What has been the greatest threat to the people of the United States in the last 90 years?

[rug]

Poll question: What has been the greatest threat to the people of the United States in the last 90 years?

[Oregone]

1. No option for the iPhone?

Under any system, the Apple Cult scares the Bejezzus out of the sane

[nosmokes]

3. there's an app for that...

[Aviation Pro]

2. Forgot a couple....

1. SarahFuckingPalinism
2. GeorgeTwoShoesBushism
3. Dumbassism

But I repeat myself.

[AnArmyVeteran]

44. How about 'Capitalist Terrorism'???

[blogslut]

4. I vote for another entry:

Apathy.

[burnsei sensei]

5. I would add these:

Taft-Hartley Act
The systematic disempowerment of workers
The ideology of the welfare queen
Trickle-down economics
Supply-side economics (same thing really)
An addiction to war
The undermining of infrastructure

[rug]

6. I think the third option covers that.

[AlabamaLibrul]

41. A GREAT book on "welfare queens"

The Myth of the Welfare Queen by David Zucchino. It won a Pulitzer and it's one of the best-written pieces of non-fiction I've ever read. A truly enthralling story from cover to cover.

[Fearless]

7. Other... Reaganism.

[laughingliberal]

9. All the problems we see today go back to that. nt

[xxqqqzme]

25. That was my first thought as well.

Reagan and the disciples of free trade.

[xchrom]

8. No option for people who don't use an iPhone? Nt

[marybourg]

10. Radical Reactionism (a.k.a. right wing nuts) nt.

[dgibby]

11. I voted for Capitalism,

but I'd also add the radical religious right and their agenda to establish a Theocracy in the US.

[Loudmxr]

12. Isolation, Ignorance and Ego.

Our isolation from the rest of the world has crippled us in many ways. Now we do not have a competitive manufacturing base because we are not metric. We have bullied our selves around the world because we were left as the world's superpower at odds with the Soviets. Our educational system was allowed to rot in many different ways.

American ego said we were great when we were falling behind our contemporaries.

[OrwellwasRight]

13. Also: Anti-Intellectualism. nt.

[Ozymanithrax]

14. Americans to disinterested to vote and the politicians that encourage disinterest. n/t

[proteus_lives]

15. Poll questions.

[rug]

19. The Pollish question is so 1930s.

[bananas]

16. Marijuana prohibition

I was going to say nuclear war, but then I remembered that even Carl Sagan, who felt free to speak out against nuclear war, was so terrified by marijuana prohibition that he could only write about it anonymously as "Mr. X":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

Sagan was a user and advocate of marijuana. Under the pseudonym "Mr. X", he contributed an essay about smoking cannabis to the 1971 book Marihuana Reconsidered.<45><46> The essay explained that marijuana use had helped to inspire some of Sagan's works and enhance sensual and intellectual experiences. After Sagan's death, his friend Lester Grinspoon disclosed this information to Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson. The publishing of the biography, Carl Sagan: A Life, in 1999 brought media attention to this aspect of Sagan's life.<47><48><49>

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. American Exceptionalism - We can do no wrong covers a lot of territory.

[lefthandedlefty]

18. Should have been one for ourselves

I think we are our own worst enemy

[Enrique]

20. gay marriage

:sarcasm:

[Kali]

27. oh yes! this is it

this will be the downfall of the human species FER SHUR!

[Fearless]

+1

:rofl:

[Octafish]

21. BFEE

They encompass all three plus Fascism.

For example:

Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever.

Know your BFEE: Olympic Games Show Who’s Best Friends Forever with Authoritarians and Dictators

Know your BFEE: They Looted Your Nation’s S&Ls for Power and Profit

Know your BFEE: War and Oil are just two longtime Main Lines of Business

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

[theoldman]

22. An unintended war with Russia.

Even if we had won, their nukes would have killed millions of Americans.

[skepticscott]

23. None of the above

Willful Ignorance, Apathy and Religious Fundamentalism get my votes

[rug]

24. Ignorance of what?

[skepticscott]

31. You name it

Science, history, economics, law, other cultures, how the political process in their own country works, what the US government does in their name all over the world....

But, boy...people sure are up on what happened on American Idol...

[Sebastian Doyle]

26. The Bush Crime Family.

It didn't start with Chimpy, or Poppy, or even Prescott's funding of Hitler. Samuel P. Bush (Prescott's daddy) had one hell of a gun running scam with Remington rifles back in the 1910's. Those guns ended up arming both sides of World War I and the Russian revolution. So not only did the Bush Crime Family help create the Nazis, they helped create the Communists too. And Al Qaeda (a complete fabrication of Poppy's CIA. And we can't forget Prescott Jr's role in building up China.

[Cleita]

28. Fox News.

Propaganda and getting the majority of people to think a certain way for the benefit of a small and powerful majority is the most dangerous threat of all. In the modern era, it's how Hitler, Stalin and Mao controlled their empires. Now we are being controlled by it by making us believe that it's those things in your poll that are threatening us.

[DainBramaged]

29. Republicans

[MineralMan]

30. Other: Nuclear War.

For pete's sake. 90 years? Think about all the things that have been threats in that time. World War II? Nuclear war. Duh...

I'm sorry, but this is a stupid push poll.

[rug]

32. Excepting terrorism, which has always been a red herring, the poles of the last century are clear.

Looking at the past century oblivious to that conflict reduces politics to blather.

[MineralMan]

42. Yes, indeed. To forget that or those situations is to

ignore much. I get really tired of people not bothering to think before writing a stupid poll like this one. 90 years? Hell, that includes the Great Depression, as well. Threats aplenty in 90 years.

This poll is of no value, and is just here to provoke, as are most push polls.

[rug]

50. Yes the Depression had nothing to do with capitalism.

At the risk of provocation, can you name one threat in the last 90 years unrelated to capitalism?

[MineralMan]

52. Of course not. Everything is related to economics, and capitalism

is a very common economic system. Of course they're related. So, yes, the threat of nuclear war also has a link to capitalism and Soviet socialism as well. It was a threat caused by economic theories.

Capitalism and other economic systems are. They just are. They affect everything in the societies in which they exist. Sometimes, they have a positive effect. Other times, they have a negative effect.

Capitalism is an economic system. It seems to be the most prevalent one on this particular planet. We need to figure out a way to control it and deal with it. It's not going away.

[treestar]

35. +1

[sixmile]

33. Concentration of wealth

and idle money

[WheelWalker]

34. Attachment.

[lob1]

36. For the last 40 years, it's been the republican party.

[underpants]

37. If you ask the Pentagon they will tell you that it is-global warming oh and the CIA & World Bank too

Pentagon to rank global warming as destabilising force
Sunday 31 January 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/pentagon-ranks-global-warming-destabilising-force


The Pentagon will for the first time rank global warming as a destabilising force, adding fuel to conflict and putting US troops at risk around the world, in a major strategy review to be presented to Congress tomorrow. The quadrennial defence review, prepared by the Pentagon to update Congress on its security vision, will direct military planners to keep track of the latest climate science, and to factor global warming into their long term strategic planning.



World Bank, Pentagon: global warming red alert
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/world-bank-pentagon-warn-cli/
February 22, 2004
Pentagon: "global warming requires immediate action"

The Pentagon's planning scenariosays that global warming "should be elevated beyond a scientific debateto a US national security concern." It declares that "future wars willbe fought over the issue of survival rather than religion, ideology ornational honour."

It envisions the need to turn the US and other rich westerncountries into "fortresses," armed against an angry tide of peopledisplaced by rising sea levels or unable to grow food, and running fortheir lives.

The report doesn't hem and haw the way the White House does. Itdoesn't speak in tortured sentences to suggest that the scientificcommunity isn't convinced. It hasn't been proof-read and edited byExxon/Mobil. It says it plain:

"Rather than decades or even centuries of gradual warming, recentevidence suggests the possibility that a more dire climate scenario may actually be unfolding."


Pentagon, CIA Eye New Threat: Climate Change
December 14, 2009

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121352495

Global warming is now officially considered a threat to U.S. national security.

For the first time, Pentagon planners in 2010 will include climate change among the security threats identified in the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Congress-mandated report that updates Pentagon priorities every four years.

The reference to climate change follows the establishment in October of a new Center for the Study of Climate Change at the Central Intelligence Agency.

The projections lead us to believe that severe weather events will increase in intensity in the future, perhaps in frequency as well.

- Amanda Dory, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy
But the new attention to climate concerns among U.S. security officials does not mean the Pentagon and the CIA have taken sides in the debate over the validity of data on global warming. As with nuclear terrorism, deadly pandemics or biological warfare, it only means they want to be prepared.

[howaboutme]

38. The corrupt self serving marriage

between politicians, international corporations, Wall street, international lobbyists, K street and a media that now works in partnership with these aforementioned entities.

At one time the media served the function of expose, and now it serves as enabler.

[Individualist]

39. The neocon/DLC agenda

of giving corporations precedence over the people, supporting the military industrial complex, and suppression of civil liberties.

[RevStPatrick]

40. Religious Insanity.

It leads to so many other problems.

[nevergiveup]

43. My Republican neighbor would say it is Obama

I believe it to be the far right.

[valerief]

45. JINGOISM! nt

[Island Blue]

46. I voted capitalism

but corporatism is the real problem IMO.

[Kurovski]

47. Homosexuality, of course!

Don't ANY of you heathen read the Bible, for fuck's sake?

[roamer65]

48. Bush.

That was easy.

[Initech]

49. People who vote against their own interests.

[old mark]

51. Republicanism. nt

[political_Dem]

53. The Bush crime family and allies.

They single-handedly brought down our country while taking its riches for themselves. :(

[ThomWV]

54. The election of Ronald Reagan was, and remains, the greatest threat to our nation's survival - ever.