringing all countries' standards down to the lowest common denominator rather than the highest.

INCLUDING OURS. Or haven't you been paying attention to the way the work environment had changed here?

So your only proposed solution to third world poverty is not abolishing unjust debt burden and not allowing fairer terms of trade, but simply reducing taxes for companies in America in order take jobs away from poorer countries. That's how you want to help them? Lower corporate tax rates may well be a good idea, but doling out billions of dollars in subsidies is an appalling one in almost all circumstances. You seem to be supporting government interference in the market economy only when it does the most harm to poorer countries and grants the best bonanzas to big business.

Could you provide a source for that claim?

Can't honestly think of a single source right now, but then it's nine-thirty, don't have my glasses and am dealing with the flu. I'll see if I can look for just one, but...I have a cousin who spent two years in Siberia, and the people he talked to were NOT happy about the way the workers were managed. Short work weeks, yes....everybody employed? you betcha. Which meant over staffed companies, but the government owned them so that was OK...workers who had no incentive to do well, a real epidemic of vodka use on and off the job...NOBODY trusted Russian doctors at the rural level. Just as an aside, my cousin LOVED Siberia and the people there. Reminded him of southern Idaho, only with better summers.

Didn't work. That sort of governmental micromanagement never does.

It's certainly been tried in America and Australia and Britain and so on; 120 years ago standard working weeks were more like 60 hours. It is inevitable that ongoing automation trends will continue reducing the amount of work available for human labourers, drivers, lawyers, doctors and so on. In some fields, the reduction in available human work looks likely to exceed 50%, and overall according to one 2013 study "about 47 percent of total US employment is at risk." Now I'm no expert, but it seems to me that since reducing working hours has helped spread the available work around over the past century and more, that would be one of the logical places to start here too, particularly since it's an established and relatively simple measure requiring neither taxes nor spending.

Oh and it provides SUCH lovely benefits for the companies, too, who, by hiring people for 30 hours or less, call them 'part-time' and then don't have to provide any benefits, like health care, sick leave, retirement, or......yeah. Companies love the idea for lower level workers. This by you is an improvement? My son worked 30 hours a week...two jobs and he still didn't get benefits. That puts him back to you horrific 60 hours a week....and no benefits.

Now he works for one company, for less money per hour, and he sometimes STILL works sixty hours per week (truck drivers sometimes do that) but he has BENEFITS and HEALTH CARE and SICK LEAVE and VACATION.

How is the modern "cut 'em down to 30 hours a week" an improvement for
ANYBODY?

I have not suggested any kind of government 'micromanagement' You get whatever you get for working a 'full time' 40 hour week - it sounds like you've got it pretty bad over in America - and I've simply said that the full time week should be (gradually) reduced down to 35, 30 hours etc.

It's worth noting that part-time workers in Australia already get the appropriate proportion of full-time holidays, long service leave and so on (while casual workers receive ~23% extra casual loading pay in lieu of those extras) and everyone gets health cover through Medicare. But if you have to be full-time to have a decent life in America, you should be even more keen on this idea; reducing full-time hours will mean more full-time jobs. If a company currently has ten full-time employees at 40 hours a week, as the standard work week reduces towards 30 hours they'll end up employing 13 full-time workers, because it would be more cost efficient than paying their existing workers overtime. (Sorry; 'overtime' is this thing we have where you get paid additional penalty rates for working beyond full-time hours )

It's not a comprehensive or even perfect solution to unemployment trends, but as a partial first step it is simple and based on prior precedent and astoundingly obvious. If 50% of available work is going to end up being done by machines* later in this century, what are we going to do: Have 50% unemployment, or maintain current employment rates with everyone only doing half as much work? And are we going to wait for the cliff edge or start a gradual, manageable transition earlier on? I know which world I'd prefer, yet judging by the responses I sometimes get you'd think I was encouraging government takeover of the means of production or something.

* I emphasize automation here, because that is the biggest and most inevitable trend we need to consider; though the principle is just as applicable to the (real, but cynically exploited) issue of losing jobs overseas. As I implied originally, wedge issues are one of the key forms of control used against us, and trying to pit the interests of employees in richer countries against those in poorer countries in a masochistic race to the bottom is one particularly cruel but successful example.

When someone is (by all appearances) defending and justifying leaving the world's peace and security at the mercy of its biggest arms traders and inflicting ongoing debt repayments on the victims of corrupt regimes who were seen as a convenient profit by unscrupulous lenders, it really looks more like some kind of automatic partisan rejection than any real intention to productively discuss solutions. . . . .


I didn't suggest anything even remotely along the lines of a 'Robin Hood gambit.' How can you imagine that you are objectively evaluating any ideas when you seemingly have not even understood them? As I specifically emphasized, those four points I listed have nothing to do with taxes, spending or even particularly novel/complex regulation, but it seems that you're off chasing communists and NWO boogeymen more than anything else: Really the only point that you actually responded to was the one about 'fair competition.'

Well, ironically you are suggesting that WE, the USA "do something" about the situation, at the same time claiming that we are one of the bigger, if not the biggest, part of the problem. I find that the idea of 'we have the power so we should use it to make everything happy happy and give away that power in the process so that we can feel better about ourselves and the world will all rejoice and sing kumbaya' to be about as ivory tower naive as it can be (and those who evince this ivory tower world view aren't always in academia...just trained by them)

Look, if you can't address what I've actually written there's no point in discussion at all. I really don't have the patience to tiptoe around whatever persecution complex it is that you seem to be expressing here and elsewhere in your post. Not a single one of the four points I raised is exclusive to the USA, and besides the Security Council issue they're likely to apply to wealthy countries pretty generally. I'm not even American - which is pretty clearly indicated under my avatar and hinted in each of my posts - and I explicitly said in my initial post in the thread that

• Where I think the OP goes wrong is in failing to recognize that most of us are victims as much as anything else. We certainly have ethical responsibilities to try to be informed and proactive in both reducing our own negative impacts and advocating positive change in our societies; and folk in Australia or America certainly have much more agency to do so than folk in Bangladesh or Ethiopia. But when we consider for example the fact that the three richest people in America own more than the bottom 50% - with inequality still on the rise - it's difficult to imagine that those at the bottom are active, willing or even really knowing proponents of that system. We're being duped as much as anyone by commercial bombardment, mind-numbing media, artificial complexity, political partisanship and over-hyped wedge issues.

Of course, even that you took as me having "criticized the extremely wealthy for nothing but being extremely wealthy, never mind how they got that way or what their characters may be," so it seems to be a bit of a catch 22 there. The idea that the system itself is not perfect - that there's plenty room for improvement in the rules by which we conduct ourselves within and between nations - without necessarily imputing blame or evil to particular people or countries does not seem to be a possibility which you are willing to entertain.

[Monta]

The greatest albeit most unrealistic thing we can do is somehow change the powers at be to be less bloody towards the world. The most realistic thing we can do is help to make the people around us and our own communities better places.

Very good idea.

World will rejoice.

[dianaiad]

They make their edicts stick? Really?

(grin) I didn't write "do make their edicts stick." I wrote "can make their edicts stick." There's a difference...and sometimes they do. Sorta.

Nothing is likely to stop the big powers from perpetrating 'minor' violations like the invasion of Iraq, but a system which a) generates legitimate fear of a 'might makes right' process, b) encourages the proliferation of arms, c) creates a direct conflict of interest for the nations given the responsibility for peace and d) lacks any kind of moral or democratic legitimacy can only make the world more unstable. It's like saying that the justice system should be run by the biggest gangs and militias. The most that can possibly said for it is that fear of mutually assured destruction has so far kept the big boys from directly going toe to toe with each other, a 'virtue' which would not be lost by trying to correct all the other systemic problems.

How?

WHERE did the money to lend it to foreign nations come from, again?
If THOSE nations do not pay it back, who gets it in the neck when they don't?

Again, I really did think that this was amazingly simple and noncontroversial: Folk who think they can make a few extra bucks by lending money for a brutal dictator in some African country to buy more weapons do not have any legitimacy in continuing to hold that crippling debt over his victims once he's gone. If you think that this is a legitimate process then, again, our perspectives are seemingly too different to have much hope of agreement.

Yes.
So your solution is to take all the money that individual Americans use to invest in bonds, or pay into social security, and decide that since they are going to 'forgive' the loans do them from the folks they lend money to and then tell the people who lent money to the government 'tough, we ain't paying you back?' Since when is it moral or ethical to do THAT? Mind you we could absolutely begin by watching where our money goes better than we do, but your 'simple' idea is simplistic, and your non-controversial idea will ruin a WHOLE bunch of Americans. Or....is that the idea?

Why do I get the feeling that you're missing the point. I'm talking about concepts like basic justice and poverty relief for some of the world's poorest countries, while you're talking about how to leverage US interests overseas. If a totalitarian or corrupt regime borrowed money, requiring their victims to repay that money after they're gone is utterly obscene. Isn't it? Complaining about how that might affect the poor innocent lenders who only wanted to make a few bucks off that corruption doesn't really change that fact. Does it? Please try to address the actual issue here.

Since when have we EVER 'asked the victims to repay?" That's one of our biggest financial problems. We don't. We just keep throwing more money at people.

I have not suggested any kind of government 'micromanagement' You get whatever you get for working a 'full time' 40 hour week - it sounds like you've got it pretty bad over in America - and I've simply said that the full time week should be (gradually) reduced down to 35, 30 hours etc.

Well, that does leave people free...because nobody over here figures that anything less than 39 hours is 'full-time' to work twice as many hours to make the same amount of money they USED to make working forty...and no benefits.

It's worth noting that part-time workers in Australia already get the appropriate proportion of full-time holidays, long service leave and so on (while casual workers receive ~23% extra casual loading pay in lieu of those extras) and everyone gets health cover through Medicare. But if you have to be full-time to have a decent life in America, you should be even more keen on this idea; reducing full-time hours will mean more full-time jobs. If a company currently has ten full-time employees at 40 hours a week, as the standard work week reduces towards 30 hours they'll end up employing 13 full-time workers, because it would be more cost efficient than paying their existing workers overtime. (Sorry; 'overtime' is this thing we have where you get paid additional penalty rates for working beyond full-time hours )

Australia is a lovely country (I'd really like to go there but they wouldn't allow me off the boat) where nobody can own a gun, taxes are hellish, and the health system is, while fine for normal, typical folks, would have been utterly lethal for me. I participate in a Multiple Myeloma board. From what I can tell, Australians have an impossible time getting medication and treatment authorizations from the government for a cancer that, treated, can have survival rates of 10 to 20 years, but in Australia it's more like, oh, three.

On the other hand, you only have to wait a day or two to have a bone set, so it equals out. Don't get me wrong. I admire Australians and some of the most creative friends I have live there. They have too much government.

It's not a comprehensive or even perfect solution to unemployment trends, but as a partial first step it is simple and based on prior precedent and astoundingly obvious. If 50% of available work is going to end up being done by machines* later in this century, what are we going to do: Have 50% unemployment, or maintain current employment rates with everyone only doing half as much work? And are we going to wait for the cliff edge or start a gradual, manageable transition earlier on? I know which world I'd prefer, yet judging by the responses I sometimes get you'd think I was encouraging government takeover of the means of production or something.

Isn't that exactly what you are doing? Because...who is going to dictate this stuff? Now, if the idea 'comes from the bottom,' where small businesses and entrepreneurs start it and MAKE IT WORK, I'm all for it. But when the government starts making policies to 'encourage' it, or mandate it, it simply won't.

* I emphasize automation here, because that is the biggest and most inevitable trend we need to consider; though the principle is just as applicable to the (real, but cynically exploited) issue of losing jobs overseas. As I implied originally, wedge issues are one of the key forms of control used against us, and trying to pit the interests of employees in richer countries against those in poorer countries in a masochistic race to the bottom is one particularly cruel but successful example.

When someone is (by all appearances) defending and justifying leaving the world's peace and security at the mercy of its biggest arms traders and inflicting ongoing debt repayments on the victims of corrupt regimes who were seen as a convenient profit by unscrupulous lenders, it really looks more like some kind of automatic partisan rejection than any real intention to productively discuss solutions. . . . .


I didn't suggest anything even remotely along the lines of a 'Robin Hood gambit.' How can you imagine that you are objectively evaluating any ideas when you seemingly have not even understood them? As I specifically emphasized, those four points I listed have nothing to do with taxes, spending or even particularly novel/complex regulation, but it seems that you're off chasing communists and NWO boogeymen more than anything else: Really the only point that you actually responded to was the one about 'fair competition.'

Well, ironically you are suggesting that WE, the USA "do something" about the situation, at the same time claiming that we are one of the bigger, if not the biggest, part of the problem. I find that the idea of 'we have the power so we should use it to make everything happy happy and give away that power in the process so that we can feel better about ourselves and the world will all rejoice and sing kumbaya' to be about as ivory tower naive as it can be (and those who evince this ivory tower world view aren't always in academia...just trained by them)

Look, if you can't address what I've actually written there's no point in discussion at all. I really don't have the patience to tiptoe around whatever persecution complex it is that you seem to be expressing here and elsewhere in your post. Not a single one of the four points I raised is exclusive to the USA, and besides the Security Council issue they're likely to apply to wealthy countries pretty generally. I'm not even American - which is pretty clearly indicated under my avatar and hinted in each of my posts - and I explicitly said in my initial post in the thread that

• Where I think the OP goes wrong is in failing to recognize that most of us are victims as much as anything else. We certainly have ethical responsibilities to try to be informed and proactive in both reducing our own negative impacts and advocating positive change in our societies; and folk in Australia or America certainly have much more agency to do so than folk in Bangladesh or Ethiopia. But when we consider for example the fact that the three richest people in America own more than the bottom 50% - with inequality still on the rise - it's difficult to imagine that those at the bottom are active, willing or even really knowing proponents of that system. We're being duped as much as anyone by commercial bombardment, mind-numbing media, artificial complexity, political partisanship and over-hyped wedge issues.

Of course, even that you took as me having "criticized the extremely wealthy for nothing but being extremely wealthy, never mind how they got that way or what their characters may be," so it seems to be a bit of a catch 22 there. The idea that the system itself is not perfect - that there's plenty room for improvement in the rules by which we conduct ourselves within and between nations - without necessarily imputing blame or evil to particular people or countries does not seem to be a possibility which you are willing to entertain.

My point is this: you HAVE some good points, but they are all...sorry...ACADEMIC.

Nothing you or I can do will change things, and talking about them is a complete and utter waste of time, especially when all the ideas discussed involve making "someone else do something." Especially when they involve 'someone in some other nation do something."
This is where the 'politics AND RELIGION' part come in, I think. Politics is about the movement of many people towards secular goals. Religion is about moving oneself toward a more moral, ethical, philanthropic goal. The solution to ALL the world's problems is even simpler than you realize.

Take whatever ethical or moral or religious POV you live by, and LIVE BY IT. If you want to call 30 hours a week 'full time' for the purpose of benefits, Go ahead. Do it. With your own company. If you want to offer the other ten hours a week in classes preparing your workers to deal with automation (like...how to fix the machines) do it. See how it works.

If you want to prepare for your own retirement and not buy government bonds, figuring that your social security is a lost cause so that when the government (as it always does) refrains from collecting debts from other nations, go for it. If you want to provide scolarships for kids who can't afford the education they need to enter the workforce on the level that will allow them to stay employed, go for it.

If you want to send money to the very many micro business start ups in the poorest nations to allow men and women to begin there own very small businesses (a sewing machine here, a yarn stash there, a spinning wheel over there, a street cart some other where) go for it, they tend to be quite successful.

THAT is how you make changes, Mithrae.

[Mithrae]

My point is this: you HAVE some good points, but they are all...sorry...ACADEMIC.

Nothing you or I can do will change things, and talking about them is a complete and utter waste of time, especially when all the ideas discussed involve making "someone else do something." Especially when they involve 'someone in some other nation do something."
This is where the 'politics AND RELIGION' part come in, I think. Politics is about the movement of many people towards secular goals. Religion is about moving oneself toward a more moral, ethical, philanthropic goal. The solution to ALL the world's problems is even simpler than you realize.

Sure, all the world's problems would be solved if every person on the planet decided to individually do and believe the right religious things. Very simple, I agree, but it's realistic... how? And you're sitting there telling me that discussing real political options (three of the four, at least) is a complete and utter waste of time?

In a way you're right of course: All it takes for something to be impossible is for everyone to keep agreeing that it'll never happen. Especially when they seemingly go out of their way to distort and misrepresent what's actually being considered

By contrast all it takes for a positive step to happen is for just enough people to discuss and correct and refine and promote productive ideas - aiming merely for a better world rather than digging in our heels over minor points of divergence from our personal utopian ideal - in the recognition that it might happen. This is in no way mutually exclusive of commendable individual improvements; on the contrary, if anything your idea of trying to go it alone is likely to be a much harder commitment for most folk to sustain in the long term than considering themselves as part of a movement for change. Nor is there any need to delude oneself about the likelihood of positive change (which in some cases is very plausible, such as responses to reduced work availability, and in others almost inconceivable such as reform to the UN): But recognizing some of the problems and even a slim possibility of progress is potentially being part of a solution, while dismissing the effort entirely or pretending that all alternatives are necessarily worse is actively obstructing any improvement - which is why I commented on Wootah's post in the first place.

[DPMartin]

Do we Americans have blood on our hands?

Unless you live completely off the grid deep in a state park or national park (which is nearly impossible to do), in some way, you participate in the American system.

You pay taxes, you work a job, you draw social security checks, you buy consumer goods, etc.

There's a lot of really wrong, sick, dirty, unfair, unjust, and ultimately evil things that go on in the world, and the American system is either directly involved in, facilitates, or allows, such stuff.

Stuff like sweatshops, dumping waste in Africa, allowing Afghani allies in Afghanistan to continue raping young boys because the Americans don't want to lose the allies, exploiting and stealing the natural resources of third world countries, unjust wars that benefit the military industrial complex, secret operations ran by the CIA which include destabilizing countries so that the world doesn't look too secure and thus allowing the Department of Defense to keep securing a large defense budget, torturing people, supporting rebellions in order to overthrow unfavorable governments and install dictatorships (which treat people horrifically), and contributing to the drug problem in America, most likely faked 9/11, the Boston bombing, the Orlando shooting, and the Vegas shooting (There's no way that was an AR-15, the first barrage was at least 50 rounds. It had to have been some kind of belt fed weapon), only intervening in countries where it benefits the American system, but leaving places that are worse than the places we intervened in alone, doing little to nothing about organized crime outside of the Sicilian-American Mafia, doing little to nothing about police corruption, Fast and Furious scandal, lying as part of espionage, keeping us on fossil fuels rather than switching us to alternative energy, etc.

If we participate in the system, do we have blood on our hands, especially if we know about this mess? I say yes.

Where does this fit in spiritually? Christians, do you think God is ok with us participating in the American system?

oh yes yes yes USA is responsible for everything bad that happens in the universe.

what are you nuts or something?

if people are doing bad things in Afghanistan the why aren't the afghan people doing something about it?

"hey mister, you want my sister?" people are everywhere no one has stopped them yet.

[Monta]

Do we Americans have blood on our hands?

Unless you live completely off the grid deep in a state park or national park (which is nearly impossible to do), in some way, you participate in the American system.

You pay taxes, you work a job, you draw social security checks, you buy consumer goods, etc.

There's a lot of really wrong, sick, dirty, unfair, unjust, and ultimately evil things that go on in the world, and the American system is either directly involved in, facilitates, or allows, such stuff.

Stuff like sweatshops, dumping waste in Africa, allowing Afghani allies in Afghanistan to continue raping young boys because the Americans don't want to lose the allies, exploiting and stealing the natural resources of third world countries, unjust wars that benefit the military industrial complex, secret operations ran by the CIA which include destabilizing countries so that the world doesn't look too secure and thus allowing the Department of Defense to keep securing a large defense budget, torturing people, supporting rebellions in order to overthrow unfavorable governments and install dictatorships (which treat people horrifically), and contributing to the drug problem in America, most likely faked 9/11, the Boston bombing, the Orlando shooting, and the Vegas shooting (There's no way that was an AR-15, the first barrage was at least 50 rounds. It had to have been some kind of belt fed weapon), only intervening in countries where it benefits the American system, but leaving places that are worse than the places we intervened in alone, doing little to nothing about organized crime outside of the Sicilian-American Mafia, doing little to nothing about police corruption, Fast and Furious scandal, lying as part of espionage, keeping us on fossil fuels rather than switching us to alternative energy, etc.

If we participate in the system, do we have blood on our hands, especially if we know about this mess? I say yes.

Where does this fit in spiritually? Christians, do you think God is ok with us participating in the American system?

oh yes yes yes USA is responsible for everything bad that happens in the universe.

what are you nuts or something?

if people are doing bad things in Afghanistan the why aren't the afghan people doing something about it?

Almost everything. Who's leading the drive for ww3 at the moment?

Agnostica., I feel there's a special hell God will provide for so-called-Christians.

[TSGracchus]

War is business. The longer you can keep the war going the more profit there is to be made. Sell the Pentagon a missile to blow up the school. Blame it on the bad guys and put out a contract to rebuild the school. By the time the school is rebuilt there will be a new crop of students. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It's the American way.

:2gun:

[starthrower]

The citizens of this country lynched almost five thousand defenseless black citizens from the end of the civil war until the 1950s. You bet we have blood on our hands. And lynching didn't consist of a mere hanging. Helpless black citizens were slowly tortured and burned alive while huge crowds of callous whites gathered to be entertained by the sickening event/crime. Local, state and federal legislators refused to pass anti lynching laws for decades, so this horrible crime continued with impunity for 90 years after emancipation.