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Psychlone
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15 Mar 2008, 3:01 am

gekitsu wrote:
Whivit wrote:
Now back on topic, saying 'americans are gullible' is racist. Seriously.


while you may be true with your point of americans being no more or less gullible than any other nation (what i, personally, would doubt, given how much creationism rages over there, and how easily religious ideas could be swept into politics. but ultimately, thats just a personal guess of mine.), what you are not true is the point on racism.

the statement is discriminating against americans, but at no point is it concerned with race. the definition of racism is that a stance is taken that races exist and race differences mean quality/worth differences.
racist statements would be: blacks are inferior people, all whites are stupid, eskimos suck, etcetera... saying that sitizens of a certain nation (especially when the nation builds on a multiracial fundament) are prone to a certain kind of behavior is not.


While I personally do not support creationism, I would like to point out there is not enough evidence yet to completely rule out the possibility of a divine intelligence.



Sand
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15 Mar 2008, 4:16 am

There will never be enough evidence to rule out a divine intelligence since a divine intellect is obviously assumed to be capable of evading detection under any circumstances. What is more worth considering is whether the observed forces of nature are capable of producing what occurs in our universe. So far, the indications are that no divine intervention is required to produce what we see around us.



Anubis
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15 Mar 2008, 7:41 am

Blame the corporate media and culture of ignorance, arrogance, and sloth.


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snake321
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15 Mar 2008, 8:30 am

Whivit wrote:
Ah, well, normal people are stupid. :D

No, but again, NTs are no more gullible than aspies; you just see it that way because you are an aspie. Aspies can be just as stupid as normal people, or just as smart; so there is no relevance. *Shrugs* We just see it as a difference because we're this way, they're that way, it's easier to judge.


Aspies can be just as ignorant as NTs, I wouldn't say stupid. Ignorance and stupidity are 2 different things, although they kinda go hand in hand, as ignorance severely limits intellectual capacity. But an ignorance person can still be very intelligent as for inside their little box of ignorance they choose to live in.
I'd still say ignorance will ultimately cost an individual because as I said it limits their intellectual capacity and their capacity for over-all awareness. There are bad NTs and bad aspies, good NTs and good aspies. I do not identify much with how chav tries to make everything into an "aspies are perfect and NTs are all evil" scenario.
But an aspie can't really be stupid, our brains are clinically and diagnostically wired for a trade-off, intellect for social skills. If an aspie were stupid, he'd have to be literally brain dead, because nothing would account for the void in chemical processing of their brain. An aspie CAN be ignorant. And there are plenty of those around.
If you can't look at yourself, or your own people, critically, then your failing to keep an open mind. If you can't view yourself or your own critically... You'd be a lot like Othilia (who most likely can not ever question the pre-dominant feminist opinion nor their hatred of men, nor Clinton's marxist background) .
Aspies are a minority, however I do not cling to "PCness" either to build me an unfair double standard against NTs, or to back a bias view against them. Although I would like to see aspies grow in acceptance and integrating into mainstream society on an equal basis... But not on a PC superiority basis. Some food for thought.... Reguardless of your race, gender, religion, or nationality, etc.... political and religious doctrines can also count as one's own people.



gekitsu
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15 Mar 2008, 10:24 am

Psychlone wrote:
While I personally do not support creationism, I would like to point out there is not enough evidence yet to completely rule out the possibility of a divine intelligence.


absolutely right. its rather the kind of media/popularity-phenomenon - how hardcore and extreme people became. how distorted the whole discussion actually became, including the discussion of not teaching evolution in schools anymore. i mean how twisted is that? scientific theories dont claim to be about the "true" nature of things anyway, and they never ever come near explaining WHY something happens, scientific theories hands down present the highest percentage of working solutions.
everybody is free to believe or not to believe in creation by a divine intelligence, but abusing religion to explain HOW something happened and abusing science to encompass WHY something happened - and considering that philosophers at 1000 a.d. (most namely avicenna, a muslim) had so much more intelligent concepts on how these two dont even interfere with each other, when taken for what they are.

and no matter whether there is a divine intelligence and ultimate good and evil, a president proclaiming an axis of evikl which he is out to fight for the glory of god and whatnot... sorry, but buying into something like that as a proper president (and proper presidential behaviour) is really nothing short of electing a hitler figure in present day, preaching about different races and how this race is holy and that race must be gotten rid of.



Sand
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15 Mar 2008, 11:14 am

One point that deserves consideration is that, in a commercial society where the populace must be convinced to pay for all sorts of services and goods that have, at best, minimum value, it is very useful to educate the populace towards gullibility.



iamnotaparakeet
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15 Mar 2008, 2:17 pm

gekitsu wrote:
Psychlone wrote:
While I personally do not support creationism, I would like to point out there is not enough evidence yet to completely rule out the possibility of a divine intelligence.


absolutely right. its rather the kind of media/popularity-phenomenon - how hardcore and extreme people became. how distorted the whole discussion actually became, including the discussion of not teaching evolution in schools anymore.


The intelligent design movement is not about ridding the classroom of the scientific theory of evolution, rather it says that frequency of allele shift over time alone is insufficient for developing the biochemical level machinery which is supposed to occur naturally. It doesn't name who or what the designer is, just that under current scientific data and mathematic concepts that exist now that the a priori rejection of non naturalistic phenomena may itself half to be rejected. Evolution is still valid, but it's not the savior of the militant atheist anymore.



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15 Mar 2008, 8:43 pm

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That's how bad the Democratic party has gotten. If Obama wants to be president, then he needs to tell his supporters to calm this kind of rhetoric or else he'll never be elected president. A president is supposed not only lead, he has to UNITE our country - not divide it as is happening now. If the Democrats don't get their sh*t together, McCain will win in a landslide, no matter WHO the Democratic nominee is. Right now, Hillary and Obama are fighting like a couple of school children while McCain looks on from his loftier position as being the 'adult' in all of this.


Actually, according to Intrade, Obama has a 43.9% chance of winning the general election (McCain has a 38.6% atm and Clinton 17%); not to trying to offend, but your statement seems to be exaggerated considering Obama is favored to win presently. There is a saying that any publicity is good publicity and right now Obama is receiving quite a bit of it compared to McCain.



The_Q
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15 Mar 2008, 10:25 pm

Psychlone wrote:
Who said Obama was a Muslim? I never did, and I personally don't really care either way. But I think you are targeting me with your offensive post because I stated in another thread that Hillary was a socialist. Well, I do stand by that statement and it doesn't have a thing to do with an African Proverb she may have quoted.

Need more details? Well, take a look at her voting record, for one thing. The individual doesn't factor into anything she stands for. Look at "Hillary CARE" for a perfect example of this.

Finally, take a look at this quote:

"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society." [Hillary Clinton, 1993]

Now compare that to this quote:

"The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood." [Adolph Hitler, quoted in Hitler, A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock (Harper Collins, NY)]

Do you see a similarity? Socialism is about making humans into worker bees for the collective hive, and this is what Hilary stands for in both her rhetoric and in her voting record.


That's a poor comparison. Socialism and National Socialism are two very different things. The quote by Hitler you provided demonstrates this when he mentions Marxism. NS is a perversion of Socialism.

Edit:

"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society."

At first glance this may appear to be something a socialist would say, however, we have no idea about the context it was in. Judging by what I've seen of her in the past few years, Hilary is no socialist. I might actually like her if she had leanings in that direction.


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16 Mar 2008, 3:42 pm

I have to admit, most people are gullible. They'll vote for Huckabee because he's Christian, for Hill because she's a woman, for Romneybecause he's not McCain, for Obama because he's not Hill.

Kids at my school all think Obama is a muslim. Im not kidding. MIND NUMBING. Really. They're all Christian with Jewish names, but theyre not Jewish....sometimes people dont really think. That's why the media is so successful.



Othila
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17 Mar 2008, 3:16 am

Well I don't like to argue with quotes because like biblical passages it so easy to co-opt them into what you think they really mean as opposed to what the hell the person was really saying. I suppose that is why politicians and evanglists are such great buddies given they need a lot of great speech writers at their disposal to make every syllable out of their mouth pure gold.

That being said the famous African proverb is the "it takes a village quote." This is not soley a socialist concept. More of a humanist one I would think. A reference to the fact that the environment one grows up in does play a major part in how that individual later grows up in life.

"

Quote:
We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society." [Hillary Clinton, 1993]


Well believe it or not some people think life is more than just who ever gets the most toys wins. I won't have worded it that way as I am not an utilitarian but few can argue that setting up a society in which only a marginal few basically own everything ( don't piss off my electricity company or you will have to move out of my state :lol: ) is somehow a more positive or a more free state than say breaking up these rich individualists monopolists who only care about profits over everything else including their own planet. I don't really like living in a society that tortures animals to save a few bucks, pollutes lakes because they don't give a s**t who has to use it as a water source, and basically just makes people hope for a Robespierre in their mist. Talk about history repeating itself.

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The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood." [Adolph Hitler, quoted in Hitler, A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock (Harper Collins, NY)]


Hitler was a pseudo intellectual. Need I say more. Oh what the hay. There are two groups of people that Hitler hated with a passion in his early days: Socialists and Jews. Now granted he probably started really hating the former because a lot of them especially the leaders of the movement were the latter. However he happened to live in a time where socialist parties throughout the world were notoriously popular. Also you have to take into account that Hitler rose in power after one of the bloodiest human conflicts in history. WW1 really messed his generation up along with the influenza. It doesnt surprise me that Hitler along with others subverted other peoples' work and ideas to fit his own purposes. Just look how he murdered darwin!

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Do you see a similarity? Socialism is about making humans into worker bees for the collective hive, and this is what Hilary stands for in both her rhetoric and in her voting record.
[/quote]

Look we are treated like those bees whether you acknowledge it to yourself or not. I don't mean to go all Matrix but the capitalist society is just as obsessed with putting everyone in their place as any other political system. That's what politics is all about making order out of chaos. The hive is already here. I see Americans as the biggest conformists on the history of the planet. Why is that? It's because we as a nation spend billions on studying what makes people buy one brand over the other. If anything we are already in a Brave New World hell. You consider it some virus of socialism I consider it some virus of neo-feudalism. I always say that libertarians and socialists have the most in common. It's like the old george carlin speel about anti-abortionists hating gays when they should be natural allies considering gays as a group are having the fewest abortions.



Othila
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17 Mar 2008, 4:12 am

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Neither one of them are ready to be President, in my view, and that only leaves McCain. He would only be a continuation of George Bush
.

How can a continuation of how the nation is going be a better route than rolling the dice and having Clinton or Obama in the white house. At least with the Clintons I know that they know what the hell they are doing in the white house and with Obama I know foreign relations would drastically improve. What bothers me about McCain is that 1) he is an old man and statistically men don't live that long after they hit their seventies. 2) he isnt a maverick so much is he just want's his party in power for 09 to make history (hasnt been since FDR since same party was in office for 3 conseuctive terms).


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McCain will win, though, simply because the Democratic party hasn't had an unassailable candidate in years. If the Democratic party keeps trying to force Socialism down our throats, before long there will be no more Democratic Party. Most Americans are 'middle of the road,' and so far, there isn't one candidate out there of any party who fits the bill.


To me that just sounds like propaganda. What about bush shoving the Patriot's Act down our throats or promising illegals amnesty so their families would vote for him back in 04? Or basically just acting like a spoiled brat everytime the congress tries to do their job? Is an oligarchy really better economically for the nation? It doesnt seem like it. True the democrats have been really whoring themselves out for the poor vote by promising social incentives like healthcare and cheaper higher education. I don't think social improvments are such a terrible thing not everyone has a rich daddy to pay for their education or can afford health insurance. The democrats haven't become more socialist in their thinking, people have just become more callous towards it's most vulnerable citizens. Which is just going to bite them in the ass when crime rates go up and the prison doors start revolving again due to overcrowding.

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The warnings of a fracture in the Democratic party are pointless -it's already happened
.

I blame the media for this. We have many months of press coverage to go before November so the media must come up with endless stories to keep the people entertained. I don't buy that democrats won't go to the polls just because their favorite wasn't picked as a presidential nominee.

Quote:
It's split on racial and gender-specific lines. When I listened to a radio talk show the other day (a Republican one), a black female activist got on and was saying something to the effect of "If Hillary takes the nomination away from him [Obama], there will be a repeat of the 1968 Democratic primary," (riots, general unrest, yadda, yadda).


Again you really got to hate the media for this stuff. Where they get people to say such crap is beyond me. People are too lazy these days to riot except when their drunk on St Patties day and they ran out of beer. This plays right into the Repub's hands which makes me wonder which party really owns the media :roll: . How great for McCain that Democratic pundits are pecking their own eyes out at the most inane comments imaginable. Yes blacks are voting for Obama in the 80 percentile but unfortunately they don't mention that blacks make about around 20% of the US population which is why Hill was able to squeeze out a win in those big important states. Another thing that really bugs me is that the media isn't talking about the injustice of big states like TX, OH, CA, and NY basically having all the control in who is the next prez.


Quote:
said that all white women hate Obama for running as the First Black President (picking up on comments made by Geraldine Ferraro early in the week), I had to pull my car over. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry, or to tear the radio out of my car. So has it come to this? All white female Hillary supporters are RACIST now? What a load of crap! I hate this attitude Obama supporters have that says, "either you're with us or you're a racist." What utter, total BS.


That is pretty lame. Ferraro had a point and ironically she even mentioned that it was her femaleness that got her that VP slot back in the 80s. So is she a sexist too for acknowledging the obvious. I would like to think that most Obama supporters arn't like that.


[
Quote:
i]That's[/i] how bad the Democratic party has gotten. If Obama wants to be president, then he needs to tell his supporters to calm this kind of rhetoric or else he'll never be elected president.


But that is just the thing. How or why should a political candidate be blamed for what one of his or her supporters say. To me it seems bad for the Dems because it takes the focus off their political issues. However I wish more people in the media werent so greedy for a story and that most people including the media would stop caring about the soapbox supporters and pay attention to the actual canidates.

Quote:
If the Democrats don't get their sh*t together, McCain will win in a landslide, no matter WHO the Democratic nominee is.


Thats what drives me up the wall about this election. Because the dem candidate is between a female and a black man there has to be a story about it everyday because it's a first and than that is where the focus and drive is for every stupid story that comes into play. At this point i really don't care about race and gender and I just want the dems to make up their damn mind and pick one so they can focus on beating MCCain in November.



Othila
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17 Mar 2008, 5:16 am

The fact that you think ignorance is a trait that not every human has in some capacity kind of makes you ignorant. No offense but I suppose you never heard of the old saying that the more one knows about something, the more they realize how little they know about it. I wasn't even going to respond to your post until you dragged my name in it.

As for stupidity well show me a human who isn't stupid in some capacity and I will either declare you insane or declare that human the next messiah.


Quote:
There are bad NTs and bad aspies, good NTs and good aspies. I do not identify much with how chav tries to make everything into an "aspies are perfect and NTs are all evil" scenario.


Arn't you in the same boat as Chav by labeling aspies and NT using a good/evil spectrum. I would seriously recommend you watch the movie Crash at this point.

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If you can't look at yourself, or your own people, critically, then your failing to keep an open mind. If you can't view yourself or your own critically... You'd be a lot like Othilia (who most likely can not ever question the pre-dominant feminist opinion nor their hatred of men, nor Clinton's marxist background) .


You don't know me well enought to know how I look at myself or other people since my postings are only a small part of my total thoughts on any subject. I admit the older you get the more jaded everything looks and I am not as willing to be open-minded to opinions that I know from my own experience are pure crap. What is a pre- dominant feminist? IF you read any of Simone Beauvoir's work maybe you won't be so critical of my motives as to why my feminist leanings are existential and socialist in nature. I guess I should point out at this point that I am not a liberal feminist. The main difference between us is theoetical in nature. Liberal feminists think that by evening out the playing field using affirmative action and through the use of family friendly government and corporate incentives that women will be equal with men. I see this as putting a bandaid on a festering wound and just hoping that the leg doesn't fall off because of gangrene. Given that their is a biological root coupled with sociological reason for why patriarchy started in the first place i think liberal feminists fail themselves when they write policies that force women into dependence to either the state or a man. Mandatory child support is a bigger failure than the war on the drugs. I am far from being a man hater and I don't think liberal feminists are man haters either I just think they are looking for simple solutions for complex problems. Beavoir being Satre's lover can't exactly be condemned as a man hater. And considering that the majority of famous feminists in history were married or had male lovers (unless they were gay) kind of makes the man-haters theory ludicrous. My goal isn't to subjugate men. By my theory as to how sexism started that would be impossible anyway since men don't have uteruses. Why is a feminist in the 21st century always associated with hating men? I admit like Courtney Love I feel like a gay man trapped in a female body but that doesn't mean I hate men. I think being left handed ( testorine link) I probably can understand the male condition more so than most woman.

I also think that unlike you in my posts I am more willing to see the other side of the issue more so than you. Also unlike you I am more likely to prod the person as to why they feel or think they do. I am a naturally inquisitive person which I guess can come off as aggressive . In any case I don't know how old you are but I was aware of the Clinton years and I know that they are conservative democrats. I don't have to believe in your truth just because it is convenient to you to believe in this Hill Pinko conspiracy. I think it's kind of ridiculous that you paint Obama as a zionist but Hill has to be the socialist even though both support a socialiized (not socialist) healthcare system.



Odin
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17 Mar 2008, 8:02 am

Aspie_Chav wrote:
Imagine you are playing Civilisation II
Image
To build your society would you invest in buggery and sexual sleaze or weapons of mass destruction.


I have every Civ game except the very first and god, is that game addicting. :lol:

Oh, and the Civ2 advisers are hilarious!


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17 Mar 2008, 8:05 am

People are gullible, period; it's not just am American thing. If British tabloids like the Daily Mail are any indication the Europeans believe in things just as stupid as the crap many Americans believe.


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17 Mar 2008, 8:14 am

Daily mail does look crappy, yes. That there's a market for it is one thing, how large the market is is another.