"if you don't support our troops then you don't deserve freedom", "if you don't vote then you're insulting the troops that died fighting for your freedom", and other similar ridiculous phrases i hear from time to time...
what bullshit is this? there are so many things wrong with thinking this way. so many it's almost impossible to explain them, how is it not more self evident? first of all- voting is a right, yes, but it's not a freedom to choose one of multiple bad scenarios. the freedom lays in having a say, and not all the time but sometimes having a say means not voting if your voice isn't represented in the options available. if everyone keeps voting in parties that everyone wishes were better then no one can blame them because they voted them in... it's like being at a dinner party and there's a group of people all talking about what everyone will eat. so far it's been decided that there are 3 options, because discussing over each person's wants would be impractical, there's only one kitchen. when someone brings up a new idea they're told to either get with the program or leave the conversation. meanwhile roughly half of the party are in the next room waiting to see what happens since most of them would prefer something different than any of the three options or are just too lazy to put in their say. turns out we get a nice fish dish with a thai peanut sauce. mmm. too bad a few people are allergic to nuts, jim is a vegetarian and a few others are lactose intolerant to the cream in the sauce. great work guys.
we're like the god damned frog in the pot of water on the stove. oh, only half the country voted? that's okay, we'll still call it a majority win. where will the line be drawn? "hmm... only 22% of our citizens voted... well i'm sure that's still a fair and equal sample of everyone else in the country!" freedom? we consider ourselves free based on our not only our perception of ourselves but of the skewed idea of what freedom is that something has somehow given us. free? i can't shoot heroin without breaking the law, yet i can find government approved safe injection sites. i can't grow certain plants even without intent to dry and smoke or sell without fear of being caught and either greatly fined or thrown in jail, but if i have bad enough luck to be in a gross amount of pain or have some other malady that the government deems worthy of the benefits of said plants then i'm allowed to lend them a profit because of it? i'm realizing more and more how free people aren't, and it's annoying me more and more that i feel people don't see this.
your money is not your own. first of all, very rarely do banks make you money, they provide you a service and as for every service you have to pay for it. the service is keeping it "safe" even if that means that anyone and their mother who the government or bank deems deserves some of your money can dip into it without your consent or knowledge, also while locking you out of your own money. carry cash? that's a pretty safe step, but even then your currency is only supported by your countries currency's value. get a job? if you don't want anyone taking a piece of your pie without asking you'll have to work illegally, and that'll likely be a shit job since employers are scared to hire illegal workers.
we have such a bloated sense of self worth it's disgusting. if you ask yourself how much a human life is worth it's a hard question to answer. priceless, right? that's the answer most people would give. but this is impossible and it's a serious question, i don't care how much you don't want to think about it or want to be romantic, how much is a human life worth? is a country going bankrupt worth saving the life of one person? shit no. a province? no. a city? no. and so on and so on it goes, getting scaled down more and more until you come to an answer. everyone has a price. to make this easy Time did a thing on this a little while ago in 2008 and the highest value they got was 488,000.00$. (a little note here, the pay a family receives for a US soldier that falls in battle is only 12,000 more than that.) does that sound enough to you? or too much? okay, well maybe some lives are worth more than others then? well health insurance sure sees it that way, but that's besides the point. so a person has a value, and things that have value can be traded for other things that have value, that's where currency comes from. so if this could actually happen in a legal way and there was no squabbling about how much who is worth, then you would be able to buy someone's life for 488,000$. you would own them entirely, and you would be able to kill them without penalty as they are your property and you have just bought every right they own. that's a neat idea, but it's not like too many people would be able to do that anyways. right? wait, how much is the US military budget? in 2007 it was approximately 530,000,000,000. with signs of rising each year after that. so each year the US government is spending roughly the amount of 1,086,065 lives on whatever the military does. this should be tragic. this should be as tragic as that many soldiers dying for the same cause (save for it may be said that those on million+ soldiers were drafted as they didn't really have a say as to where they were spent.) why should this be so tragic? because you do not own your life. you are a currency, and you belong to your country. your country is currently about 1,100,000,000,000.00$ in debt? congrats, you need just under 1/3rd of the world's population in their previously decided monetary worth to pay off your debt; 2,254,098 and 36/100ths of someone as well. i don't see how it makes sense to while owing 2.5 billion lives be spending 1 million each year on military spending. the Iran war is hypocritical in the first place, while the US has >3000 nuclear warheads stockpiled in various locations as of 2006 it is intervening under the excuse of preventing the research of nuclear arms by Iran? that's a battle you can never hope to win as long as the will is there. as education progresses and information becomes more and more readily available, as well as the existence of black markets it is only a matter of time before they do gain access to nuclear arms. all that aside, nuclear research does not specifically mean nuclear arms, and as the president of Iran said they don't intend on using the research for that purpose as it would not be for their best interest and also against their religion. so, it's not the US's war, they don't claim to be researching nuclear power for the production of nuclear arms, and Israel is already at war with them. "oh noooooo, of course they're going to use it for arms, what else is it good for!?" well, let's see.. it's benefits include things from better smoke detectors, wine production, insect control, bone imaging, bone sterilization, to making sure the seals in pipelines don't burst, testing the pressure capacity of blast furnaces, testing the density of material one would be drilling through for mining purposes, and, oh i don't know, NUCLEAR ENERGY. you know, that cleaner more efficient energy that everyone's been raving about? it's a shame about the cool down time but the pros outweigh the cons. outweigh so much so that it accounted for 20% of the US's electrical output in 2010, also being 30% of the world's entire output of nuclear electrical energy. so as for the war being a good and grand idea, it's bullshit. the military is shitting on another country- a developing country within the UN's Development Programme (UNDP).
still feel all "Ra ra! support the troops!"? don't. feel sorry for them that they're in a shitty situation, hope that they get home, but giving someone a bigger gun in a fight is the worst way of supporting them. encouraging someone to join the army? remember that number we talked about earlier, the 488,000.00 one? every time the military deploys a missile around that cost, which as i understand i likely most (if not they cost more but it is REALLY hard to find some trustworthy sources on that matter...) missiles, then they are spending the match amount of that soldier's life. i do not believe that if it were presently possible for a robot to be made with all the pros and cons of a human soldier, that cost 2 million dollars to produce, that the military would use such a thing. because it wouldn't be cost effective. soldiers are a weapon, and they're worth roughly half a million dollars. every time a missile is shot, break that cost down into soldiers lives. then keep an eye on how many "lives" are really lost each day. do not encourage people to join the army, do not support the war effort.
here are some new ones to try on- "if you support our troops you support the purchasing of human lives as tools for someone else's trade.", "if you vote you support a system that disguises itself as freedom which while still in place hides from you what freedom really is for the sake of its own survival"
Time life cost - http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808049,00.html
2007 military budget and signs of rising- http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2009-BUD/pdf/BUDGET-20
US national deficit - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/business/federal-deficit-for-2012-fiscal-year-falls-to-1-1-trillion.html
US stobkpile - http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Wpngall.html
Iran president claiming research not meant for arms - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4613644.stm
benefits of nuclear research - http://www.ansto.gov.au/nuclear_information/benefits_of_nuclear_science
pros outweighing cons of nuclear energy - http://energyinformative.org/nuclear-energy-pros-and-cons/
nuclear power output by US in 2010 - http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf41.html
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