Has decades of corporate propaganda removed the last vestiges of empathy from Americans?

[PatrickforO]

Most of you know that I'm quite to the left. I've said many times that we need to rethink our whole social and economic organization so that addresses our needs as a species and supports human need instead of human greed. I have also often said capitalism sucks and that I believe it is a cancer on the earth. I mean, we're literally destroying the planet we live on for the sake of earning a few shareholders more profits.

OK...so I read something this morning that deeply troubles me. Makes me wonder if empathy around here is so dead that I might as well shut up and not even bother.

Check out this article on Huffpo:

"These 2 Boys Were Born The Same Day In The Same Town, But Their Lives Will Be Dramatically Different"

The story is about two boys in Madagascar and talks about the effects of 'stunting' due to malnutrition. Bad enough, right?

OK. Go into the link and LOOK AT THE COMMENTS.

I quit posting on HP some years ago because I hated their censorship of comments. I tend to think mine through and not worry much about length, I know - maybe a little TOO verbose sometimes. Now I see what they wanted all along. Short and...I just don't have a word to describe the quality of those comments.

ARE THESE DEMOCRATS, DO YOU WONDER?

[Odin2005]

1. Never read the comments on a news site, they are always terrible.

Mostly bitter old people and 20-something emotionally stunted losers who live in their parents basement and call people "cucks" on the internet.

[PatrickforO]

3. Yeah, well, people on here tend to be a bit more empathetic, it is true.

But, geez, how can somebody look at that stunted kid and say, "I don't care?"

I mean, I just don't get that at all. And when you see the USA having up to 6.9% stunted kids? We don't, I don't think, but holy crap! How can we even hold our heads up knowing that kids are going hungry in the formative first months of their lives right here?

[Oneironaut]

5. E-Dudebros... They're a disease.

They're easily spotted by their lingo - Do they use the words "cuck," "alpha," or "beta?" Do they ask you "if you even lift?" Are they deathly afraid of "feminazis?" Are they desperate to keep Gamergate relevant? You've found a dudebro, then. Beware his level 59 keyboard rage.

[Odin2005]

6. And they often have Anime or My Little Pony avatars.

[Wisc Progressive]

2. You mean since Bill Clinton signed The Telecommunications Act in 1996

And now multinational corporations control 90% of what Americans see/hear daily?



Bill Moyer did a piece on this recently:

Twenty Years of Media Consolidation Has Not Been Good For Our Democracy

http://billmoyers.com/story/twenty-years-of-media-consolidation-has-not-been-good-for-our-democracy/

Everything you need to know about the politics in America since the massive buy-outs/sell-outs began under Clinton are explained by the way he capitulated to their interests at the expense of our democracy.

[PatrickforO]

4. Well, Clinton piled on, that's for sure, and I definitely think this was the wrong policy

for him to pursue, but to really get our heads around the deterioration, we have to go back a ways, at least to the Powell memo in 1971 and Reagan's killing of the fairness doctrine in 1984. And for the fear that is so carefully cultivated among us so corporations can profit off it, we could go clear back to the Red Scare days and the birth of the Birchers. Or even to the rise of the Ku Kluxers after the civil war.

Hell, we've all been exploited by the elite classes for time out of mind. All you have to do is read your Zinn and you see what a shitty, greedy, fucked-up species we are. Individually, we are OK I guess. I've met very few people who are downright evil - maybe a couple in my 57 years. I've met a lot more who are basically good inside. But the systems we create? Pure evil, which I define based on the suffering they cause.

The real truth here? We are a loathsome species who is racing with the clock against our own extinction. Unless we pull our heads out of our asses and start caring about each other, the planet and the rest of its life, then I see very little hope for us. That's why I tend to be so anti-Christian, because many of them are just waiting for the apocalypse when they are lifted into heaven in the rapture and the rest of us are left down here to suffer. Some of them are purposely trying to hasten this apocalypse - they think they are helping!

Sorry for the rant - I just get tired of the 'fucked-uppedness' of our world NEVER ending. Never even alleviating really no matter how hard we work, it's like pushing jello. You push and push and push and the minute you have to rest the jello plops right back where it was.

[CrispyQ]

7. Our culture looks at kindness as a weakness, so why would we value empathy?

I'm so glad I'm not trying to raise a decent human being in this cesspool of a culture of ours.