Last night, I was trying to leave campus by my usual route through the town of Arbutus, Maryland, and I got stuck in parade traffic. The cops shut down all the intersections so that everyone could march down the street holding candles. And when I say everyone, I mean pretty much everyone. I never knew there were that many people in Arbutus.

They were playing this horrible sappy country music over a PA system. I went and looked up the lyrics to one song that really impressed me. It's by Alan Jackson. Here's a sample:

quote:

---

I'm just a singer of simple songs;
I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN, but I'm not sure I can tell you the difference
in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God

---

quote:

---

I went and looked up the lyrics to one song that really impressed me. It's by Alan Jackson. Here's a sample:

quote:

---

I'm just a singer of simple songs;
I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN, but I'm not sure I can tell you the difference
in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God

---

Sure you do, pal. Why don't you ask Jesus and God to at least tell you the difference between these two countries that we've half-destroyed before we run off to finish the job? I mean, as long as you're discussing these issues with the Almighty, you might as well get some background info. Let us know what He says.

---

I don't see how the "context" alters the meaning at all. What I object to is this attitude that we're just simple folk who ain't got no idear about the furren countries where we park our aircraft carriers, 'cause all we really need to know is Jesus and God. What a load of horseshit. And how arrogant for someone to claim he's on speaking terms with his good buddy the Almighty. (He didn't just say he prays. He knows Jesus. He talks to God.)

I left out the part about how the greatest thing in the world is love because it's bland, trite, uncontroversial. I mean who's going to argue with it? I guess it's supposed to sugarcoat the chorus's nasty combination of ignorance and arrogance and make it go down easy. But I still think the song sums up as well as anything what's wrong with American political life.

I mean, here are all these people marching along with candles, and they're ready to go to war, and they're singing along with this guy who seems proud to say he's not political and doesn't even know one country from another! Well shit, people, look at a fucking map! You wanna pray? Pray for an education!

Sorry. This shit gets on my last nerve. It's not Alan Jackson's fault, that no-talent slab of radio-friendly hack.

---
What others say about boorite!

and...

quote:

---

In his own way, I think Mr. Jackson is opposing the violence against (at the time the song came out) Afghanistan, but it still works for this new World War that our president is trying to start.

---

I should've said it like this.

---
What others say about boorite!

Saying that you know Jesus, and speak to God, is in no way arrogant. God wants you to love Him and talk to Him and know that He sent His son to die for you. -coming from the mouth of an athiest.

I know Clinton and talk to Gore.

---
What others say about boorite!

Shut it or I'll kick you over the Swiss-Polish border!

Actually, wait. Why d'you care? I thought people's idiocy was of no consequence?

With you on the song, though. This capitulating ignorance makes me want to eat my eyes.

[Click to view comic: 'FIGHT THE EVIL!']

YEEEHAW FELLOW FRIENDS!

---
~But now you realize / He's not selling any alibis~

Just because you say you talk to Gore doesn't mean you are actually talking to him, or that he is actually listening. Talking to Jesus is a bit like talking to yourself, but you still are, in theory, talking to him. He just can't hear you, or, whatever. And I know Bill Clinton. I can pick him out in a crowd.

i don't know what to say about all this jesus stuff exactly, except that i agree that the power of prayer is wholly a psychological byproduct of positive thinking, but i'll weigh in on the iraq discussion:

i'm not a hawk. if they started a draft and it wasn't to get people for a war i really cared about, i likely wouldn't go (that is to say, had they drafted me last september i'd be in the army now, but had they done so in 1970 [before i was born], i wouldn't have).

anyway, that said, i totally understand the idea behind this apparently impending war against iraq. our president, such as he is, had the unenviable task of assuaging the fears of a nation that had just witnessed an all-too-real nightmare last year. now, he wants to take steps to make sure that we never have to witness such a thing again, and i'm all for that.

now, whether or not hussein has access to and/or intentions to use nuclear bombs, bush showed me last year by waiting as long as he did to obliterate the taliban that he doesn't rush blindly into war without first gathering all the facts necessary, and i really appreciated that, because his cowboy-at-high-noon speechifying had me terribly frightened at first. simply put: we knew for a long time that bin laden had designs against america and did nothing, and got our asses kicked for it; we've known hussein has designs against america for a long time, and we might as well bring him to his knees just in case.

that said, the scariest thing i have ever seen on television was not the pentagon on fire or even the WTC towers collapsing. the scariest thing i ever saw happened around ten years ago, when the branch davidians' complex mysteriously caught fire as a bunch of ATF tanks attacked it. on 9/11, i was terrified--but i knew the attacks had been perpetrated by people who hated america and that those responsible would have missiles lodged in their rectums very shortly. at waco, tx, the perpetrators were about thirty times more unnerving, as they were sent by the government; and i'll be damned if i can remember a capital offense they had committed. what's more, the government that sent them was run by "liberals."

my point in bringing up all this stuff is not to announce my intent to join a militia or anything, but merely to remind you that GWB, retarded though he is, is not unique in his ability to do heinous things, and i'd hope you'll all agree that crippling hussein's regime--unnecessary as it may seem--is certainly a lot better than deep-frying around a hundred americans who are exercising their constitutional rights (albeit while amassing a large stockpile of nearly-illegal weapons).

i think that's all i have to say for now (gasp!) good night, and all hail discordia.

---
"I don't know who you are, schmucko, but you rule." - lara7 | christ@myself.com

Yeah, better kill thousands of innocent people just to be on the safe side. Why ever not?

No, the casualties would be far greater, so it'd be worse. Anyway, even if it would be better, that's still not much of a recommendation.

quote:

---

Let's consider the abandoning the concept of "defending US interests in the Persian Gulf." Is there any such thing as "defending Chinese interests in the Gulf of Mexico?" Do the Russians or the Iranians get to park missile cruisers in Galveston Bay to ensure their access to our strategic oil reserves? No. If we imagine that scenario for a few seconds, we might get an inkling of why "radical Muslims hate Western culture," as we are fond of saying.

Democracy in the Persian Gulf will mean nationalization of natural resources. It will mean Arab oil for Arabs, Persian oil for Persians, and so on. It will mean America will have to relinquish its supposed "interest" in monopolizing the world's energy reserves. I have the deepest doubts that Washington will ever tolerate such a thing. They have overthrown nascent democracies in the region over this very issue, and they will again. They will back the most repressive elements they can find to keep the people down, and these elements will keep coming back to bite us in the ass. So it has gone, and so it probably will.

---

Sure. If I tell you I talk to Gore, it means I've left him a voice-mail message which he probably deleted.

I couldn't possibly agree more.

I doubt that Alan Jackson could pick Jesus out of a crowd.

Anyway, your interpretation is the only plausible one I can think of. Sadly, I don't think Alan Jackson meant it that way, and I don't think his listeners receive it that way. I have a lot of experience with people who say they know God, and they are not generally such abstract thinkers as you.

What I meant yesterday as I foamed at the mouth was: I think "knowing God" is a subject that is best approached with a certain degree of humility. After all, we're discussing the idea of an all-powerful intelligence that created us and everything we can ever see or know, and many things we can't. Now, I have almost no problem with a person saying he seeks to know God. What gives me the willies is people who say they actually know God or that they converse with God or that God tells them things. Alan Jackson talks to God. So does the Ayatollah, Osama bin Laden, the Pope, Pat Robertson, and Ariel Sharon. Somehow they can't agree on what God is saying. So please forgive me if I dismiss claims of knowing God with enthusiastic contempt.

---
What others say about boorite!

For a less controversial musical exploration about the events of 9-11, check out this video by The Blue Man Group.

---
"Nothing expresses the brutal grandeur of rectal polyps and anal fistulae quite like the mother-tongue of Goethe."

I think the main reason Alan Jackson caused so much controversy here is that he was so uncontroversial.

not to sound cocky or anything, but i do believe that the american air force is a bit too good and precise to kill "thousands of innocent people." it was, however, a shame about that baby milk factory we bombed during the gulf war. (:

i recognized that little logical flaw when i posted, but i was making a point about politics, and the total lack of a distinction, in my mind, between democrats and republicans. of course if the casualties are going to be great, it's not a good idea to start the war.

so here's the deal: i count myself as neither liberal nor conservative--i think that representative democracy, as it stands in most of the free countries in the world, is a pathetically unfunny joke. that said, i do believe that america is among the best countries in the world, not that that's much of an accomplishment. however, i hope you realize (as i truly believe) that if london or glasgow or paris or any other western city had been bombed instead of DC and NYC, we would have done the same thing. in a way, it's fortunate the attacks were on US soil, 'cause that made it easier to get public support here.

as for iraq: i don't exactly know why GWB has such tunnel-vision. i fully agree with the theory that this conflict will be nothing more than a distraction from and/or a boost to the sagging economy. however, we do have enough cause to go in without violating international law, if only for the fact that hussein has been thumbing his nose at the UN ever since victory was declared in '91, and we did warn the world a year ago that anyone who supports terrorism, publicly or otherwise, has a shitstorm coming their way.

what's more, the "rightness" of a military action--or any action that kills people, for that matter--can't be measured in how many lives are lost. sure, that's an easy thing to quantify, but the real measuring stick is how right the cause is, and that's why an attack on iraq (somewhat good reason) would be better than the waco travesty (no reason whatsoever).

i'm in danger of rambling, and probably in danger of being hauled in for treason, but i'm trying to sort out my feelings about the possibility of a war in iraq, and you lucky people get to read about it. worth mentioning is that my father was in the national guard during the gulf war and was never activated, he was still in the guard on 9/11 and was never activated, and has since retired because he realized he was never going to be activated and therefore shouldn't take any more of the government's money (not to mention that giving up every weekend sucks ass). anyway, on both of those occasions i was scared shitless that dad might go overseas, and since his retirement i guess my pacifism has abated a bit. (:

---
"I don't know who you are, schmucko, but you rule." - lara7 | christ@myself.com

I dunno if this is a great topic to be grinning about. You amazingly precise airforce killed more innocent Afghan civilians then were killed in the collapsing World Trade Centre. This is a country where nearly everyone is spread out in small communities. Compare this to Iraq, especially Baghdad, where quarters are much more confined and crowded. A single stray cluster bomb in Baghdad (and the USAF just loves using those evil fucking devices) has the potential to kill a thousand or more civilians, when you take into account fires and building collapses.

Oh, and about that baby milk factory, lets not forget the two Red Cross medical supply warehouses, the civilian hospital, the high school, and the Chinese Embassy, bombed in Bosnia. The Chinese fucking embassy, for Christ's sake! If you're going to talk bullshit about USAF precision, you're definitely going to sound cocky, and irresponsibly so.

Sorry, but that is pure propaganda. International law and UN rules state quite clearly that a) no nation has the right to launch a pre-emptive strike on another, and any such action will be recognised as aggressive and hostile, not defensive, and b) no nation has the right to alter the leadership of another, neither to depose or install leadership. Bubyah can crap on about justification all he likes, and about how action must be taken before it is too late, but the fact is that the law says you guys just are not allowed to do it. This constant defiance of international law is one of the reasons the US government and military are so despised all around the world.

...and this is relevant to Iraq... how? Dubyah has stopped talking terrorism now - this is all about "weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a madman" now. No significant evidence of links between Hussein and terrorism has ever been found. I'll restate that a bit more succinctly: The proposed attack on Iraq has ZERO to do with the War on Terror, and the US government does not claim that it does. In fact, a lot of government people who are advising Dubyah against attacking Iraq are opposed to it because it is taking resources away from the terrorism offensive (such as it is).

I disagree very strongly. The only solid way to judge the righteousness and success of a war is to measure the number of lives lost against the number that would have been lost had no action been taken. No matter how good the cause is, it would be difficult to justify a hundred lives lost in an effort to save ten.

Even so, this attack has nothing whatsoever to do with "right". It is all about US corporate interests. There are many nations that have had nukes for years, even decades, along with a clearly demonstrated willingness to use them. The US military has never marched on Beijing, capital of a nation whose government has perpetrated, and still continues to perpetrate today, some of the most hideous violations of human rights and dignity in human history. Why not? Simple: there's no money in it. Stabilising the Middle East with puppet leaders and cultural indoctrination will allow American big business to get at a lot of oil without any hindrances.

This shit is all about money, because Dubyah is all about money. A soulless rich man governing on behalf of other soulless rich men.

---
This signature has performed an illegal operation and has been shut down.

i knew there must be a reason why i hate politics so much. i hereby withdraw from this here conversation.

---
"I don't know who you are, schmucko, but you rule." - lara7 | christ@myself.com

...except to say that that baby milk factory wasn't really a baby milk factory, and that's why i grinned...

---
"I don't know who you are, schmucko, but you rule." - lara7 | christ@myself.com

...and for what's it's worth, i don't even own an american flag. (:

---
"I don't know who you are, schmucko, but you rule." - lara7 | christ@myself.com

...and now i've settled down a bit and changed my mind; i do have one last thing to say.

we are entitled, and are in fact correct, to argue. that's one of the great things about being human and therefore blessed with the gift of free will and intellect (most of us, anyway). one of the prerequisites for an argument, unfortunately, is bias. we all have it. i'm not particularly patriotic, as i said ineloquently before storming off, but my way of thinking is admittedly affected by what i take in from my surroundings and, being american, most of that is from other americans, many of whom are more patriotic than me. no one is impervious to such things.

here, then, is what i know to be true: there are, to the extent of my knowledge, no iraqis posting regularly on this site. if i'm mistaken, please stand and be counted, and do accept my apologies for passively advocating an attack on your homeland. however, if i'm correct, then we can only guess what an iraqi might say. it would likely be one of these two things:

1) "Please don't attack my homeland. We've been wartorn long enough and I couldn't bear to see another sortie of American bombers."

2) "Saddam Hussein is a madman and a tyrant and needs to be stopped. If that means I have to leave Baghdad to be safe, I will."

none of us knows which of these statements that token iraqi would make. likely, there are both sorts of people in that country, just as there are a handful of americans who, believe it or not, like dubyah. however, as long as we don't have the input of those people, any fervent opinions in one direction or the other are pointless.

yes, in publicly attempting to form an opinion for myself, i've undoubtedly run off at the mouth a bit more than is advisable. i did feel that someone should take up the pro-attack side of the argument, if only because everyone else was so disgusted and dubyah really did impress me by being so patient in waiting to attack afghanistan when every fiber of his body must have told him to nuke it out of existence at about 11 am on september 11th.

on the other hand, i also know that the US has some bad karma working against it. it's my personal theory that all of our foreign policy failings (read: irrational attacks) of the last fifty years stem from a collective guilt complex we sustain because we didn't jump into the second world war early enough and a shitload of innocents died because of that, and i hope you'll admit at least that that's a lot to atone for. now, whenever we see another hitler, even if it's really just a windmill, we tilt at it. but that's neither here nor there.

i suppose this all boils down to a request for sanity. we're friends here, and there's no reason to descend to ad hominem attacks--which thankfully we haven't yet, but we're teetering close to that particular precipice. there's never gonna be world peace, but the least we can do is all unite to smack around retarded newbies, right?

---
"I don't know who you are, schmucko, but you rule." - lara7 | christ@myself.com

Urm... sorry, not following your point... are you saying that my set of counter-arguments is inhibiting your right you an individual opinion? Hey, if you're going to defend your right to argue and disagree, I hope you will defend mine, too...

I think I get what you mean, but that is poorly phrased. You don't [u]need[/u] bias in order to have a conversation. It is, however, something that pops up in discussions - to their detriment, I might add. I think it is also a mistake to confuse bias - which means, as I see it, an irrational, emotional, or selfish adherence to a viewpoint in defiance of evidence - with simple disagreement. It is perfectly possible for two people to disagree and argue coherently without either being negatively affected by bias.

Are you saying that this excuses you from an obligation to debate fairly? Bias is not a creed to live by. As far as intelligent debate goes, bias is an obstructive vice to be eliminated. I have a bucketful of bias too, but I try not to let it affect my judgement. I'm not always successful, but how often is anyone 100% successful at controlling their own subconscious?

You have a US bias. Fair enough. I have an Australian left-leaning moderate lapsed Catholic academic bias. Does that mean we simply can't argue? I hope not... I hope it just means that we may have to work a bit harder to reach concensus, or at the very least identify where our opinions fundamentally diverge, at which point we can agree to disagree without leaving the argument hanging.

Okay, now I am completely lost. When did anyone in this thread try to argue on behalf of the Iraqi people? I can't be 100% sure about everyone else, but I know I was speaking from the perspective of international law, UN charter rules, and basic morality. If there is overwhelming support in Iraq for a US-led invasion, then I suppose that would make it okay... but has anyone tried to argue that there is or isn't? Sorry, but this argument of yours has just left me bewildered.

Hardly a good reason to take up a case. Very few people defend the activities of paedophiles, but that is not a good reason to decide you're going to become an apologist for the world's kiddyfiddlers.

You're impressed because he didn't act immediately, irrationally, and in violation of a truckload of international laws? That's hardly a shining commendation. "He didn't fly off the handle and do something really stupid that would have had international repercussions for decades to come and cause untold numbers of deaths. I think he deserves a medal for that!" I think I would describe that as doing his fucking job not doing something impressive.

No, pretty much 100% of US foreign policy fuckups in the past quarter of a century have been caused by the government doing the will of its corporate masters, the people who pump hundreds of millions of dollars into campaign finance. Kuwait was about oil. Afghanistan was about oil. South America is mainly about creating a cheap labour force and a marketplace for overpriced vital services, like water and electricity. The WTO and IMF exist solely to shape second and third world countries into useful life support systems for western economies, mostly the US economy. If everyone in the world started getting a fair wage for their work, the US economy would collapse overnight, as it relies upon exploitation of foreign workers and consumers just to survive. Oh, and before you say it, these are facts that the WTO and IMF admit to freely. I am not throwing conspiracy theories about the place. This is the way the modern world works.

...and if there is no new Hitler, the US government makes one. Are any of these names familiar: Pinochet, Noriega, Hussein, bin Laden? These are all people who were once paid, armed, trained, and even placed into positions of power by the United States of America. Osama bin Laden was a "freedom fighter" against the Russians in Afghanistan. Noriega was a friendly dictator who agreed to give the US easy access to the Panama canal. On and on and on... almost every US-backed puppet turns around and becomes next year's evil maniac. If you don't want more lunatics running foreign governments, tell your government to stop making the bastards.

Nah - most of us are just passionate, enthusiastic debaters. ObiJo and I, for example, are quite a long way apart on the spectrum of political beliefs, and we have debated about it. I'm still friendly with that psycho right-wing demagogue... ;)

When I am in my less cynical moods, I believe there will be world peace some day. I doubt it will happen in our lifetimes, but the potential is there. The scary thing is that true world peace requires a real world government and judiciary. These things have never been possible before, but the technology now exists to make it a reality. Trouble is, as I said before, Western prosperity requires third world exploitation. There is enough wealth and food for everyone, but greed is a powerful and destructive force. If a world government starts to form, corporate interests will do their best to pervert it, control it, or destroy it. Considering most western leaders are in the pocket of big business, getting around such obstacles will be... a challenge...

Fuck, that was long. Sorry about that.

---
This signature has performed an illegal operation and has been shut down.

not to sound cocky or anything, but i do believe that the american air force is a bit too good and precise to kill "thousands of innocent people." it was, however, a shame about that baby milk factory we bombed during the gulf war. (:

Ah, yes, one of the great brainwashing victories of NATO. When the enemy attack civilians, it's deliberate, but when they do it, it's an accident.

You win wars by deliberately killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure. That's how it works. The US admitted during the Gulf, Afghanistan and Kosovo campaign that it was targetting civilians. So leave the "collateral damage" horseshit to Donald Rumsfeld.

I'm with DexX on the rest.