Text 7258, 165 rader
Skriven 2006-08-29 11:25:00 av Robert E Starr JR (7755.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: My presidential pick
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"Angelika Tobisch" <kamyra@arcor.de> wrote in message
news:44f37a51$0$10172$9b4e6d93@newsspool1.arcor-online.net...
> Note that I wasn't actually assigning any values there. You were asking
> for labels beside anti-American, and I made a few suggestions. They're
> all based on arguments you might hear and while you might not agree with
> some or all of them, none are anti-American.
I'll take some issue with that. Especially "anti-Republican".
>> There is a difference between questioning any government action
>> (especially a war) and attempting to undermine it. I don't believe the
>> Left in the US recognizes any difference, which does not support the
>> troops.
>>
>> This goes all the way back to demonstrations before the invasion that
>> stopped traffic in large cities. Opposition was fanatical to the point
>> of insensetivity to the movement of, for example, emergency vehicles. It
>> would be interesting, if slightly morbid, to figure out if anybody died
>> or sufferred permanent injury as a result of needing emergency treatment
>> while leftists were blocking the roads. Such narrow, focused hostility
>> as was demonstrated by anti-war protests would not recognize any line
>> between questioning the war and opposing it, impeding it, and working by
>> any means necessary to make it impossible to wage, which has the direct
>> result of soldiers dying in the field.
>
> What you call "narrow, focused hostility", I call democracy at its best.
> I wish more people would get off their a..es more often. I don't know
> about the US, but the police here know how to deal with this kind of
> stuff. I'd be willing to bet good money that a lot more people needing
> emergency treatment have died because of traffic jams and budget cuts
> than demonstrations.
Without a doubt. Just on the rarity of that big a demonstration alone,
you'd have to be right. But that misses the point by equating a protest
stoppage with the 5:00 rush hour.
Demonstrations are voluntary. A group of people got together and decided to
stop traffic. It was a voluntary among any number of different means
available to get one's point across. The organizers either didn't consider
that they'd be blocking first-responders or didn't care. Regardless,
they're responsible for the damage their demonstration causes. I take from
that a spectrum that runs somewhere between incompetence, inattention and
fananticism.
I choose "fananticism" because of a 2003 Dr Phil Show my mother taped and
showed me. Phil had a professional activist on the show to talk about the
demostrations. Phil asked her in about as non-confrontational a way as one
could about the Dallas demonstration. He pointed out that among the blocked
cars were, IIRC, at least four ambulences and asked the activist what she
thought.
She refused to address the question. She went on about how tough she had
it, eating, drinking and sleeping the impending horror of war, how she
wanted to shout out "Noooooooo" about the war. Phil tried to get her to
addrsss the issue twice to no avial. That woman was a fanantic.
Now I can't in all fairness take this one incident as indicitive of the
majority of liberal activists. Taken by itself all that one Dr. Phil show
can do is, at best, show that the activist Phil had on was a fanantic, and
even that is theoretically open to debate. I've made my decision. I came
away with "fanantic", but someone else might not.
I choose fanatic because of what I've seen since then. Look at some of the
crazy stuff people though *would* happen over the Valerie Plame outing.
People on the left seriously thought that Karl Rove would be convicted of
treason for saying "he heard that" Plame was a CIA agent. There's plenty
more and it seems epidemic in the extreme left, which I belive is the base
from which activists come.
>>> Babylon 5 is US. Star Trek is US. JMS, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Red
>>> Hot Chili Peppers, New Line Cinema (and therefore the LOTR movies), Neil
>>> and Louis Armstrong, Meryl Streep, the Grand Canyon, Blizzard
>>> Entertainment, Gavin Newsom, the space shuttles, Tom Sawyer, Carl Sagan,
>>> the X-Men all are US and don't stop being so whenever someone in the
>>> White House makes questionable decisions.
>>>
>>> No, I'm not anti-US. Actually, I'm not anti-any-country. I'm
>>> anti-certain-people, anti-certain-ideologies, anti-coconuts and all
>>> kinds of things, but not anti-any-country.
>>
>> Republicans are the US too. So's President Bush.
>
> So? Are you even trying to get my point? I can dislike some things
> American without being anti-American. I may not be above putting people
> in boxes, but I at least try to have a lot more than two.
I think I do.
Like? yes. Dislike? sure. Be my guest. By all means process your world
and come to conclusions about what's in it. Really and truly. Independent
and unbiased thinking is something this world needs desperately and can
never get enough of.
Now let's see if you get my point.
We live in a world where you are asked to give unthinking loyalty to the
left and unblinking hatred to the Right and it's coming at you from many
directions.
People have allowed you to come to at least one false conclusion, and
probably out of sincerity. You once posted that Bush ignored all his
advisors when he ordered the invasion of Iraq. That's a massive
simplification of the actual state of affairs, where Bush actually chose the
view the majority of his advisors had. He ignored a minority that
questioned whether Iraq had the weapons that it was thought to. Nobody on
this board has question the accuracy of this assertion on my part.
When you start to think in black and white, all or nothing ("all Bush's
advisors"), you become prey to wild rumors and Big Lies that play to what
you already believe. In 2001, one left-leaning friend I had was sure that
Bush was going to build concentration camps for gays. This plays to the
fears gays would have of a Republican adminsitration. It could have been
circulated maiciously but could also have materialzed spontaneously out of
the gay community's anxiety. When you step back from the crushing fear that
infuses such an assertion, you can see how incredibly remote the notion
really is. Beware absolutist wording and emotion-overcharged rhetoric. If
you see it in my rhetoric, beware me too. Take two critical thinkings and
make a decision in the morning.
Simply put, don't think my way. Don't think the way any political movement
wants you to (and they do). Think your way. And be aware of who you're
giving credence to, what they're telling you and try to figure out what
they're not telling you.
If you think Amy's book recommendation is a good choice, by all means read
it. I'd recommend books on rhetoric, and rhetorical fallacy ahead of
anything partisan. That and psychology books that detail mind control
techniques, how to recognize them and how to defeat them. I don't have any
titles for you, sorry.
I think we've gone about as far as we can. If you have any last points
you'd like me to respond to, I'll reply one more time. For all others, I'm
done with this thread, barring something revolutionary.
--
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent
"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."
"Spirituality without science has no mind.
Science without spirituality has no heart."
-Methuselah Jones
--- SBBSecho 2.11-Win32
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