“To sponsor events in which money is no object is something that lies within the reach only of dictatorships that can disregard the interests of their own people. They can simply mandate that taxpayers foot the bill”.
This is quoted from Liu Xiaobo’s book “No Enemies, No Hatred”. He was describing how an advisor to the Beijing Olympic committee disclosed that China had spent more than $70 billion hosting the 2008 Olympics. And this was lavishly more than the $9.7 billion they had spent in 2007 on public health and medical care, and also the $15.7 billion for education.
I think he is correct, that such extreme and unbalanced financial choices can be made only by governments with no accountability to their people.
So, what is going on with us here in the U.S.?
Are we expected to believe our people really want to be paying trillions on international military, or on “aid” to Israel, while we spend no money cleaning up basic infrastructure here, such as for clean drinking water to Flint, MI, and many, many other cities? Millions of people here do not have basic healthcare, or even homes, or solid enough education to understand that this country was literally setup as a country where people would have a say in their government’s actions, and that our government certainly should be accountable to us.
The first step to fixing a problem is to admit there is a problem.
I love this country. And I want to join the effort in fixing the problem that some of the checks and balances on power seem to have been undermined.
Quite urgently, let’s stop dropping bombs on our neighbors. Let’s stop training and funding terrorists to “destabilize” other people’s homes. Let’s stop putting most of our budget into horrific, ongoing, crimes against humanity that the people do not want, and which must be stopped because they are really unbelievably obscene.
The media doesn’t report on these much, so unfortunately, most of the people here don’t realize they are even occurring, much less that they should be upset.
But, since this country is actually a democracy, every one of us is complicit in every act of destruction our government and military make, which are a lot. We the people need to take responsibility for the crimes we have been allowing, and even paying for, and stop allowing these now.
It would also be a move in the right direction to remove our military presence from most of the other countries in the world. Would we want other countries to have military presence here? Obviously not. We don’t want even their refugees here. Which is another good reason to stop allowing our military to continue bombing and terrorizing them out of their homes. If those millions of people had homes, they wouldn’t be refugees wanting to come here.
There is an election in November. Let’s try to make good choices. And let’s remind the people who we elect to represent us, and to represent our interests, that their accountability is to us.