>
> "turtoni"
fastmail.net> wrote in message
> news:e1b3ac0c-cf02-415e-88ee-97df6e1e043d@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
> On Apr 5, 2:35 pm, "tooly" bellsouth.net> wrote:>> "James Bath"
bellsouth.net> wrote in message
>>
>> news:baOJj.17021$9O.11699@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>>> On Apr 4, 4:52 pm, "James Bath"
bellsouth.net> wrote:>>>>> "tooly"
bellsouth.net> wrote in message>>
>>
>>>>>> "James Bath"
bellsouth.net> wrote in message
>>>>>>news:t17Jj.29147$r76.28793@bignews8.bellsouth.net...>>>>>>>I agree with most of what you said. I did watch the video. It was a
>>>>>>>good
>>>>>>>reminder of the serious dangers those and similar other extremists
>>>>>>>present
>>>>>>>to the world. Diplomacy obvious will not work with people like
>>>>>>>that.
>>>>>>>And, in the light of this and other recent revelations about the
>>>>>>>candidates -- 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. I wonder if this will destroy the
>>>>>>> democrats' chances for the White House.
>>
>>>>>> You know, when I was young, the JFK years inspired people. I was a
>>>>>> democrat early on, then sort of independent voting for Jimmy Carter
>>>>>> [ha,
>>>>>> no lie]. But Reagan converted me for good. There was once a great
>>>>>> overlap
>>>>>> between the parties where even if the opposing party gained office,
>>>>>> there
>>>>>> remained much to feel representation about. 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. Oh...and the elites of course;
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> Harvard professors would always be liberal in scope.
>>
>>>>>> 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.
>>
>>>>>> 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.
>>
>>>>>> 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. 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.
>>>>>> 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? What sort of new
>>>>>> world
>>>>>> will
>>>>>> it be? I for one am not hopeful for that new world.
>>
>>>>> Frankly, I'm not hopeful either. 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.
>>
>>>>> I don't think the human race has a whole lot of decades or centuries
>>>>> left to
>>>>> survive its exponentially-increasing insanity.
>>
>>>> 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). We fall into a trap when we attempt to resolve every
>>>> issue at a National level. 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). On the flip side ever present news
>>>> (on every event - e.g. internet) tends to blow things up out of
>>>> proportion. 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. 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. The nastiness doesn't end, whether on the local or
>>> national level.
>>
>>> I also agree with your statement that individuals need to take
>>> responsibility. 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. 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. But that ship has just about sank. 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 --
>>> 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. 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. 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.
>
> Materially speaking, you are quite correct. There has been a trade off as
> time has unfolded. Very true, today we live 'material' lives on better
> levels than kings did just a few hundred years ago. But what is the state
> of our Human Relationships?
>
> Spiritually, we are slowly dying.
>
> In the photo link below from Cassini spacecraft looking back toward earth,
> our planet and everything pertaining to life is but a small tiny blue dot
> seen in upper left quadrant of the outside ring of Saturn [have to look
> close]. I think this is symbolic of what is happening to us 'internally'
> while 'externally' we tackle the very stars.
>
>
http://bp1.blogger.com/_TX-WkAZZ6-s/Ra8BJLroY8I/AAAAAAAAAFo/KbKhvqWVx9o/s1600-h/newrings_cassini...
>
> Happiness and contentment is a function of our human relations I
> argue...so as they sour, so does happiness and contentment. Not everyone
> is a loser of course...but grand means trend downward.
>
>
>
>
Phew! Can you imagine being that far away from home?
