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myamata
Joined: 16 May 2008
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 Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 8:56 pm Post subject: |
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| beckham, yes it's a city, somewhere |
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shifter2009
Joined: 03 Sep 2006
Location: wisconsin
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| Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 9:30 pm Post subject: |
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| myamata wrote: |
| beckham, yes it's a city, somewhere |
How is that soccer boom he brought to America going? |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 11:29 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
a) I'm Canadian
b) The world is way better off with America than it would be without.
I got to make this point. The USA is the only nation on earth and in history, that, at the end of WWII, could have the whole world in grips, could have troops in every important part of the world, could have the sole ability to wipe out any nation that wanted said troops out and yet chose to simply give the world back to itself and left money, food, and babies with a claim to a future green card. Really, compare what Russia did to the territory it owned. Compare even how long it took the British to get out of its colonies.
America is a fine nation. Sometimes its leaders suck.
That said. Ah hem. When you are the only remaining super power, when you choose to ring the world with nuclear weapons, when you really do have the power to wipe out any nation at a whim, you do have to accept you're going to be held to a very very high standard.
We hold cops to higher standards. We hold teachers and doctors and judges to higher standards.
Same same. |
Totally true, America's not perfect, but pretty damn good considering the amount of power. Anyway, you could give people paradise itself (no biblical allusion intended) and they'd still find some way to feel outraged and tear it down. Pretty much just the way humanity is, no surprise there, but in the meantime America will just keep on trucking. |
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red_devil
Joined: 30 Jun 2008
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:15 am Post subject: |
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| uberscheisse wrote: |
much of my assessment of what western governments do in africa hinges on 2 things.
first
"what can we take?"
second
"what can we get away with?"
anyone who doesn't see the future of africa as being something less like colonization and more like the matrix is a fool. |
Those two make up the joke that is..."International Policy", except they combine it in one sentence: Is this in the best "interest" for the United States of America? |
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ceadem
Joined: 11 Dec 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 8:41 am Post subject: Re: Since people are so eager to criticize America... |
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who's we? through anthropomorphizing a plot of land do you take credit through affiliation of this 'something good for the world'. damn nationalism. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 11:31 am Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
| ...you could give people paradise itself (no biblical allusion intended) and they'd still find some way to feel outraged and tear it down. |
| Quote: |
Two people drift in a lifeboat on an uncharted sea. One says, "There! I seen an island. Our best chance is to go ashore, build a shelter, and await rescue." The other says, "No, we must go farther out to sea and hope to find the shipping lanes. That is our best chance." Unable to agree, the two fight, the lifeboat capsizes, and they drown.
This is the nature of humanity. Even if only two people are left in the entire universe, they will come to represent opposing factions. |
Perhaps Battlestar Galactica's Edward James Olmos is right: we are not going to make it, in the long run. As a species, that is. Nothing is good enough. And anything that emerges as an organizing system, such as the capitalist system and today's American govt, which has policed it since the Second World War, will ultimately be denounced and attacked as irredeemably corrupt and evil. As a colleague, a Canadian national, recently told me, "anything but this nightmare that we live in." So people add pebble after pebble of negative information onto the antiAmerican pile, hoping that, sooner or later, they might provoke an avalanche that will bring the whole thing down.
What might emerge after that is anybody's guess. |
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nateium
Joined: 21 Aug 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| ["anything but this nightmare that we live in." |
I've heard that kind of sentiment before to and it baffles me. What nightmare? When has the human species ever been better off than we are now? |
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A2Steve
Joined: 10 Nov 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
pfft! Americans.  I spoke to one the other day who had never heard of David Beckham - fancy that!
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David beckham, that's the poseur from England who thought he could do what no other forigner could do in America. Make soccer popular. If Pele couldn't in the 70s......
America already has a Crowned Prince of Football.... AMERICAN football. And his name is Tom Brady, NE Patriot and Michigan Wolverine. 
At least Beckham gets to sleep with a Spice Girl. Now, Tom slept with an actress and S. American supermodel, and knocked both up within about a month or two, but who's quibbling over details? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 9:52 pm Post subject: |
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| nateium wrote: |
| What nightmare? When has the human species ever been better off than we are now? |
It derives from several sources, which all differ from person to person. The people I know, colleagues in a social sciences dept., cite, in alphabetical order: Hannah Arendt's work on "power" and "totalitarianism," Marxism-Leninism, and the ideals and standards of measurement it established, and George Orwell's 1984.
What nightmare? In short, many have concluded, in effect, that America is Oceania, and, as Orwell says, no different in any significant way from Estasia or Eurasia, the other totalitarian superstates.
I agree with your response, by the way. But the "nightmare" interpretation/allegation reappeared yet again in historian Linda K. Kerber's historical address on "statelessness in America." And only a week or so ago, my colleague told me that he understood the idea: anything but this. Tear it down. I cited Stalinist Russia, Mao's China, and the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia. And he responded that they did not represent true Communism and could not stand as indicators of what the left would construct once it toppled and destroyed the current order of things. This notwithstanding, I remain concerned, especially when people such as Michael Moore stand in their vanguard. |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 2:45 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| especially when people such as Michael Moore stand in their vanguard. |
Michael Moore is not a communist. Being a critic of a capitalist system that uses humans as if we are a renewable resource and then discards them when no longer useful is not enough to make him or anyone, a violent revolutionary. He's too damn rich, for one thing, as conservatives are fond of pointing out. And he's in nobody's vanguard but his own.
And I think he'd be as amused as I am to see himself in the company of Hannah Arendt, Orwell, and the others you mention. I think he's in better company when you go quoting tv science fiction to hammer down some dark and pessimistic view of the human species ... except that he's funnier, of course.
You know what America gets the most flak for? Not living up to our ideals. I think Mario Cuomo made a speech a few dozen years ago and talked about "a shining city on a hill." That's how the world sees us, and that's why we get shat on when people discover we are really "just a some guys, you know?"
But ... we did come up with these ideals, though. Several other places arond the world looked at them, looked at what we were up to, and decided to go after it also. You set a goal, you shoot for it. Do you get blamed because you missed it this time? Maybe, but you keep shooting for it anyway.
And then you give a shrug at all the ones who didn't bother set a goal and try to do anything that hadn't been done before.
Is the world a better place because Americans tried a few things here and there? Bet your ass it is. Criticize us all you want, you won't say worse than we say about ourselves, and that's part of our strength, too.
Talk ill of us, but do it with love, or do it without love and confess to all that you are less than garbage. And I say that because the kind of hate that people around the world express about the US can only get its energy from a sense of love that has been twisted and disappointed. Go suck an egg if you think differently.
Oh, and do have a nice day. |
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xingyiman
Joined: 12 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 11:36 pm Post subject: |
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| ReeseDog wrote: |
| David who? |
He's that dude who's married to that Spice girl. |
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