#reapect

The U.S does not lead the world in "technical" suicides. "Money doesn't buy happiness! Look! Poor people commit suicide at the lowest rate out of any segment of society!" Well yes. If you're just talking about "I'm going to die right NOW." suicides. See, you don't have to kill yourself tonight if your life choices are going to kill you anyhow. Young people who join gangs aren't expecting to live to get old. Death or prison. Those are inevitable and anybody joining a gang knows that. No street gang has a 401k.

People who become addicted to heroin, opiates, crystal meth, these aren't people thinking "I'll take a gap year to be a junkie/tweaker, and then off to university to get that MBA!"

Poverty, child hunger, healthcare, homelessness, education, a living wage, all could be easily addressed and corrected if we simply made the top one tenth of the top one percent in terms of wealth pay their fair share. And yet this heavily armed and potentially well informed populace placidly accepts a blatantly false narrative. "The rich DESERVE that money! It's THEIRS! They're EARNED it!"

If you accept suicides out of despair and not attributable to mental illness as murder, then the U.S. murder rate jumps to horrific levels. If you accept deaths caused by conscious lifestyle choices as suicide, the U.S becomes a world leader in that category as well. However. The impact of a death is directly tied to the financial value of the life lost. That isn't even masked or downplayed. It's on display in the judicial system. A poor kid will get fifty years in prison for a mistake defined in part by a lack of options. A rich kid breaking the law deliberately is "a tragedy" and judges will give far more lenient sentences, not wanting to "ruin" that rich kid's life. The rich kid has "potential". Which is why they should be receiving the harsher sentence. You had everything in your favor, you had every benefit society could offer, and you don't appreciate THAT? You're the one who's dangerous. The poor kid has just as much potential. They'll just never be allowed to reach it because society has pre-decided that they have no value.

The U.S has a broken two-party political system that serves the wealthy and deplores the poor. The majority of US citizens don't trust or respect the government. But they accept it. There are more guns than there are people in the U.S and yet the population assumes a subservient role, accepting exploitation and misery as though those things are natural and inevitable.

The U.S isn't the only society with a corrupt cultural definition of value. It's a worldwide phenomena. It's not even secret. The serial killers with the highest body counts target "vulnerable" members of society. Sex workers. Drug addicts. The poor. Homosexuals. The police are less likely to expend great effort to investigate a missing sex worker. A young gay runaway who vanishes. A drug addict whose friends are worried because they've disappeared. Because culture and society have already determined that these people aren't important. They're disposable because they have no "value".

While the U.S media insisted that we the public obsess over the death of Jon Benet Ramsey, a dozen poor children vanished without a trace and never made the news. Government. The Media. The Institutions of Sociéty. They all inform us about whose lives have value and what we are allowed to expect depending upon our position within society.

tRump and the Republicunts are simply taking full advantage of our distracted, conformist, well trained willingness to overlook injustice and abomination. Our insular apathy and resignation are obvious. Our government's support of Israel's genocide against the Palestinians illustrates our cultural complacency and indifference. Despite mass protests and voiced "outrage" the government knew it faced no real consequences for enabling and assisting in the mass slaughter of women and children. "But the democrats lost the election!" Newsflash. Even with Adolf tRump and Heinrich Musk in office, nothing has changed in Gaza.

Newsflash #2. Nobody outside of the United States sees the U.S. as a righteous nation and force for good in the world. Courtesy of our currently elected leaders we are living up to our ignorant, narcissistic, malignant and vile perception in the eyes of the world. Of course the majority of immigrants to the United States are poor. They're fleeing impoverished and repressive societies/countries and come here because a) Even a slim chance at a better life is still a chance, and b) Our media portrays impossibility as probability, and c) From any stable, prosperous, equitable country the U.S. only looks good if you're extremely rich and into hanging out with celebrities

There's a simple way to make a drastic change that doesn't require a violent revolution. Hold the government accountable. Quit listening to campaign commercial bullshit and pay actual attention. Restore the tax rates that were in place (through multiple Republican administrations) prior to Reagan.

Newsflash #3. Up until Ronald Antichrist Reagan the existence of Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, hell, the Koch brothers, was impossible. The citizenry didn't accept such obscenity and they demanded that the politicians address it. Reagan began the destruction of the middle class, and the mutation of capitalism and its flaws were immediately obvious. The "Savings and Loan" crisis happened under him but most people just went "Huh. Economics are complicated."