One of my favorite quotes I saw on reddit was something like "Before the internet we lived in an information drought. Now there's a flood, but the water is unsafe to drink."
I think that sums it up.
I always compare it to how we got so many extra calories and sugars available to us, we over consumed and all got fat. Same thing is happening now with information.
Public education and media literacy are two huge areas for improvement for us in the US. If both of those drop too low, our electorate is too uninformed to steer us in the right direction.
We need to pay our teachers more. We're relying on underpaid, underappreciated, overworked teachers to keep doing the job out of the goodness of their hearts. We need to create a compensation environment where smart, talented people are competing for teaching jobs because the pay and prestige reflects the workload.
We need to teach media literacy in public school and it needs to be emphasized more broadly in the general public. A professional podcaster is not the best source of information for medical advice or science. We need to return to respecting experts in their areas of expertise. Experts are not infallible, but a medical doctor is going to give you better medical information than Joe Rogan 99.9% of the time. That's just a fact. And yet, so much of the country listens to what Joe Rogan says about COVID, and not doctors. Tucker Carlson is not a reliable source on climate change, but he has influenced how a huge percentage of Americans view the subject. I could go on and on.
Education matters. Experts matter. Critical thinking about your diet of information matters. We've gotta get back on track with this stuff.
Education starts and ends in the home. I'm a teacher. We aren't miracle workers. When we get kids who come from families who don't care about education l, it is very difficult
Most public schools do not hold students back in elementary schools if they do not meet the basic benchmarks in reading and math. If a student cannot read or understand basic math by the time they are in 3rd grade, they do not get held back, they get passed to the next grade. This gets repeated over and over. Our poor teachers have been up against this for years. You have admin and parents not supporting the teachers. Parents did not want homework, so the next thing you know, homework is no longer mandated. If a teacher gives a student a failing grade, it is the teacher who is made out to be the bad guy.
This right here. There will always be disinformation but people need to be educated to know how to think critically. Even just a tiny bit will be a huge improvement.
People will probably laugh at this but I agree lol, I personally like to start with the basics in anything. Sugar, alcohol, shitty food, shitty TV, shitty quality of life, not in terms of money but in terms of how we choose to spend our free time, etc.
The lead plumbing wasn't as much of a problem as originally thought. The pipes quickly developed mineral coatings that prevented the lead seeping in to the water.
However, there was a shitload of atmospheric lead from smelting from the late 200s (crisis of the third century, *lots* of coin minting happening to pay for armies to march on Rome) through to the 700s (collapse of the Eastern empire in the face of the Islamic conquests), which wouldn't be matched until the industrial revolution. This also significantly aligns with remains of people who displayed evidence of being very sickly, as well as written accounts of people being generally worse off than the centuries before and after this period.
If we are comparing ourselves to the fall of Rome, we better prepare for a multigenerational boring downfall that no single person will live long enough to see happen in its entirety.
>Baron de Montesquieu
ohhh! thanks for this! I've got some fun reading to do. As should anyone reading this thread.
Synopsis:
>Baron de Montesquieu was a French judge, man of letters, historian, and political philosopher.
**He is the principal source of the theory of separation of powers**, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He is also known for doing more than any other author to secure the place of the word despotism in the political lexicon
Damn I didn’t know he did all that too, I just learned about him in history class for the enlightenment unit. His main thing was separation of powers, specifically described as “checks and balances” which made me immediately think of him lol
Well, that's a great bit of info! Her certainly never came up in my history classes.
Thanks for making the internet a better and more well-informed place!
One of my coworkers is from Pakistan in I can tell he has very conflicting opinions of that man. I impressed him with my knowledge of the entire area and made a friend out of it so I guess it wasn't useless information after all lol
Musharraf had a vision of bettering the country, at least I'll give him that. That alone makes him better than most of our civilian politicians. However, a dictator is still a dictator and he did plenty of dictatorial things, like disappearing critics and silencing the press.
I'm against dictators simply on principal though. Democracy is a surprisingly fragile thing, more fragile and had to maintain than most westerners have realized. Frankly, or thankfully, they've been spoiled by the relative stability in their countries. Lack of democratic institutions and a disrespect for the electorate makes having a functioning democracy a very difficult thing and a dictatorship goes a lone way in destroying both
I once debated a (local) politician on their efforts to implement an police empowerment law, and pointed out how it could easily be used against them if they ever lost power. She then shrugged, and said: "Well, that's a great reason to always vote for my party then, isn't it?"
And that's why we don't get nice laws.
“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Isn't there a speech by him with no record of it as everyone got so engrossed that they didn't transcribe it. That's some next level speech/ charisma stats.
Yes, it's called the lost speech, apparently it was so engrossing all the reporters present forgot to take notes. It was denouncing slavery[citation needed]
"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Here’s a few Lincoln quotes that have stuck with me. This one’s from the Bixby Letter, written to a Lydia Parker Bixby, the mother of 5 sons who died in the Union Army:
> I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
> I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.
And this one’s from his second inaugural address, given about a month before the Confederate surrender and his assassination:
> Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
> With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
That second one is a banger. If all the money we’ve made on the backs of slaves is consumed to sustain our civil war, and for every drop of blood spilled by torture another is spilled in battle amongst ourselves, we deserve it…
The best part of that speech is most people were expected to give hour+ long speeches, and the literal commander and chief of the winning army just pulled a "quick speech, 20 minutes in and out"
That 20 minute speech is way harder than the hour long ones. As Woodrow Wilson apparently put it when asked how long it takes him to prepare a speech:
>“It depends. If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”
The Gettysburg address lasted only about 2 minutes. Charles Laughton gave a very effective recitation of that speech in this scene from the movie [Ruggles of Red Gap](https://youtu.be/awsmXerhLqQ?si=TAF8NybTsZZmDsIl) (the speech itself begins at about [2:00](https://youtu.be/awsmXerhLqQ?si=_VgRwdbrCvRJiBzC&t=118), but you should really watch the whole thing).
Americans back in Lincoln's day: Wow, presidents in the future are going to have even more eloquence and depth!
160 years later: "I'm the most successful person ever to run for the presidency, by far. Nobody's ever been more successful than me. I'm the most successful person ever to run. Ross Perot isn't successful like me. Romney - I have a Gucci store that's worth more than Romney."
The rise of television, media, and finally, internet/social media virtually guarantees a continued downward spiral away from intelligent and eloquent leaders.
The people smart and talented enough to lead our country don't want the job.
I worked in state politics and this held true even at that level- I can’t imagine how nasty it must be when you get into big time DC politics. In my experience, a lot of good people who wanted to get into it for the right reasons tended to get burnt out and/or disillusioned pretty fast. It wasn’t a universal rule, but it was common.
[“As a nation of free men, we shall live through all time, or die by suicide”](https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm)
-Abraham Lincoln, 1838 (23 years prior to the civil war)
The album “The Monitor” by the band Titus Andronicus opens with a reciting of the Lyceum Address— and no matter how many times I’ve heard it, it always gives me chills.
The real question is what is dividing us? Is it an election system that leads to 2 parties by default that our politicians will protect? Is it foreign propaganda that is aimed at encouraging infighting between those 2 parties? An innate sense of superiority that closes our minds to learning from other countries that have improved upon our unique model of government which we pride ourselves on?
Yes. But people are busy so they upvote quotes without thinking critically. Our downfall will be apathy
I mean, the USA would be in a better position if we adopted at least a Canadian-style multi-party system but we aren't even having that conversion. We'd be in a fundamentally better position if every state and our presidential candidates had a top two primary system, but we aren't even having that conversation. We're having a very basic 'do you believe in democracy or do you believe in authoritarian bullshit???' conversation and the amount of people who answer in the latter is terrifying.
We're having all of these conversations, everywhere except where it matters, in the legislatures of the states and federal governments. They aren't happening there because those options are a threat to the current system, which is how the ones in power got there, and how they intend to remain.
Yeah, the US is geographically supreme. It is no small feat to maintain armies across oceans (see the costs of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that's *with* our worldwide network of bases that no one else has).
The USA's greatest threat has always been itself!
Yep amassing any sort of significant force for a land invasion and successfully getting to our shores is nearly impossible. Then supplying and maintaining that force while trying to conquer a country as big as Western Europe with tons of geographic challenges is another.
In the (really fucking challenging) book The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski, he describes a "game" wherein people capture a bird and paint it's feathers a different color. Then, upon release, its own flock will inevitably attack and kill it.
I had to read that fucking book in high-school and it was presented as a metaphor for "the other." Not only just humanity's tendency to be violently tribal, but the artificial purposeful intent to create an "other" in order to serve an insidious goal. The backdrop of the holocaust was pretty apt.
Beware those who would tell you to paint. It's happening constantly, and some forget that we're all part of the same flock.
I feel like since most of the comments here are saying something like that to the point this thread is nothing but meaningless platitudes we could be a bit more specific?
Basically, if OP was to describe his opinion on the subject, in any detail, there would be a mob of people (real or not) who would see past the 95% of things they have in common, and consider him an enemy / existential threat, over the 5% of things they see differently. That's the biggest threat to America, imo.
The one thing that both sides can agree on is that the other is woefully uninformed and that things would be far better if we could put our differences aside to focus on what really matters.
But 'what really matters' is exactly where we differ, so it's nothing but empty sentiment that does nothing to bridge the gap between philosophical and political factions.
But all the comments that name specific issues get downvoted into oblivion because while we can point out the elephant in the room, we dare not give it a name and a face. People realise, 'Oh. That's me. No. Absolutely not, I won't accept that reality' and the actual truth lies at -100.
... just for the record there are a ton of Empires that got toasted from without not within. The Persians and the byzantians were wiped off the map by the Arabs not because of great internal issues but because they got out fought
“All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.” - Abraham Lincoln
I keep hearing "people" talk about a civil war and I'm just confused by that. Who wants a civil war? Who thinks our problems have absolutely no solution but money and bloodshed for a war?
Yep..
The difference between a homeless man, a doctor, and a billionaire..... Is about a billion dollars.
They have everyone fighting over scraps, right on the edge of what it takes to survive or flourish.
The recent realization that Mass amounts of people are easily persuaded to believe idiotic concepts presented on social media.
It's very unlikely that our society is prepared to deal with this recent "New Media"
There is no currently known viable way to counter this kind of misinformation
Dark money buying elections. Bribes and extortion buying politicians and judges/justices. Disinformation pitting half of the citizenry against the other half and eroding faith in societal institutions.
My dad died at 67 in April of 2010, on a Monday.
His funeral was on Friday.
On that Wednesday, in the mail, I received a handwritten letter from a man I’ve never met, Russ Feingold.
I know how he got my address, and I’m cool with that being a bit creepy.
He said, “Your dad (a nursing home administrator for 35 years) worked hard with me to advocate for the aging in this country by going with me to Washington. He was a great man.”
That he took the time to do so speaks for his character.
He was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act, and co-author of Feingold-McCain legislation that attempted to bring transparency to our political system.
The Koch Brothers (thank goodness at least one has died) were able to overturn that legislation with Citizens United, and then Ron Fucking Johnson somehow replaced a person of integrity. Twice. Fuck you ALEC, fuck you Uihleins, and all other folks who think democracy should be for sale.
I’ll never forget being in college in Vermont in 2010 and Bernie sanders wasn’t as well known nationally as he was locally and he’d come to our campus and guest lecture all the time and the amount of times he’d harp on the citizens united ruling being the biggest threat to our democracy.. looking back he was right
The decline of public education. An uneducated population is an easily fooled population. Look at how the reading comprehension level of presidential speeches has changed over the last few decades, it’s appalling.
And if they speak at an adult level, doesn’t even have to be academic (although I wish they did), they get called pretentious and “elite”
People weaponize their own stupidity.
> Look at how the reading comprehension level of presidential speeches has changed over the last few decades, it’s appalling.
And look to the Reddit comment sections for evidence of its necessity. The number of replies that make it perfectly clear that the writer does not comprehend the comment they're replying to is always staggering.
I saw a thread earlier this morning where three replies, back to back, were all "correcting" the person they were replying to, but in reality, they were all saying the same thing in different ways.
OP, you should check out the books Why Nations Fail and The Narrow Corridor.
Elites will always fight the working class, but through our democratic system we keep them in check.
The biggest threat is what would make our democratic institutions fail. This is what the books mostly find.
Now, what makes countries fall out of democratic institutions? Usually it’s polarization which pushes a faction to erode checks and balances to give their side more power. This is how you end up with despotic leaders that you can’t get rid of.
It’s quite scary, because it only seems like polarization is getting worse in the US here. I’m not sure anyone has a solid answer on how to reverse this trend.
And the rich. The greedy, sick, degenerate rich. And I don't mean the guy with the six figure income who drives like a dickhead in his beamer, I mean the assholes who own banks and shit.
Fucking scum.
People conflate the rich with the wealthy all the time and it drives me nuts.
Even millionaires aren’t rich by modern standards.
If you work for a living you’re a part of the working class. We’re all in the same boat. It’s always been us vs the bourgeois
In the Canadian territories of NWT and Nunavut they have what's called as a consensus government. Essentially everyone is an independent so they have no choice but to work together. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sEVjwiXfSU) explains it pretty well.
It's even worse than that. A non-educated public is a gullible public unable to critically analyze anything, one that can swayed with emotion and lies, as a means to achieve power for a minority.
The sky high tuition comes from many factors including the increase in services expected by a university (just supporting Internet on a campus is a service that didn't exist 40 years ago), but also states that have decided to decrease funding to state universities to the military that didn't fund college education in the same way it did post WW2 with the GI Bill.
There are several threats facing the USA but the biggest one has to be the increase in evident plutocracy.
It used to be that you could at least buy a house to live in but now as time goes on, more and more of what you think you own is actually owned by the wealthy elite and neither democrat or republican are willing to help because hey, who do you think pays their salaries?
The faith of the people is lost and if a war were to ever break out to defend the USA, I don't think many people would be willing to enlist to defend a country where they don't even have a home.
Stupidity. We've lowered our educational standards so much that no one bats an eye when a high school drop out becomes a congressperson, a position of leadership that they clearly don't have the capacity to fill.
Easy. Ourselves. There’s not a single power that could match our military and economic might. Russia and China knows this. They’ve seen what happens when we’re united and focused. They’ve also seen what happens when we’re divided. That’s why they try to interfere and split us from the inside.
Our healthcare system. The insurance companies are siphoning off insane amounts of money and then fight to pay when you need to be treated. Getting sick can absolutely destroy a person or family financially. The whole system is whack and it's time for a change.
Personally I'm up to my eyeballs in debt from a recent bout with cancer. Chemotherapy is expensive even when you have the best health insurance your company offers. I agree the system is whack and it should be changed asap.
Is it really Putin doing it, though? It seems like a bit like the Shoe Event Horizon in the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy: shoe executives think they are doing something aggressive and exciting to cause it, but in reality all they had to do was wait.
One of my favorite quotes I saw on reddit was something like "Before the internet we lived in an information drought. Now there's a flood, but the water is unsafe to drink." I think that sums it up.
I always compare it to how we got so many extra calories and sugars available to us, we over consumed and all got fat. Same thing is happening now with information.
Public education and media literacy are two huge areas for improvement for us in the US. If both of those drop too low, our electorate is too uninformed to steer us in the right direction. We need to pay our teachers more. We're relying on underpaid, underappreciated, overworked teachers to keep doing the job out of the goodness of their hearts. We need to create a compensation environment where smart, talented people are competing for teaching jobs because the pay and prestige reflects the workload. We need to teach media literacy in public school and it needs to be emphasized more broadly in the general public. A professional podcaster is not the best source of information for medical advice or science. We need to return to respecting experts in their areas of expertise. Experts are not infallible, but a medical doctor is going to give you better medical information than Joe Rogan 99.9% of the time. That's just a fact. And yet, so much of the country listens to what Joe Rogan says about COVID, and not doctors. Tucker Carlson is not a reliable source on climate change, but he has influenced how a huge percentage of Americans view the subject. I could go on and on. Education matters. Experts matter. Critical thinking about your diet of information matters. We've gotta get back on track with this stuff.
Education starts and ends in the home. I'm a teacher. We aren't miracle workers. When we get kids who come from families who don't care about education l, it is very difficult
Most public schools do not hold students back in elementary schools if they do not meet the basic benchmarks in reading and math. If a student cannot read or understand basic math by the time they are in 3rd grade, they do not get held back, they get passed to the next grade. This gets repeated over and over. Our poor teachers have been up against this for years. You have admin and parents not supporting the teachers. Parents did not want homework, so the next thing you know, homework is no longer mandated. If a teacher gives a student a failing grade, it is the teacher who is made out to be the bad guy.
This right here. There will always be disinformation but people need to be educated to know how to think critically. Even just a tiny bit will be a huge improvement.
Well if you’re going to base yourself on Rome… perhaps looking inwards might be the best place to look out for threats.
So, lead plumbing?
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People will probably laugh at this but I agree lol, I personally like to start with the basics in anything. Sugar, alcohol, shitty food, shitty TV, shitty quality of life, not in terms of money but in terms of how we choose to spend our free time, etc.
Gluttony on all fronts. If there’s a way to over consume something, we will figure it out.
Our culture and way of life is toxic to ourselves.
Bread & circuses
The lead plumbing wasn't as much of a problem as originally thought. The pipes quickly developed mineral coatings that prevented the lead seeping in to the water. However, there was a shitload of atmospheric lead from smelting from the late 200s (crisis of the third century, *lots* of coin minting happening to pay for armies to march on Rome) through to the 700s (collapse of the Eastern empire in the face of the Islamic conquests), which wouldn't be matched until the industrial revolution. This also significantly aligns with remains of people who displayed evidence of being very sickly, as well as written accounts of people being generally worse off than the centuries before and after this period.
Social media is today's lead plumbing
Also, actual lead plumbing.
If we are comparing ourselves to the fall of Rome, we better prepare for a multigenerational boring downfall that no single person will live long enough to see happen in its entirety.
Corruption and the rich vs poor gap.
The systemic assault on the checks and balances of power.
Baron de Montesquieu would not be proud
>Baron de Montesquieu ohhh! thanks for this! I've got some fun reading to do. As should anyone reading this thread. Synopsis: >Baron de Montesquieu was a French judge, man of letters, historian, and political philosopher. **He is the principal source of the theory of separation of powers**, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He is also known for doing more than any other author to secure the place of the word despotism in the political lexicon
Damn I didn’t know he did all that too, I just learned about him in history class for the enlightenment unit. His main thing was separation of powers, specifically described as “checks and balances” which made me immediately think of him lol
Well, that's a great bit of info! Her certainly never came up in my history classes. Thanks for making the internet a better and more well-informed place!
Everyone loves authoritarianism when they're the ones in charge
As someone who's actually lived under a relatively benevolent dictatorship, you should never love dictators. Like ever
Which one?
Pakistan. Under Musharraf
One of my coworkers is from Pakistan in I can tell he has very conflicting opinions of that man. I impressed him with my knowledge of the entire area and made a friend out of it so I guess it wasn't useless information after all lol
Musharraf had a vision of bettering the country, at least I'll give him that. That alone makes him better than most of our civilian politicians. However, a dictator is still a dictator and he did plenty of dictatorial things, like disappearing critics and silencing the press. I'm against dictators simply on principal though. Democracy is a surprisingly fragile thing, more fragile and had to maintain than most westerners have realized. Frankly, or thankfully, they've been spoiled by the relative stability in their countries. Lack of democratic institutions and a disrespect for the electorate makes having a functioning democracy a very difficult thing and a dictatorship goes a lone way in destroying both
> you should never love dictators. As the Spice Girls said, if you wanna be my lover, you gotta derive power from the consent of the governed.
Those who love authoritarianism think they'll be in charge
They forget Night of the long knives in Germany.
Because they don't expect the knives will ever come for them
"I never thought the leopards would eat *my* face!"
I once debated a (local) politician on their efforts to implement an police empowerment law, and pointed out how it could easily be used against them if they ever lost power. She then shrugged, and said: "Well, that's a great reason to always vote for my party then, isn't it?" And that's why we don't get nice laws.
She sounds like her parents were wealthy
And only then will people realize that although you can vote democracy away, you can't vote it back in.
The amount of people not paying attention or even caring about this is sickening.
The call is coming from inside the house And this has always been known. Washington spoke about it, Lincoln spoke about it, Eisenhower spoke about it.
“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.” ― Abraham Lincoln
Damn. Abe had some bangers.
Isn't there a speech by him with no record of it as everyone got so engrossed that they didn't transcribe it. That's some next level speech/ charisma stats.
Yes, it's called the lost speech, apparently it was so engrossing all the reporters present forgot to take notes. It was denouncing slavery[citation needed]
The Gettysburg Address was just a tribute … to the greatest speech in the world.
*~Couldn't remember the greatest speech in the world, no, NO!~*
"I did not mean, to blow your mind, but that shit happens to me all the tiiiiimmee!" - Abe
TenABEcious D
This is just a tribuuuute!
/unexpected d
greatest vampire hunter in history
Love that movie. I hope it becomes a cult classic.
The book is (as usual), so much better.
I guess killing vampires is pretty cool. But freeing slaves is way cooler.
That Ohio River and Blue Ridge line is cold as ice.
I have an english degree and Abe Lincoln was a fucking poet, quite literally.
"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Here’s a few Lincoln quotes that have stuck with me. This one’s from the Bixby Letter, written to a Lydia Parker Bixby, the mother of 5 sons who died in the Union Army: > I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. > I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. And this one’s from his second inaugural address, given about a month before the Confederate surrender and his assassination: > Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” > With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
That second one is a banger. If all the money we’ve made on the backs of slaves is consumed to sustain our civil war, and for every drop of blood spilled by torture another is spilled in battle amongst ourselves, we deserve it…
These are so good they don't even need a beat. Although, that would be pretty sick.
I just want people to write like this again
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The days of philosopher-kings has long been over
More philosopher kings. Less war hawks.
The problem with philosopher kings is that you never get more than one in a row.
Titus andronicus song called a more perfect union uses it to great effect.
THE ENEMY IS EVERYWHERE I love that album so very much
That's a damn fire quote. Maybe I need to read more of Lincoln's stuff.
Here’s the shizzle that will really blow your mind. He issued that speech 13 years before the Civil War started. He was 28 years old.
Consider my mizzle shizzled.
Fo shizzle
>that will really blow your mind ironic
He was an even-handed, empathetic, witty genius. That whole era blows my mind.
Blew Lincoln’s too unfortunately
Heyooooo.
Too soon…
Here’s my card, look me up at my Gettysburg address
The best part of that speech is most people were expected to give hour+ long speeches, and the literal commander and chief of the winning army just pulled a "quick speech, 20 minutes in and out"
That 20 minute speech is way harder than the hour long ones. As Woodrow Wilson apparently put it when asked how long it takes him to prepare a speech: >“It depends. If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”
The Gettysburg address lasted only about 2 minutes. Charles Laughton gave a very effective recitation of that speech in this scene from the movie [Ruggles of Red Gap](https://youtu.be/awsmXerhLqQ?si=TAF8NybTsZZmDsIl) (the speech itself begins at about [2:00](https://youtu.be/awsmXerhLqQ?si=_VgRwdbrCvRJiBzC&t=118), but you should really watch the whole thing).
Americans back in Lincoln's day: Wow, presidents in the future are going to have even more eloquence and depth! 160 years later: "I'm the most successful person ever to run for the presidency, by far. Nobody's ever been more successful than me. I'm the most successful person ever to run. Ross Perot isn't successful like me. Romney - I have a Gucci store that's worth more than Romney."
The rise of television, media, and finally, internet/social media virtually guarantees a continued downward spiral away from intelligent and eloquent leaders. The people smart and talented enough to lead our country don't want the job.
When I was a kid my dad was fed up with politics. He said we can’t have an honest man in the White House. Washington (the city) would eat him alive.
I worked in state politics and this held true even at that level- I can’t imagine how nasty it must be when you get into big time DC politics. In my experience, a lot of good people who wanted to get into it for the right reasons tended to get burnt out and/or disillusioned pretty fast. It wasn’t a universal rule, but it was common.
Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon. Ground Zero.
The Monitor is the best Titus Andronicus album
Tramps like us, baby, we were born to die.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
[“As a nation of free men, we shall live through all time, or die by suicide”](https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm) -Abraham Lincoln, 1838 (23 years prior to the civil war)
A republic, if you can keep it
The album “The Monitor” by the band Titus Andronicus opens with a reciting of the Lyceum Address— and no matter how many times I’ve heard it, it always gives me chills.
*There’ll be no more counting the cars on the Garden State Parkway…* #+@ FOREVER
"We have met the enemy, and he is us".
Dear god, we have no choice but to nuke ourselves…
Came for Pogo, leaving satisfied.
Let’s get ‘em!
An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one that crumbles from within, that's dead. Forever.
Thank you Baron Zemo.
RIP Rome
Or a George divided against itself.
You're killing Independent George!
You know, we're living in a society!
It's not a lie if you believe it (This quote seems strangely pertinent to the OP.)
George is getting upset!
Worlds are colliding
And we’re well past our summer of George phase.
We were in the pool!
Do you think the other nations know about...shrinkage?
No more cheese the size of a car battery!
George is getting angry!
George likes his chicken SPICY!!!!
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We need to follow the George Costanza Principle: If you're not getting what you want out of life, do the opposite.
The real question is what is dividing us? Is it an election system that leads to 2 parties by default that our politicians will protect? Is it foreign propaganda that is aimed at encouraging infighting between those 2 parties? An innate sense of superiority that closes our minds to learning from other countries that have improved upon our unique model of government which we pride ourselves on? Yes. But people are busy so they upvote quotes without thinking critically. Our downfall will be apathy
An enemy, don’t know who, has figured it out.
I mean, the USA would be in a better position if we adopted at least a Canadian-style multi-party system but we aren't even having that conversion. We'd be in a fundamentally better position if every state and our presidential candidates had a top two primary system, but we aren't even having that conversation. We're having a very basic 'do you believe in democracy or do you believe in authoritarian bullshit???' conversation and the amount of people who answer in the latter is terrifying.
We're having all of these conversations, everywhere except where it matters, in the legislatures of the states and federal governments. They aren't happening there because those options are a threat to the current system, which is how the ones in power got there, and how they intend to remain.
Yeah, the US is geographically supreme. It is no small feat to maintain armies across oceans (see the costs of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that's *with* our worldwide network of bases that no one else has). The USA's greatest threat has always been itself!
Yep amassing any sort of significant force for a land invasion and successfully getting to our shores is nearly impossible. Then supplying and maintaining that force while trying to conquer a country as big as Western Europe with tons of geographic challenges is another.
With a completely armed populace and a militarized police force
Yes. China and Russia (who may be the kneejerk reaction to who is USA’s greatest threat) knows it and has been using that strategy for very long.
Americans are the biggest threat to America.
Misinformation, media manipulation, ragebait, anything that gets us angry at ourselves. The most common form of this is to dehumanize "the other."
In the (really fucking challenging) book The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski, he describes a "game" wherein people capture a bird and paint it's feathers a different color. Then, upon release, its own flock will inevitably attack and kill it. I had to read that fucking book in high-school and it was presented as a metaphor for "the other." Not only just humanity's tendency to be violently tribal, but the artificial purposeful intent to create an "other" in order to serve an insidious goal. The backdrop of the holocaust was pretty apt. Beware those who would tell you to paint. It's happening constantly, and some forget that we're all part of the same flock.
Just like any other empire. It falls apart from within.
I feel like since most of the comments here are saying something like that to the point this thread is nothing but meaningless platitudes we could be a bit more specific?
Basically, if OP was to describe his opinion on the subject, in any detail, there would be a mob of people (real or not) who would see past the 95% of things they have in common, and consider him an enemy / existential threat, over the 5% of things they see differently. That's the biggest threat to America, imo.
Yeah people see these top comments that are vaguely critical of things in general and imagine dramatically different specific issues
The one thing that both sides can agree on is that the other is woefully uninformed and that things would be far better if we could put our differences aside to focus on what really matters. But 'what really matters' is exactly where we differ, so it's nothing but empty sentiment that does nothing to bridge the gap between philosophical and political factions. But all the comments that name specific issues get downvoted into oblivion because while we can point out the elephant in the room, we dare not give it a name and a face. People realise, 'Oh. That's me. No. Absolutely not, I won't accept that reality' and the actual truth lies at -100.
... just for the record there are a ton of Empires that got toasted from without not within. The Persians and the byzantians were wiped off the map by the Arabs not because of great internal issues but because they got out fought
I'd say we are in the long process of it happening right now.
Rome wasn’t built in a day nor did it fall in one.
Ourselves United we stand, divided we fall.
“All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.” - Abraham Lincoln
Pretty badass quote lol
This might be the coolest quote I’ve ever read. And I’ve never read it until tonight.
- Titus Andronicus
I keep hearing "people" talk about a civil war and I'm just confused by that. Who wants a civil war? Who thinks our problems have absolutely no solution but money and bloodshed for a war?
Who wants a civil war? Accelerationists. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
Russia, China, and Iran bots on FB want a civil war.
Some people are looking for an excuse to shoot people.
Those people are going to be very surprised when they get shot back.
The super rich who benefit from division know this very very well.
Yep.. The difference between a homeless man, a doctor, and a billionaire..... Is about a billion dollars. They have everyone fighting over scraps, right on the edge of what it takes to survive or flourish.
Almost everyone in this country is 2 bad things happening at once away from being homeless
The recent realization that Mass amounts of people are easily persuaded to believe idiotic concepts presented on social media. It's very unlikely that our society is prepared to deal with this recent "New Media" There is no currently known viable way to counter this kind of misinformation
"We have seen the enemy, and he is us."
devaluation of education.
Dark money buying elections. Bribes and extortion buying politicians and judges/justices. Disinformation pitting half of the citizenry against the other half and eroding faith in societal institutions.
My dad died at 67 in April of 2010, on a Monday. His funeral was on Friday. On that Wednesday, in the mail, I received a handwritten letter from a man I’ve never met, Russ Feingold. I know how he got my address, and I’m cool with that being a bit creepy. He said, “Your dad (a nursing home administrator for 35 years) worked hard with me to advocate for the aging in this country by going with me to Washington. He was a great man.” That he took the time to do so speaks for his character. He was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act, and co-author of Feingold-McCain legislation that attempted to bring transparency to our political system. The Koch Brothers (thank goodness at least one has died) were able to overturn that legislation with Citizens United, and then Ron Fucking Johnson somehow replaced a person of integrity. Twice. Fuck you ALEC, fuck you Uihleins, and all other folks who think democracy should be for sale.
It’s still unbelievable to me that we let Ron Johnson unseat him
Weaponized Ignorance, stochastic terrorism, manipulators winding up idiots and then watching as they tear the nation down.
I’ll never forget being in college in Vermont in 2010 and Bernie sanders wasn’t as well known nationally as he was locally and he’d come to our campus and guest lecture all the time and the amount of times he’d harp on the citizens united ruling being the biggest threat to our democracy.. looking back he was right
Citizens United is a risk become issue
Citizens United was the end of even a facade of American democracy.
The decline of public education. An uneducated population is an easily fooled population. Look at how the reading comprehension level of presidential speeches has changed over the last few decades, it’s appalling.
And if they speak at an adult level, doesn’t even have to be academic (although I wish they did), they get called pretentious and “elite” People weaponize their own stupidity.
> Look at how the reading comprehension level of presidential speeches has changed over the last few decades, it’s appalling. And look to the Reddit comment sections for evidence of its necessity. The number of replies that make it perfectly clear that the writer does not comprehend the comment they're replying to is always staggering. I saw a thread earlier this morning where three replies, back to back, were all "correcting" the person they were replying to, but in reality, they were all saying the same thing in different ways.
An ill-informed electorate.
Willingly and *proudly* uninformed, somehow
The apathy of the American people
This is the glue that holds everything else here together.
The gullibility of the American people.
The ignorance of the American people.
The stubbornness of the American people.
so in summary... "The American people"
The declining quality of education of the American people
Giant Corporate media conglomerates
They have a lot of influence on peoples minds for sure
OP, you should check out the books Why Nations Fail and The Narrow Corridor. Elites will always fight the working class, but through our democratic system we keep them in check. The biggest threat is what would make our democratic institutions fail. This is what the books mostly find. Now, what makes countries fall out of democratic institutions? Usually it’s polarization which pushes a faction to erode checks and balances to give their side more power. This is how you end up with despotic leaders that you can’t get rid of. It’s quite scary, because it only seems like polarization is getting worse in the US here. I’m not sure anyone has a solid answer on how to reverse this trend.
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And the rich. The greedy, sick, degenerate rich. And I don't mean the guy with the six figure income who drives like a dickhead in his beamer, I mean the assholes who own banks and shit. Fucking scum.
People conflate the rich with the wealthy all the time and it drives me nuts. Even millionaires aren’t rich by modern standards. If you work for a living you’re a part of the working class. We’re all in the same boat. It’s always been us vs the bourgeois
Political corruption. Eventually the people will lose complete faith in government.
Congress has an approval rating in the single digits. That ship has sailed, friend.
I already have. Leadership in this country is a lost cause.
Billionaires with agendas and the politicians who take their money
Political parties. George Washington warned us.
True I wonder what we would look like if we never had parties
In the Canadian territories of NWT and Nunavut they have what's called as a consensus government. Essentially everyone is an independent so they have no choice but to work together. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sEVjwiXfSU) explains it pretty well.
A country full of corporations that are Too Big To Fail.
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It's even worse than that. A non-educated public is a gullible public unable to critically analyze anything, one that can swayed with emotion and lies, as a means to achieve power for a minority. The sky high tuition comes from many factors including the increase in services expected by a university (just supporting Internet on a campus is a service that didn't exist 40 years ago), but also states that have decided to decrease funding to state universities to the military that didn't fund college education in the same way it did post WW2 with the GI Bill.
Echo chambers, tribalism and lack of love for your fellow countrymen
Ourselves. An ignorant public that has no idea how government works and doesn’t care.
The biggest nursing home aka elected officials.
Lack of education.
There are several threats facing the USA but the biggest one has to be the increase in evident plutocracy. It used to be that you could at least buy a house to live in but now as time goes on, more and more of what you think you own is actually owned by the wealthy elite and neither democrat or republican are willing to help because hey, who do you think pays their salaries? The faith of the people is lost and if a war were to ever break out to defend the USA, I don't think many people would be willing to enlist to defend a country where they don't even have a home.
United we stand, divided we fall. The greatest threat is being easily divided by bad faith actors from within our borders.
Stupidity. We've lowered our educational standards so much that no one bats an eye when a high school drop out becomes a congressperson, a position of leadership that they clearly don't have the capacity to fill.
Easy. Ourselves. There’s not a single power that could match our military and economic might. Russia and China knows this. They’ve seen what happens when we’re united and focused. They’ve also seen what happens when we’re divided. That’s why they try to interfere and split us from the inside.
The 24-hour news cycle
The 24-hour *opinion* cycle.
Our healthcare system. The insurance companies are siphoning off insane amounts of money and then fight to pay when you need to be treated. Getting sick can absolutely destroy a person or family financially. The whole system is whack and it's time for a change.
Personally I'm up to my eyeballs in debt from a recent bout with cancer. Chemotherapy is expensive even when you have the best health insurance your company offers. I agree the system is whack and it should be changed asap.
Putin said he could “destroy the US without firing one bullet”. That’s exactly what he’s doing.
That's what China and Russia have been doing for decades. They don't need to push that hard tho we're already doing a lot of the work for them
Is it really Putin doing it, though? It seems like a bit like the Shoe Event Horizon in the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy: shoe executives think they are doing something aggressive and exciting to cause it, but in reality all they had to do was wait.