Injustice, Misfortune or Ignorance

Income inequality is perhaps the biggest domestic political issue in America today.  It should be.  Unfortunately, Elizabeth Warren can argue until she is blue in the face, and she does make some good points, but income can never be equal in a prosperous society.  Life will never be fair.  Government cannot legislate equality.  People are not automatons.  Some people are just more productive than others.  We all have different personalities and character.  We all enter life under different circumstances, and we all encounter different obstacles and opportunities.  That's just the way it is.  Deal with it.

Injustice certainly exists.  It happens to nearly all of us in some way or another.  Nearly all of us have been discriminated against when job hunting, trying to make a sports team, applying for college, and when raises are handed out.  But when it comes to being rich or poor in America, the gap is based more on misfortune than injustice.  Some people are likely to be born to the right parents, be in the right place at the right time, or endowed with greater intelligence, physical skills, occupational skills, social skills, creative skills, or higher energy than others.  That has nothing to do with justice.

Of course there is a small segment of the population who have gotten mega-rich that don't deserve it - such as hedge fund, leveraged buyout, private equity, and other financial services managers, as well as product liability and ambulance chasing lawyers.  On the flip side there are many more people who are homeless, poverty-stricken and destitute through no fault if their own, and they are the ones who deserve public support.  But cultural influences, political restraints on commerce and industry, and government created dependency are what hold the majority of the underclass back, not discrimination.

The fortunate do not have a legal obligation to provide for equality, but they do have a moral one to support the less fortunate to ensure they have basic human rights.  Those who have experienced more fortunate circumstances cannot ignore the plight of the less fortunate.  No one in America should be homeless, hungry, unclothed, uneducated, and not have access to basic health care or the opportunity to support themselves.  On the other hand, this support must not be so generous that it destroys personal responsibility and encourages dependency.  Support should not be provided without reasonable expectations of the recipient earning it or using it to become self-supporting.

Sufficient progressive marginal tax rates must be levied to provide for the legitimate basic support that is required of a civilized country.  That is not too much to ask in an affluent society.  That support must be designed in a manner that is fair to both those taxed and those who receive it.  It must help the helpless, but not allow anyone to game or take advantage of the system by getting something for nothing.  And public support should never encourage dependency or tolerate indolence, substance abuse, or criminal activity.

No one should ever be allowed to take advantage of the less fortunate.  Private scams should be subject to severe punishment.  But public programs that irrationally punish the poor are even more unconscionable.  Poor people should not suffer the consequences of destructive political policies created by government officials.  Public servants must be held accountable for their misguided and self-serving actions.  If anyone should be suffering the consequences of failed government policies, it should be the Barney Frank's and his Democratic colleagues who create these programs of mass destruction, such as encouraging the lending of mortgage money to people who could not pay it back and then blaming the devastation it caused on someone else.  Democrats are good at that.

There is also culturally ingrained ignorance, indoctrinated into the brains of some Americans by the pandering of one political party.  It is noteworthy that ethnic groups that reward hard work, law abidance, and educational excellence (Asian) tend to prosper in America.  Ones that disdain and even punish those attributes (African-American) don't.  It is difficult to escape the inner cities when neighborhood gangs ostracize and physically assault the ones who try to improve themselves.  Those attitudes must be changed and criminal acts stopped for anyone of any race to participate in the opportunities available to all Americans.  Not all will achieve the same results due to many different factors, but we can all live the good life.  The only thing holding anyone back is personal choices, the peer pressure of cultural experience, and politically induced dependence on government.  It is this culture of dependency that breeds poverty and hatred, not lack of opportunity.  Place the blame where it belongs, on the Democrats.

Gridlock

The reason for the breakdown in the ability to compromise in Congress is simple.  It is because of one word that Barack Obama emphasized when he ran for president in 2008.  That word is 'Change'.  Before Obama became president there certainly were policy differences between the two dominant political parties, but they were generally on the same page regarding the basic American principles of capitalism, democracy and social culture.  That is no longer the case.  Today's Democrats are intent on changing everything.  They advocate big government, socialism, income redistribution, sexual revolution, educational indoctrination, and politically correct behavior.  They use junk science 'studies' and fabricated polls to back their agenda. They impose their mandates by ignoring Constitutional law and controlling the sources of information.

Democrats are intentionally polarizing the country because they hate traditional America.  They tell us that the United States is mean, evil, and the cause of all the world's problems rather than the defender of freedom and engine of global economic growth we have been for more than a century.  Something has gone very wrong in America's information distribution and educational systems.  It is almost as if the nation's most bizarre lunatics have become the media producers and editors, college professors, educational institution administrators, and designers of high school and college curriculums.

America does not need to change our basic principles.  We have continued to evolve for 235 years to deal with and solve the problems of social injustice and economic imbalances that every country on earth faces.  We have succeeded in eliminating the underlying foundations of social injustice as much as humanly possible, even though the critics refuse to believe it.  The vast majority of Americans today are color blind.  No society can ever totally eliminate ethnic antipathies, unless it conducts brainwashing mind control or extermination.  But that is unnecessary because the intolerant can be ignored.

We do still have a long way to go regarding economic issues, and the only way to succeed is through the fundamental principles of capitalism - private enterprise, free markets and limited government interference.  Trashing capitalism in our educational system, income redistribution, big government interference in commerce and industry, and socializing major sectors of the economy will kill any hope of generating widespread prosperity for all.  It will leave us with wealth concentrated in the authoritarian few at the top of the financial, academic, and political food chain.

In reality, the progress of the last fifty years has been phenomenal.  America is full of women and members of ethnic minorities at the top of every profession, corporate enterprise, educational institution and government organization, as well as throughout the mid-levels of each occupation on their way to the top.  Discrimination in hiring no longer exists for minorities.  All one needs is the credentials.  Color of skin has nothing to do with gaining meaningful employment, except for the federally legislated discrimination against white men in seeking many job opportunities.

The percentage of women and minorities near the top of every endeavor is generally not yet equivalent to their percentage of the population, but it is closing fast.  The reason it is not yet there is because white men did have a head start.  Society cannot snap its fingers and get to where it wants to be overnight.  In another generation there will be near equivalency of men, women and minorities in positions of responsibility and compensation packages.  Society needs to chill out and let evolution run its course.  Political gridlock and demands for change will lead to nothing but intensified cultural polarization, ethnic animosity, societal turmoil, and eventually devolution from the social integration and economic prosperity created by the century of American success.

The Law of the Jungle

Just what point are the people protesting the results of investigations where grand juries do not indict police officers trying to prove?  That they know more about the evidence in these cases than the grand juries do; that police should not do their jobs of arresting criminals; that law enforcement officers should ignore crime in high crime neighborhoods; that police shouldn't use force in arresting people who resist arrest; that police departments should be disbanded; that chaos and anarchy is preferable to law and order.  Are they trying to promote a full blown race war?  Seriously, what the hell is their point?

The result of these protests, particularly if they are successful in bringing unwarranted prosecution of law enforcement officers, will be that no one in their right mind will want to be a police officer.  Why would anyone want a job where you can easily end up either doomed or dead?  Police officers today trying to do their jobs are damned if they do and damned if they don't.  At the very least they will be uncertain about performing their duty because doing so may result in exposing themselves to undeserved prosecution or even rabid lynch mobs.

The rational response to the insanity of the protests is obvious.  Guns.  Lots and lots of guns.  People will have to provide for their own self-protection.  If anyone wants to protect themselves and their family in America they had better buy more guns and lots of ammunition.  Is that what the protestors want - mob rule; survival of the most heavily armed; the law of the jungle?  Wouldn't it be better for people to tell their children, relatives and friends to not resist arrest by assaulting police officers?  If they are innocent of any wrongdoing, they will live to be exonerated.

No one denies that there are incidents where law enforcement officers are belligerent and use excessive force.  White people experience those situations too.  The cause is not racism.  Being a law enforcement officer is a tough, hazardous job.  They must sometimes make life and death decisions in split seconds.  Often they make the wrong one.  150 policemen are killed in the line of duty on average in America every year.  The reason incidents that end in death occur most frequently in black neighborhoods is because that is where the violent crime is.  That is just a fact, not a condemnation. 

If people feel they must register their objections to unwarranted treatment from the police, at the very least they should select examples that prove the point, not ones where police action was clearly justified.  Maybe they should look at the facts of the case before marching in the streets and burning down neighborhoods.  How many protestors would be willing to put there lives on the line every day to provide security in dangerous neighborhoods?  If they're not, then they should shut the hell up.  If they can't control themselves from being stupid, then they should move to a country where real police brutality, political oppression and injustice is the norm, and see what happens when they protest there.

Yes, of course bias, prejudice and racism exists in America.  They exist everywhere else in the world as well.  They always have and always will.  It is human nature for people to take precautions around those who are different than they are.  That applies whether the difference is religion, nationality, ethnicity, sexual preference, political inclination, and color of skin.  But for all practical purposes, those differences today are irrelevant.  The United States has become more united regarding race, religion and gender than could have been imagined a half century ago.

Other than the views of professional pundits and some Hollywood celebrities, the only people whose biases one can ever really know are those of their friends and workplace associates.  Out of the dozens of people I know well enough to be aware of their opinions, only one could be considered a racist.  And you know what, he is entitled to his opinion whether anyone else likes it or not.  The only thing I have found that the vast majority of my acquaintances are biased against are hard core, intolerant liberals - and most of them are white.  We detest their unmerited self-proclaimed moral and intellectual superiority; their obscene arrogance in presuming to tell Americans what is wrong with us; their imperious imposition of illogical and unsound policies that always fail; and their condescending audacity in defining what is politically correct behavior.  Politics is what polarizes America, not race.

Never-the-less, Barack Obama, many members of Congress, and legions of frenzied social commentators suggest we need a discussion on race in America.  Fine.  Let's have one.  But no matter what is said it is unlikely anyone will change anyone else's mind.  In fact, it is like to only aggravate the situation as the professional agitators are always the loudest voices heard to spew the lies and misinformation that provoke and inflame the clueless crowds that either are not exposed to the facts or simply do not want to hear the truth.

Does anyone really think these protests are doing anything but polarizing the country even more than it already is?  The basic problem is that the politically correct liberal interest groups that control the dissemination of information in America continually promote the idea that racism permeates American society.  Half a century of lies and misinformation from these people have done nothing for society except encourage a certain segment of the African-American minority to believe it is OK to murder people of their own race, steal from their neighbors, live in drug induced delusion, and defy law enforcement authorities.  Unfortunately, the only people they hurt are the law abiding members of their own communities, who need protection from these thugs more than anyone else.  This is what liberal policies have wrought.  Fifty years of misguided policies creating dysfunctional families and dependency have not helped African-American communities, they have crippled them.

Oh, and the public displays of support by professional athletes for crime committing 'brothers' who get themselves killed by resisting arrest is another example that proves one can get rich even though they are brain dead.  Any athlete or celebrity who publicly supports the criminals against the public servants who are trying to protect African-American neighborhoods is clearly part of the problem, not part of the solution.  Someone should tell them they are embarrassing themselves, their families, and the people who overpay them.

A Party in Need of Reality Training

Why is it that the media is so willing to publish with attention grabbing incendiary headlines anything that is proclaimed by Democratic Party politicians?  Why would anyone believe them?  Liberal politicians have no credibility whatsoever since they are known to intentionally lie and distort the facts about everything on their agenda, particularly when attempting to portray conservatives as greedy, racist, child eating, predatory monsters.  Ever since the Clinton Administration that has been their standard operating procedure.

Regarding their claims about CIA techniques of interrogating terrorists, no one should be surprised if the CIA did indeed use some of the methods stated in the report, although that may deserve some skepticism given the Demorats history.  But no one should believe for a minute those techniques did not provide critical information that saved American lives.  Every CIA Director and responsible member of Congress sitting on the intelligence committees during the period in question says that they did, including the Directors appointed by the Democrats.  The original report was over 6000 pages while the Democrats published just under a heavily redacted 600.  What is in the other 5400 pages?  Would it be a surprise if the Demorats are suppressing important information and just doing what they always do - lying?

The published report claims that one terrorist died of hypothermia in detention, but was not clear whether that was under CIA or Pakistani supervision.  One death.  That has to be a first in the history of human conflict.  Can't you just see the Islamic terrorist groups, the Russians, the Chinese and every other autocratic regime around the world laughing their asses off about the torture conducted by the CIA.  They would be calling the CIA pantywaist girliemen amateurs.

Americans need to understand that in order to win wars it is necessary to make the enemy fear you, not laugh at you.  The enemy must understand that whatever you do to them will be much worse than what they do to you.  That is the only way to stop aggression.  The last war America won was an all out affair that used every means possible to kill as many enemy personnel as possible, including civilians, until their leadership was eliminated and those still left knew they could not win, resulting in unconditional surrender.  No country can survive for long if their enemies do not fear them.  Sorry for telling the sensitive liberal types the brutal truth, but that's just the way it is.  They always recommend sensitivity training for those of us who don't get with the political correctness program.  Maybe the liberal establishment needs some reality training.

Finally, did anyone see anywhere in the published reports that all but one of the Republican members on the committee (Maine Senator Susan Collins, a RINO who often votes with Democrats on key legislation) wrote a 167 page rebuttal strongly objecting to the Democratic majority's report, particularly the part about the interrogations not revealing information that saved American lives?  No?  Me neither.  Every article appearing in the Dallas Morning News regarding the report was from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press - the Triumvirate heading the Syndicate comprising the Progressives Media Indoctrination Machine.  Does anyone still think there is not a Democrat - Media conspiracy to brainwash the American people?  It sounds absurd, but the evidence is overwhelming.

By the way, we didn't start this.  These assholes the liberals are weeping over did, on September 11, 2001.  In case they forgot, that was the day these cold-blooded murderers killed nearly 3,000 innocent people inside our homeland who were just going about their daily lives and threatening no one.

And one more thing.  Why is it OK for King Barry to personally decide who dies in drone attacks, with no regard for the many civilian casualties that have been collateral damage, but the CIA is demonized for giving a few terrorists a bad day?