What Does the US Need to Quell the Anger and Unrest?

US denizens were hitting the best standard of living in their history with the least amount of poverty, least amount of crime, nearing record levels of educational achievement at all levels, greatest amount of "ownership" and it was still not enough - still much anger and unrest. We had unprecedented levels of mental health issues despite these "great things."

Why?

The US is experiencing anger and unrest at an unprecedented level.

It's not Iran.

It's not global warming.

It's not SARS viruses.

It's not police murdering black people.

It's not Donald Trump.

It's all of those and more.

So what does the US need to make these things not cause so much civil unrest and anger?

Please select an option from the poll and explain your reasoning/provide a justification. I would like to poll tens of thousands of Americans with this.

"muh gaslight polls"

🙄

I went with Social Media and it's something I've discussed in the past between click baits, falsely framed narratives, echo chambes etc

While the polls were inaccurate, the false optimism of liberal voters was also a byproduct of the inherent biases of modern news. For a while, a generation of liberal-minded young adults fell into the habit of getting the news from watching the comedian Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Now that cellphones have taken over as our peripheral brains, we consume our news from social media feeds that are by design programmed to present us with the news as we want it, not necessarily as it is. We’ve become digesters of a kind of syrupy, self-righteous pablum produced within online echo chambers and filter bubbles, continually narrowed with each click of a “like” button on social media and each time we defriend or block someone with opposing viewpoints. Human brains are already slaves to “confirmation bias” (in which we favor evidence that supports our intuitions and reject evidence that contradicts it) – but within the online universe, it’s more like confirmation bias on steroids. Which means that, in the end, we can’t trust the news because we’ve become voracious consumers of fake news, not actual news that aims to be objective or fair-balanced.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/201611/understanding-post-trump-stress-disorder

There is more to all of this of course but for starters humans have never in our history been bombarded with this much information so frequently in our history.

Originally posted by snowdragon
I went with Social Media and it's something I've discussed in the past between click baits, falsely framed narratives, echo chambes etc

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/201611/understanding-post-trump-stress-disorder

There is more to all of this of course but for starters humans have never in our history been bombarded with this much information so frequently in our history.

Good point and that's from Psychology today where their opinions are required to be backed by actual research (generally, a good site).

I definitely could not have worded it better. If people shut off social media, the news, etc. I wonder what that would do to mental health and the positive outlook on life? I wonder how much more the people who view themselves as "have nots" will start viewing themselves as "haves"?

Edit - And it is nice to see at least 1 person voted for Trump and politics like his as a cause. I would like to see whoever that was expand on their position quite a bit/go into details.

Banning lawyers is a start.

Lawyers, media, judges, and activists have long been in collusion as a money making operation. In many cases the wronged party doesn't even get a cut of the winnings.

Originally posted by cdtm
Banning lawyers is a start.

Lawyers, media, judges, and activists have long been in collusion as a money making operation. In many cases the wrong party doesn't even get a cut of the winnings.

I don't think I could take that extreme of a stance (banning lawyers). I get to work with them all the time and I really like the brains they add to my day to day work.

Originally posted by dadudemon
I don't think I could take that extreme of a stance (banning lawyers). I get to work with them all the time and I really like the brains they add to my day to day work.

Depends on their specialisation.

As a hobby I like to dig into legal corruption. It's hard to believe some of the things that happen.

The attorney actually writing up the verdict and passing it to a judge, for example.

And even in legit cases, I've spoken with lawyers on topics like discrimination suits against school departments asking where the money goes, and got told "Not to the classrooms or the kids"

As long as big bucks are part of the legal system, there will always be that confliict of interest.

Originally posted by cdtm
Depends on their specialisation.

As a hobby I like to dig into legal corruption. It's hard to believe some of the things that happen.

The attorney actually writing up the verdict and passing it to a judge, for example.

And even in legit cases, I've spoken with lawyers on topics like discrimination suits against school departments asking where the money goes, and got told "Not to the classrooms or the kids"

As long as big bucks are part of the legal system, there will always be that confliict of interest.

So you propose massive tort reform (federal laws) to get rid of the frivolous suits and the money-grab suits?

Good news or bad news, people like my old boss are working on AI that does all the lawyering stuff. It does it better than the human lawyers and for a lower cost. Not all areas are better handled with the prepackaged electronic lawyer and AI law stuff - obviously, it has a long way to go.

But that also implies we could have lawsuits drawn up and filed, automatically, with no human being involved. It scans the internet for "something" and it has a set of triggers that will auto-file lawsuits. That's pretty damn scary.

Education, or lack thereof.
Lack of critical thinking.
Desire for confirmation bias rather than actual facts.
Politicisation of every single issue.
Everyone has AIDS...AIDS AIDS AIDS

Originally posted by jaden_2.0
Education, or lack thereof.
Lack of critical thinking.
Desire for confirmation bias rather than actual facts.
Politicisation of every single issue.
Everyone has AIDS...AIDS AIDS AIDS

Education is good. Stiffling curiosity due to political sensitivity is not.

For example, if people were encouraged to dig into data on the holocaust if they questioned aspects of the narrarive (Such as where data for the number of deaths comes from), instead of being told to just accept the figures or be branded an anti-semite, we may have less anti-semites.

That way we can find out:

1. The data is sound, ending debate.

2. The data is sketchy. This is useful infornation for correction.

3. The person researching is a nut, who won't be swayed. But at least there's a solid platform to debunk him other then "Take our word for it."

Give everyone LSD and just see what happens.

I would pay to see Trump have an acid trip whilst smoking potent cannabis.

Originally posted by Eon Blue
I would pay to see Trump have an acid trip whilst smoking potent cannabis.

Yeah, that was a good time when I was younger 😱

I can see Trump getting stoned and when he gets the munchies he buys out a taco bell for the day............

💃

Social Media, the actually so called journalist, and the whole woke culture. But it goes much further.

Everyone here knows where I stand. I see myself as a Libertarian, and I believe, let people live their lives the way they want, as long as their choices do not negatively impact others.

Stop bending backwards to be offended, not everything is racist/sexism, or whatever ism. I also believe in the freedom of expression, but do not force others to care about the fact that you see yourself as some other gender.

Stop rewriting history. Today if you ask a kids in high school why did we fight each other in the Civil War, the only answer is because of slavery.

Stop giving big corporations so much leeway.

Much importantly, Journalism needs to go back and be unbiased. There is a big difference between opinions pieces, and reported facts.

The fundamental problem is the economic system, that works in service of only a small number of people while leaving everyone else behind, whether that is through precarious employment and poverty, or the alienation of the destruction of meaning. So what it needs is policies that have worked before, strong labor laws, high taxes, regulation, investment in public infrastructure and commons, extensive free public services, basically everything that's called communism in the US but is just social democracy.

That would go a long way to help the racial problems, that would still persist of course, but it's nicer to argue when the world isn't on fire for most people and they don't know whether they will survive the next month or they don't know why the even bother being alive. Solutions for that are justice reform, dearmament of police forces, curtailing of their powers, decriminalization of a lot of crimes, alternative forms of dealing with criminals besides punitive, etc.

Originally posted by Surtur
Give everyone LSD and just see what happens.

We also wanted to join the kids in the local park's play area. They were having so much fun, but we decided not to because people would react negatively to grown men on the monkey bars with 7 year olds.

Society and it's stupid rules! 😠

Originally posted by Artol
The fundamental problem is the economic system, that works in service of only a small number of people while leaving everyone else behind, whether that is through precarious employment and poverty, or the alienation of the destruction of meaning. So what it needs is policies that have worked before, strong labor laws, high taxes, regulation, investment in public infrastructure and commons, extensive free public services, basically everything that's called communism in the US but is just social democracy.

Just a superficial reading, I fundamentally disagree with what you're saying. Perhaps there is a different way of stating how it works and you'd agree:

Mixed-Economies largely benefit the oligarchs and corporatistic dynasties but also drag along the proletariat into better Socio-Economic Status.

Originally posted by StyleTime
My friend and I had the same idea in the middle of an LSD trip.

We also wanted to join the kids in the local park's play area. They were having so much fun, but we decided not to because people would react negatively to grown men on the monkey bars.

Society and it's stupid rules! 😠

Yes, playing with kids that are not your own or not part of your play-date group would be a bad idea.

Here is the look you'd get from other parents:

And this would be the outcome:

Originally posted by Artol
The fundamental problem is the economic system, that works in service of only a small number of people while leaving everyone else behind, whether that is through precarious employment and poverty, or the alienation of the destruction of meaning. So what it needs is policies that have worked before, strong labor laws, high taxes, regulation, investment in public infrastructure and commons, extensive free public services, basically everything that's called communism in the US but is just social democracy.

That would go a long way to help the racial problems, that would still persist of course, but it's nicer to argue when the world isn't on fire for most people and they don't know whether they will survive the next month or they don't know why the even bother being alive. Solutions for that are justice reform, dearmament of police forces, curtailing of their powers, decriminalization of a lot of crimes, alternative forms of dealing with criminals besides punitive, etc.

Originally posted by dadudemon
Just a superficial reading, I fundamentally disagree with what you're saying. Perhaps there is a different way of stating how it works and you'd agree:

Mixed-Economies largely benefit the oligarchs and corporatistic dynasties but also drag along the proletariat into better Socio-Economic Status.

I see you are somewhat Marxist in your economic analysis. But I'd disagree to some degree, the term "mixed economy" spans a huge range of economic systems, some of them benefit both the elites and broad masses, others benefit only the elites, and potentially some might benefit the masses over the elites, but I am not sure there are historic examples of that (perhaps we could classify policy implementations like the New Deal as such).

However we can just look at the United States to see that systems that fall under the term "mixed economy" can be very different. The United states used to be a mixed economy much closer to what some might call a welfare state, the government would take care of its people, and it would limit the ability of the wealthiest capitalist to exploit the system, but ever since it was implemented, and around the end of the second world war this has been gradually eroded, and with the neo-liberal changes in the 80s the economy has moved far toward benefiting the economic elite at the expense of the masses. These changes should at the very least be reverted, imo, but I'd go even further, that for an optimum of freedom for your people (as well as security, and opportunity at happiness) you need a very strong welfare state, that heavily curtails overpowering individual or corporate interests.

low life thugs ceasing the rioting could help quell anger