Silesian:A couple more questions.
1]Why do you make jokes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5YgJx8VGRA
2]Why do you turn on your people when they have no jobs and money and in of need help?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNOsIB5VMSQ
3]Are these true events? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJLwqBfrcu8
4]Why do you not invest in your cities, healthcare,quality of life; but invade foreign lands?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL_YdRxBhzI
If I had clicked on the links and read this more carefully I wouldn't have bothered to give a thoughtful reply to your initial question. This is b.s. anti-American propaganda.
1. Really? That's the response to the fact that every intelligence service in the world thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? Sometimes, if you don't laugh, you'll cry, which he has done a plenty, especially during his innumerable meetings with vets, meetings which he doesn't allow to be publicized. Is this supposed to mean that he did know? That's ridiculous. Does it mean the decision was correct, a decision supported by the entire Congress including Hillary Clinton? No, it doesn't. Even given he was working from faulty intelligence, he should have been more cautious. He, and a lot of American planners gave the Iraqis far more credit than they deserved.
2. Enlighten me. Are you so fortunate that you are a citizen of a country of whose every decision you're in favor, even those taken before you were born? Do I approve of the army throwing tear gas at these ex-soldiers? No, I don't. Neither do I approve of a virtual army of angry men surrounding the Capitol of this country and putting legislators in fear of their lives because they don't agree with a law passed by Congress. That kind of crap should be for other countries, not the U.S. Neither, by the way, do I approve of Kent State or the actions of the Chicago police in putting down the riots at the Chicago Democratic convention. It's not smart policing. However, the pendulum has swung too far the other way. The "Occupy Wall Street" protesters in Oakland shut down a whole part of the city, destroying the livelihood and even buildings in the area. The black protesters in Baltimore destroyed their whole city, and over a lie, a lie perpetuated by their leaders.
3. You want to know why Detroit is an utter disaster and emblematic of what is happening to a lot of primarily minority inner city areas in the U.S.?
a. The total breakdown of the traditional family structure, and the frequent pregnancies of unmarried women, often starting at a very young age is a prime cause. This leads to a situation where young girls leave school before graduation or even any technical training, which ensures that they will never be able to earn a living wage, and further ensuring that their children grow up not only as financial wards of the community, but without the stability and discipline of a two parent home.
b. The decline of high paying unskilled factory jobs, which is what drew a lot of African-Americans from the south in the first place, is another big factor. The fact that African Americans in these underclass communities, both male and female, drop out of school and don't even get technical training means that they're not equipped for decently paying white collar jobs. Their choices are to get minimum wage service jobs or stay home and go on welfare, which isn't much different in terms of buying power.
c. The ever increasing use of drugs and alcohol fuels a myriad of social ills, starting from an inability to keep a job even if you get one, to gang membership, violence both in the community and among family members, the disruption of familial relationships, and the birth of drug addicted and otherwise mentally and physically impaired children who will never be able to pull their own weight.
d.The creation of a whole generation of children who are barely socialized,and therefore have not internalized the ethos necessary for responsible adulthood, and who are very prone to anti-social behavior.
e.All of this means that you can throw all the money you want at the schools, give free health care to all of them (Medicaid), which has already been done, build brand new housing blocks, and you still have incredibly high school drop out rates, poor utilization of health resources, and the new housing blocks are trashed within a generation.
f. Speaking of "free" everything, you can add the policies of the Democratic administrations which have run almost all of these once industrial cities for decades. Their solution was to give as much "free stuff" as possible to keep them quiet and to get elected. Never have they suggested that some of the responsibility for this situation lies with the community itself. Instead, they've stoked the fires by maintaining that every time a cop, white or black or Hispanic, and increasingly the cops are from the latter two communities, shoots a young black man it's some sort of targeted racist assassination. Are there racist cops? Yes. Are there cops who should never have been given a gun and use excessive force? Yes. When it happens, they're prosecuted, no ifs, ands or buts. I know that for a fact. Most of the time, some street thugs with guns or knives are threatening a police officer, and have to be shot for the police officer's own safety. These politicians don't tell their constituents that; they feed the hysteria and misinformation, and when there are riots, they tell the police to stand aside and let the entire city burn. That's one reason so much of Detroit looks like a crater of the moon. Who do you think did it? For a long span of time it was considered fun by the young people in Detroit to celebrate Halloween by setting fires in the city. Did that news make it to Canada? Is it any wonder that the police aren't anxious to do real policing, and companies don't want to build businesses in the inner cities?
g. Related to the above, these local governments rely to a great extent for the financing of some social programs, but even more for maintenance of the infrastructure, for the police department, for the fire department, on the receipts from local taxes. However, the vast majority of their local population doesn't work and so it pays no taxes. Trying to make it up by increasing the taxation burden on the working part of the population resulted in what is called "white flight" to the suburbs. So, nothing gets fixed, get it?
I think that's basically it, although I'm sure I'm forgetting some things. Plus, I know attention spans are now short. It's a tragic, horrible situation, and my heart breaks for these people, but throwing money at the problem doesn't solve it.
4. We've thrown billions at poverty programs, and the result has been a big fat O. All the money in the world won't help if you're dealing with a dysfunctional family and community structure.
We certainly would be better off if the billions we spent carrying Europe's (and Canada's) water in terms of security and stability had been spent on our own infrastructure, and health care, and promoting and helping our own industries. You may be in luck, however, if Trump does win. He'll be inclined to let you all sink and to hell with you. We'll see how Europe likes it when it's totally on its own against ISIS, Russia, and economically, at least, China. If forced to it, I think the U.S. could be self-sufficient, certainly in terms of energy. Europe, on the other hand, will get strangled by Russia and destroyed economically by China.
Oh, and even without any military expenditures, Europe can't continue to pay for the social services it has promised. Not with an aging work force, and a shrinking population, and especially not when all of a sudden it has a large underclass of its own which soaks up millions in benefits and pays not taxes. Let's see how they do when they have to add military expenditures into the mix.
