Post #55,509
10/8/02 2:17:44 PM
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Re: Points on your points...
Cool. You have a three year old son. That gives you some insight or wisdom? To answer your question. Absofuckinglutely yes. When you have children (if you care about them), you are forced to think beyond your own lifetime - a form of insight, if you will. In other words, in the name of children who have given you wisdom, you're willing to make a lot of Iraqi orphans? Or don't they count? -drl
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Post #55,518
10/8/02 3:37:16 PM
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Like I said.
That isn't "wisdom".
That is "selfishness".
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Post #55,521
10/8/02 4:02:45 PM
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The best answer I can give...
which is not a very good one... If you have siamese twins and have to decide to separate them or they will both die. One most probably will die so that the other may live... You have to make a rough choice for the greater good. It is never a "good" choice for the one who must perish.
All of the Germans in Nazi Germany weren't fascists. Hell, most of them were scared citizens. Scared of their own government. You know where this analogy goes.
I do believe there is a greater good. I believe that it is hard to define and even harder to determine if you worker towards it or against it. I believe that our President did a decent job of outlining why it would be for the greater good if this leader were no longer allowed to "lead". He went point by point as to why this man is a threat (not only to other nations, but to his own people) and to define why, for the greater good, it is better that we use force, if necessary, to oust him.
YMMV
Just a few thoughts,
Screamer
Living is easy with eyes closed
misunderstanding all you see,
it's getting hard to be someone but it all works out
it doesn't matter much to me
J. Lennon - Strawberry Fields Forever
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Post #55,531
10/8/02 4:53:58 PM
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Yeah I do know
"All of the Germans in Nazi Germany weren't fascists. Hell, most of them were scared citizens. Scared of their own government. You know where this analogy goes."
Come to think of it, I *am* scared of my government.
"A civilian gang of thieving lobbyists for the military industrial complex is running the White House. If to be against them is considered unpatriotic -- Hell, then call me a traitor."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
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Post #55,532
10/8/02 5:07:41 PM
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Anybody else here scared of their own government?
*Raises hand*
End of world rescheduled for day after tomorrow. Something should probably be done. Please advise.
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Post #55,583
10/8/02 7:40:15 PM
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ditto
*hand raised*
BTW: I can be "arrested" and indefinately "detained" without access to a lawyer by my "democratic" "free" government.
Just by being labeled a "terrorist".
Waiting.....
To put on a black shirt.
Waiting.....
To weed out the weaklings.
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Post #55,847
10/9/02 8:38:28 PM
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Just by being labeled a "terrorist". - WRONG!
You just have to be labeled someone who may know something about a potential terrorist.
----
Whatever
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Post #55,589
10/8/02 7:53:20 PM
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Re: Anybody else here scared of their own government?
Funny, I was going to screed about the pure evil of deliberate false imprisonment (as I write I'm watching a show on A&E about falsely convicted death row survivors). And then I saw you beat me to it.
*raises both hands*
In fact these international adventures are nothing but a diversion of attention from the sickness and evil in our own backyard.
-drl
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Post #55,625
10/8/02 9:21:45 PM
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Hopefully everybody
Anybody that isn't at least somewhat worried about their government doesn't really understand what governments do.
The fundamental function of government is to impose order at the expense of freedom. History shows that there is an inherent drift towards more order and less freedom unless action is taken to prevent the slide. People should be constantly concerned with what their government is doing.
Honestly though, right now I'm more fearfull then I have been in the past. The current leaders of this country show many dangerous traits.
Jay
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Post #55,640
10/8/02 10:29:57 PM
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Scared as in...
"Those fuckers scare me! Nobody that dumb should ever hold a gun."
or as in
"I'd better sit tight. If I make waves, they will find a way to screw up my life for sure."
We have only 2 things to worry about: That things will never get back to normal, and that they already have.
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Post #55,755
10/9/02 11:55:54 AM
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I'll take "A", please.
End of world rescheduled for day after tomorrow. Something should probably be done. Please advise.
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Post #55,674
10/9/02 2:45:14 AM
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Not scared - livid__ (but only once in a while)
One must ration extreme emotions, when living in a nascent Gulag State. Save the energy for an actual local event. And there Will be one... in this atmosphere.
Fear is an inappropriate response to the Fascism passed without debate or even READING the POS document! someone managed to make into a sophomoric acronym like PATRIOT Act. It is a parody of itself! so evidently unConstitutional on its face.. so evidently the kind of weasel thing which only people in a Screaming Panic could ever regurgitate, let alone make US Law.
Anger is the appropriate state to nurture! It helps you Not to forget just how strong is the undercurrent in Murican mythos - for LawN'Order at the expense of personal freedom. Just as in Germany after the torpedoing of the quite democratic Weimar Republic, by the same sort of thugs as today bomb clinics and attend Jerry Foulwell rallies: Fascism for Jesus, if you believe the likes of him.
Stay mad about *what you have already lost*. 25,000 marched in one of the larger local Vietnam protests, the sum of which ended Johnson's career .. eventually. Bush/Cheney must be ended - sooner methinks. If enough still have the guts,
Ashton
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Post #55,756
10/9/02 11:58:52 AM
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Fear is a warning.
Don't let it rule you, and you're fine.
I can handle fear just fine. Hell, death doesn't paralyze me - I act first, THEN panic when the emergency is over.
When I talk about fear, I talk about seeing the path we're on the way down, and noticing how similar it is to the Nazi party's ursurpation of democratic Germany and the decline into WW2. No, we haven't dissolved congress, and Shrub ain't Dictator in Chief - but Congress is now his lap-dog, and he's using every trick in the book to manipulate people's feelings and hide the blame for what's really going on here - doing $$$ of damage to preserve his power...
End of world rescheduled for day after tomorrow. Something should probably be done. Please advise.
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Post #55,685
10/9/02 5:50:17 AM
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Re: Not of mine thank God, but alarmed at yours <grin>
I have tried to like Bush, but I just can't get past the shallowness and outright deception in his speeches.
Reagan was actually likeable even though he was advised by almost the same team Bush Jnr has.
It still alarms me that the Anthrax evidence (suddenly & abruptly gone quiet) was leading up to being shown as a deliberate campaign by a CIA operative to terrorise the US population into supporting funding for biological weapon research & to support the cause of the current admin.
That is bloody terrible. And these milksops who want to believe Bush's every word deserve everything that comes their way. People deserve the Govt they elect (ooops Bush didn't really win did he ???).
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Post #56,044
10/10/02 3:56:00 PM
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Yeah, my hands are raised too...
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" said someone... :-)
I've been working on a freakin' project from hell which has prevented me from annoying everyone on this board sufficiently... That said...
I fear my own government and have for many years now. I do not put us in the same context as of Stalin's Soviet Republic or Hitler's Nazi Germany in that we (as of yet) do not have to fear for our lives or face imprisonment if we hold opposing points of view from our current government's.
That said, the government of the US has declared a non-stop "war on Americans" (War on Drugs, War on Terrorists, War on Handguns, War on Poverty, War on Hate Speech, War on {stick finger in political air and see which way the popular paranoia wind is blowing}) since the 70's which have slowly been reversing such things as the 1'st, 2'nd, 4'th and 5'th ammendments. This particular group in the White House are different in that they are so overt in what they are doing. Pardon me if I find it refreshing - still disgusting - but at least openly.
In a democracy (representative or true), we the frigging people still have a chance, if we have the will and perserverence to affect change, unlike in a monarchy/totalitarian regieme. What I fear, and I think maybe others here fear, is that we the frigging people aren't necessarily that bright?
Just a few thoughts,
Screamer
Living is easy with eyes closed
misunderstanding all you see,
it's getting hard to be someone but it all works out
it doesn't matter much to me
J. Lennon - Strawberry Fields Forever
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Post #55,631
10/8/02 9:50:32 PM
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Re: The best answer I can give...
I'm not implying that you are callous about future Iraqi orphans. I know you are afraid for your kids you love so much. Well I'm afraid too. But, the danger is from within.
You have to understand the economy is *really dying*. There are vast numbers of lower middle class people, heavily in debt, chasing false ideals of eternal youth. These people have NO CHANCE. They are NOT ECONOMICALLY VIABLE. Why is the system of business we use crushing these people? Why is this not the absolute #1 priority? What good is it to be safe in a spiritually and economically dead country? That is the fate of people who are tyrannized.
There have been somewhere near 100 people freed from death row because their alleged victims were not only murdered, but RAPED. Without the DNA evidence left by the actual rapist, these people would probably be DEAD. It is nearly certain that this worst of all fates is a COMMON OCCURENCE. **WHY** is Iraq more important than this? If those thousands who died in the trade center, and the possible hundreds of thousands who might die in a nuclear attack, died in a country in which innocent people are in jail because of official misconduct, then they DIED FOR NOTHING.
(As an indicator of our disgraced level, consider that the idea of homosexual prison rape is wonderful fodder for comedians, and in fact has become a sort of "common knowledge" - but no one seems very upset about it or willing to see it put to an end. They're just cons after all - not really human like US.)
-drl
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Post #55,676
10/9/02 3:09:57 AM
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Agreed - the decline is within
No external enemy is other than a ploy, mere fodder - especially for the depraved cabal now in charge of the entire US arsenal. As the Congress speaks in blab-words and ignores the Constitution blatantly.
Further, the ~3000 lives snuffed at WTC, placed in perspective with the multiple thousands of victims of US deals with scum, during and after the cold war - that is a perspective never alluded to, in what passes for citizen discussion.
I saw a few months ago on PBS [Frontline], a report which focussed upon just one of the cases you mention. In detailing the patently fraudulent illegal behavior of the Authorities, even *after* the DNA evidence had exonerated the man - I saw no difference between today's US and Stalin's Gulag, except in frequency of occurrence here + our crude forms of racism. Whether US or USSR: no newspapers will report such material.
Personally I think it's a crap shoot whether there are enough US (real) citizens left who give a shit about anything but mercantile behaviour and Me-Mine. It Can't Happen Here was publ. in '35. Much of the Bush/Cheney + Evangelist Ashcroft fulminations are right out of the book; also the dialogue is sometimes eerily close to verbatim (certainly the rationale for the words is identical). S. Lewis's 1935 sheep are reincarnated in 2002.
We can see concentration camps soon, if the general torpor holds. I wonder how long Canada will accept refugees? (If I see a few more benchmarks passed - I will be among the ones trying to leave this nascent Gulag State)
Stay pissed - keeps one alert,
Ashton
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