Item One
Our suicide rates have increased to the point at which the CDC says they are actually
affecting our life expectancy. Our usage of antidepressants continues to increase. Looking at the facts, it's not difficult to argue that we, as a society, are become more and more unhappy.
Item Two
More and more, Americans are walking around in a state of hypersensitivity, just waiting to be outraged or offended by something. When someone from the "other" tribe does or says something that we can attack, we jump right in with the group hysterics.
Theory
We're making ourselves more and more miserable by adhering ourselves to political ideologies, by refusing to even understand the opinions of those who dare to disagree with us, and by jumping on the tiniest opportunities as a reasonable excuse to attack the "other".
Please vote and comment. Thanks.
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U.S. Antidepressant Use Jumps 65 Percent in 15 Years
Suicides are at the highest rate in decades, CDC report shows
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My comment would be that Americans get all excited over EVERY LITTLE THING. Stuff that has no impact on them at all. Like abortion. If you disagree with abortion and think it's wrong, don't have one. But unlike other countries, Americans have to inflict what THEY believe to be right, on others.
Gay marriage is another one. My country has had gay marriage for 15 years. It has no impact on straight people getting married, and is totally a non-issue.
Common core is another one. Conservatives opposed it, not because it wasn't a good idea, but because liberals proposed it, and were trampling on "states' rights" to deal with education. The logic of living in a country with a high degree of mobility and having an expectation that in moving from one state to another, a core cirriculum would seem to be a common sense goal. The opposition wasn't based on the reasons behind it or even the good sense, it was all "tribal", and "federal overreach". And your education system continues to fall behind the rest of the first world as a result.
What is happening is a knee jerk response to everything the other side proposes with no consideration of the merits. There is no admission on the part of Republicans that tax cuts and deficit spending doesn't work as an economic strategy, and they continue to spout the same lies that it will, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Their base continues to believe their lies about tax cuts creating jobs because Republicans stay on message, and lies repeated often enough really do become truth to Republican voters. And since they fact check, and they've trained by 40 years of talk radio that the MSM is radically left wing and not to be trusted, basically Rush and the gang can tell them anything and they'll believe it.
32 years ago, the
Fairness Doctrine lapsed. This required that public media give equal time to both sides in the political debate. Since that time, right wing talk radio has flooded the airwaves in the mid-west and rural America with this apocalyptic view of America under attack by liberal forces out to destroy the country. This is reinforced by conservative evangelical churches, whose leadership billed itself as the "Moral Majority", and who demand that conservatives make laws around their religious beliefs on marriage, abortion, and bigotry, which they refer to as "religious freedom", which is what bigots have done since the Jim Crow days. Many of the leaders of the Moral Majority were brought down by scandals involving drugs, sex, and money, like all corrupt enterprises. Part of the coalition Reagan cobbled together to get elected.
The difference is that once in power, Reagan did nothing to pander to the fringe right wingers whose votes he needed to get elected, but these days, evangelicals refuse to vote for anyone who believes in "choice". And Donald J. Trump, who desperately needs to hold onto the right wing evengelical vote is rolling back women's rights as quickly as he can in an effort to pander for their votes.
Why does it matter so much to these radicals that their beliefs be enshrined in law? Why are they trying to control other people's lives? The Founding Fathers were very clear that they wanted a separation of Church and State, and yet radical right wing evangelicals, including an entire sect whose goal it is to take over the government, are working against this most basic of Constitutional principles.
