Text 7406, 290 rader
Skriven 2006-09-01 16:07:00 av Robert E Starr JR (7903.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: My presidential pick
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"Angelika Tobisch" <kamyra@arcor.de> wrote in message 
news:44f4da33$0$18489$9b4e6d93@newsspool3.arcor-online.net...
> Vorlonagent schrieb:
>
>>> 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".
>
> Anti-Republican equals anti-American if and only if Republican equals
> American.

You may be misunderstanding.  "Anti-Republican" is a prejudice against 
someone based on their political affiliation.  That's why I mention that 
here.

Moreover Republicans are nearly half the american population.


>>> 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.
>
> Peaceful demonstrations are part of a living democracy. If they indeed
> cause parts of a city to totally collapse then that city/region/state
> obviously lacks the knowledge of how to handle them.

Unless that collapse was a part of the plan.  In this case, it was the point 
of the protest.

Other cases, like the latest "million _____ march" on washington would be a 
different story.


> Berlin has its fair share of huge demonstrations/parades/festivities
> blocking parts of the city and yet it works. So obviously it can be
> done. In fact, during the soccer worldcup a major street in the middle
> of Berlin was blocked on the length of almost 3km to create a place for
> public viewings and the like. Guess what - no chaos ensued.

American cities are normally like this too.


>> 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.
>
> Sorry to say, but you're delving far too deep into US internal politics
> for me to follow.

Fair enough.  If this matters to you, you may wish to research these 
demonstrations.  Otherwise, we'll leave the the matter here.  This is my 
last post in our conversation anyway.


>>>>> 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.
>
> I did not. I implied Bush had been lying about the reasons for going to
> war, you objected and then someone else wrote the statement you're now
> referring to.

My apologies.  I thought that came from you.

The rest of my last post here may well be completely wrong as far as you're 
concerned.  If so, my apologies for that too.


> I'm really not well enough informed about US internal politics to
> comment on Bush's advisors. However, he obviously either did ignore his
> advisors or didn't choose them very wisely. Both possibilities make me
> seriously question his abilities as a leader.

Most CIA analysts are permanenet employees.  Bush usually appoints the top 
adminitrators.  I still believe the majorty of thos analysist went with what 
the majority of the world thought at the time (Iraq had WMDs).


> I believe Bush was lying for one simple reason: If he really had
> believed Saddam was as dangerous as he was portraying him, he'd never
> gone in like that and risked massive losses caused by those WMD. I
> realize I'm working on assumption here, but it's based on my own
> observations of the world I live in and it's good enough for me. And
> believe it or not, I came up with that on my own.

You would be right if no defenses against such weapons existed.  They do.

US troops came in with full chemical warfare defense gear at the ready. 
Suits, antidote, the works. They were prepared for the possibility of 
chemical or biological weapons.

I don't know how that figures into your thinking, but it should.


>> 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.
>
> While we're talking about false conclusions and massice simplifications:
> Earlier on you stated the following:
>
> <quote>
> The worst you can say is Bush ignored a minority opinion.
>
> The majority of Bush's advisors believed, as the majority of the world
> governments (including the UN) believed, that Iraq was producing
> chemical weapons, possibly biological weapons, and was actively pursuing
> nuclear weapons.
> </quote>
>
> Now I don't know what news you have been watching, but the UN was not
> convinced. China, Russia, France, Germany all were not convinced. The
> inspectors were practically begging for more time. Whether you agree
> with these positions or not, to call them a "minority opinion" is a
> really amazing feat.

It's not so amazing.

Just because people assumed Iraq had WMDs doesn't mean there would be any 
rush to take those WMDs away any more than there was a rush to disarm 
Hezbollah over the last six years.  It was only a UN resolution after all.

France, Russia and Germany would never sign onto an invasion.  They had 
investments in or business dealings with Iraq (in defiance of the ceasefire 
agreement) that they would lose if the Hussein government was overthrown. 
China had a developing appetite for oil.  All had selfish interests in 
keeping Iraq as it was.

Conditions in Iraq wouldn't allow for any further delay.  Iraq is very hot 
in the summer.  An invasion in Iraq would need to go when it did or wait 
until fall.  Not even the US can maintain that much equipment in and men in 
the field for that kind of time.  The US had to either go when it did or 
would have to pack up and go home.  Bush chose to go.

I sometimes think contnuing the inspections was so loudly insisted-upon 
exactly because the Iraqi heat imposed a go/no-go deadline on the invasion.


>> 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.
>
> I try to do that all the time and don't see that I have given cause to
> doubt that.
>
> It does seem mildly hypocritical to call Bush-skeptics "anti-American"
> and talk about the world supporting Bush's decisions in 2003 and then
> urge me to beware absolutist wording and emotion-overcharged rhetoric.

It's a methods disagreement, not a ideological one.

Tolerating a difference of opinion doesn't mean tolerating anything someone 
chooses to do with that opinion.  You can be against the war without trying 
to destroy the US's ability to win the war.  When someone gets to the point 
where they are trying to impede the US ability to win in Iraq, that's 
anti-american.  Large chunks of the anti-war crowd in the US have taken this 
route in my opinion.  Any expression of support for such people is 
anti-american.

If you don't see my points after the examples and logic I've presented, 
don't believe me.

I am trying to raise alternatives for your consideration not control your 
thinking, regardles of what anyone else says I'm doing..

I'm calling a halt to my end of the conversation with this e-mail anyway. 
If I am the nefarious mind-controller, I have failed.  If I am as I say I 
am, trying to give you a different point of view to chew over, I have 
succeeded in presenting that viewpoint.

I leave the rest with you.


-- 
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent


"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."


"Spirituality without science has no mind.

Science without spirituality has no heart."

-Methuselah Jones
                                                                       
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