[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Sabine Gallais

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"]The truth is that both sides equally have folks bent over. That ain't no conservative conspiracy, folks. How about we all make a deal. Let’s just call it as we see it. It’s a goddamned disaster – politics, that is. It’s one miserable failure after another, and yet the same old clowns have the unmitigated gall to get up before mankind and profess their really honest desire to do something about the raping and pillaging of America this time. Oh yes, just trust them this time and you’ll see. This time it’ll be better. The vote coming up in November isn’t about Republicans or Democrats. It’s about throwing all these criminals out on their ass for good. Every one of them. Lying, stealing, thieving bastards that they are.

A couple of questions. Firstly, if all politics is a disaster what do you replace politics *with*? America is a nation of 300 million people who do not have identical interests. There are close to 7 billion people on the planet who also have interests that are far from identical with any other given person. If there is a *better* way to manage the conflicting interests of that many people beyond some kind of political process, I'm all ears. Secondly, let's say we throw them all out--every last politician currently holding office and up for election is gone. Now what? Most of the people running for office have held some other elected office so that makes them a politician which, in what we will for the moment call your analysis, means that they are lying, stealing thieving bastards. So we can't vote for the incumbent because that person is a lying bastard and we can't vote for the challenger (unless they are a neophyte) because THEY are also lying bastards. So who, precisely, is left to vote for? Write in candidates?

So, go ahead. Enjoy your summer. Let the media continue to tell you what all this discomfort is about.

Funny thing is, one can be informed by taking in a variety of media sources and then filtering it through some kind of rational thought.

Let them jerk you around as before, telling you bullsh*t about how this one over here is going to do this for you and that one over there is going to do that for you.

I don't know about you but I don't expect anyone to 'do things for me', I expect elected officials to solve problems that are too large for any one person to solve themselves. For example, I have neither the means nor the skills to build a road but my local government does. I don't have the means or skills to negotiate international treaties, but my national government does. That's not 'doing things for me', that's doing things for the country that no one individual can take on by themselves.

And blah, blah, blah. Frankly, I am not going to watch this crap on TV any more until right before this election in November in order to confirm my suspicions that people fall for this nonsense over and over and over.

So, in other words, you have already concluded what will happen and any evidence you see will be taken as evidence ONLY of your foregone conclusion.

You have to keep in mind, these people in the media are able to basically package turds and sell it to y'all. It happens all the damn time. Just read the endlessly pedantic posts.

There are media people here? Who? Who here works in the media because I wasn't aware of anyone here doing so. Or are you folding BFP into the larger category of 'the media'?

You know, the easiest thing in the world is to take a flamethrower and just indiscriminately wave it around, shouting like some biblical prophet of old that it's all corrupt, all is lost and all are fools--except those who, of course, agree with you. It is quite a bit more difficult to actually come up with a cogent argument that actually deals with complexity on its own terms while, at the same time, breaking it down into digestible pieces. Your statements may or may not be accurate--there's really no way to evaluate them because they are largely content-less. By this I mean, for example "it's a goddamned disaster--politics, that is". Okay, so what? Maybe that's true but since the statement just sits there with not even the least suggestion as to how it could be made better or what politics could be replaced with, it comes off as nothing so much as a tantrum instead of an attempt to inform or get people to think about a subject deeply.

For my money, I will trust a news organization like the BBC or NPR or even The Economist (although I don't agree with about half of what I read there) over the likes of Alex Jones or any other conspiracy theorist who is "just telling the truth". The BBC, NPR and The Economist actually have something to lose because if they get it completely wrong too many times without correction eventually they lose all credibility. Alex Jones or any other conspiracy theorist you care to mention doesn't have to worry about credibility. If PrisonPlanet announced that a giant rock will hit the Earth tomorrow at 7:00 am Pacific time and at 9:00 am there still isn't a rock the people who buy into the conspiracy theories peddled there will simply pretend that the prediction wasn't made--OR that 'the government' moved the rock out of its path with lasers as part of a secret plot to hasten the coming of the One World Government--OR that when it was said Saturday 26 June 2010 at 7:00 am Pacific it meant a DIFFERENT Saturday on a *different* 26 June 2010. What they won't admit is "they got it wrong".