On Apr 6, 7:25Â pm, "James Bath"
bellsouth.net> wrote:>> "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>
>
>>>>> 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. Â There has been a trade off as
>> time has unfolded. Â Very true, today we live 'material' lives on better
>> levels than kings did just a few hundred years ago. Â 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]. Â I think this is symbolic of what is happening to us 'internally'
>> while 'externally' we tackle the very stars.
>
>
>> Happiness and contentment is a function of our human relations I
>> argue...so as they sour, so does happiness and contentment. Â Not everyone
>> is a loser of course...but grand means trend downward.
>
> Phew! Â Can you imagine being that far away from home?
Imagine is a good word. I guess we all externalize what we have
internalizing; perhaps as we age our "spirit" is gradually degrading
and leads us onto this good old days cliché.
"It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then, like most
clichés, that cliché is untrue." -- Stephen Fry
