in which i talk about the Saddam news
Dec. 15th, 2003 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hermionesviolinPre-emptive disclaimer: Appearances to the contrary, none of this is a personal attack on any of my friends. I’m probably the closest to the Religious Right of any of my friends. The more this becomes clear to me, the more respect i have for all of you who haven’t shut a door in my face, because more and more i am understanding just how tempting it is to do that.
Doug was the first to inform me because i check e-mail before LJ. Then of course it was at the top of my friendspage with conspiracy theory suspicions, and my immediate reaction was “Fuck You” though of course i have more respect for my friends than to say that. I checked the Jolt next, which did nothing for my sanity. I actually stopped reading the threads, because i just can’t take it. I just.... It was making me scream inside, to be honest.
I felt better after checking in on weblogs (because all the weblogs i read are by thoughtful intelligent conservatives). I only kinda even skimmed those, though, because honestly i don’t care about 723 individual perspectives on all the angles and details. (If you want that, InstaPundit.com has about a million entries, including a link to a round-up of anti-war blogger responses, which also links to 2 round-ups of coverage from pro-war bloggers.)
I held off on posting because i wanted to temper my immediate reaction both emotionally and intellectually. I think i’m good now, and you can decide for yourself whether you want to engage me in discussion about this.
I understand where people’s conspiracy theories come from, hell i’ll even validate them. But the kneejerk Bush-is-the-Antichrist, anything-that-happens-under-him-is-of-the-dark side, makes me twitch.
Is it possible it’s a double? Sure, why not. They say the have DNA samples and damned if i know how they got the original ones.
I honestly don’t even care so much that we captured Saddam. I didn’t think he had any sort of Mafia-esque control-from-exile thing going on, so once he was deposed i stopped caring.
“The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation” -RENT
I’m not interested in catching the bad guys; i’m interested in making life better for people.
I understand people’s concern about catching Osama, since he was far more directly responsible for 9/11, but i’ve seen people implying that catching Osama is the only important thing to focus in the “war on terrorism” and that troubles me deeply. I’m far more concerned with improving the quality of life for people than about punishing specific bad people (note: this is my slant on domestic as well as foreign policy).
The Bush administration still has an obligation to help rebuild Iraq. There are still months and months left before the election in which things can go poorly for the Republicans and decrease Bush’s chances of being re-elected. If all they can pull out come November is “But, remember 11 months ago when we captured Saddam?” then you have far less faith in the American people than i do if you think Bush is gonna win the election.
If you say you would rather have Saddam in power than Bush in power, i may have to stab you. If you say you want people to die in Iraq, or Americans to die from terrorist attacks, so that Bush will not get re-elected, i may have to cease speaking to you.
I don’t think any of my friends feel that way, though, and i know that those who do give your side a bad name (agreeing with conservatives a lot, i definitely feel your pain with the whole psychos-make-my-side-look-bad thing).
I have no opinion on the news coverage as i haven’t actually watched any of it. I’ve barely even glanced at the photos and news stories floating on the Web.
I have been so tempted to say i wouldn’t mind having Bush re-elected. I don’t think i know enough about his policies to say that, though.
When voting for President, there’s so much to consider. Not just campaign promises and voting record, but also the dynamics of the Congress and the public, which affect the likelihood of certain legislation passing (or even being proposed). Also which things are going to be major issues during the President’s term (Supreme Court Justice nominations, international treaty ratification, etc.). I just find it really hard to say “X is evil, therefore I cannot allow X to be elected.”
I think Allie [and most of my friends, who are closer politically to her than to me] and i have some differing basic paradigms, so even if we talked all year we wouldn’t be able to solve the problems of the world.
1) Yes, he is, actually. He may not be your President, but funny how that happens when we have majority voting; every time, there are thousands and thousands of people who did not vote for the winner. I didn’t follow the recount well enough to know what i think is correct, but the popular vote doesn’t matter. Personally i thought this was a travesty when i first learned about it in junior high. I don’t hear anyone talking about abolishing the electoral college, though. Maybe i just float in the wrong circles.
2) Hey, would you want every citizen to have to vote on everything? This is called representational democracy.
3) Which media? Are things like indymedia.org never incorrect or misleading? Do you in some senses fool yourself by insisting on the infallibility of such basic paradigms as “GWB=Antichrist”?
Okay, i’m being pissy and potentially unfair here. Shutting up now.
Doug was the first to inform me because i check e-mail before LJ. Then of course it was at the top of my friendspage with conspiracy theory suspicions, and my immediate reaction was “Fuck You” though of course i have more respect for my friends than to say that. I checked the Jolt next, which did nothing for my sanity. I actually stopped reading the threads, because i just can’t take it. I just.... It was making me scream inside, to be honest.
I felt better after checking in on weblogs (because all the weblogs i read are by thoughtful intelligent conservatives). I only kinda even skimmed those, though, because honestly i don’t care about 723 individual perspectives on all the angles and details. (If you want that, InstaPundit.com has about a million entries, including a link to a round-up of anti-war blogger responses, which also links to 2 round-ups of coverage from pro-war bloggers.)
I held off on posting because i wanted to temper my immediate reaction both emotionally and intellectually. I think i’m good now, and you can decide for yourself whether you want to engage me in discussion about this.
I understand where people’s conspiracy theories come from, hell i’ll even validate them. But the kneejerk Bush-is-the-Antichrist, anything-that-happens-under-him-is-of-the-dark side, makes me twitch.
Is it possible it’s a double? Sure, why not. They say the have DNA samples and damned if i know how they got the original ones.
I honestly don’t even care so much that we captured Saddam. I didn’t think he had any sort of Mafia-esque control-from-exile thing going on, so once he was deposed i stopped caring.
“The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation” -RENT
I’m not interested in catching the bad guys; i’m interested in making life better for people.
I understand people’s concern about catching Osama, since he was far more directly responsible for 9/11, but i’ve seen people implying that catching Osama is the only important thing to focus in the “war on terrorism” and that troubles me deeply. I’m far more concerned with improving the quality of life for people than about punishing specific bad people (note: this is my slant on domestic as well as foreign policy).
The Bush administration still has an obligation to help rebuild Iraq. There are still months and months left before the election in which things can go poorly for the Republicans and decrease Bush’s chances of being re-elected. If all they can pull out come November is “But, remember 11 months ago when we captured Saddam?” then you have far less faith in the American people than i do if you think Bush is gonna win the election.
If you say you would rather have Saddam in power than Bush in power, i may have to stab you. If you say you want people to die in Iraq, or Americans to die from terrorist attacks, so that Bush will not get re-elected, i may have to cease speaking to you.
I don’t think any of my friends feel that way, though, and i know that those who do give your side a bad name (agreeing with conservatives a lot, i definitely feel your pain with the whole psychos-make-my-side-look-bad thing).
I have no opinion on the news coverage as i haven’t actually watched any of it. I’ve barely even glanced at the photos and news stories floating on the Web.
I have been so tempted to say i wouldn’t mind having Bush re-elected. I don’t think i know enough about his policies to say that, though.
When voting for President, there’s so much to consider. Not just campaign promises and voting record, but also the dynamics of the Congress and the public, which affect the likelihood of certain legislation passing (or even being proposed). Also which things are going to be major issues during the President’s term (Supreme Court Justice nominations, international treaty ratification, etc.). I just find it really hard to say “X is evil, therefore I cannot allow X to be elected.”
I think Allie [and most of my friends, who are closer politically to her than to me] and i have some differing basic paradigms, so even if we talked all year we wouldn’t be able to solve the problems of the world.
and we hold these truths to be self evident:*sighs* I’ve had a lot of issues with Ani’s “self-evident” ever since she first started performing it.
#1 george w. bush is not president
#2 america is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
Ani D.
1) Yes, he is, actually. He may not be your President, but funny how that happens when we have majority voting; every time, there are thousands and thousands of people who did not vote for the winner. I didn’t follow the recount well enough to know what i think is correct, but the popular vote doesn’t matter. Personally i thought this was a travesty when i first learned about it in junior high. I don’t hear anyone talking about abolishing the electoral college, though. Maybe i just float in the wrong circles.
2) Hey, would you want every citizen to have to vote on everything? This is called representational democracy.
3) Which media? Are things like indymedia.org never incorrect or misleading? Do you in some senses fool yourself by insisting on the infallibility of such basic paradigms as “GWB=Antichrist”?
Okay, i’m being pissy and potentially unfair here. Shutting up now.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-15 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-15 07:32 pm (UTC)What should we do with him?
no subject
Date: 2003-12-15 08:52 pm (UTC)I applaud your Rent quote. I applaud it into next week.
See, look at me, little miss agnostic leftist consummate liberal. I got online that day and found very little but people repeating "we got him" and "we got the fucker."
I just. This isn't what I care about. And the whole thing makes me a little uncomfortable. I have as strong an aversion to the man as anyone who dislikes, you know, repressive governments and massive amounts of murder. But I'm not really the sort to go around cheering about some guy being yanked out of a dirty hole, and the pictures of them swabbing his mouth being played over and over on tv. He didn't even look like he could comprehend what was happening. I don't sympathize with him, but my gut keeps wondering why showing us that over and over is so necessary.
Conspiracy theories? Ehhhh? It sure looks like him. My reaction to the news, which I heard on the radio first: Good, now he can't cause any more harm. Now can we put the swabbing footage away, please, and get on with the fixing the mess over there?
Yeah. I don't know if that's what you said, or what you said, but as always, you bring out in me the urge to share and compare.
Really must read through your post later.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-15 09:40 pm (UTC)As for democracy, my last two papers for the English "history" class I took this semester both focused on problems in electoral systems. The last British government formed with over 50% of the popluar vote was in 1931. Yet excluding a few years, each of those governments could weild (and, espically in the case of Thatcher, did) weild great powers, much greater than our system theoritically allows our government. If I wasn't extremley tired, I would try to start a disscussion about diffrent electoral systems, but it's something I still need to learn more about. I just know that I don't like the system we have here, or the British system, at least in terms of Parliament. . .
Strangely enough....
Date: 2003-12-16 02:57 am (UTC)I'll be candid here. I'm a Republican and I voted for W but I'll be the first to admit that I only did so because he was the most palatable. Had the Gore/Lieberman ticket been reversed, I would have voted Democrat.
In many ways, I think W may have been the person to have at the helm during 9/11 but I'm not sure about after. And I don't know that I'll be voting to re-elect him, We'll have to see who's running against him.
<hugs> And you're not being pissy and unfair, btw. The Media, whenever used in capital letters, generally does not refer to the Fourth Estate but to a subsection of it. All media is biased. Then again, every individual is too. I may have to post on this in my journal as it's been rattling around in my head for some time now.
Ah well, always good to start the morning with insightful, thoughtprovoking view points.
Peace
-J
Re: Strangely enough....
Date: 2003-12-16 09:34 am (UTC)As for Athens, well, of course there was the problem that it was only men, and that it was not democratic towards non-Athenians ruled in its "colonies". There's a great quote a professor said quite often, but I've blocked out most of what I learned in that seminar for good reason.
I've also heard the cantons in Switzerland called democracies, and it also has a consensus system, which is interesting.
We're not a democracy. But we can become more democratic. . .
Re: Strangely enough....
Date: 2003-12-16 03:58 pm (UTC)Thus showing that Fuller, a very bright man, was also a very foolish man (why do the two so often go together?).
The great political scientist Oscar Wilde understood something Fuller did not. Asked if he was a socialist, Wilde replied, "No, it would take up too many evenings."
RAS
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 05:43 am (UTC)1. given that (in my opinion, obviously) gwb should not be reelected, the saddam capture could have some pretty bad repercussions on the eventual election. that being, that dean, the current dem forerunner, is vehemently anti-war, which the masses interpret as "we should not have gone into iraq." hence, the leg upon which he is standing has just gotten weaker. it is my belief that dean has the best chance in the presidential election of energizing the country to vote for him and not gwb. hence, if the saddam capture winds up costing him the nomination, we may (and i realize there's a lot of ifs in this argument) indeed be stuck with GWB for another four years.
2. i just have to defend the ani quotes:
a. gwb may technically BE president, but if he had run an ethical/moral campaign which didn't involve jeb ensuring the win of florida by preventing hundreds of people from voting, he would not be. hence her point.
b. democracy, a la webster: 1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2 : a political unit that has a democratic government
3 capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the U.S.
4 : the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
5 : the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges
My point on democracy is that we are living in a country where, like it or not, people who have the right and will to vote simply could not. jeb's regime gave orders to forbid people to vote if they even had the same last name as folks who had been incarcerated. the polls were blocked, people were systematically intimidated, and don't even get me started on the ballot (which, whether or not it was intentional, was still an infraction on democracy).
c. the media, aka fox news, abc, cnn, nbc, etc. The companies are all owned by the same four umbrella firms, who also own enormous corporations. hence, the media will not report issues/events which might hurt their interests in other areas. see WST 150.
3. I have been so tempted to say i wouldn’t mind having Bush re-elected. I don’t think i know enough about his policies to say that, though.
I beg you to reexamine the past years of GWB's reign, and further examine his policies. The repercussions that his adminstration has had can be felt at the national, state, and local level. See school funding, health funding, welfare, social security, human rights, the patriot act, separation of church and state, etc.