[g0v]

I just feel sick when I think of how helpless I am as a citizen while I watch my government's officials get away with shit like this. Yeah, I can sign petitions, vote, contact my congressman, but I always have the feeling of someone that's just watching from the outside.

My hope is that those people that we don't see or hear about that work around injustices like these are doing what they can to keep some sort of balance. I try to convince myself sometimes that these people that love their country and want to do good are trying to use what power they have to make things right. I know for a fact that there are amazing people working in government and I hope the good stuff these people do just doesn't get much attention.

I love my country, I served, I consider myself a patriot, but I worry about my children and their children. I don't expect much, if anything, to come of this and the fact that that feeling is common for me as an American puts knots in my stomach.

[einhverfr]

I am an American expat living abroad. One thing that bugs me about this is that there is a shrill hyperpartisanship that underlies a lot of this discussion. Yes, we should be prosecuting torturers, their bosses, and those who aided and abetted this via existing CIA programs or via extraordinary rendition during the current and last two administrations.

But Democrats won't sign on to something that will implicate Democratic party Presidents, nor will the GOP sign onto anything that will implicate a Republican president, no matter how despised he is by the Republican base.

The result is a lawless government and a strict reminder that there is no such thing as a "government of laws." In the end, all governments are "governments of men."

[MCRed]

As an norte american who was an expat for many years I agree. IT's amazing how different the perspective is when you get out of the US media bubble. Nobody, not CNN, not Fox, not MSNBC, etc, none of them really are critical of the US government. It's all whitewashed in a way that's hard to see when you're inside the bubble.

And that whitewash is not just to defend the national government, but to defend the parties.

I believe this is exactly the reason that the founders didn't want to have a party system. Some of their choices (like the original make up of the senate) I believe were specifically to prevent this.

Further, the entire goal of having strong state governments and a weak federal government was to prevent these kinds of crimes.

For the very reason that the federal government will not prosecute itself, a strong federal government is bad. (Principle agent problem.)

Can you imagine if states were doing extraordinary rendition and torture? Highly unlikely. While at the same time, for a real war, there would be no problem fighting with a bunch of state militias banding together (and it would cost us a lot less... much of our problem is due to the adventurism of our permanent military-- hard to justify keeping it around if you aren't constantly finding wars to start, er, fight.)

[rayiner]

> Can you imagine if states were doing extraordinary rendition and torture?

The decline of state versus federal power has been punctuated by events that arose because the states did far worse. There's slavery and the civil war, of course, but more recently state governments were throwing black Americans in jail or executing them with no evidence, turning a blind eye to lynchings and hangings and other atrocities. And every time the states proved that they could not be trusted, the Supreme Court gave the federal government a little more power over them.

Eisenhower sending federal troops (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/101...) into Arkansas to forcibly integrate a school would've been decried as a reprehensible infringement of state sovereignty if it wasn't so throughly justified.

[einhverfr]

Unfortunately the Federal Government was hardly blameless in the racial issues. The single greatest tragedy in the history of race in the US was when the administration of Andrew Johnson rejected Sherman's efforts at land reform in the South. This would have lead to a very segregated South, but former slaves would have had means of production so the segregation could not have been pernicious, as it was (and still is as de facto segregation based on massive economic inequality).

The federal government, effectively, has been a party to the worst of these problems, by advocating for the last 150 years, that black folks "getting a job" will solve the issue. It never has and it never will. Give a man a fish and he'll be back tomorrow, which is why Sherman was more interested in giving them metaphorical fishing boats.

I have now lived in areas where there is a lot more racial separatism than there is in the US. In the absence of massive economic inequality, that poses very little problems. The problems in the US have been racial separatism backed by massive inequality out of the starting gate, something bolstered more than hindered by federal policy (though the states have been bad guys here too). But because we can pick and choose which bad guys we want to condemn, we can imagine that the feds messed up everything or that they saved people from the evil states. In reality there is plenty of blame to go around.

I like the Scandinavian model: most taxes go to the local level and most social programs are run at the local level. Sweden and Denmark, for example, have no national single payer systems (rather municipalities set up single payer systems). However on the spectrum of American politics that makes Scandinavians both far-left and far-far right....

[saalweachter]

Yeah, the failure of Reconstruction was sad but not really surprising in the greater context of the United States. Huge swaths of the history of the United States pretty much come down to defending slavery, de facto slavery, and maintaining a society which favors whites above others. One of the reasons for the Louisiana Purchase was the fear that France would free slaves in its territories, leading to unrest in the United States; one of the causes of the Texas Revolution was maintaining the rights of the American settlers to own slaves. Avoiding an "imbalance" of slave/non-slave states occupied the country for several decades before the Civil War, and prior to the 'War of State's Rights' numerous laws were passed abridging the rights of Northern States to shelter escaped slaves. After the Civil War, laws were passed in former slave states compelling blacks to enter into contracts with whites which were de facto slavery. Even today, prison labor and racially biased sentencing maintains de facto slavery. It wasn't until 84 years after the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments that Congress passed laws enforcing them. Even Progressive New Deal programs were racially biased; the original New Deal contained exemptions to Social Security (eg, for agricultural workers) to prevent large numbers of African Americans in the South from qualifying; this was a compromise between Roosevelt and Southern politicians, because he needed their support to fight World War II (Northerners were much more war-adverse and non-Interventionist, and more willing to sit out the war in Europe).

Trying to understand the United States and its history without knowing about the economics and social institutions of slavery is like trying to understand chemistry without knowing about atoms.

[einhverfr]

A few things that are particularly sad about it are:

1. We learned our lesson, given how we rebuilt Taiwan, Japan, and Germany.

2. We haven't learned out lesson given how the same rhetoric is trotted out by both parties today.

I swear... "creating jobs" is the single worst goal in American politics. Any time you hear it watch closely: both parties use it as an excuse to give rich people more money nad chain people to corporate employment....

[graycat]

Yes, but in my Southern US high school, in chemistry they did teach about the atoms but in history they didn't!

[Retric]

It's important to remember just how recent slavery was in the US and how much closer to equality we are now than even just 40 years ago.

Some people that fought in the civil war where alive in 1950, and your grandparents where likely to have met someone that fought in that war and or a former US slave.

[einhverfr]

I am not sure we are closer to equality on a substantive way. We are closer in terms of where you can sit on the bus. But in terms of property and power, we may be even further away. The KKK's terrorism may be largely a thing of the past, but we now have a choice between the welfare servile state of the Democrats and the penile servile state of the Republicans.

We have had 2 descendants of slaves serving on our nation's highest court, a handful of Congressmen, and not much else. In terms of the legacy of slavery, you really can't count Obama.

No matter what the talking heads on the media say, I still think if you put Al Sharpton, Clarence Thomas, Jesse Jackson, and Ben Carson in a room and ask for consensus and ask them for suggestions to fix the race problem, they will come up with better answers faster than if you put Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid in a room.

[lotsofmangos]

I think the states may be rising in power again, given details like the incredible trouble the federal government is having in getting its Apache helicopters back when it wants them.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/16/senate-derai...

[Spooky23]

Federal inaction was driven by the cancer that was the Southern voting bloc. The Senate shelved anti-lynching legislation, even purely symbolic legislation was killed something like 48 times between 1900 and 1963.

The failure to deal with the slavery issue early on put us in this weird place... We're a people of paradox.

[einhverfr]

That can't explain Andrew Johnson's opposition to Sherman's land reform initiatives though. That was quashed by Northern industrialists.

[nl]

As someone outside the US, when I see someone attempting to frame this as a "states rights" issue I see that framing as adding to the problem by making it an even-more-political-issue than it already is.

I sometimes find it useful to try to keep some kind of perspective with this kind of issue. Realistically all governments have issues policing themselves. I don't think this is unique to the US at all, nor does it represent some kind of break down of the US system of government.

[einhverfr]

Everything regarding everything government does is incredibly political.

But I don't see this as a states' rights issue directly. It is an issue with a large secret federal government (and stronger states or better yet, local governments, would make that less of an issue). But transferring power from the federal government to the states by itself has no impact at all except making the policies both affect fewer people and the government accountable to the fewer that are affected. That may be a win but it isn't by itself much of anything.

After all, it isn't like the FBI are the ones in the cross-hairs of the anti-police protests...

[einhverfr]

It isn't just defending the parties. It is defending the corporations who effectively control the parties. In short the media is an important part of the power structure of the US.

Why I read The "American Conservative," "Mother Jones," and "The Nation" more than I read The New York Times.

[CWuestefeld]

the corporations who effectively control the parties

While I don't entirely disagree, I'd note that the control runs in both directions.

The only reason that corporate interests steer the government is that the government controls the corporations. By creating regulations that favor a company or the industry, they improve corporate returns. Even regulations that damage a company, but damage competitors worse, may enable rent-seeking and be a good long-term investment for a corporation.

So when the people, aghast at the kinds of problems they see, demand that the government must do something, and allow the government to gather more power in order to do so, this makes more power available for capture by the corporate interests, and so in the long run, makes the problem worse.

[dangerlibrary]

Try living in DC.

It's a special kind of hell to live in the city where all this is taking place - where the local news IS what is going on in Congress (good and bad) - and not even be able to write to a voting representative in either house.

[discardorama]

San Francisco is similar in a way. Nancy Pelosi keeps winning with massive margins, simply because of her name and the fact that she's part of the political machine here; and no one goes anywhere in SF politics without the backing of the machine. And the machine prevents viable challengers from coming forth. For all practical purposes, we don't _have_ a representative who will represent us; she just represents the rich and the powerful.

[samstave]

And she is corrupt to the core, maybe almost as much as Feinstein who's husband's company Bechtel was one of the top profiteers in the wars.

[cwp]

And yet, Feinstein was the one who did battle with the CIA to get the torture report published. Establishing that crimes were committed is the first step toward prosecuting the criminals.

I'd be the last to defend corruption, but it's important to point out that these things are relative. A republic can tolerate a little graft and profiteering. It cannot tolerate torture.

[kabdib]

Read about Feinstein and the crypto wars.

She's a lying sack of garbage. Maybe, just maybe she had an attack of conscience about the CIA thing -- my guess is that she realized it would make it out anyway, and decided it would be better to look good on that account than defend something obviously illegal.

[kabdib]

I should add: And then work to have any repercussions be a wrist slap. "Don't do that again, okay?" and a wink.

Just watch. Nothing will happen.

I wonder who the next intelligence committee lapdog is going to be?

[discardorama]

> And yet, Feinstein was the one who did battle with the CIA to get the torture report published.

And she's great at doing just that: throwing the liberals a bone once in a rare while, which keeps them happy (no offense meant). She had no choice about releasing the report: she was going to get booted out of the SIC at the end of the year. If she didn't release the report (as was demanded by lots and lots of people), it would have been impossible to do so after January 1.

In any case: if she hadn't released it, Mark Udall would have, since he has nothing to lose.

[001sky]

but it's important to point out that these things are relative.

This and the CIA never crucified, amputated, or executed men on film for progoganda...which is what we look at now on the news every other week.

Not to mention CIA's lethal drone program (incl. under Obama) has killed, maimed, and injured more innocent men/women/children than the EIA stuff.

[spacefight]

If you can - take your tax money elsewhere.

[dangerlibrary]

Unfortunately, it is not possible to solve the problem that way. There are over 600,000 people living in this city - more than the population of Wyoming and Vermont. You wouldn't just tell everyone in Vermont to move to New Hampshire because the federal government can't get its act together. I was born and grew up in this city, as were many people who happen to fall on this side of the DC border.

[spacefight]

I agree that it's hard to relocate, that's why I stated "if you can". Some can and some do leave the places where they grew up for reasons of unhappiness with the policies of their gov.

[dangerlibrary]

That addresses my complaint, but doesn't solve the problem. There will always be residents of the District of Columbia - it's a city. Just like San Francisco or Chicago. The federal buildings make up a tiny fraction of the land area - the rest is private businesses and people's homes. The people who live in those homes should be allowed to vote.

[lambda]

I don't understand why they don't just change the District of Columbia to consist only of the federal buildings, and give the rest back to Maryland (I don't believe there are still any residences on the Virginia side of the river, but if so, give that land back to Virginia).

Then there can be the constitutionally mandated federal district, that consists simply of the federal buildings, and everywhere that people live (outside of the White House, Number One Observatory Circle, and maybe a few other formal federal residences) would actually be within state jurisdiction.

This already happened to the bulk of the Virginia side of DC in 1847 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocess...). I don't see why they don't just do that again with the rest.

[spacefight]

I fully agree that everyone should be allowed to vote. Solving the specific problem is hard. I just wanted to give a small hint, that if someone is not happy with the status quo, they might try to change it.

Of course I have to add, that first it would make much more sense to try to change the local sentiment first - usually done by enganging in your locale community.

[Dylan16807]

There was one itty bitty spot in the entire middle band of this continent that people could move to and wouldn't be able to vote. So hundreds of thousands of people did. Still confuses me.

[dangerlibrary]

I didn't move here, I was born here. I work here for a private company that has no relationship to the federal government. My home is here.

The apathy about this issue is what confuses me - what harm would it do to allow DC residents to vote? What reason could you have to oppose DC citizens gaining the right to vote? The argument that federal government workers should be forbidden from voting is incredibly hollow - the vast majority of them reside outside the city. Also, this is tantamount to saying "Park Rangers in Idaho shouldn't be allowed to vote," a position I have never heard put forward.

[jfoutz]

Historically, i think it made some sense. now with instant communication, it seems hard for locals to influence congress unduly.

Personally, I have no problem with adding DC as another state.

Politically, it'll never happen (imho). why would any senator give up 2% of their power to add 2 more senators? There are probably many issues blocking, but on that one at least is a monster to overcome.

[curun1r]

There's no need to add it as a separate state, just give back the land that Virginia and Maryland originally donated to create DC in the first place. Then when the next census rolls around, residents would be considered during redistricting.

No new senators would be created, so no yielding 2% power, and Maryland and Virginia might get 1-2 more electoral votes and/or congressional representatives.

I would imagine that the main issue that would need to be resolved is jurisdictional...would laws passed in Maryland and Virginia apply to residents of DC? If so, it's conceivable that those states could influence Federal policy. What would happen if one of those states made it illegal to order a drone strike without the approval from one of their courts...could the President be arrested and charged in that state for violating that law?

[desdiv]

The jurisdictional problem isn't as big as it seems, because not 100% of the land will be returning to Maryland, only 99.99% of it. To wit, the White House, the Capitol, and the Supreme Court building will still retain their status quo[0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_retrocessi...

[dragonwriter]

> What would happen if one of those states made it illegal to order a drone strike without the approval from one of their courts...could the President be arrested and charged in that state for violating that law?

Probably not, because Supremacy Clause. Federal officers operate in the states fairly regularly, and this general issue (not the specific issue involving the President and drone strikes in particular) has been litigated extensively.

[dalke]

"why would any senator give up 2% of their power to add 2 more senators?"

Presumably for reasons similar to ones that lead previous Congresses to add the previous 37 states to the Union, despite even higher dilution of power.

[jfoutz]

Manifest destiny? Vast natural resources? Strategic location? I don't see a compelling political reason to do it, but fortunately we're free to disagree.

[rtpg]

>why would any senator give up 2% of their power to add 2 more senators?

I think the issue is more why would any republican senator vote for it, since DC is extremely liberal and would be confirmed Democratic bastions

[rayiner]

The harm is that DC is already "the capital" from hunger games. Housing prices going up while the rest of the country suffers. People here don't need the vote. Heck, we should take it away from NoVa and Maryland for good measure.

[dangerlibrary]

Housing in DC didn't have the crash that the rest of the country experienced, that's true. Of course, neither did Houston's, or San Francisco's, or much of New York City's.

By contrast, people who don't live in DC didn't have their pay cut 10% by mandatory furloughs demanded by a governing body they have no vote in. People who don't live in DC get to pass laws determining how they want to live, without those laws being vetoed by representatives from Oklahoma who find them politically inconvenient in their home state.

I haven't even touched on the fact that DC's population is over 50% black, and has been for decades. It may not be the case now, but in the past the arguments for refusing DC residents the right to vote were very explicitly racial.

[eru]

> Housing prices going up while the rest of the country suffers.

Aren't rising house prices also a problem?

[bmelton]

If the problem is that too many members of the underclass live in D.C. without representation, then rising house prices is, in a somewhat sadistic sense, a potential solution.

[Dylan16807]

I'm not blaming you, I'm blaming your ancestors.

I'm not against letting DC vote to fix the problem at this point. But this situation is ridiculous. There was no reason to start a major city in the no-voting zone.

[TheCoelacanth]

The no-voting zone was created around two already existing cities (Georgetown and Alexandria).

[eru]

Why? Not having a vote is not a major pain point for most people.

[Dylan16807]

Can someone explain why they downvoted me? This comment was positive for quite a while...

(Please tell me it wasn't because someone thought I was including dangerlibrary in those hundreds of thousands. That's a distinction that really doesn't matter, and I didn't want to double the size of the post with a disclaimer.)

[eru]

Who cares about voting anyway?

[harryf]

The biggest problem when your nation tortures people is you've trained people to torture; you've created institutionalized psychopaths. What do you do with them when their mission ends? Are they properly supported back into society or just dropped like most vets? Do the go home to become nightclub bouncers or security guards at your kids school?

That's why we have to clean up this mess.

[smeyer]

>The biggest problem when your nation tortures people is you've trained people to torture

No, I disagree. I think the torturing itself and the moral failings it entails are a bigger problem than the (admittedly substantial) problem of reintegrating the individual torturers back into society.

[harryf]

OK agreed. Perhaps that should have read "the best argument for fence sitters on why we need to clean this up is ..." because a disturbing percentage of Americans seem to believe torture was justified http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-po...

[lazyjones]

Indeed - and from a purely practical standpoint: you've also created hundreds of millions, possibly billions of people who hate your country and perhaps feel that violence against its citizen, who voted for and continue to vote for such leaders, is justified.

[Someone]

One might almost say the creation of psychopaths is the goal of military training. Without training a small fraction of soldiers ('natural psychopaths') will kill for pleasure, another small fraction will be the heroes that kill and put themselves in danger for the good cause, but the majority twill try and come out alive. The goal of military training is to make the army more effective by increasing that second fraction, but increasing the first fraction isn't that bad, either, from a direct military perspective.

(http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Killing:_The_Psychological..., http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killology)

[philwelch]

Actually, psychopathic behavior is something the military works very hard to screen out. Psychopaths don't make very good soldiers because they're not especially inclined to follow orders or concern themselves with the safety of their fellow soldiers.

[harryf]

Yes and there's the difference between training someone to kill quickly and efficiently for a military objective and training someone to slowly inflict cruel forms of extreme suffering on another human over and extended period of time.

The former you may be able to rehabilitate afterwards. The latter is Hannibal material.

[rtpg]

Now I'm not aware of how modern military training is built, but I have to imagine that the top priority for the military is making sure that their own soldiers don't die. Apart from the ethical aspects, training somebody takes a long time, and having people with experience on the field seems valuable.

Much like how lifeguards are taught that the first priority is making sure that they are safe rather than saving the person drowning.

[Someone]

Yes, you want your soldiers to survive because training is expensive, and comrades dying is bad for morale, but it is not _the_ top priority.

If it were the top priority, very, very few attacks would take place. Taking that hill, destroying that gun, or gaining knowledge about enemy positions often gets higher priority than the lives of a few (or lots of. Generals knew lots of soldiers would die on D-Day, for instance) soldiers.

[InclinedPlane]

The biggest problem is that people are talking about whether or not its effective and inventing euphemisms. It's torture. It's immoral. It's illegal. It's also not actually very effective but that's just the icing on the cake, the rest is what's important.

[spinlock]

I'd consider the _biggest_ problem to be invading Iraq under false pretenses. We've destroyed millions of lives because we tortured people until they told us what Dick Cheney wanted to hear. Yes, we love our children more than Iraqi children but it's not a hypothetical in the latter case.

[mkramlich]

Another problem is that it can be used by others to justify torturing US soldiers, agents or officials that fall into their hands, if those others see the US as an enemy, and feel the US gov was conspiring or operating against them. That's not a world we want to live in. Torture is wrong, period. We're not the Good Guys because we wave a wand and say so. If we want to act like we have moral authority, and have credibility, and be able to show international leadership in the future again when there may be another major good-vs-evil rallying cause, requiring a coalition, then the US needs to maintain a certain image. But one based on facts, not on lies and contra-factual propaganda.

[gaius]

The US already incarcerates more people than anywhere else. You guys can fit in a few more.

[rayiner]

Painting this as a "government versus citizens" situation is simple minded. Latest polls show support for the CIA methods by 2:1 margin after the Senate Report: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-po....

I'm not a big fan of Obama, but he's gotten an unfair shake on the national security front. The fact is that the broader electorate is indifferent about drone strikes and enhanced interrogation, but would pillory him if a terrorist attack happened "on his watch." If your theory of the world depends on Obama being duplicitous and going against the will of the people to do these things he promised he wouldn't do, I submit that it's not just republicans that may fairly be accused of ignoring reality when it comes to politics.

The issue isn't why won't the government do what we want it to do. The issue is: why do we still want revenge after 14 years, after Iraq and after Afghanistan?

[canjobear]

The article is about prosecuting people not just because of the torture was depraved but also because it was illegal. The Senate report finds that the CIA knew its actions were illegal and acted to cover them up. The fact that the majority of the populace approves of an illegal action in polls should not make the perpetrators less worthy of prosecution.

[rayiner]

If people broke laws they should be prosecuted. But let's describe the situation honestly: not "why does the government defy the people and not prosecute?" But "why doesn't the government defy the people and prosecute?"

[rtpg]

This is kind of an interesting point that I feel has come up a lot in Obama's presidency in particular. Why can the executive choose not to prosecute crimes?

This comes up in another point, which is marijuana legalisation. Under federal law, that stuff is still illegal, yet we've chosen not to prosecute. I'm still not sure of how the legality of the non-prosecution works out

[bediger4000]

That's a very good question, and in simple terms, one could say "lack of leadership". Isn't the very point of having a representative government to avoid the Tyranny of the Majority? That is, the elected representatives need to do ethical things, rather than just be driven by polling, or special interests.

[dragonwriter]

> Isn't the very point of having a representative government to avoid the Tyranny of the Majority?

No, that's the point of limited government in an otherwise democratic system.

The point of representative democratic government is to institute popular sovereignty while allowing most citizens to do something other than full-time government oversight.

[sitkack]

One I don't support your claim that people are in support of torture. Two if they do support it, _they_ also need to see bringing the participants of torture to justice. Popular polls replacing laws? What country is this?

[samstave]

An interpolating poll is simply not acceptable when it comes to this. I am in no way going to accept that 2:1 in support of torture is a true number unless every single person asked that question were shown videos of the actual torture conducted by US military in an IMAX theatre.

Show me anal-rape-feeding on the big screen and ask me if I support it.

[harryh]

So support for say, abortion, isn't real unless you show someone a dead fetus before asking them their position?

[samstave]

Do he have "Planned torture clinics" where analogous said torture to one single gender may occur, where said gender may pay for said torture, then released.

Your analogy is literally brain dead.

[harryh]

Why is it brain dead? I was merely pointing out that the framing of a question to the public can dramatically influence the results, and I wanted clarification from you about what sort of framing you think is appropriate for different issues.

[samstave]

Abortion may be an ugly practice, but it is a voluntary individual choice that a person chooses for themselves, while it is controversial given that you are indeed killing your unborn baby - I don't think it is comparable to forced torture on other by sponsored governmental agents. Further, abortion is sought out and paid for by one gender of the population.

They are both moral issues, but other than that, they don't have much in common.

However, I will agree that if you made all people watch a video of an abortion, it would likely influence their opinion on it - but we don't cmsend the Cia all over the globe forcing abortions on people. Or kidnap people and send them to forced abortion clinics in Hungary.

[lstyls]

> 'The fact is that the broader electorate is indifferent about drone strikes and enhanced interrogation, but would pillory him if a terrorist attack happened "on his watch."'

Your position begs the question of whether the drone policy is actually effective at reducing the risk of terror attacks. Many if not most critics of Obama's policy argue that they are in fact counterproductive in their stated mission.

[justcommenting]

we often believe we can't do anything about all the bad things we see in the world, but it's almost always necessary for people to first decide that things will change before they do.

please join others and continue fighting for the democracy you want to live in and that you want your children to live in. it's going to take all of us.

[InclinedPlane]

Run. For. Office.

It's sad that this isn't seen as an option anymore, but it should be. There are tons of offices out there that people have a reasonable chance at attaining and can kick start a political career. Not everyone will do a good job and not everyone should do it, but too many people don't even consider it as an option. The result is that the people in office tend to be people who are driven by ambition, lust for power, or desire for fame, precisely the least suitable people for office, with abundantly visible results.

[orbifold]

To someone from a nation responsible for a large genocide in the 20th century and at least one world war, Germany, the notion that you could "love your country" has only become non controversial again, recently. For example, flags are really only displayed by the population for major sport events, like the world cup and not for National Day. In fact a major part of political indoctrination in school was that the idea of the nation state is largely a thing of the past, nationalism is "dangerous" and that the future is the European Union. The majority of the political elite can't wait to see a "United States of Europe" emerge and says so openly at various occasions.

This is to illustrate, that the perception of the country you live in largely depends on the indoctrination you received in your youth and the overall agenda. In most countries of Europe strong nationalistic tendencies are inconvenient for long term political goals, so the emphasis is on international cooperation and adherence to international law. In fact German politicians rarely state they "love their country" and would be crucified, if they described their country as "exceptional".

The US instead has been a rogue actor for much of its existence, basically ignores international law, routinely blocks inconvenient UN resolutions, has supported some of the most oppressive regimes in recent history (South Africa, Honduras, Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia come to mind) has constantly waged war and bullied countries in Middle and South America.

Restricted to foreign politics there is little America justifiably can be proud of in recent history and yet there is this whole quasi religion around the USA as a nation, "manifest destiny" etc., that apparently serves as a mental block even among many educated Americans to coolly and rationally evaluate the appalling record of most of their administrations in the past 50 years and maybe come to the conclusion that you should have persecuted many, who claimed they served your country and "loved it" a long time ago.

[MatthewWilkes]

Is that Belgium, Russia, Japan or Germany? They all have legitimate claims to that title, having killed 5 million or more in time frames containing the 20th century.

[orbifold]

Edited the opening line to no longer claim it was "the largest genocide" and explicitly stated the country. Belgium is still very nationalistic, with big military parades on National Day, a military parade on National Day in Germany would be unthinkable.

[samstave]

We need a tax holiday. Everyone should refuse to pay taxes unless we are actually represented.

[xorcist]

The normal answer would be to vote for a party that would stop this. This is democracy's answer.

(I don't want to discuss much futher because of the downvotes, but the Five Why's can probably be utilized here.)