Snowden statue points to divide in US society: Is he hero or traitor?

[ronnie624]

87. Legislation and policy establishment

are almost completely beholden to monied interests, and our Supreme Court equates freedom of political speech with buying political influence. A government that functions on behalf of a minority through influence peddling instead of the common good, is the very definition of corruption.

And by what metric does one measure the level of corruption required to enable the invasion and destruction of another country, with rationalizations based on a pretext of lies and conspiracies, and to launch an endless "war on terror" that any reasonable, moderately educated person, through an examination of statistics alone, should know is complete horse shit? The invasion of Iraq is a crime that most Americans regard with an extremely shameful nonchalance, indicating some serious corruption of our culture, society and educational system as well. I don't know how I could exaggerate it.

This all has to be seen to, before we can even hope of successfully dealing with the impending crises just around the corner in the form of overpopulation, resource depletion and mitigating the damage we've done to our biosphere. I'll probably live out the remainder of my life in relative comfort, so I'm not fearful on a personal level, but we sure are leaving a mess for future generations, and our corruption might even be paving the way for the collapse of our civilization and maybe even the extinction of our species.