Sunday, October 11, 2015

Weekend Semi-Open Thread: The World Kept on Spinning While You Were Busy Watching the Oregon Massacre

As is our weekend habit and tradition, please do consider this a semi-open thread. What matters of public or private concern would you to share and discuss?

One death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic. Stalin supposedly said something of the sort. It is a cliche. But, cliches linger and persist because they are true.

Many Americans were focused on the Oregon massacre. The gun gods were fed their blood. But in that ritual, we were distracted other happenings that will kill more people, and impact the life chances of many millions more.

To wit.

During that same week, The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear a case that would make it easier to prosecute insider trading. Political scientists have new research that demonstrates how political polarization and dysfunction are fueled by wealth and income inequality. And during these early moments of the 2016 election season, 158 families donated almost 50 percent of the monies.

The overwhelming amount of those monies have gone to support the Republican Party. Is this any surprise?

The news media chases down dead bodies in Oregon while the American people en masse are being carved up by the plutocrats. America is not a democracy. The plutocrats kill millions by suppressing their wages, forcing them to work a life of drudgery, and extracting every last resource from the Anthropocene. The news media, which is part of the same power elite, would prefer to talk about those who kill with bullets as opposed to with contracts, deregulation, and pushing buttons on Wall Street.

Terrorists bombed Turkey. American bombs incinerated people at a hospital in Afghanistan. Russia rolls out her new toys in Syria--for those grognards and other like types, the SU-34 Fullback is a beautiful machine of death--to bomb ISIS Assad's enemies. Is Fred Kaplan correct? Does the chaos in the Middle East and Syria possess the same dynamics as those that birthed World War One?

Yazidi women have formed a brigade to fight off the rapine ISIS monsters who have invaded their lands, killed their sisters, and hurt their families.

What are your thoughts for this Sunday? Anyone "celebrating" Columbus Day here in the U.S.? Readings to share? Music and movies to suggest? TV shows to binge watch?

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