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Pacific wrote:I think you'll find the defence budget is a bit more than 5 billion murdog.

An increasingly public pro-Christian nationalism complements anti-Muslim biases generated by 9/11. The self-proclaimed freedom-fighting Tea Party is primarily a collection of religious, social-issue conservatives – white Protestant evangelicals who want to ‘put God back in government’. Mitt Romney, who faces opposition from evangelicals partly because he’s a Mormon, promises to govern prayerfully and to make decisions ‘on my knees’. Rick Perry, currently leading President Obama in one poll, promotes prayer as a policy initiative: while Texas was suffering a devastating drought earlier this year, he issued a gubernatorial proclamation designating a three-day period of prayer for rain. Just last month, as governor, he famously presided over a mass Christian prayer rally to heal the nation’s ills, declaring that his love of country was second only to his love of the living Christ. How does the presumptively patriotic Perry define liberty? His website proposal for restoring liberty focuses on repealing Obama’s healthcare legislation (‘the greatest intrusion on individual freedom in a generation’) and lowering taxes, among other vaguely described economic reforms, and ‘protecting the unborn’. It offers no comment on the national security state, much less a commitment to limiting it.

I found this bit especially frightening. Brings to mind that old Bill Hicks joke where he is acting as the President and stood with his hand over the big red button, with his eyes rolled back up into his head, saying "Tell me when Lord, tell me when."

I live in Texas; I'm not surprised at all. Annoyed, sure, but we've been surrounded by religious... extremists to use the most polite way to describe them without making assertions towards their mental states... for quite some time and the country hasn't been torn apart or fallen into ignorance in spite of their best efforts to ensure it does.

Post 9/11 America is far more partisan than pre 9/11 America. The republican party shifted so far to the right during the post 9/11 years that a modern day Reagan would be completely unelectable because Reagan's policies are far too liberal for today's political landscape. The left wing's policies have not changed, but left wingers have become even more obnoxious douchebags whom seem to enjoy irritating moderates/independents or infuriating right wingers rather than attempting to do something productive.

We still have the same groups of people out to kill us for the same old reasons + a few more new post 9/11 reasons. The only difference now is security is far more alert and better funded making the likelihood of attempted attacks far less than they were pre 9/11 at an extreme cost in money. The downside is the stated goal of Al Qaeda is to slowly bleed us of money until we suffer an economic collapse similar to the Soviet Union in 1991 resulting in the end of American hegemony. The net result is Al Qaeda meets their strategic goals every day without causing a single terrorist attack.

The only thing that has changed since 9/11 is America, and sometimes no matter how much things change things remain the same. Most Americans are as ignorant today as they were on 9/11 as to who is attacking us, and why they hate us. Furthermore the same groups of people are usually willfully ignorant of America's attention span and commitment to long drawn out wars. That means our politicians are accountable to the ignorant, and our military under the control of the politicians. I am haunted by the obvious.

If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.

Melissia wrote:

A shadowy national security state

can someone provide a summary that doesn't make my brain try to crawl out of my skull and close my eyes?

She's trying to warn you that, in her opinion, your liberties are being taken away in front of your eyes, and you're not talking about it. She's telling you that you created a national security state in the after 911, and that public complacency allows it to be. She points out that this loss of liberty is concurrent with the loss of power. She decries the tendency for discourse on policy to be partisan, instead of a rational debate of facts. She's worried about religion, and religious conflict, seeping into politics, and with it the alarm of seculars and atheists. She argues that the tension between political parties is at an unhealthy stage. She ties it all together by saying: "across political, cultural and religious divides, we don’t seem to like each other very much."

Not many have addressed these issues in this thread. There has been alot of typing about the Republican candidates, but which of them are addressing these issues and how? I don't see Obama or any Democrat taking it on, or am I not looking close enough? What do you 'regular' yanks think? What about people from other countries, what do you think in regards to your own liberties? I'm pretty sure you british are under alot of cameras at the moment...

In Canada, we have legislation similar to the Patriot Act that was enacted shortly after 911. Two of the most controversial provisions, preventative arrest and investigative hearings, expired in 2007, and their renewal was voted down by the opposition parties in Parliament. They are arguably incompatible with our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Prime Minister Harper just this month proclaimed Islamic terrorism the biggest threat to Canada and vowed to bring them back for another vote. I've heard the arguments for both sides, and I think our existing laws can handle the threat adequately.

dogma wrote:I think you're overestimating how severe conditions are in the US. Things are worse than they were, but not really all that bad. I mean, I can still get federal loans for college, spend half of it on booze, and eat steak every day. My parents can rent movies, upgrade their computers, and care for a dog and a guinea pig while driving two cars and paying a guy to mow their lawn. These aren't conditions that spur "real change".

You're telling me you are comfortably middle class. But is that middle class big enough to keep upper and lower from getting really mad at each other, forcing the middle class to choose a side?

schadenfreude wrote:Most Americans are as ignorant today as they were on 9/11 as to who is attacking us, and why they hate us. That means our politicians are accountable to the ignorant, and our military under the control of the politicians. I am haunted by the obvious.

If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.

This worries me also. I can see it with my own nieces and nephews, teens and early twenties, who have no idea why we're in Afghanistan or even who bin Laden was, let alone the rights their Government took away from them after 911. You can usually times anything by 10 to compare Canada to the US, so that tells me there are alot of people down there who aren't paying attention to what is being done to them, or done in their name.

chaos0xomega wrote:What about Jon Huntsman? He doesn't seem to be getting any media attention at all, yet he is the best (IMO) candidate on the GOP ballot. He has experience (Governor of Utah, Ambassador to China, Businessman), he has a good relatively clean record, isn't a right wing christian fundamentalist nutjob, etc. etc. etc.

http://www.jon2012.com/

The fact that a guy like Jon Huntsman can't get much of a look in is indicative of everything that's wrong with the Republican party right now. While it wouldn't surprise you to hear I find his politics a lot more conservative than mine, the fact is he has a strong record as governor and senior diplomat, and has a strong record of pretty classical conservative politics. This seems to be costing him votes among the radical set that turns up for primaries, rather than helping him.


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murdog wrote:You're telling me you are comfortably middle class. But is that middle class big enough to keep upper and lower from getting really mad at each other, forcing the middle class to choose a side?

Class war doesn't really work like that. The lower classes are largely non-political, and to the extent they are they are typically motivated by non-economic concerns and will typically vote for the right wing as often as they'll vote for the left. While the politics of the upper classes tends to the right wing, as a voting block there isn't that many of them so that doesn't matter - it's the political power their wealth represents that matters.

The real grist of economic warfare occurs among the middle class, and even then it's generally waged by the middle class for the benefit of other people - the left to improve the living standards of the poor, and the right to improve the wealth of the rich (so that business and economic activity will grow).

murdog wrote:
You're telling me you are comfortably middle class. But is that middle class big enough to keep upper and lower from getting really mad at each other, forcing the middle class to choose a side?

Historically the middle class is the most politically active segment of the population, not just in the US, but everywhere. The poor don't really participate in politics, certainly not in the sense really pushing to revolutionize anything, and the upper class only wants to stay there. What usually happens when you see significant political change is that the middle class sees itself bearing too much of society's burden, while also not being able to live comfortably. At that point the middle class will mobilize, and start trying to develop support among the poor, the wealthy try to moderate this impetus by either giving in to certain demands, or curtailing it.

Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, but the middle class generally has to have an actual interest in radical change, which usually requires the physical situation of large swathes of the population to be quite bad. This doesn't appear to be the case in the US.

Slightly OT, but here in the UK we have had a build up of news stories rehashing the events of 10 years ago, along with political commentary and analysis. I am all for healing whilst still remembering the tragic events but I have to say, watching some of the memorial events that took place, it strikes me that a lot of the 9/11 commemorations were akin to prodding an open wound and re-living past horrors. I think it is somewhat unhealthy to keep dwelling on it. Of course, this is easy for me to say without any vested emotional attachment but still, I think the US as a country needs to move on in it's grieving. I wouldn't like to see similar scenes at the 25th anniversary, for example. It's one thing to remember and mark the anniversary with poignancy and perhaps another to rake over the ashes all over again. The TV news channels over here seemed to go into every minute detail of the events so I can only imagine what it was like in the States - I think some of that wasn't really needed.


Edit: Just to clarify - that post comes off as being antagonistic, which is not my intention. Specifically, I am trying to say that some of the media coverage of the anniversary has been unnecessary in its depiction; I would rather have seen more muted and sombre services rather than having the whole story replayed and re-lived.

murdog wrote:

Melissia wrote:

A shadowy national security state

can someone provide a summary that doesn't make my brain try to crawl out of my skull and close my eyes?

She's trying to warn you that, in her opinion, your liberties are being taken away in front of your eyes, and you're not talking about it.

Yes I am, with my congressman. I have no problem with talking about REAL laws and REAL affects.

But this isn't talking about that. It's talking about shadowy conspiracies. There's no over-arching shadow government conspiring to tyrannize us and hell-bent on taking away all our rights. There's just people who are overzealous in their efforts to try to protect us and hunt down terrorists. Bringing up a valid point is fine, but bringing it up while sounding like a piece of conspiracy theorist trash only makes you sound like a piece of conspiracy theorist trash and nullifies your point because you're god damned annoying to read.

Melissia wrote:

Pacific wrote:I think you'll find the defence budget is a bit more than 5 billion murdog.

An increasingly public pro-Christian nationalism complements anti-Muslim biases generated by 9/11. The self-proclaimed freedom-fighting Tea Party is primarily a collection of religious, social-issue conservatives – white Protestant evangelicals who want to ‘put God back in government’. Mitt Romney, who faces opposition from evangelicals partly because he’s a Mormon, promises to govern prayerfully and to make decisions ‘on my knees’. Rick Perry, currently leading President Obama in one poll, promotes prayer as a policy initiative: while Texas was suffering a devastating drought earlier this year, he issued a gubernatorial proclamation designating a three-day period of prayer for rain. Just last month, as governor, he famously presided over a mass Christian prayer rally to heal the nation’s ills, declaring that his love of country was second only to his love of the living Christ. How does the presumptively patriotic Perry define liberty? His website proposal for restoring liberty focuses on repealing Obama’s healthcare legislation (‘the greatest intrusion on individual freedom in a generation’) and lowering taxes, among other vaguely described economic reforms, and ‘protecting the unborn’. It offers no comment on the national security state, much less a commitment to limiting it.

I found this bit especially frightening. Brings to mind that old Bill Hicks joke where he is acting as the President and stood with his hand over the big red button, with his eyes rolled back up into his head, saying "Tell me when Lord, tell me when."

I live in Texas; I'm not surprised at all. Annoyed, sure, but we've been surrounded by religious... extremists to use the most polite way to describe them without making assertions towards their mental states... for quite some time and the country hasn't been torn apart or fallen into ignorance in spite of their best efforts to ensure it does.

The problem of course, is your definition of a religious extremist is someone who darkens the door of a church on Christmas and Easter. Seriously.


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schadenfreude wrote:Post 9/11 America is far more partisan than pre 9/11 America. The republican party shifted so far to the right during the post 9/11 years that a modern day Reagan would be completely unelectable because Reagan's policies are far too liberal for today's political landscape. The left wing's policies have not changed, but left wingers have become even more obnoxious douchebags whom seem to enjoy irritating moderates/independents or infuriating right wingers rather than attempting to do something productive.

We still have the same groups of people out to kill us for the same old reasons + a few more new post 9/11 reasons. The only difference now is security is far more alert and better funded making the likelihood of attempted attacks far less than they were pre 9/11 at an extreme cost in money. The downside is the stated goal of Al Qaeda is to slowly bleed us of money until we suffer an economic collapse similar to the Soviet Union in 1991 resulting in the end of American hegemony. The net result is Al Qaeda meets their strategic goals every day without causing a single terrorist attack.

The only thing that has changed since 9/11 is America, and sometimes no matter how much things change things remain the same. Most Americans are as ignorant today as they were on 9/11 as to who is attacking us, and why they hate us. Furthermore the same groups of people are usually willfully ignorant of America's attention span and commitment to long drawn out wars. That means our politicians are accountable to the ignorant, and our military under the control of the politicians. I am haunted by the obvious.

If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.

No its not actually, but you're probably too young to know what pre-2001 was like.

Frazzled wrote:The problem of course, is your definition of a religious extremist is someone who darkens the door of a church on Christmas and Easter. Seriously.

Only a delusional person or someone who doesn't actually pay attention would honestly believe that of me.

Oh wait, hi Frazzled.

No, someone can easily go to church twice a week (wednesdays and sundays isn't an uncommon occurrence) and not be an extremist.

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:The problem of course, is your definition of a religious extremist is someone who darkens the door of a church on Christmas and Easter. Seriously.

Only a delusional person or someone who doesn't actually pay attention would honestly believe that of me.

Oh wait, hi Frazzled.

No, someone can easily go to church twice a week (wednesdays and sundays isn't an uncommon occurrence) and not be an extremist.

Your statements about Christians are known.

Oh no, the terrorizing is far more than merely the arson and the murders. In fact, for many people (not everyone of course, given that it's open for interpretation), the bible itself is essentially intended to as a book supporting terrorism towards homosexuals.

Frazzled wrote:No its not actually, but you're probably too young to know what pre-2001 was like.

Lol, Frazzled is right. Do you remember the hilarious partisanship in the Clinton era at least?

Heck, they tried to kick him out of office because he got a blowjob!


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Frazzled wrote:Your statements about Christians are known.

Oh no, the terrorizing is far more than merely the arson and the murders. In fact, for many people (not everyone of course, given that it's open for interpretation), the bible itself is essentially intended to as a book supporting terrorism towards homosexuals.

I know that reading is hard for you Frazzled, but surely you are capable of reading words which happen to be between parentheses.

Melissia wrote:Heck, they tried to kick him out of office because he got a blowjob!

No they didn't.

They tried to kick him out of office because he committed perjury. He also got disbarred for that action.

Remember kids, lawyers have higher standards than the Senate.

Frazzled wrote:
Your statements about Christians are known.

Oh no, the terrorizing is far more than merely the arson and the murders. In fact, for many people (not everyone of course, given that it's open for interpretation), the bible itself is essentially intended to as a book supporting terrorism towards homosexuals.

That's hardly equivalent to calling people darkening the doors of homes and churches an extremist.

You're essentially trying to equivocate a statement about some Christians being extremist with one, which you made, about all Christians being an extremist. Its quite dishonest.

biccat wrote:No they didn't.

I know it wasn't supposedly the real reason. But the local republican representatives tried to make it out as if his infidelity was OMG THE WORTS TIHNG EVAR", which amusingly enough came to bite some of them in the ass later.

biccat wrote:Remember kids, lawyers have higher standards than the Senate.

That I believe.

Frazzled wrote:
No its not actually, but you're probably too young to know what pre-2001 was like.

Actually, empirical measures of partisanship in Congress have shown a marked increase in partisanship post-9/11, though its more of a distortion to a trend that's existed since Carter.

The argument that America is now different after 9/11 has been made by a number of people, some of them quite high profile, on both sides of aisle. Its hardly the type of sentiment that merits blindly dismissing someone based on what you want to believe their age is.

Frazzled wrote:Your statements about Christians are known.

Oh no, the terrorizing is far more than merely the arson and the murders. In fact, for many people (not everyone of course, given that it's open for interpretation), the bible itself is essentially intended to as a book supporting terrorism towards homosexuals.

I know that reading is hard for you Frazzled, but surely you are capable of reading words which happen to be between parentheses.

You put it out there and supports your other statements in the thread. Sometimes it takes another person to point out the truth for you.

Or it takes another person to say something which is utterly untrue and insist that it is regardless of any facts, reason, logic, or for that matter any real mental activity at all.

Oh hi Frazzled.

Melissia wrote:Or it takes another person to say something which is utterly untrue and insist that it is regardless of any facts, reason, logic, or for that matter any real mental activity at all.

Oh hi Frazzled.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

Frazzled wrote:

Melissia wrote:Or it takes another person to say something which is utterly untrue and insist that it is regardless of any facts, reason, logic, or for that matter any real mental activity at all.

Oh hi Frazzled.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

No, we'll just have to agree that you're lying and trying to claim that I believe something which I do not. Do not claim that I don't know what I believe, Frazzled.

That is trolling, and disrespectful, and pisses me off more than almost anything else someone can do on this forum.

Melissia wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Melissia wrote:Or it takes another person to say something which is utterly untrue and insist that it is regardless of any facts, reason, logic, or for that matter any real mental activity at all.

Oh hi Frazzled.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

No, we'll just have to agree that you're lying and trying to claim that I believe something which I do not. Do not claim that I don't know what I believe, Frazzled.

That is trolling, and disrespectful, and pisses me off more than almost anything else someone can do on this forum.

Well I tried to agree to disagree. Oh well.
To be a lie I would have to not believe it. I believe it quite strongly. I could be wrong (I'm not), but I am not lying. You just can't accept the indictment of your own statements. Its ok. Matty's pretty hardcore too, as are many posters here. But its ok to not like Christians. I don't particularly like seafood. In both instances its kind of sad, but the world takes all kinds of people.

On the positive I hate clowns, and I am not the only one.

Frazzled wrote:

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

Much obliged.

Great as it clearly is to see old scores and grudges dredged up in new threads, clearly, if we could not spit and yell at each other it'd be super.

We'll call that even and let people move along.

Can I still hate clowns?

That's clownist! I wish to register a complaint!

filbert wrote:That's clownist! I wish to register a complaint!

I'm sorry but when the clowns try to talk to you from a sewer grate thats just creepy. No I do not want a balloon. No I do not want to come down and play. I don't care if everyone floats down there - really thats not a selling point for me. Jeez.

Frazzled wrote:Can I still hate clowns?

*joke about political person/party of your choice to be imagined here*

Time to pull the plug on this thread I think. I'm using my invisible MOD powers to lock down

Seriously, the quality of debate on this forum has taken on Titanic like qualities. In future, I for one will be sticking to subjects that only concern Star Wars fillms, metal music, and Patrick Swayze. The MODS have my permission to ban me from participating in political debate on this thread. While their at it, please could they stop people from Texas from contributing.

Thank you and goodnight...

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:Time to pull the plug on this thread I think. I'm using my invisible MOD powers to lock down

Seriously, the quality of debate on this forum has taken on Titanic like qualities. In future, I for one will be sticking to subjects that only concern Star Wars fillms, metal music, and Patrick Swayze. The MODS have my permission to ban me from participating in political debate on this thread. While their at it, please could they stop people from Texas from contributing.

Thank you and goodnight...

Texas is unstoppable. Just ask Liechtenstein.

Man, I was just on here last night trying to point this thread back on track! You guys are pyros!

I was hoping to respond later but it will probably be dead by then.

Melissia, sorry, I didn't mean to say you specifically weren't talking about liberties, I'm glad you are and with your congressmen no less. I'd like to hear more about that.

Dogma, Sebster, sorry to be so simplistic, it just came out good and silly so I left it. My point was that there comes a time when the majority are against the ruling order, and force change.

That change does not have to stem from physical violence, indeed the US provides a wealth of evidence of the power of nonviolent methods of resistance, and I believe that your democracy is strong enough to accomadate major changes in the the way things are done without violence. It is a fascinating dynamic at play, with class, political, religious, economic, military, and ideological factors all in flux in a major way. We're all counting on you to do the right thing. No pressure tho. Good luck!

They usually respond with form letters most of the time. It's how it goes, especially for state senators.

What kinds of questions and concerns within this context did you raise, if you don't mind my asking?