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American Idiots
I know I’m a bit late to “the party”, but here goes. I just can’t believe George W. Bush has been re-elected. The world shall suffer for four more years.
If I was an American, I probably would’ve posted something among the lines of what MJdub says.
I would like to apologize on behalf of my country for the results of this election. This will obviously change many things worldwide for the worse and I can only hope that it will help open people’s eyes at the very least. Please forgive my fellow Americans; they honestly believed they were doing the right thing; but they are products of the society that has made them what they are. If you haven’t been to America, please understand that we are spoon-fed one point of view from every major media outlet and are raised in an educational system that trains us to “go with the flow” rather than thinking analytically or critically. Laws and policies are enacted based on the lobbies that have the most political support (i.e. money) and not the needs of the people. Though it was a very close race, there is much evidence of election fraud, though I don’t want to get into conspiracy theories because the sad fact is that even if that is the case we will just stand by and let it happen anyway. When will it change? Will it change?
Go read the rest of the thread, there are a couple of interesting replies there.
I think that, if everybody in this world could’ve voted (which would only be fair, because the president of the United States really puts his stamp on this entire planet), this would never have happened.
Sad, really sad. Thank God there’s Michael Moore, and his excellent write-up Seventeen Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists. And the fact that anti-Bushers are not alone.
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Unfortunately, I must disagree.
As compared to Kerry, Pres. Bush was the only intelligent choice.
Kerry does not have a solid point of view: his points and thoughts shifted every time he spoke to someone. His party did not have a solid platform nor anything substantial to offer to the citizens of the US. (Except for some socialism in our health care and other things… which isn’t particularly a path the majority of the country wants to follow.)
Should you wish to vote in a US election then you should petition your government to speak with ours to see what can be done about adding a new state to the union.
*cringe*. I’m not posting an opinion on the results of the election, but thanking a supreme deity for the presence of Michael Moore, when there’s some evidence he certainly didn’t help the Democrats or Anti-Bushers, may not quite be the way to go here, Sir…
So do the rulers of oil-spewing countries in the Middle East, and the rulers of more prominent Western European countries. We haven’t quite established a single world government yet; until then, individual countries maintain sovereignty, despite their level external influence, yes?
Luke:
That’s right. As slattery69 says in that thread: if Kerry had campagined on more than and had a plan of action for Iraq rather than , then I am sure he would have won.
I’m not a Kerry-lover, really. I just hate Bush — much more than I love Kerry.
Lissa: Calm down, girl! You’re right, we haven’t established a single world government yet. I seriously doubt there will ever be such a thing. But isn’t it a fact that a president of the United States has got a lot more to say than, say, Guy Verhofstadt times twenty?
Please note that I really wouldn’t want to offend anyone with this post — except for mr. Bush himself, maybe. I love to hear other people’s thoughts and discuss them, so that’s what I’d like to do here. No way I’m getting personal.
See, the funny thing is that everyone hates Bush so much as if he was the all powerful person in the world. He does not make decisions on his own, he is not a single mind, he has a cabinet and congress, this is a republic. His decisions are not based on what he wants to do.
I think the world needs to worry about their own problems, sure the US might be involved on a lot of places that it maybe should not… but then it would be labeled as not caring. Stop hating Bush, specially if you cannot do anything about it and do something locally to change what happens around you.
That’s my rant ;) and you know I love you and respect all your opinions just sharing mine.
All the people who have posted something “pro Bush” — are they all American people? I think so. Well, listen up, American folks who followed “their Bush”.
The situation in America is far different from here, in Belgium. There are some really good documentaries on the television, that show us not everything is going quite right in Iraq, to start with. Your television programmes are censored a lot, because of the influence they might have, because of the elections.
Of course, I don’t live in the USA — I don’t see what’s going on there every hour, nor do I see who says what exactly. But it’s true that they want their people to “go with the flow”.
And hey, logtar, you say that we first have to do something locally, right? That is what’s so typical… “do what is connected to you, don’t look at the rest of the world, be selfish, don’t take care of problems in foreign countries, just take care of yourself…” Is that good, you think? I don’t think so. The USA has a huge influence in a lot of foreign countries, first of all in the Middle-East, but also in Europe, and in the United Nations. If your president decides something about The World, most of it will happen! Is that democratic? The “big mr. President” decides it all, he’s the most important person in the world, they say. If that is true, it means we need (we, indeed, all human beings) a stabile, peaceful president who is smart, doesn’t start wars for things that aren’t present (weapons of mass destruction, for example) — and that just ain’t Bush!
As for the censored part of your environment… Things aren’t going well all the time in Iraq. A lot of American soldiers die, and more than they let you know, believe me. Hopefully it won’t be as in Vietnam, but it looks like it will…
I’m sorry if you didn’t understand everything I said, but I’m a dutch-speaking person after all, so it’s quite difficult for me to put it good in English.
Bye!
cHaRaJ
cHaRaJ, show me a press completely free of government/political influence, and I’ll show you this beautiful machine here that runs at 100% efficiency.
Of course our media is tainted. Everyone’s is. Believe it or not, however, a good deal of people are aware of this — that doesn’t mean there’s still no room for interpretation of what you read/see, hence the different conclusions people have come to on the war. Some think the war is going better than what the media indicates, others think it’s going worse.
Apparently, that split is about 50-50 here in the US. It seems to be different in different countries. C’est la vie.
I’ll second logtar’s sentiment about US involvement in other countries, although whether this applies to Iraq is seriously debatable, in my opinion. If the US doesn’t do anything, we’re labelled uncaring and insensitive. When we do something, we’re boorish and insensitive. Maybe we are just damned insensitive (:)), but it does seem to be quite the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.
In fact, cHaRaj, you proved my above point in your first paragraph addressing logtar — he suggested a little more isolationism (although that’s a hefty word for what I think he meant), and you smacked him with a label of “selfish”.
It’s cliched as all, but that old saying about great power bringing great responsibility very much applies here. The American situation (balance of power, level of influence) is distinctly new for some of us (maybe just young voters, maybe the entire country since 9/11, I’m not sure), and I think it’s going to take a minute before we’re comfortable with wielding that power in a way that benefits a majority.
What that majority will be of, however, remains to be seen. I’d like to see care being taken to keep a wider view of what’s best, but I can also very much understand the sentiment that we need to get ourselves working correctly/better before we worry about pleasing the rest of the world.
We wait, we watch, and those of us eligible to vote do so.
You know, I hadn’t realized the comment was quite going to be that long… Sorry, Mathibus…
cHaRaJ,
Thanks for your post, your English is excellent — I understood all the things that you wanted to express… Now, I do agree with helping the rest of the world, but look at where America has gotten by trying to do just that. They have helped people that then have turned against them, they are always the bad ones and all the good the country does for the world always goes unnoticed.
Lissa’s post addresses some of the things I already believed… I mean, you are not here and you are getting your government’s version of things. I have the internet and my brain, but even then I still feel like I do not know enough. It can be quite frustrating when it comes to making decisions about politics and now knowing everything that goes into it.
I hope that Iraq is not another Vietnam also, that would be pitiful but only history can tell the real story, right now we are too close to the fire to see it clearly.
Hot damn. I get busy for a few days and miss the whole party.
I think what it comes down to is a wonderful restatement of what Lissa and logtar’s posts have been about.
The US has been a major player since the whole WWI and II thing. We didn’t particularly care to be in either… We wanted to be left alone and make our money as we sold to whichever side happened to be buying (mostly the non-Axis powers) whatever we had at the time. Anyway, we were isolationist and we liked it, damn it.
Anyway, it turned out that after WWII the Russian Communists wanted to take over in a slightly different way… and we thought that was a bad idea. And because most everyone else was a little too busy rebuilding their lives and countries we figured we’d hold them at bay or a little bit. Turns out they ended up falling apart.
Well, we couldn’t exactly leave the world to its own after that. Namely our economy got a little too world oriented and we kinda need the rest of the world to be stable enough to keep selling us what we want. So we can’t stop poking our nose into other people’s countries because as proved by human history everyone will just start fighting again and cause all kinds of disruption in everything… US lives and other countries.
So as you can guess by now we’re only going to stop policing and enforcing our ideas of freedom on the rest of the world when everyone can promise to be good and not screw up our economy/lives or anyone else’s.
It comes down to this: want the US to stop mattering so much in the rest of the world? Then stop messing shit up that we’ll notice and care even a little about. Do that for a couple of decades and we’ll start pulling out because we’ll loose interest in everyone else.
Logtar, you’re right about the information thing — I’m influenced too, and of course, I’m not there, I don’t see every thing that is showed on your television or is in your newspapers or magazines or whatever kind of media. My government wasn’t that subjective about the elections, but I was, I know! What I wanted to say is, before the elections, you were getting influenced MORE than here, ‘cause the case was very very important to all of you. I know that is normal, it’s better to be informed about things than not to be informed at all. I just think that sometimes, the American people have to critisize their government, and also…
Oh I’m sorry, I have to go, but don’t worry, I’ll finish my comment later…
Well, I guess there’s nothing to do anymore about the fact that Bush will do his thing (good or bad…) for four years. I want to give all of you this URL: http://sorryeverybody.com/.
Nice gesture :) I am an optimist… I think what is to come should be better, or at least a learning experience for our generation.
Subject Iraq: Iraq doesn’t need freedom — what they need is religion, and anybody should respect that. In fact, they expect freedom in heaven, not on earth, and that’s what Bush never gets.
Anything else (America’s international policies and actions) is acceptable.
American media is highly censored, and all the media are pro Bush — as Bush is pro big business, even with all the evidence that bush rigged the innitial election, they did not report the evidence as it should have been reported. Now with this election they once again failed to report the rigging, the list of fellons banned from voting in Florida changed three weeks before the election (again) and it was left to a British TV channel to obtain the list, suprisingly enough Jeb Bush didn’t want the list released as it proves rigging, so Channel 4 had to take the gouverner — Bush’s brother — to court, the list proves rigging, and guess which was the ONLY media in the world not to report this evidence? Yes, it’s the American media. Now I know this election wasn’t dependant on Florida like last time, but if this state was rigged what’s to say other states werent. For people that don’t know — the fellons list is a list of people banned from voting for commiting a criminal offence. The list is compiled by a Bush sponsor, and the ONLY person that can add or take from the list is Bush’s brother Jeb Bush, the gouverner of Florida. In Florida most of the black community vote democratic and there was a hugely unbalanced number of black people on the list, many people that had in the past been removed from the list were put back on weeks before the election, the hispanic “fellons” were virtually not on the list at all, even when the crime was murder — most hispanics vote republican! Anyway look at the list weeks before the elections they are changed. Also the electronic voting machines are known to multiple vote bush and ignore democratic votes, these machines are made by debold — a Bush sponser!!! Do a Google search for electronic voting machines! These corruptions have depended on the fact that most will put these facts down as conspiricy theories and nothing more, and in this sence they have won. I should point out that there is also evidence that bush knew of the 9/11 atacks before they happened — in there pre-election manifesto before they originally got into office they stated that they planned to go to war in Iraq and Afganistan, and they only feesable way they could do this — would be for there to be a major attack on us soil! — (there words not mine) read the manifesto — it’s scary —, it was produced by G. W. Bush and Jeb Bush and Cheney, I think. Also there is no plausable explanation why no jets were scrambled — and the voice recordings of at the air bases show that even when there were two planes still in the sky they made any excuse not to scramble the fighter jets. When G. W. Bush is told of the Twin Towers attack in that school, he looks left — to his memory side (body language doesn’t lie) — and he doesn’t look at all surprised. The evidence is out there, don’t just put this down as a conspiracy theory, because that’s what they expect to happen; facts are facts. I’m glad that Saddam was toppled and I’m actually all for the Iraq and Afganistan war, but I don’t like Bush because he rigged the elections and effectively tied the mouths of the US media. USA is therefore not democratic. JUST GOOGLE — try a search for and see what comes up!!!
Apart from anything Bush is not smart enough to hold power (in the nicest possible way), he can’t talk without reading, he can’t read, he can’t even repeat using a wire! His English is terrible, he thinks the Greeks are called — my cat knows they’re called Greeks. He can’t form sentences and he doesn’t make sence. For a scary laugh, do a Google search for . America is becoming more hated by the day, and it’s up to its population to try and save what’s left of a once great democracy. I find that most Americans are blindly patriotic, and don’t acknowledge anything bad about the USA, this patriotic propaganda that makes Americans so mocked throughout the rest of the world, for being so overly patriotic, has played right into the hands of Bush, as he knows many Americans will ignore/deny anything negative about the USA. This patriotic propaganda — the USA of “America” in every sentence, the constant bigging up of America, and its “greatness” has been done so that a nation of immigrants with different cultures languages have at least one thing in common, and there isn’t constant fighting between them. It has achived this and made a great stereotype because Americans don’t recognise it as propaganda and just swollow it all up. Americans should try to avoid American media — as it’s all pro Bush and not in the slightest impartial, as it should be.
Leo Strauss would have been proud.
Free Thinker:
I hope you don’t mean that. Much of the media in this country (USA) is biased the other way. You’re right about getting only one side of the story from the media, but it’s generally the liberal side only.
And if Bush really did rig the election, can you provide some links with some actual evidence?
Yes there were signs that 9/11 would happen, but that was towards the end of the Clinton administration. Due to the “controversial” outcome of the 2000 election, the Clinton administration wasn’t exactly forthcoming with any intelligence that they may have had. In addition, there were some serious problems with the FBI and CIA. But Bush did not plan for the 9/11 attacks. The reason why he showed no emotion or surprise was that he was sitting in front of a bunch of 5 and 6 year-olds.
As for patriotism, we do it because we are proud of our country. It’s something that most people can’ grasp if they aren’t an American. It’s not some sort of propaganda made up to keep us from fighting each other. The thread that holds us together is our values.
No no no, the patriotism has been fed to Americans for decades, it was Leo Strauss that said that America needed a single focus such as war, and to be united by a patriotism, to stop the nation tearing itself apart, and to dispell the ill effects of individualism, that democracy brings. Read up on Leo Strauss — it is quite clear that Bush is following his guide, and that is the reason for all the patriotic propaganda Americans are fed. An example I find particually amusing is the American Idol show. In every other nation we exported it to they called it Pop Idol, but in America… No, it was . It’s always American this American that, God bless America. It’s nationalism we haven’t seen since the nazis (not that I’m comparing you to them, but it’s true), the torture in Iraq shows that blind patriotism with no basis can lead to thinking you’re above everyone else, and this shows, in all the video’s of the USA military. The USA is the most hated nation on the planet, and although Americans like to think (be told) it’s jelousy, it is in fact hatred because you blindly patriotic with no basis, you’ve all been asimilated by your media into thinking the USA is special (Leo Strauss also said this needed to be done) you are mostly ill educated, bigoted, ignorant arrogant, extreamly deluded and most are meglomaniacs, that have this bizzare habit of subconsciously thinking and acting like their on TV. Living by how they think will look cool, not by reality. The media is the biggest problem, doing as Leo Strauss stated and by making Americans feel special and different, when America has little to be proud of, its riches comes from letting Europe destroy itself, in WW2, and bankrupting itself, whilst America sat back and watched, knowing fully well what Hitler was up to, and making the lame excuse that “our boys won’t die abroad”… Well I hope it was worth it. The UK has only just recovered. Nothing of any significance has come out of America. You are a nation built on hype, and hollow propaganda, please read up on Leo Strauss and you will see that all the blind patriotism, the wars, the media, the belief’s everything about America is all part of his plan to curb the ill effects of democracy and indiviualism. Strauss also stated that belief in God/religion was a vital element of this, and this may be why 95% of Americans believe and the number is growing, and in Europe the number of believers has fallen through the floor and is still dropping, with science providing facts it is bizzare that fiction is believed over them. Anyway I’m not anti-american at all — I have American friends, but this is how it is!!!, and how you are seen. Please read up… Thanks.
(And yes, I know I can’t spell.)
edit…
It is not only Bush that is following Leo Strauss, but most of the previous presidents since Leo Strauss, Bush is particually fond of him, and does exactly as Leo said.
Bush is a major catastrophy, although a light beam for motivation in psychiatric health care; if a absolute inbred moron with no attachment to reality whatsoever can make it to the presidential role then everything is possible, regardless how great your mental illnes is.
I just want to remind our colonial chums that there is actually no such word as “gotten”.
D