The Beauty of Obama’s Clapper Appointment

[abelenkpe]

The Beauty of Obama’s Clapper Appointment

http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-beauty-of-obamas-clapper-appointment/

As you’ve probably heard, Obama has appointed James Clapper (the man who lied under oath to Congress about NSA spying) to review NSA spying.

I am in awe, few things have impressed me this deeply.

(snip)


The media is full of studies showing that power decreases empathy, and I’ll bet that’s true throughout history. But I’ll also bet this, the degree to which it is true is social, and in many times and places it has been less true. Over the last couple generations we’ve seen a significant, measurable fall in the general level of empathy in the population as a whole. If you have an ideology which glorifies greed and which claims that society is a meritocracy when there is copious evidence to the contrary, those who win will believe they “deserve” what they have, and everyone else “deserves” what they have. Add to that objective circumstances which amount to dog-eat-dop (there simply are not enough good jobs to go around) and people will either band together, or turn on each other. Generally, we’ve chosen, for ideological reasons, to turn on each other.

This isn’t necessary: it isn’t what happened in the US in the Great Depression, for example. It’s a choice, and our choice is to be bastards to each other.

(A bit more at link)

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Depressing. We should band together in a time of need. Why do we spend so much time and energy fighting amongst ourselves?

[vi5]

1. Again....

Obama's appointments, which cannot be blamed on Republicans, show what he truly believes. Everything else is just a smokescreen. When called on to appoint someone to a position of power, 9 times out of 10 he goes the route of entrenched and/or corporate power and connections.