Please explain it to me because I just don't get it.

[avebury]

I look at what is going on in the US and, as a country, we have left bat shit crazy in the dust. I feel like the liberals/Democrats are literally become the Dutch boy with his finger in the dam.

We have an out of control militarized police that operates overwhelmingly without consequence. We have Governors who out right are working to destroy their own states (Kansas and Wisconsin to name a couple). Governors who have flat out lost their minds (ex. Greg Abbott who feels the need to have the Texas National Guard monitor the US Military because he thinks that Obama is going to take over Texas). Politicians who want to want to take away food stamps from families who have children that protest against the police, reduce urban renewal investment money that might actually help impoverished areas, and so on. We have a news media who are not legally mandated to provide fair and balanced reporting and would not recognize investigative journalism if it bit them in the face. We live in a society that is heck bent on dumbing down our population. We have Conservatives/Republicans/Tea Party/MIC/1%ers who are always banging the drum for the next war when the next war has already arrived - here in the US.

I think that, all too often, when the police are caught doing something that will really piss of the people, they intentionally redirect the scenario so that the public acts out in hostile protest. The police know that if they can get at least some of the people to act out violently, it takes away a lot of the focus from them. It makes me mad when people in authority fall for this BS approach and then start talking about the thugs because it means that they have taken their eyes off of what is really going on. In this, Obama has really messed up. I would love to see him sign an executive order outlining a requirement that, if a police force has more then X number of police brutality and/or death/injury to civilian cases, the DOJ will be mandated to investigate that police force. The time has come to play hardball with these police departments.

I don't understand why on earth anyone would want to have children in this country. I don't understand why young people would choose to stay in a country that offers less and less opportunities to them. It just feels like we have gone well past the tipping point and that even the Democrats cannot salvage things.

I really think that this country has the potential to become the 21st Century version of Nazi Germany and we may delay it but I do not think that it is out of the realm of possibility.

I am off to the zoo to enjoy a beautiful day. I will check back later for responses.

OK talk me down from my feelings of doom and gloom. I know that for me, the most important issues in 2016 will be social inequality and the militarized police state. Those are a far greater threat to us then Iran and Isis.

[malthaussen]

1. You want to be talked down?

Your misgivings may not go far enough! Take, for example, your thought that the DoJ should investigate police departments with a certain number of wrongful injury cases. I guess we'd have to start reporting such cases first, wouldn't we? Yet as has been discussed on DU several times in the recent past, laws already in place requiring the police to report the number of officer-involved deaths to the DoJ have been completely unenforced and unregarded for decades. The GOP is right when they say that many of our laws should be enforced, but of course they don't really mean it. We have plenty of laws and regulations. We only enforce those which are convenient.

-- Mal

[Bluenorthwest]

3. New law- Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013, signed by Obama Dec 18, 2014

And there was not such a law in place for decades, that's just not accurate at all. For decades there was absolutely no law requiring the reporting of such deaths to the DOJ. This law had been half way put in place and that was not carried out under GW Bush. Prior to that, no reporting law whatsoever.

[malthaussen]

4. Death-in-Custody Act was first promulgated in 2000

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics here: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=82

I'll cop to "innacurate" on the "decades" hyperbole. But surely the point is that we haven't even been reporting such deaths -- let alone incidents short of death -- to any reliable extent up to today?

-- Mal

[vi5]

2. "Democrats as dutch boy with finger in the dam"

Wrong analogy. In that instance the Dutch boy was sincere if misguided in his efforts to plug up the damn.

The Dems are like the Dutch boy if he were making a big show of plugging up that tiny hole, while at the same time encouraging the drilling of massive holes elsewhere in the dam.

[shraby]

5. I can't talk you down cause I'm in the same place you are. This country has gone

nukkin futz.

[NCTraveler]

6. I really think this boils down to one thing. Perception.

"in the US and, as a country, we have left bat shit crazy in the dust."

Relatively speaking, the US is a beacon of stability. It just that we often view things from our own arrogant perspective.

"I don't understand why on earth anyone would want to have children in this country. I don't understand why young people would choose to stay in a country that offers less and less opportunities to them. It just feels like we have gone well past the tipping point and that even the Democrats cannot salvage things."

Followed by: "I am off to the zoo to enjoy a beautiful day."

I would spend more time learning about world issues. You need to put things into perspective. It really is somewhat humorous that you have no idea how someone would want to have children in this country as you head out the door to enjoy the zoo.

[avebury]

7. Actaully most of my travels by far have

been overseas where I do spend as much time as possible talking to the local people.

America just is not the Number 1 country in the world that some like to think. When you have so many disenfranchised people and those in authority don't listen to them or have any interest in social and economic equality, all that is left for them is take to the streets.

While Americans praised those that took to the streets in the Middle East (i.e. Arab Spring) they refer to Americans as thugs when they do the same thing. The problem with that is the failure to notice that the militarized police game the system to set up the citizens as the bad guys. It is all smoke and mirrors.

The day that the CVS was burned the police set up barricades before schools got out. Most of the kids that go to school near the mall don't live close enough to walk to school. The students rely upon school buses and the underground to go between home and school. On the day the CVS, the police refused to allow the students get on their school bus or access to the underground so that they could go home. They literally trapped this kids in an unsafe area with no way to get home. This information was from some teachers at that school. It appears that the MSM has failed to report this part of the story.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/how-baltimore-riots-began-mondawmin-purge

[NCTraveler]

8. My point still stands.

Why would anyone want to have children in this country? I'm going to go enjoy a beautiful day at the zoo and come back to read responses.

"America just is not the Number 1 country in the world that some like to think." Perspective.

"While Americans praised those that took to the streets in the Middle East (i.e. Arab Spring) they refer to Americans as thugs when they do the same thing. The problem with that is the failure to notice that the militarized police game the system to set up the citizens as the bad guys. It is all smoke and mirrors."

Blanket statements rarely ever work. It doesn't even come close to working here.

[liberal_at_heart]

9. I think mothers of young black men would probably disagree with you.

The mother in that video caught hitting her son didn't do it because she felt what he did was wrong. She did it because she was afraid her son would be killed by the police. My son's school was in lock down yesterday because someone spotted a person with a gun in their pants near the school. I have to send my children to school everyday and hope they come back alive. We may not be as bad as some other countries. It does not mean things are not getting exponentially worse.

[NCTraveler]

11. I agree with just about everything you have written.

So no, I doubt they would disagree with me. But I am not going to sit here and speak for them. Why? For the exact reason I already wrote. Perspective.

[CTyankee]

10. frankly, I don't blame him. Watching animals interact (even at a zoo, which is a problem of

another kind) is peaceful. Sometimes we need to get off to a gentler place...

[NCTraveler]

13. And most of us can be at that place within ten minutes of leaving our door.

Yes, it is a problem of another kind. An important one at that.

[daredtowork]

12. Especially when we get "informed" by NYT that liberals don't represent the country

you have good reason to fear that you're the last hold out against a massive fascist take over that has done a mighty good job of convincing the mass of barely-have-time-to-pay-attention constituents that they are the "center".