Michigan Republics approve bill that advocates bullying gays.

[Kuraudo Sutoraifu]

Topics like this aren't helping.  There are real problems out there, ones more urgent than the latest mindfuck-inducing piece of legislation our gov't produced.

PGF has won this thread.

[GeneralStrife]

Amen PGF, I only joined in because it was bashing conservatives. Fuck no I hate pat robertson, nad whoever else you were talking about. They are an insult to my convictions, I don't watch fox news usually anyways.

[Kaijyuu]

Discussion is a pointless waste of time? Okay, whatever.

Being armchair philosophers and not going out and doing anything about it is being "useless" I suppose, but that doesn't mean said philosophizing is a waste of time. Some things are an end in themselves. Maybe it's just "useless" amusement... but I don't see you railing against people partaking in other useless amusements.

Once upon a time, discussion and discourse was a worthwhile endeavor in and of itself. Dunno when that changed.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

It's not that discussion is useless - it's not - so much as it is that discussion of how awful x group of people is, based on one ambigiously worded piece of legislation.  I saw this same story flash on CNN last night, so I suspect it's a red herring to draw everyone away from the real issue - how banks, corporations, and the wealthy are fucking everyone in this country while getting tax breaks and subsudies from the gov't.

[Kaijyuu]

Fair enough.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Fair enough.

I accept your apology.

[formerdeathcorps]

You've more or less told me why I'm leery of OWS.

*Wall Street, banking companies, corporations, and the wealthy in the USA have benefited from the economic crashes of the past 10 years, many of which were caused by their own personal incompetance (Enron, the Housing crash/unregulated derivatives scandals).

Although I mostly agree, this doesn't go nearly as far as it should.  First of all, the implication is that if these schemes had gone on forever (or if the Wall Street operators were not incompetent), we would have no problem today.  That in itself is wrong.  These economic crashes are INEVITABLE as long as the model for profit involves conning others for profit (asymmetrical power and information) over making actual goods that can be sold.  Sooner or later, your shell game will end because you'll run out of people to cheat.  Secondly, it must be emphasized that such tactics shouldn't be legal in the first place.  Some of them definitely violated existing (unenforced) laws, others violated laws that they helped lobby out of existence, and many were in gray areas not addressed by the law but would be immoral/illegal if translated into everyday equivalents.  Lastly, if you consider the history of other bubbles, you'll find the same group of banks involved.  Thus, it's more appropriate to say that the Crash of 2007 was engineered by them FROM THE START.
For example, Bank A creates a bubble, while constantly monitoring it for implosion.  During the growth phase, they use their media assets to trick people into buying in.  Right before the implosion, the bank sells what they can to gain control of real assets while the worthless speculated money remains on their books.  The coup de grace is then in forcing the government to hand over real assets to cover the speculated non-money.

And after they screwed up, they weren't held to the same standards as the average American, but were instead bailed out, first by a Republican President and a Democratic Congress, and next by a Democratic President and a Republican Congress.  Not only that, but once they were bailed out, they refused to do what the gov't understood they would do, which was use the money with which they were bailed out to begin hiring and loaning again, to jump-start the economy.

The banks right now can enforce an economic blockade against any country that opposes them.  If the US dares to do the above, they'll just extort the US government, as they did to Greece or Iceland.  They'd orchestrate a 5000 point plunge of the Dow, which would prompt the credit agencies to downgrade the rank of the dollar.  That will pressure all of the creditors of the US to then demand the US follow whatever the banks/IMF wants.  If the US still disagrees, the status of the US as the reserve currency of the world will be removed, which effectively drives up the price of imports (including petroleum) to the point where you can trigger all kinds of crises here and globally.
In short, if you want to stop this cascade effect from leading to WWIII (which they'll then profit off of), the banks need to be disarmed politically in every major industrial nation.  Sadly, this is tied to their economic control of virtually every sector of the economies of the major industrialized nations.  Thus, the struggle against their political power needs to cut their economic power.  From what I've gathered from the OWS members I've talked to on campus, not many see it like this; I fear OWS doesn't have the vision needed to defuse this problem globally.

*So what we have in the USA isn't actually capitalism.  Instead, it is Corporate Socialism - welfare for the wealthy and for corporations, financed by tax increases on the rest of us ( in the form sales taxes, property taxes, and, if the Republicans have their way, a flat tax which will increase taxes on the majority of Americans while reducing taxes for the wealthiest minority) and the destruction of social safety nets (such as food stamps, Social Security, Pell Grants,...).

I agree, but I'd like to change one detail.  Corporate Socialism is fascism.  This means that we face not only an increasing war machine abroad and the reduction of welfare at home (with corporate subsidies), we also face the diversion of that money towards the structures of a police state.  Paramilitaries, violation of rights, torture, kidnapping, and assassination will become increasingly the norm for the police and related agencies.   Furthermore, the union of state and corporate power means that existing organizations (for profit or otherwise) that claim to speak for the people will be increasingly strained to follow the edicts of the state in deceiving and misleading the people, or will face increasing official harassment.  OWS, I feel, isn't willing to look at either of the latter two issues in sufficient depth.

*What Occupy Wall Street proposes is this: that we stop both the bailouts and the subsudies for the wealthy and for corporations and that they be treated as the rest of us are.  We don't want socialism for the poor, we want capitalism for the rich.

This sentiment feels like distortion.  I'd rather keep jobs, benefits, and welfare for the people and cut subsidies for the rich (this by the way, includes unnecessary foreign wars and a good number of federal departments, if we take subsidy to mean any activity using public money that mostly benefits a few rich stakeholders) over cutting both.  This is especially the case since much of the concern over the "national debt" is manufactured by the rich through their media and political operatives to justify cutting welfare.  The only "real" factors in the debt problem are the US trade imbalance (from insufficient domestic production) and the US war machine (which as I mentioned above, should be mostly dismantled).

**OWS aren't like the mid-century Baby Boomer Liberals.  We don't want more pay for less work.  If anything, we are more like the peasants than middle-class workers, in that we want jobs that pay enough for us to afford food, clothing, housing, and an education.  I personally have never made more than $7.40/hour, since I got my first job at age 16, and I'm now almost 26.  But incomes for the wealthiest 1% have nearly tripled in the same time period.

The problem is that you've also begun to adopt the mindset of a peasant: "I just want a guarantee of X, Y, and Z, and I'll leave you and your power alone".  The problem, however, is that a highly skewed system still remains in place against the poor and the radical.  All you've secured, at best, is a guarantee from the current crop of leaders that they won't use the tools they have.  However, unless you can directly influence the successor, the next person who comes into government can simply renege those promises and put your children back to where you started.  In short, if the stranglehold the rich have over political and economic decisions isn't broken, and the anti-democratic means (both violent and subtle) for subverting popularly elected officials or popularly demanded laws are not dissolved, these demands amount to nothing but a ceasefire.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

What tactics, techniques, and procedures do you propose?  What is the overall strategy?  Most important, what is - or should be - the goal?

On topic for once: I don't think there should be a global oversight comitee on business activities, and I definately don't think we need or should have/desire a "higher" moral code to guide a comitee in charge of overseeing business ethics (or the lack of it).

What we need is the technology which will make it impossible for any business, anywhere, to fuck over anyone. Social networking is part of the equation, as is cloud computing and cheap tablets and other hardware, but the most important variable is free and open source artificial intelligence, running on the computers of volunteers, which can sort through pentabytes of data to unmask the fuckery our wonderful business community gets into. Specifically, a set of AIs to find and detect fraud and deceit in financial markets.

^The above is a response I typed in reply to a discussion about the Vatican forming an international comitee on morality in business and idolatry of money and materialism.

spoiler

You don't understand. The reality of the Cadillac-driving Welfare Queen is irrelevant, because it was not meant as part of an intellectual discussion on the merits of social welfare programs. It was a purely political move, meant to, as you said, divert attention away from the greater injustices being commited by Wall Street at that time (anybody remember the Savings & Loans scandals?). It was misdirection.

What I dislike about my fellow liberals is, despite their suppossed mastery of the arts (especially writing and storytelling), they can't get the facts I discussed above through their fucking heads. Every time they see a bit of bait, a bit of misdirection, they chase after it like a toddler chasing a big red rubber ball into traffic. They have no idea how to fight, especially how to fight in a political arena.

Every second spent disproving your enemies misdirections is a second you could've spent creating misdirection of your own. Misdirection is a way to get your opponent chasing after something irrelevant, a way to get him to defeat himself when your own argument (or arsenal, depending on the kind of war you're fighting) isn't up to the task.

The thing is, as good as they are at distracting and misdirecting liberals, they are even more vulnerable to it themselves. Don't believe me? Then throw the gays issue out there and see how the average conservative goes chasing after it.

Which brings me to my final point: conservatives have spent the last fifty years denying the LGBT community the rights they are granted in the constitution, so it's high time the LGBT community struck back. What I propose is this - that we saturate every part of their lives with the LGBT issue, to the point that that's the only thing they ever see or hear. Let it drive them mad, and then let them go crazy.

Specifically, I want as many people who are willing to do it to register with every Christian chat group, forum, message board, and website, and to troll the fuck out every Christian they can find. I believe that, with Christians off trying to outlaw homosexuality, they will drive their party so far to the right that only their fanatical core will support them. Considering recent polls which state that more than 2/3 of Americans support Gay Marriage and equal rights, seeing Christians foaming at the mouth and ranting and raving over gays should give swing voters reason to pause, especially if the candidates themselves see their constituents going rabid and decide they must foam too.

Before anybody replies that I'm an awful person: sorry, I'm not a theist, and I don't hold to the do-unto-others-as-you-would-have-them-do-unto-you thing. I'm more of a "do unto others as they do unto you" sort of guy. Nobody will ever give the LGBT community their rights, just as women weren't "given" the right to vote - women TOOK their rights back. If you want the right to marry the man or woman you love, then go out and take that right. If that bothers anyone, then too damn bad.

Occupy is, in my opinion, a cry to move away from Corporate Socialism - welfare for the wealthy and for corporations - and to move towards policies which are fair and proportionate. They don't want to destroy the rich, they just want them to play fair.

I should also say, policies that are progressive, as well as fair and proportionate. Personally, I'd start with the legalization,regulation, and taxation of marijuana.

Marijuana should be legalized, regulated, and taxed for the following reasons:
1. It's about as harmful as tobacco and alcohol.

It is less addictive and harmful than tobacco, because the lethal dose of THC requires you to smoke several kilos of high-quality weed in less than an hour. The lethal dose of nicotine is about 40 to 60 milligrams (more lethal than cocaine, in other words) when ingested, taken intraveniously, or applied to the skin (since nicotine readily passes into the bloodstream following dermal contact). For fuck's sake, nicotine is used as a pesticide, when DILUTED!

Marijuana is less addictive and harmful than alcohol, and not just because alcohol is easier and cheaper to buy. When a person smokes (or ingests, or vaporizes, or whatever) a lot of weed, they get sleepy, and drift off to sleep. Most people, most of the time, at least. But when a person drinks, they can react in many different ways, depending on individual metabolism and brain and liver chemistry, personality, the setting in which they are drinking, the people they are - or aren't - drinking with,... but alcohol always reduces a persons inhibitions and contributes to violent behaviour and criminal acts.

Personal testimony: When I was in the Marines, everyone drank. Coincidentally, there were fights every night, things being broken, things being stolen, things getting lost, people getting hurt, and generally bad shit happening everywhere. Compare this to the only theiving pothead I ever know, who basically smoked weed all day and all night long. He wouldn't even steal things, he would just borrow them and never give them back, either because he forgot he had them or because he forgot they weren't his. He started avoiding me when I asked for my stuff back, so I just broke into (actually, I walked in, since he didn't have his door locked) his apartment and got my shit and left.

So, we have dozens and dozens of theiving, violent alcohol drinkers I know, out of maybe a hundred and fifty drinkers I can remember; compared to one theiving pothead I know, out of maybe 50 dedicated weed enthusiests I encountered. And I mean dedicated.

2. Homocidal, megalomaniacial Mexican drug lords sell marijuana, as well as meth, cocaine and it's derivatives, heroin, and perscription drugs. If you legalize marijuana, it will be normal, everyday people growing and selling weed, instead of blood-hungry sociopaths. Deprive them of their marijuana profits, and you deprive them of the sliver of legitimacy they have. When they have no legitimacy left, the Mexican public will no longer believe their narratives - that they are just humble mexican Robin Hoods selling drugs to gringos to feed hard-working mexicans. Once their public support is gone, the will to fight them will return to the mexican people, and a handful of drug lords can stand against a determined population no more than a ship can stand against a rouge wave.

3. With marjuana removed from the war on drugs, law enforcement entitites will be free to concentrate on meth. Not only that, but at least 5% of our nations prison population will be free. All the effort spent fighting weed and punishing growers and sellers will be redirected towards more urgent efforts.

Or we could make addiction a purely medical issue. But I doubt that will happen in my lifetime, so one thing at a time.

4. The tax revenue generated from a tax on marijuana sales - and the money saved by removing marijuana from the war on drugs and releasing weed growers, sellers, and buyers from prison - will be really fucking useful in this economy.

But honestly, I doubt this will happen for at least another 20 years. If we didn't have the weed bogeyman to scare us, we might start wondering why perscription drugs are the most abused drugs in the USA. Or why nearly every initiative to treat pseudoephedrine and ephedrine as perscription drugs - which would make it harder to make meth in the USA - has failed, mostly due to efforts by pharmaceutical companies. [sarcasm]Why should they have to pay, since they're making money from other people's misery?[/sarcasm]

Now, how could I reframe this conversation to make me seem like a great guy, and also make anyone who disagrees with me seem like a monster?

It's not a good place to start because, if you start here, conservatives will start calling you a hippie and trot out every nasty thing assosiated with that. They key is to make this idea palatable for the average american. Stay away from comments to the effect that, "Well, now we're screwed, because we all know ho stupid the "Average American" is. I want to move to Canada/Europe/English-speaking White Country of your choice".

^Random bits from another discussion I had.  I only copied my half of the conversation, so it might seem a little odd.

Since I doubt you'll climb into the pool without someone else jumping in first, I'll dump my stuff here.  My overall strategy is to use emerging technologies to make it impossible not to be transparent in your business transactions (this is a reversal of the "the internet is destroying the average person's privacy"), and to render the advantages the 1% has irrelevant (economic, production/manufacturing, connective/media, and what other advantages?).

The tactics, techniques, and procedures were touched upon in the wall of text above.  But they can still pull the extortion thing, unless the stock market is somehow rendered irrelevant as a symbol of our nation's economic well-being.

[Lijj]

Well put FDC. This bill is quite redundant and of course arbitrary. I wont even get into that but I agree with all the points you've made.

Good read and some good points are coming from all of you. The bipartisan junk is really disappointing though..

So I propose this tactic; coming together on real issues to start.
Our goals should be focused on dismantling the Empire which will ineluctably crumble as all past have. We have over 850 bases that are official in other countries; mostly Iraq, Germany and Japan. We also have many more, I can only guess, undisclosed bases abroad. The President has had his own Praetorian Guard since 1947 With The National Security Act. The emperors have overridden the laws of the land and many others since. Pretending we are nothing but a divided and dysfunctional democracy is getting us nowhere but into deeper crap. We need to recognize distractions like this bill and move on.
I would like to hear more strategies and thoughts on this though. I'm just thinking coming together and recognizing the Imperial State for what it is would be a start.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Well put FDC. This bill is quite redundant and of course arbitrary. I wont even get into that but I agree with all the points you've made.

Good read and some good points are coming from all of you. The bipartisan junk is really disappointing though..

So I propose this tactic; coming together on real issues to start.
Our goals should be focused on dismantling the Empire which will ineluctably crumble as all past have. We have over 850 bases that are official in other countries; mostly Iraq, Germany and Japan. We also have many more, I can only guess, undisclosed bases abroad. The President has had his own Praetorian Guard since 1947 With The National Security Act. The emperors have overridden the laws of the land and many others since. Pretending we are nothing but a divided and dysfunctional democracy is getting us nowhere but into deeper crap. We need to recognize distractions like this bill and move on.
I would like to hear more strategies and thoughts on this though. I'm just thinking coming together and recognizing the Imperial State for what it is would be a start.

You're operating based on the assumption that the USA is an imperialist state, correct?  Isn't that leaning towards left-wing radicalism?  And how do you propose we close those bases?  Should we all canoe out there and throw spears at them?

You can call the President an emperor all you want, but, unless you dismantle the kingmakers, another king will pop up.  And what better way to dismantle them than by bankrupting them?  But how to do that...

[Kaijyuu]

I'll just drop this here due to perceiving relevance to the USA's current condition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy


It's not 100% one but there's lots of evidence to make a strong case, regardless.

[Lijj]

"You're operating based on the assumption that the USA is an imperialist state, correct?  Isn't that leaning towards left-wing radicalism?  And how do you propose we close those bases?  Should we all canoe out there and throw spears at them?"
(don't see quote command)
I laughed..
But, I actually don't think we can do much about that. History will repeat itself. Only this time the technocratic and ubiquitous military industrial complex will go down bringing half of the world with it. It's pretty scary actually. I wouldn't go as far as claiming Left Wing radicalism-- wouldn't that be contradicting my views?
The comparisons to any Imperial power of the past is undeniable, even on small scales. This is just my own individual interpretation of what our government is. The same thing the founders fought against only with much much more power.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

*sighs*

But, I actually don't think we can do much about that.

Then why talk about it?

History will repeat itself.

Would you go into more detail?  What part of history will be repeated, and who will be in what role?

Only this time the technocratic and ubiquitous military industrial complex will go down bringing half of the world with it.

Technocratic?  You mean they're linux nerds?  And how did the word "ubiquitous" get in there?  What does the military-industrial complex have to do with this?  What exactly do you mean by "military-industrial complex"?  Or is this in keeping with the "War is bad, 'mkay?" line of baby-boomer liberal thought?

I wouldn't go as far as claiming Left Wing radicalism-- wouldn't that be contradicting my views?

You haven't expressed any views yet.  So far, you just dropped a bunch of one-liners without explaining how they are relevant to this discussion, offering any context for them, or explaining what exactly you mean.

A view is what you believe, and, more importantly, why you believe it.

The comparisons to any Imperial power of the past is undeniable, even on small scales.

What am I suppossed to do with this?  Are you saying the USA is the same as the Japanese Empire during WWII?  Did we rape the entire female population of every city we every invaded?  Did we bayonet and behead POWs for practice?  Did we march and starve undesirables and POWs to death?

This is just my own individual interpretation of what our government is.

I really like you, lijj, but still, I gotta ask this: Are you high right now?

The same thing the founders fought against only with much much more power.

1. Why does everyone worship the founders?  Oooo, a bunch of slave-holding white men who fought another slave-holding white man, so they could be free!  Big fucking deal.  I'm going to admit right now that I think the founding fathers we're a bunch of assholes with a handful of good ideas.  Most of which they promptly tossed out the window once they had to stick to those ideas when dealing with non-whites and females.

There is no point in discussing the past, because nothing like the current times has ever existed.  We now have the technology to make a truly fair and progressive society, and we can't afford to get sidetracked down the alleys of failed philosophies out of the past.  If those philosophies are so good, then why did they fail?

What we must do now is change and grow, improvise and adapt, so that we may someday overcome.  If an idea works, steal it.  If a belief holds you back, throw it away.  Never be perfect, never be pure; so that you may encompass and absorb your opponents knowledge and experiences into your own.

[Lijj]

PGF you are completely turning everything I said around and only perpetuating the basic point I first made. That arguing details and political views gets us nowhere. That is all was trying to say. I like you too but I think judging people's political ideals is a waste of time.

First question: Why even talk about it? Because I'm making a point that this is an imperial system we live under. The sheer amount of bases surrounding China alone proves that (Taiwan, S. Korea, Uzbekistan etc).

History will repeat itself.. as in: We are the Holy Roman Empire which started as a republic, then went into an elite class democratic system to an oligarchy to an outright dictatorship. Tell me Bush was not a dictator. Who completely trampled over justice and dignity in this nation. (think of Guantanamo).

To answer the third question I will have to ignore the first part because I don't need to answer those, look them up or something. War is bad m'kay; especially imperial war. Our military is most ubiquitous. Don't do anything with it (what the hell?).

Fourth quote response: I did say I was anti bipartisan bickering pretty much. Is that not holding some view? Saying that I think our democracy is dead?

Fifth quote response: Compare ourselves to the Romans again during Nero's reign for one small scale example of how we emulate the exorbitant culture of an empire.. One small scale example is reality TV or the Food Network. A whole station devoted to gluttony is rather fitting for an empire of excesses.

Sixth: A little. But don't use such a thing against me, that hasn't much to do with it.

And the last bit actually kind of pisses me off: I haven't displayed any worship of the founding assholes ok. I just used it to sum up the whole paradox of the current situation.

I like the idea of coming up with some solutions. But if me seeing the US as a global empire is too much than I suppose I should stay out of this topic. I really don't see that opinion as being too far fetched at all though.

[GeneralStrife]

The republican party freed the slaves. Abraham Lincoln = Republican

Chew on that awhile.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

The republican party freed the slaves. Abraham Lincoln = Republican

Chew on that awhile.

Correct.  This was back when the Republican party represented Northern industrial interests, northern abolitionist Christians, and banking groups; and was oppossed by the Democrats, who represented rural agricultural interests (slave holders and plantation owners) and southern pro-slavery Christians.  The whole thing got switched around in the 1960s and 1970s when conservatives, led by Richard Nixon, started courting fundamentalist Christian groups, most prominantly Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and the Southern Baptist Convention.  What Richard Nixon felt was the most useful part of these southern religious groups was the sense of eternal victimhood of the southern white that these groups propogated among their parishoners.

[Lijj]

The republican party freed the slaves. Abraham Lincoln = Republican

Chew on that awhile.

Speaking of one-liners

Correct.  This was back when the Republican party represented Northern industrial interests, northern abolitionist Christians, and banking groups; and was oppossed by the Democrats, who represented rural agricultural interests (slave holders and plantation owners) and southern pro-slavery Christians.  The whole thing got switched around in the 1960s and 1970s when conservatives, led by Richard Nixon, started courting fundamentalist Christian groups, most prominantly Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and the Southern Baptist Convention.  What Richard Nixon felt was the most useful part of these southern religious groups was the sense of eternal victimhood of the southern white that these groups propogated among their parishoners.

This is all the more evidence that there isn't really any distinction between the two parties.

GS:
Abraham Lincoln really cared for those slaves obviously.

"I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man."  -Abraham Lincoln

Seems like he more cared about retaining the Union.

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." -Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln is the founder of the American Empire IMO.
He even allied with Tsar Alexander ll! http://www.reformation.org/czar-alexander.html http://www.russianamericaninstitute.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=229&Itemid=32

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Speaking of one-linersThis is all the more evidence that there isn't really any distinction between the two parties.

GS:
Abraham Lincoln really cared for those slaves obviously.

"I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man."  -Abraham Lincoln

Seems like he more cared about retaining the Union.

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." -Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln is the founder of the American Empire IMO.
He even allied with Tsar Alexander ll! http://www.reformation.org/czar-alexander.html http://www.russianamericaninstitute.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=229&Itemid=32

So American support for a foreign monarch makes us an empire?  Does anyone else who supports a foreign monarch also become an empire by doing so?

[GeneralStrife]

theres only one empire i support

[lirmont]

I don't think there are any specific policy changes that can be made to "fix" the ambiguous problem the United States of America faces. What I mean is, even if there were some set of calculated, time-appropriate, risk-assessed set of changes put forward by some expensive think tank and those changes were perfect, people inside the country would still feel that there is some great and somewhat unfathomable problem looming. However, it can be argued that the United States of America suffers from an almost equal disagreement in the highest tier of their legislative branch. That is, with basically two opposing sides that have mostly loyal components in law-making seats, votes are basically even. There are two sections: the House of Congress and the Senate. Both sections need at least 50% votes plus 1 vote for a majority (approval to pass on to President). When it comes down to basically two groups voting on things, it is not unlikely that one will vote one way and the other will for opposite of them in many cases. However, I put forward that the current two parties do not represent accurately all possible combinations of beliefs. Considering that the large parties basically vote instead of the people who hold office from those parties, this is a crucial point.

To deal with this situation, there are two ways I can conclude would shake up the deadlocking situation. One, it should be recognized that having a political career represents a tangible conflict of interest during voting. People will know which way you vote (and they should, in my opinion). Because of this, the legislator voting must weigh their choice to vote for or against a bill against something totally unrelated, which is the ambiguous idea of their own re-electability by their base. What makes this possible? Any of the following make this conflict of interest possible: the possibility of re-election, the public voting record, and the idea of fierce loyalty demanded by large parties. In the first case, it is unlikely that the constitutional section describing requirements for senators and congressmen would be amended to prevent re-election. In the second case, if voting is made completely anonymous, the people suffer the inability to fact check political puffery during election cycles. In the third case, it's unlikely that something born out of the polarizing effect of political disagreement will ever change to something less polarized. So, what can be done, and, further, what need are we trying to fill? The need is to represent more closely in the voting on bills the actual beliefs of the people that are being represented (as opposed to the parties that are represented) so that voting on bills reflects a less-narrow set of viewpoints. As to what can be done, we need more people to run for public office. I think every last single one of those people participating in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations should run for whatever they're qualified to run for by age and also, for the presidency, by birth in the United States of America. With the ideas and emotions fresh in their minds and hearts, they have practically groomed themselves for the role: they don't like the amount of power corporations have (outside of advertising products and services and making revenue off of said products and services), they distrust the intentions of people who put the idea of making money at the forefront (i.e. referencing Wall Street's speculative nature versus anything that is more of a constructive investment-oriented, e.g. micro-loans; or, the idea of the success of a CEO is measured primarily by the financial state they leave the corporation in), and they likely know the importance of communication (as bizarre as seeing their seemingly jazz-hands inspired version of communication looks to someone outside of the demonstration). You wouldn't have to vote for one of them, but I think their benefits outweigh whatever experience, voting record, or party the people from a major party have to offer.