Did I ever say we should shrug off Bin Laden? Anyone who organizes forces to directly attack my home and threaten my future is clearly my enemy.
But am I morally superior to Bin Laden? I think I made it clear that my own selfish desires to live in a fictionalized version of 1950's Americana wearing Nike's and driving a gazz guzzling car at the cost of other people's lives shows that my morals are not the highest at this point.
Remember, the original idea of my posting in this thread is simply this:
All of the media is full of crap, not just Muslim anti-American newpapers. An American criticizing Muslim propaganda is like Bill Clinton and Congress approving the discharge of a B-52 pilot for adultery
Frickin' hypocrites. Grossly inaccurate information is everywhere, just look at the headlines and commercials during our Presidential elections.
Hangtime,
If I had the answer to the Life, the Universe, and Everything, I surely wouldn't post it on a BBS for free. Being a good little capitalist, I might share it with someone for the right price and a legally binding non-disclosure agreement.
More seriously, I don't have children and don't feel an overwhelming need to take responsibility for other people's children. They chose to have them in this crazy world, they can figure out how to raise them and make the world safe for them. I can't even figure out how to live in this world, so I am far from being qualified to raise children or tell other people how to raise theirs.
In all honesty, I would like to contribute to the future of my country and the world, but I have yet to figure out how. I was hoping I might help in the area of the space program since I feel that is ultimately where the future of the human race lies. But alas, we don't really have a space program since most people feel the cost of space exploration far outweighs the benefits. Why invest money in the technology that will permit us to leave the Earth when it is used up in the distant future when we can look out for our own personal interests today? Given the environment I live in, the most I can hope for is to join the rest of the silent majority living out there lives in suburban bliss. Maybe that's not the right answer, but in the absence of a better one I don't know what else to do.
You can criticize me for pointing out flaws in the U.S. and its role in the world without offering solutions. But the way I see it, it is kind of like movie critics. Do they have to know how to make a great movie to know whether or not they like someone else's movie? Will their opinion affect my opinion of the movie? Most of what I have said in these posts is purely my opinion from my viewpoint with some supporting examples to show why I feel the way I do. Of course I don't expect hardly anyone to agree with me, nor would this be any fun if they did.
By your half-empty/half-full glass statement, I am assuming that you understand that my goal is to maintain some sort of objectivity rather than being a hypocrite standing on a soapbox proclaiming anyone who disagrees with me must be an idiot. The only power I really have to affect anything in the "big game" in my current position is to vote for leaders that I think will make good decisions and to try to win support for those same leaders through semi-rational discussions with people that will change their minds if given a good enough reason. At the same time, in discussions like this thread, logical replies that point out fallacies in my own assumptions, thought patterns, and "facts" may cause me to change my definition of what is "best" for the world, my country, and of course, me.
I am human, I make plenty of mistakes. I am stubborn and do get angry and/or frustrated in the process of realizing I am wrong. I do openly acknowledge my mistakes when someone gets it through my thick skull.
In the process of thinking about all of the implications of what is being discussed in this thread, I realized something. Frequently, it is said it is the doom of men that they forget, leading to history repeating itself. The last post against me even said "how soon we forget". For the longest time I have agreed and supported that basic "fact". But after thinking a lot about it, I have to disagree. It seems like it is because we remember the past so well that things never change. We never forget or forgive someone who truly wrongs us. We always seek revenge or maintain the memory so that someone else can seek revenge for us in the future. Of course the act of revenge is wrong in its own way, and inspires the other side to seek revenge for that act. And so goes the never ending cycle of hatred and killing.
The only way I know to eliminate thousands of years of hatred would be for everyone to forget the past. If you didn't know you were Jewish or Arab or American, didn't know that people you never knew were killed by other people you never knew, or know that yesterday your neighbor stoned your son to death so today the police shot your neighbors...
It is the doom of men that they don't forget and pass on their pain and hatred to the next generation so they can maintain the status quo.
Of course who wants to give up the society that we have to live the simple hunter-gatherer life with little stress and few wars? But then again, who wants to give the best years of their lives to greedy companies so that they can raise a family only to send their sons and daughters off to die in wars fought to protect the interests of those companies?
I sure do wish "42" was the answer as it is in the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy! Somehow it makes so much more sense compared to my own perception of reality.
[ 11-02-2001: Message edited by: streakeagle ]
