On Apr 5, 2:35Â pm, "tooly"
bellsouth.net> wrote:> "James Bath"
bellsouth.net> wrote in message
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> news:baOJj.17021$9O.11699@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
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>>>> On Apr 4, 4:52 pm, "James Bath"
bellsouth.net> wrote:>>>> "tooly"
bellsouth.net> wrote in message>
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>>>>>>I agree with most of what you said. Â I did watch the video. Â It was a
>>>>>>good
>>>>>>reminder of the serious dangers those and similar other extremists
>>>>>>present
>>>>>>to the world. Â Diplomacy obvious will not work with people like that.
>>>>>>And, in the light of this and other recent revelations about the
>>>>>>candidates -- Â especially the incredible willingness of the two
>>>>>>democrats
>>>>>>to lie without shame -- I have to cast my vote for McCain.
>
>>>>>> I wonder how effective a series of political ads, comparing Reverend
>>>>>> Wright's hate-rantings with the rantings of sword-wielding muslim
>>>>>> extremists, will be against Obama -- especially when the ad shows
>>>>>> those
>>>>>> smiling photos of Obama and Wright together, and perhaps clips of
>>>>>> Farrakhan added in with it all. Â I wonder if this will destroy the
>>>>>> democrats' chances for the White House.
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>>>>> You know, when I was young, the JFK years inspired people. Â I was a
>>>>> democrat early on, then sort of independent voting for Jimmy Carter
>>>>> [ha,
>>>>> no lie]. But Reagan converted me for good. Â There was once a great
>>>>> overlap
>>>>> between the parties where even if the opposing party gained office,
>>>>> there
>>>>> remained much to feel representation about. Â Civil Rights slowly put
>>>>> an
>>>>> end to that as I see it, and slowly the Democratic party became the
>>>>> party
>>>>> of minorities, working women and feminists, gays, and any radical who
>>>>> had
>>>>> some vested interest in bringing down the established traditional
>>>>> order of
>>>>> this nation since it's inception. Â Oh...and the elites of course; the
>>>>> Harvard professors would always be liberal in scope.
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>>>>> Today, the Republican party has become a mass of 'cornered' old guard
>>>>> people trying to make last ditch efforts in protecting what was once
>>>>> theirs by right of inheritance.  And  like westward wagons under
>>>>> assualt
>>>>> from Injun attack, all it seems to be able to do is mount a defense to
>>>>> withstand 'attack, after attack, after attack' in a rising campaign to
>>>>> 'bring down that established' order once and for all.
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>>>>> The slippery slope always swings to the left.
>
>>>>> But now we enter a new era I'm afraid, whereupon, in the past, left
>>>>> and
>>>>> right had distinct 'idealogical' disagreement, essentially between
>>>>> socialist thinking and free market capitalism.
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>>>>> The new era however offers something we have never seen before...the
>>>>> advent of Racial Politics whereby, the issues become obscurred as
>>>>> masks
>>>>> over a deeper, more natural competition in the world. Â Most people do
>>>>> not
>>>>> want to recognize this, preferring to be optimistic that we have
>>>>> 'grown'
>>>>> past race. But what we have really done is bring it to the forefront,
>>>>> but
>>>>> in a most unusual way, through the suppression of it's very face. Â The
>>>>> established and the disestablished takes on a completely different
>>>>> personafication and in our blindness, as we usher in a transition to
>>>>> a....well, that is the question now isn't it? Â What sort of new world
>>>>> will
>>>>> it be? Â I for one am not hopeful for that new world.
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>>>> Frankly, I'm not hopeful either. Â When you have third graders plotting
>>>> to
>>>> kill their teacher; and when a grade school administration calls the
>>>> police
>>>> to enforce sexual harassment laws on a six-year-old because he patted a
>>>> classmate on her behind; and a judge lets a young man go free, on just a
>>>> few
>>>> hundred dollars bail, a young man who threatened to shoot up his school
>>>> with
>>>> the room full of high-powered rifles and other weapens the police
>>>> discovered
>>>> he had possession of; and the Reverend Wrights and the Catholic priests
>>>> defending their hate-speech, well... well... well hope is a four-letter
>>>> word.
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>>>> I don't think the human race has a whole lot of decades or centuries
>>>> left to
>>>> survive its exponentially-increasing insanity.
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>>> I agree that there are issues, but most of what you described are
>>> things that should be resolved at a local level (or even by good
>>> parenting). Â We fall into a trap when we attempt to resolve every
>>> issue at a National level. Â The Federal government gets bloated and in-
>>> effective and people lose hope.
>>> At some point individuals need to take responsibility for their corner
>>> of the world (and clean it up). Â On the flip side ever present news
>>> (on every event - e.g. internet) tends to blow things up out of
>>> proportion. Â Obviously that affects people like us more then others.
>
>> I agree it's not fundamenatally the national government's job to make
>> people behave like peaceful human beings in their own local communities.
>> But local governments are dropping the ball, kicking it over to the
>> churches, and the churchs are trying to pray the problems away. Â The
>> question is always what to do about the increasing punk/gang murders,
>> brutal rapes, drug dealing, bank robberies; and the unbelievably poor
>> educational commitments from school boards, uneducated parents,
>> undisciplined students, and cynical and harassed teachers, not to mention
>> the dirty local politics designed to incite racial tensions for personal
>> gain, and on and on. Â The nastiness doesn't end, whether on the local or
>> national level.
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>> I also agree with your statement that individuals need to take
>> responsibility. Â But that scenario is growing more and more unlikely
>> everyday, as this pill and that study and this doctor and that clergy
>> person takes over more and more of the public's personal thinking
>> decision-making skills for them. Â There are too many false and unnecessary
>> experts these days and the average Joe and Jane hardly makes a move
>> anymore without consulting their guidance (which usually amounts to the
>> blind leading the blind).
>
>> What we human beings are desparately in need of is a resurgence of common
>> sense and personal integrity. Â But that ship has just about sank. Â I don't
>> see any real progress in this area until people begin to buck-up and see,
>> once again, the serious dangers of making petty goals, greed, narcissism,
>> hubris, ignorance, demagoguery, and all such mental and psycho-social
>> diseases now affecting human kind and its withered spirit.
>
>> Finally, I think it will take unprecedented worldwide destruction -- Â
>> starvation, plague, and bloody wars -- to get enough members of any
>> surviving societies to take what is left of life seriously enough to find
>> and create solutions the useless and unnecessary problems we're plagued
>> with today. Â The dangers have to be seen and nothing less that an anvil
>> dropped on the head is going to do at this time.
>
> Good post James Bath. Â I think you've hit close to the core problem
> here...and I will add a single thought to mull over with your
> thoughts..."The decline/loss of Moral Authority".
Bullshit. You guys write like our grandmothers. "it aint like what it
used to be"
What a crock. We never had it so good. You romanticize the past and
perpetuate the same old crap.
And yet again the only saving grace will be the further development of
technology which FORCES us into new ways of existing.
I predicate in the distant future we will be seduced to each remain in
one small place with virtual reality hookups and have small outside
forces (human or robotics) to manage the ecology; with which we will
be able to share in via the tecnology. Too lazy/tried to come into
much more detail.
Of course in the mean time millions upon millions will die in the
"third" world countries.
HTH.
