| ▲ | kibwen 3 hours ago |
| The fish rots from the head. It's a sucker's game to aspire to selflessly serve the greater good when the most powerful people in the land are brazenly corrupt pedophiles. In other words: monkey see, monkey do. |
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| ▲ | elmomle 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Yes, and: the rot started long ago, this is just what it looks like when it goes unchecked. To quote Mencius: Mencius went to see King Hui of Liang.
The king said, “Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?” Mencius replied, “Why must Your Majesty use that word ‘profit’? What I am provided with are counsels to benevolence and righteousness, and these are my only topics. If Your Majesty say, ‘What is to be done to profit my kingdom?’ the great officers will say, ‘What is to be done to profit our families?’ and the inferior officers and common people will say, ‘What is to be done to profit our persons?’ Superiors and inferiors will try to snatch this profit one from another, and the kingdom will be endangered.” |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > fish rots from the head Does it? Did it? We elected the "brazenly corrupt pedophiles." This question seems complex and important enough to not be resolved with a truism. |
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| ▲ | afavour 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The brazenly corrupt also own the vast media ecosystem that can help swing elections. Should we all know better? Probably. But they control the education system too, so… | |
| ▲ | paulryanrogers 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Hard to say for certain. Though I do think it goes both ways. People at the bottom influence culture from bottom up, folks at the top from the top down. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I do think it goes both ways If we flip the snake so it goes along the political spectrum, with the biting ends being extremists, I suppose the fish does rot from the heads. Top-down versus bottom-up is a more-complicated situation, and I suspect it's closer to turbulence than anything monotonic. |
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| ▲ | Waterluvian 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It really doesn’t. Trump wouldn’t survive election if the electorate didn’t seek, or at least tolerate whatever the hell you can call that. Americans will conveniently point fingers at him (as is their political tradition) but he’s a consequence of a much deeper disease. | |
| ▲ | kibwen 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Trump was not the beginning of the decline, only the terminal symptom. | | |
| ▲ | kfse 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Terminal? We don't know if worse is yet to come. | |
| ▲ | marginalia_nu 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah I think Reagan's reforms of the antitrust laws, and the subsequent fall of the Soviet union are probably some of the first dominoes toward the new gilded age. The lack of competition from the Soviets is probably one of the bigger systemic causes. The cold war in no small part a war for hearts and minds in the democratic world. It was existentially important that the west believed in America, both the US itself and its allies. As long as the Soviets were around as existence proof for an alternate world order, the US needed at least visibly have its shit in order. If today's clown fiesta had unfolded 50 years ago, well comrade, сегодня мы все говорили бы по-русски. |
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| ▲ | htx80nerd 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] |
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| ▲ | lll-o-lll 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > The fish rots from the head. The old adage that the people elect the governance they deserve; comes to mind. The concepts of Virtue, Honour, Duty, and Justice have been declining in the West over a very long period (this is not a US specific thing). The rotting head reflects the rotting society. > It's a sucker's game to aspire to selflessly serve the greater good when the most powerful people in the land are brazenly corrupt You don’t act honourably because that will “get you ahead”. You act honourably because it is right. |
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| ▲ | kiba 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You don't need "virtue", "honour", and "duty" to have NOT have voted the way people did. It is plain to see which chosen leader will torch the nation and which will not, regardless of people's distaste for the establishment politicians. It is worse than self interest. It is brazen ignorance. | | |
| ▲ | MyHonestOpinon 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I am seeing this phenomenon in my country. Once people discover that their beloved leader is corrupt, they just justify with "all politicians are the same". Society becomes so cynic that it very hard to bring change. Politicians are considered corrupt by default, I don't know how that ends. |
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| ▲ | afavour 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > You don’t act honourably because that will “get you ahead”. You act honourably because it is right. As much as I would like to believe that’s true I don’t think it is. You act honourably because society incentivises you to. To act dishonourably is to be disadvantaged, to be shamed, to be cast out. That is the part that’s missing today. | | |
| ▲ | jdlshore 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I see where you’re coming from, but something about this framing bothers me. I think acting honorably has to come from within. It’s something that people need to do regardless of rewards or incentives. Now, how we create a culture that actually does so… that has to come from society. But, imo, if people only act honorably because they’re rewarded for it, and they don’t when no one is looking… that’s not acting honorably at all. | | |
| ▲ | lovemenot an hour ago | parent [-] | | You can both be right. I live in a high trust society (Japan), but was raised elsewhere. When I first came here, there were times I had to suppress my instinct to take opportunistic advantage. That was intrinsic motivation. Later, I had adapted to the culture around me. Such instincts rarely arise as it had become extrinsic. |
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| ▲ | pixl97 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > You act honourably because it is right. Well, and because it's not typically fatal in very short order. The problem comes in when honor makes you a target to erase by people more powerful than you. Being dead right gets you nowhere. | |
| ▲ | GuinansEyebrows an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The old adage that the people elect the governance they deserve; comes to this idea has always bothered me. i think people (even ones i disagree with) deserve better. |
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| ▲ | whyenot 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's a nice saying, but the "head" changes every 4-8 years and this is a problem that has gotten worse over decades. Sometimes the rot doesn't start from the head. |
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| ▲ | WillPostForFood 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Or it is a dilution of the culture through mass media, social media, and immigration from countries with different values. |
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| ▲ | pwndByDeath 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Everyone has an anecdote of the immigrant they know who's a much better "American" in their values. The same for anecdotes of the people with the least American values being home grown and inbred | |
| ▲ | watwut 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | None of those corrupt leaders is from elsewhere. And native born americans have higher criminality then immigrants. All of that corrupt leadership is celebrated by american americans who see themselves as true americans. | |
| ▲ | 9x39 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | nkrisc 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not if your criticism is meant to scapegoat immigrants for homegrown American-made problems. |
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