President Zelenskyy got a standing ovation from both sides of the joint meeting of Congress, initially for just being there, and then for everything he said. People say politics is too polarized, yet both parties gave a standing ovation in a vote to add more weapons to allow more blood to be spilled in a war that is going nowhere.
There is a problem because the media provides a huge amount of false information, and as well as telling us what to think, also tells us how to think. In real life half of the population don't vote because there is no point, both parties as a rule do the same things, move jobs out of the country so working people get less money and CEOs get more. And start wars so the weapons makers get huge profits, and the lobbyists use some of that lolly to flood election campaigns with money. If there was a do-nothing party they might get 50% of the vote and obsolete the main party. Because the country can heal it's self if we just stop going to war.
Do people make any sense? People say we have by far the most powerful military in the World. So we can sit here and not go to war. Why is our military badly short of munitions? Because we are using them all up in Ukraine, on a war we can not adequately explain. We gave Kyiv enough to blow up every habitable building in East Ukraine but they used it up destroying Bakmut again and again. And Kyiv sold a lot of what we sent on the open market, so other countries can take it apart and copy bits they have little to lose, and a lot to gain. So our weapons makers can moan and complain other countries are catching up, so they need more money and more people, but we can't beat ourselves, so it's all in vain. all this rhyming is getting to be a pain.
Effective propaganda prevents people from seeing what is right in front of them. In January 2020, the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan watchdog, concluded that the White House broke federal law by withholding Congress-approved military aid to Ukraine. In mid February 2022 the US supplied howitzers and artillery shells reached positions near the city of Donetsk and the war in Ukraine started.
What triggered this thread was a chance conversation when I asked an older woman what was wrong with Donald Trump. She had worked all her life and seemed knowledgeable and I hoped could answer my long-standing question. The answer came from a real life experience she had a few years previously. She heard a young boy say something somewhat rude and asked him why he felt he had a right to make that comment. He explained that the US President says that sort of thing. I concurred that maybe he does, but the current President decided to call Putin's bluff and sent heaps of weapons into a war zone in Ukraine and so far that has led to a quarter of a million deaths and more than that number of permanent injuries.
Her reply was that 'still there is no excuse for saying rude things'. I was baffled then, and I am still baffled.
The news often says something like x number killed in a mass shooting or something. But I've never heard the nation shocked by a news report that 73 school students were caught saying rude things in one morning. As much as people will use the excuse that D. Trump said rude things, outside of politics in real life, we don't think it matters all that much, it's just an excuse to vote in someone who will start a war. I think the key to people not voting for Trump and constantly saying bad things about him is just repeating the media, and echoing the people around them, and that is human nature, it is tribalism. Democrats vote Democrat no matter how bad the candidate is, we make up reasons for voting the way we do, listen to each other and vote in a stupid angry candidate. I heard so much bad stuff said about Trump that I did not vote for him, but couldn't vote for someone as nasty as Biden or Camel hair, so voted Green, and that was a wasted vote, but it was socially acceptable in my part of society. Voting for the only President in recent history who didn't start a war, was not acceptable, everyone was sure of that.
