Could it be as old as Homo Sapiens? Then we shouldn’t be surprised about our country falling so deep so fast.

it’s older - therefore we fall so fast, because it’s programmed in our older (and often mightier) parts of our brain. Actually - and that is maybe the most important fact now, because it contradicts everything on which the power of our leaders depends - actually humankind overcame brute force and violence, the weapon of the stupid species, in favor of the smooth, controllable, but slowly working intelligence

look at “instincts” only humans have - feeling for justice (by awards and by punishment), caring for others even when you yourself have to sacrifice something - that’s human, as current scientific studies seem to indicate, look at the ancient philosophies, based on the protection of the weak to make the community stronger (because each group is just as strong as its weakest link!)…

people are so used to be slaves, to follow like sheep, they are trained to like Pavlov-dogs, since their first days “educated” with the “truth”, that they NEED leadership

oh, we - through our work and consume - pay our leaders 500x our own salary to be fired and humiliated, because we “need” it, we are simply too stupid, too un-informed, too weak, too this and that - and exactly that is the plan, that’s why we hear it like a prayer mill: war is “typically human” and war has existed since the beginning of humankind and humans are violent and hateful…

therefore??

humans need moral leaders, need political leaders, need biz bosses - because humans are violent, stupid monsters…

but never forget the basic law of information processing: No processing without goals and aims: Cui Bono

the infinite war is just a lie, the uncontrollable monster in each human is just a fairy tale to convince people to let others control them. Sure, in any lie lies some truth - wars ARE ancient tools, but that ancestry had 4 feet or even flippers

OUR ancestry condemned violence - the cave paintings prove that, the people at those times WERE able to control the inner violence, which is in our brains like the flippers of our embryos. Don’t follow the preachers of the monster humans, that those people weren’t “civilized enough for war”. There is proof of a culture of cities - the first California - created by people from outside, constructed of perfectly planned cities for thousands of people (bigger than the Sumerican and Egypt ones), caring for EVERYBODY (each and every house had access to water and sanitation, 2000 BC!) - and there were NO palaces and NO churches - a culture of wealthy engineers over nearly a million of square miles

THIS is our problem - our philosophy, because a philosophy decides about every decision you do - and if you believe you need help, you are too weak or too stupid, you ARE weak and stupid and need help - if we believe to need an elite, we WILL need an elite - self fulfiling prophecy. That’s why we need to stop believing that “uncontrollable stupid monster human needing leadership”-fairy tale - simply to be able to DEVELOP a sense of responsibility for our own actions…

alwayshope

We need to follow each other, not these greedy, warmongering asses.

yes - exactly that

do you know the methodology “Syntegration”? The best interaction of people - the most efficient and effective - is ordered democracy (even when they pretend to be just “hierarchy-free, but not democratic” - they should understand their own foundations - information, communication and ML-method - to see and grasp the difference between crowded and triangle structures, but i guess, to bosses “democracy” just doesn’t sell - and maybe it shows another really bad tendency - to confuse “democracy” with “dictatorship of the masses”, the same link they successfully installed between liberals and “evil ungodly communists”, btw )

ask “your leadership” - paying for Stafford Beers “leadership”

But it isn’t the fault of the leaders. It’s the fault of the people. The leaders reflect the people.

The country’s lack of a moral compass isn’t because of its leaders’ lack. It’s because of the people who put them there and allowed them to be put there. If the people as a whole had a moral compass, then the leaders would, too - they’d have no choice.

The people of the US cannot get off the hook on this. We didn’t allow the Germans to use the excuse that it wasn’t their fault, that they didn’t know. Blaming the leaders in the US instead of the people is no different than what the Germans did.

Certainly, some of us saw what was coming. But how many chose NOT to vote, saying that voting was a waste of time, or simply abdicating their responsibility? How many voted for Bush and company because they chose to vote based on sound bites, rather than on facts? How many voted for Bush because they wanted everyone else to be forced to follow the same flavor of hateful religion that they practice? How many voted out of pure greed? How many voted out of pure habit, without any thought at all? How many voted because they listened to the lies? The simple fact is that the vast majority of Americans fit into these categories - and that makes the American people as a whole culpable.

Domestic & foreign policy has always been driven by greed, corporate and personal. Issues of fairness, decency, kindness, and humanity have always been secondary to corporate profits. People who actually believe that 9/11 occurred because “they envy us for our freedom” have clearly drunk the kool-aid and kept their heads safely in the sand. While the Soviet Union was around, we had a distraction, a boogey-man, to distract us from the real problem: the United States de-stabilizing democracies & overthrowing any government which has dared try to really improve the conditions of its people, if this meant any sacrifice of any American corporate profits and perqs.

As Pogo once wrote ” We have met the enemy and he is us”. Maybe it is time for America to finally practice what it preaches.

It really steams my clams whenever I hear someone say that. As if religious belief is in any way a deterent to criminal behavior. On the contrary, from the amount of bible thumping one hears from this administration, one might get the impression that the more “godly” people are, the more likely they are to commit heinous crimes.

The United States’ history is full of aggression against sovereign states for whatever wealth the US was after at that particular moment. The only change is that it’s so far out in the open now and that the average person is about to discover that he or she is on the verge of moving toward the same status that most people of the so-called third world enjoy: hunger, cold, constant fear, lack of hope. Where on earth does freedom come into any of this?

The American people have been convinced for more than 50 years that they are somehow better. They have closed their eyes as their wealth has been gained at horrific cost to people elsewhere in the world. And their greed has grown so great that they now live in such an unreal world that they have elected the sort of leader whose primary trait of appeal is his apparent lack of intellect and curiosity, and whose entire life prior to the presidency demonstrated that he’d do precisely what has happened - further rape the rest of the world and blatantly start turning the process into a gang rape of the citizens of his own country.

I fail to see where there’s any surprise in any of it.