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Why I Love America

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General interest discussions, not necessarily related to depletion.

Re: Why I Love America

Unread postby smallpoxgirl » Wed 29 Nov 2006, 12:07:51

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Rage Against the Machine', 'B')elievin' all the lies that they're tellin' ya.
Buyin' all the products that they're sellin' ya.
They say "Jump!" and you say "How high?"
You brain dead?
You got a f----ing bullet in your head?
I love you PMS, but your level of political insight is incredibly juvenile. You gotta get past this high school civics class propaganda and delve into the real world. The melting pot is not about some fluffy-bunny Barney-Song-singing multicultural wonderland of diversity. The melting pot is about forming a tepid mass of brainless consumers(aka voters) who have no identity and no community except in the products that they buy.

King was a Christian minister. As such, he was heavily invested in the status quo. He spent most of his career chasing the "dream" of a multicultural candy land. About the time that he started waking up from his slumber and facing the hard realities of America, he got shot. You want insight into American race relations, you will find much more usefull insight from the likes of Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Bobby Seal, and Eldridge Cleaver.
"We were standing on the edges
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
What we thought would never end
Now is nothing more than a memory
The way things were before
I lost my way" - OCMS
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Re: Why I Love America

Unread postby mekrob » Wed 29 Nov 2006, 12:53:01

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'I') don't believe the climate doomers for a second. Record rains in Seattle, record cold temps up north. We're headed for an Ice Age.


So would you believe we weren't in a major depression in 1933 because you're neighbor's finances were getting better? You can't tell about a very large group from a small subset.

And how exactly does thinking we're headed towards an Ice Age not constitute being a "climate doomer"?
I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of God. - Rabia
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Re: Why I Love America

Unread postby PenultimateManStanding » Wed 29 Nov 2006, 21:22:54

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', 'm')uch more usefull insight from the likes of Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Bobby Seal, and Eldridge Cleaver.
I read those writings a long time ago. The kinds of schools I'm talking about are in some upscale neighborhoods and the black kids number less than 10% Whites are about a quarter of the kids and the majority are asians. These black kids have parents that got out of the bad parts of town. I've been there too. Very rough, mean types: I said hello to one kid once who sneered "I don't listen to no mutherfucking sub" 8O I had to stop a fight once between a little black boy who called a tall strong black girl a bitch. They started swinging at each other. Technically, I'm supposed to call security and stay out of it, but I always try to stop a fight. So I stood in front of the girl and talked calmly to her to talk her out of her rage. She was pinching my arm and looking past me at the boy she wanted to pulverize, with nostrils flaring. The fight stopped but I wound up with a nasty bruise on my bicep. The next day the cops took a photo of it, so I imagine the girl got into some serious trouble. That was years ago and I don't go to those schools in the tougher areas where the students are all black anymore. That's what you would call the "real world". These more pleasant areas where the kids are happier and rather color blind are real too. When the oil situation gats dire, the "fluffy-bunny Barney-Song-singing multicultural wonderland of diversity" will probably take a hit. But I don't get where you are coming from: you don't think a fairly harmonious blending of races is any improvement over the old racism of the past? Suppose for a moment, just hypothetically, that scientists figure out fusion energy, we move to a hydrogen economy or something and start building nanofiber space elevators and move to a type one civilization or something groovy like that, these kinds of improvements in race relations might well be expected to grow. That would be a good thing to me, even if it seems juvenile to you. But I don't want to let you down so here: I'm more progressive than you are, nya nya! :razz:
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Re: Why I Love America

Unread postby Zardoz » Wed 29 Nov 2006, 21:41:54

A timely essay on America's obsession with material goods:

Clueless in America: Feeding the Tape Worms of Desire

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.')..We cannot recognize that the American Dream is the world's nightmare. Our gluttonous wants, we think, supersede the right of other people to exist. The gilded highway is built upon the bones of the victims of genocide and empire, and that is what makes our ride into oblivion so smooth.

What can be said about a culture that is willing to destroy the biosphere, to create irreversible global climate change for the sake of private profit, and a few short decades of drunken exuberance and intemperance? In what kind of value system can the acquisition of material goods and services really outweigh the right of others to exist, including our own children and their children, not to mention more than thirty million species of flora and fauna that have as much right to live, if not more, than we do?...

...It can be seen that Americans are a spiritually starved people, despite bold proclamations of religiosity and faith. But at some level we must intuit that we have few freedoms and are slaves in an economic system that dehumanizes us into mere commodities and turns us into voracious consumers. We are not the free and fulfilled people we claim to be; we are the property of our employers, objects to be used for purposes not of our own choosing...

...Material goods and services are a poor substitute for inner tranquility and global community. We are a people bombarded by commercial media every waking hour of our lives. Our troubled existence is a matrix of distracting white noise from which the only escape is the calm slumber of death. The result is that few of us have ever had a true waking moment in our lives. We have replaced wild nature with Disney World and have forgotten which is real and which is bogus. We have recreated god in the image of capital and put him on our currency.

We're addicted to goodies. We can't get enough stuff. We want more and better shiny trinkets and toys. We're spoiled rich kids, desperate to fill the holes in our lives with material objects, hoping that somehow if we buy enough of the right ones, we'll feel better about our lives, and ourselves.
"Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
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