Recently it was revealed Melania Trump had plagiarized part of her speech at the Republican National Convention from none other than First Lady Michelle Obama. What happened next? The mainstream media along with everyone else lost their collective minds; however, it is not the end of the world. There are so many things that the government does and can do that are far more worthy of outrage than slight plagiarism. While this list is not representative of the priority in regards to just how much a person should be outraged, these are things that people should be MORE outraged about
1. The NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act)
This sounds like a good thing, right? WRONG. A tiny little provision, Section 1021, allows the President the power to indefinitely detain American citizens arbitrarily and with absolutely no due process. This is an affront to the spirit of multiple laws that have been enacted during our country's history. If you are more outraged at plagiarism than you are at citizens being jailed for potentially no, I would kindly invite you to reevaluate your priorities.
2. $19,000,000,000,000 National Debt
The talking point of virtually everyone running for office, the national debt will be $20 Trillion by the time the next President takes office. The potential First Lady may have taken some words from another speech (as many people in politics do); hopefully though, if Trump becomes President, he won't take the policies that the current administration has to add further to the national debt.
3. Militarization of Police
In recent years, local police departments have been given military surplus equipment, including machine guns as well as tanks. A high-intensity situation can escalate quickly can result in bad outcomes. Over the course of decades the police and even local sheriffs departments have been given military style weapons and equipment, even tanks.
4. Uncle Bernie joining the establishment
Remember when Bernie Sanders said he would fight the corruption in politics and no more was it going to be business as usual? I wasn't a Bernie supporter, but I remember something about that too. But that all went to the wayside when Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton and he became a part of the very establishment that he swore to fight against. I just wonder how it feels to see your candidate fall in line with someone who was declared to be an enemy by the establishment, especially now that apparently the DNC was actively working AGAINST Sanders.
5. Creation of fiat currency
The vast majority, if not all, of the problems in the United States today revolve around a monolithic body known as the United States government that uses an entity called The Federal Reserve which creates fiat currency, which drives inflation and devalues the dollar. This has been done to a point where the USD has been at record lows. This creation of fiat currency has created the income inequality that many politicians bemoan, yet are unwilling to end or even simply audit the Federal Reserve.
6. Foreign aid
Important caveat: this only applies to military aid to other countries, not humanitarian.
A source of government waste that no one seems to talk about, but you should be more than a little concerned that America routinely gives money and weapons to countries that are horrible human rights violators as well as people who would seek to do harm to America as well as allying with others who would do so.
7. CISA (Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act)
Essentially the Patriot Act on steroids, back in October 2015 The senate voted overwhelmingly to improve upon CISA, which increased the capacity of the state to watch citizens. This bill, through cowardice, was added into a spending bill and exists to only further use surveillance on the average citizen, creating a society similar to George Orwell's 1984.
To quote V for Vendetta:
"where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense"
8. People in prison for non-violent crimes
Statistics based on prior month's data -- -- Last Updated: Saturday, 25 June 2016
| Offense | # of Inmates | % of Inmates | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Banking and Insurance, Counterfeit, Embezzlement | 622 | 0.3% | |
| Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses | 8,003 | 4.4% | |
| Continuing Criminal Enterprise | 422 | 0.2% | |
| Courts or Corrections | 766 | 0.4% | |
| Drug Offenses | 84,746 | 46.3% | |
| Extortion, Fraud, Bribery | 11,976 | 6.5% | |
| Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses | 5,563 | 3.0% | |
| Immigration | 16,715 | 9.1% | |
| Miscellaneous | 1,483 | 0.8% | |
| National Security | 79 | 0.0% | |
| Robbery | 6,900 | 3.8% | |
| Sex Offenses | 14,812 | 8.1% | |
| Weapons, Explosives, Arson | 30,837 | 16.9% |
(Statistics from the Federal Bureau of Prisons)
The vast majority of people who are incarcerated are in for non violent offenses. A little under half (46.3%) are in for Drug related offenses. In the vast majority of THESE cases, the individual incarcerated is a user not a dealer. We need a drug policy that will put people into a rehabilitation program, not a system that will take an 18 year old black man, put him jail for several years for a small amount of pot. I realize that drugs are a contentious issue for many people, but regardless of this, wouldn't a better allocation of public resources be better served if they were devoted to recovery as opposed to be a prison system that will turn small time offenders into hardened criminals, ruining the lives of several people. Ending the War on Drugs would also weed out police corruption. The main reason that police officers have gotten violent and have targeted various citizens for nothing more than suspicion alone, including but not limited to targeting people with out of state plates hoping to catch drug traffickers.
