Fucking conservatives. Or conservative liberals. Or whatever, I dunno.
So, again, on my post-election post, a comment: Anonymous said... Oh man, you need a lesson in international politics, economics and foreign policy.You seldom attack the strong - you attack those that will give you strategic positioning during a war. Guess which was the country the US attacked after Pearl Harbor? It was the French colony (who were our buddies) of Morocco.You cannot attack Saudi Arabia or Pakistan directly - they are powerful, and attacking them would affect our (and the world’s) economy. You need to play your strategies out very carefully. The US is buddies with Pakistan, while holding on to their nukes, and making sure it does not fall over to Afghanistan or any of the Arab nations. And yeah, talking of which, I can understand Pakistan - but India? Why would any one want to attack India?We’ve a presence in Israel, and (hopefully) soon in Iraq and Iran. We have already started out on North Korea, and that will soon be taken care of, too. Bush is an excellent choice. At times of war, you need someone able. There was a reason Winston Churchill was voted into power during WW-2.And oh, speaking of Kerry. He wanted to “strongly warn” Pakistan. And do what? Attack them? So that Jihadis get hold of their nukes and they nuke India, India nukes Pakistan, China joins in and we all die? I do not want the highschool debate captain, I want someone who can stand his ground (and not change his decisions every other minute). I do not want someone who will make us into yet another welfare state, but rather someone who will reinforce an economic system that’s been proven to work - capitalism.Bush ain’t the best President, but he sure as hell is _leagues_ ahead of Kerry. Lay off whatever crack that you’re smoking. That first post was at 2 in the morning. I love how they came back to my blog, like, two hours later, teehee. At 4:40 AM, Anonymous said... And yes, I must also add this -- even during the peak of the Cold War, we never attacked Russia directly, and neither did they attack us directly. We played out our enmity out there in other countries, such as Afghanistan. It is stupidity to face your enemy head on, especially when doing so involves very great risks. On the other hand, it is stupidity to ignore them, too. Kerry would have spent all his time changing his opinions on these issues, while Islamic fundamentalism would be on the rise -- he is too weak to control or take a stance. Okay, my rebuttal. Enjoy, kiddies. You'll note this person elected to remain anonymous, as I think all the attention scared Princess away. So, anonymouse, here we go: 1. I am WELL aware of the strategic positioning required in times of war, genius. And your points are all good--I'll concede you that, despite your assholish delivery (smoking crack? seriously. Come up with something better). And yet, they seem to be YOUR reasoning for this war, not the president's--or at least not the reasoning that was offered. He and his spin doctors have been feeding everyone lines about humanitarian efforts, reducing terrorism, finding WMDs. By your argument, if indeed his strategy is the clever positioning your suggest, the current president is a liar. Hm, an alleged flip-flopper, or a proven liar? What a choice. You'll also note I never suggested we attack India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea or China, or anyplace else, for that matter. I was making a point, jackass. Point being, we don't attack countries that genuinely posess nuclear capability--something the original commenter, Princess, claimed was a reason she would prefer Bush to Kerry (fear of "mushroom clouds") so by her logic, her reasoning for choosing Bush was flawed. Plain and simple. Jihadis--already on the rise, or haven't you noticed all the pissed off Iraqis who weren't so thrilled with our "help," as this administration swore they would be? Not to mention adding fuel to an already raging fire of hatred extremists hold for the US. "We are NOT lying infidel bullies who run roughshod over the rest of the world! And just to prove it, we're going to go in and royally kick the shit out of this little country over here! It'll be over really fast, and it won't even cost that much. It'll be, like, war-lite! Yeah! And it has nothing at all to do with oil money, or regional powermongering. It's about saving the people from a tyrant! About finding WMDs! Shut up bitches, we're helping you!" Yeah, okay. What in the world would make jihadis mad about that? Silly bitches. Ah, the welfare state versus capitalism. Jesus god, I hate this conversation. Fuck, this wasn't even part of my original post, but since you brought it up, fine. Listen, capitalism works for a few people at the top of a pyramid, and leaves the rest to struggle and die. The thing is, it provides its own spin: the presence of a successful few gives the fucked many the impression that they, too can live the dream, if only they try hard enough. But they can't. Capitalism is a zero sum game. If I'm succeeding--really succeeding--it is because I have royally screwed someone else, say, by paying my employess shit wages (It cracks me up when hippies make arguments about how capitalism is a failing system becuase we have a growing gap between rich and poor--no, actually, it's working too well). But if you need backs to step on to get to the top, you better be goddamn sure those backs will be able to continue to support you. If you want to sell your shit, there has to be enough money spread around for us stoopid poor to buy it. And lately, my friend, not so much, the money spread around, huh? I don't think that anybody here is asking to be totally taken care of by the state, okay. All anybody wants is to maybe have a shot at some of the opportunities inherently available to those at the top--decent education and healthcare, to be able to afford rent AND food with the paychecks you get at the end of a two-job, 60 hour work week. I come from a blue-collar family, and I have been privately employed by people in the much discussed top 1 percent of the economic ladder. The. World. Is. Different. For. Them. The opportunities are unfathomably different. To ask that all children have access to the kind of support available to the children of the rich is not begging for handouts, it's good policy that will ensure enough people minorly succeed and stay happy enough with the staus quo that the masses don't go apeshit and start seriously thinking about revolution rather than merely head-bobbing to Eminem and Rage Against the Machine. Damn. And wanting someone to at least fucking control the rising costs of healthcare (in a real way, like limiting the amount drug companies can charge for their products, not capping liability suits, because, funnily enough, public healthcare and limiting drug costs seem to work okay in other countries) wouldn't be so bad, either. I'm lucky, now, having a job that provides health insurance at low cost to me. But for four years, I worked multiple jobs and was totally without a safety net--I watched my various employers manipulate my scheduling, for instance, so I wouldn't work enough to be eligible for insurance--and falling ill would literally have ruined me and my family, and that is fucked up. How would millions of illness-induced bankruptcies affect the economy--oh wait, that's happening more frequently now, isn't it, and it's fucking the system up, eh? Those crazy defaulters. (Remember when the people who didn't pay bills were just the easily-stereotyped-as-lazy-and-stupid minority poor? Not so easy to dismiss inequality now that Joe and Jane Average are suffering, is it?) But back to the Bush v. Kerry issue. Again, you only assume that Kerry would be unable to take a firm stance or ignore problems, and that "Islamic fundamentalism" would rise unchecked under him. It has already happened under Bush, who took a stance that directly contributed to the rise in fundamentalism, and who will continue to plod along this path, god help us all. And all of this, by the way, this little back and forth we have, does not change the fact that, for a whole heck of a lot of Bush voters, the deciding factors were not WMDs or capitalism v. the welfare state. They were gay marriage and abortion. And for many who did consider war and the economy the big issues, their reasoning, like Princess_1979's, was based on quarter- and half-truth soundbites coming from Bush's spin machine, not any genuine or considered fear of a Mideast power vacuum and how it will affect world economy. And that's very, very, very troubling to about half of us who have to live here with the rest of you shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later crazy ass motherfuckers, okay? Now, I have other things to do, but I think I replied to all of your points, anonymouse. Thanks for stopping by. Come back soon. Oh, and I do hope nobody missed the "Let's change our own rules, you know, the ones we drafted to try to show how morally superior we are to Democrats, because now one of our own has fucked up and might be subject to them" maneuever pulled by Republicans in the House last week.
posted by Sid @ 11/22/2004 11:56:00 AM
9 Comments:
Well, first of all my apologies. It was not my intention to belittle or slight you, I was merely using language common in the kinda boards that I frequent. I'm sorry if it came across as condescending, I assure you that it won't happen again.
Secondly, I'm not a "fucking" conservative - although I can see your reasons for judgine me thus, I'm largely liberal and not even a Christian to begin with. But it just so happens that I support Bush against Kerry, nothing more. Had the democrats provided a better choice, I would have gladly chosen him/her. But that is something that's been beaten to death so I'll just let that be.
And thirdly, I'm not the other poster that you refer to (Princess), I just came across your Blog and found this to be of interest, nothing more.
I'll have the welfare-state rebuttals for later, but I just felt that I ought to let you know _why_ I feel that war is a necessity.
>Again, you only assume that Kerry would be unable to
>take a firm stance or ignore problems, and that
>"Islamic fundamentalism" would rise unchecked under
>him. It has already happened under Bush, who took a
>stance that directly contributed to the rise in
>fundamentalism, and who will continue to plod along
>this path, god help us all.
It already happened, and not under Bush. It started in Munich in 1972. What let it take off was the civilized world, that could not fathom the idea that men have killed for religion and could do so again.
The flames were fanned in the skies overhead and in Iran, when the civilized world dealt with airline hijackings and hostage-takings as criminal affairs, things to be taken on one-by-one. Civilized men, unused to the religious hate, failed to recognize evil for it was.
But the piece-de-resistance came in the 90s in Kosovo and elsewhere, when the US refined warfare to mean lobbing Tomahawk and Cruise missiles. War with tactics with all the refinement and elegance of a Manhattan socialite gathering. Tactics that completely ignored the fact that you always need boots on the ground to win. Tactics that aroused laughter in the jihadis as they scurried away.
Through the 80s, the jihadis attacked writers (Rushdie, Nasreen), bombed buildings, embassies and ships. Then 9/11 happened.
The boldness hasn't ceased across the pond, in "calm down, man!" Europe. Pim Fortuyn was killed. So was van Gogh. The headscarves fracas in France is a grim reminder of the uneasy calm in that country as it refuses to bring its minority muslims into the mainstream even as they exceed 10% of the population (by contrast, India with 12% Muslims, 800 years of integration still suffers tensions and riots)
I look at the world and see evil that is yet to come. It is sad that not everyone sees it coming.
War is bad, but worse than war is the depraved moral condition that nothing is worth fighting for. --John Stuart Mill, paraphrased.
I believe our way of life is worth fighting for.
Well, thanks. I hope that wasn’t sarcasm, but anyway I just wanted to address a facet of gay stand since you said many people may have voted for Bush for that reason.
The reason for gays marrying is that people should be able to marry who they love - suppose I love my dog very much? (and many people do)
I want to marry a cow. From India. Which would make the cow a US citizen and accord it the rights and privileges. Which would be unfair to all other cows around the world. And accord them legal status as humans.
Why should only folk who love same-sex be given special favors?
Would you say, it should only be between humans? If so, why can’t I marry my Mom or my Sister?
No? Not within the family?
What about (the many more) who pine away in love? Why should they be discriminated against?
Why can’t I marry Catherine Zeta Jones? After all, marriage is just a ceremony. I mean, let her be happy with Michael Douglas, but let me marry her.
No? You’d say it should be mutual.
Hmm, so you’ve already proven yourself to be prejudiced - only humans, not within family and should be mutual.
We're just adding one more -- only between a man and a woman.
Where will you draw the line?
Continuing along the same lines, I believe I am a wolf. If transsexual MTFs can get married to their male boyfriends, then why can't I marry a wolf?
More than that, if my wolf eats my gay neighbor shouldn't the wolf as a human spouse enjoy the same rights? As a human? And a US citizen?
Which means, in some of these blue states, no death penalty. Funny stuff, eh.
I wasn't being sarcastic then. But goddammit, Anon, just when I grant you have a legitimate viewpoint, you come at me with some wack shit about marrying cows. Are you really even the same anonymous, or an impostor?
Okay, listen, last I checked, animals weren't considered whos, they were considered whats, so your "let me marry an animal if folks should be able to marry who they love" idea is just plain nonsensical. You're talking about interspecies relationships all of a sudden. Apples and oranges, my friend, apples and oranges.(You sure you're not a republican? That is a classic Republican tactic--"if...then" apparently black-and-white relationships between two wildly divergent issues. And don't even get me started on how close this debate has just come to some seriously foul conversation about how, until very recently, interracial marriage was illegal in many places, because of rules written when whites believed the rest of us really were animals...)
Even if it wasn't, though, I'd be willing to bet that the number of people who would do something like that is small enough that, if that were the tradeoff for legalized gay marriage, I'd say okay. I don't know why you'd assume I wouldn't. Did you think that would be irrational or extreme? Perhaps as extreme and irrational as having to fall back on "what if I want to marry my dog" examples to try to force someone to back off support of gay marriage? And why is giving two people in love the right to marry a "special favor?" A good 90% of the world (conservative estimate following the one-in-ten theory) already enjoys that right, so what we are talking about is not a matter of granting "special favors," but of alleviating longstanding "special discrimination."
I honestly don't know why marriage between relatives is codified by law as wrong, but I suspect it has more to do with protecting innocent/impressionable children from lecherous relatives than any desire to thwart romance between close family members. Again, such a rare occurence, I can't see that posing much of a threat on its own. Again, such a bizarre and desperate example, I cannot believe you even considered using it to defend an anti-gay marriage stance.
Well, you've got my answer on those issues. Thing is, I'm not the one drawing lines, dear. You are. Marry your damn dog. If the dog likes you back in that special way, and it will stop you from yapping about gays getting married, go for it. As long as you appoint someone to act on behalf of the (non-speaking, barely comprehending) dog at the reading of your will, then, okay, groovy. I see no problems there. Do you? Seriously, what are you in particular and we as a societly losing by offering people the the legitimacy and shelter of an institution conservatives claim front-back-and-sideways should be the cornerstone and salvation of our society, anyway?
I just don't know what else to say to this. Seriously, this is the most ridiculous blogversation I've ever had. Just the fact that I've taken time out of my day to respond to this line of reasoning has me in disbelief.
It was kinda funny, though. ROFLMFAO @ wolf spouse eating gay neighbor=no death penalty in blue states. (Why did it have to be your gay neighbor? Harboring a little eensy weensy bias against gays, there?) In red states, you know the poor racoon would have been arrested and fried for the crime well before the dust had even settled, so wolfie wouldn't even have to worry about it...
Sid, you misconstrue my opinions -- I'm all for gay marriages. A lot of my very good friends are indeed gays, and I most certainly do respect their wishes to get married - it is between them and their partners, I have absolutely problem. I was merely trying to present the Conservative side of the argument for you.
Whatever I had mentioned had been legally proven by a bunch of UCLA law professors, who basically showed the legal gray-areas that would arise from making gay marriages legal.
Nonsensical? Why do you consider marrying an animal that I love nonsensical? Give me a logical reason why you think I cannot marry an animal that I'm in love with. That they are not the same species is not good enough, because then I can say that gays are not different gender. We just have differences in prejudice - nothing more.
Try telling childless parents who've adopted a dog and are close to the dog that it cannot be accorded the same status as human children - in many ways, they treat them as equals, if not better. My autistic cousin has a dog whom he really loves, the dog is more human to him than most people are.
If you cater to one particular group, you are still being prejudiced. Why should animal lovers be treated any differently? And consequently why _any_ group of people be treated any differently?
If you can call allowing gays to not marry special discrimination, I would say the same for not allowing me to marry Catherine Zeta Jones. You're not letting me marry someone I deeply love, care and is human. Why?
If you can give me a good reason why you think marrying animals should not be allowed, please let me know. If not, if we allow humans to marry animals, they become citizens. You cannot kill them. If we accord that right to animals, why not plants? I'm a tree hugger. Where will you draw the line? You draw the line where nature has drawn the line. Union of two people originated for the purpose of procreation, and that is all that shall be recognized. It is not Bush who is deciding, but nature who has decided this.
While you may find my argument ridiculous, it is quite valid and has a very well proven legal basis. But -- I'll tell you _why_ humans need to be accorded that respect -- if the consent needs to be mutual, the defendant is going to have a hard time proving that the animal provides for mutual consent. Possible, but quite hard.
Therefore, to get over one prejudice (man marrying man, or woman marrying woman), you use another (the need for mutual consent).
We still have a lot of prejudice to overcome, but the point remains that there are people who have their own preferences, likes and dislikes. Where would you draw the line?
Everyone has their own set of prejudices, and most people by their upraising hold true to theirs. Surprisingly, it even has a lot of validity although they may not be rationally aware of that validity.
My point was merely to highlight that while it is easy to dimiss one school of thought easily, it would be fatal to ignore the ramifications and consequences of a simple piece of legislation. If it is gay marriage today, one can only wonder what awaits us tomorrow.
Anyway, what I had meant to say was - do not judge the conservatives by their prejudices, we all have our own set of prejudices. Kerry would most certainly not be able to sanction an inter-species marriage, doesn't that make him look like a conservative in the eyes of some body?
They merely have different prejudices than yours. Different, but no less important. And oh, the welfare thing is on the way.
Hey there anon,
1. Re: the post on terrorism. I don't think I ever said terrorism was not a real threat, nor do I think others who oppose Bush over Iraq feel it isn't important. If there is one thing we all agree on, it's that 9/11, 3/11, recent allegedly-thwarted attacks in Britain, embassy-, nightclub- and hotel-bombings, hijackings, and on and on, are all very loud and clear messages--there is a real and growing problem with extremism that must be dealt with (and while it may have started in the seventies, it continues to grow under G.W.). I think what has so many of us up in arms is the fact that there was a bait-and-switch--we were attacked by al Quaeda, and yet we've spent billions crushing Saddam, with the only sign of Osama being the nyah-nyah home videos he releases now and again before "scurrying" back to whatever hidey-hole he passes time in while plotting our downfall. Why can we bring down an entire nation in 3 months but not find one man in three years--don't answer that, it's rhetorical, I know this movement is bigger than one man, and I know if I don't point that out you will try to answer. Hell, you'll probably try it anyway, lol.
Bush hasn't been shooting straight with the country from the beginning, and keeps insisting that if we only trust him a little more--with a little more money, a little more of our liberties, a little more credulity (the "aw-shucks-if-I-say-WMDs-are-there,-they're-there-and-if-Dick-says-there-was-a-link-between-Osama-and Saddam,-there-was-a-link,-why-do-you-need-to-see-proof of-everything" stance), well then things will be just peachy. Meanwhile, we are growing poorer, more internally divided, internationally detested (rather than just mocked and secretly envied) and have managed to alienate bloody everybody. And he's not making any of it better.
The point is, we feel as though they (Iraq and terrorism) are two separate (if tenuously connected) issues, but are being painted as the same, like we won't notice. WTF?
But of course, being a liberal, you understand all this already.... Nice imagery, BTW, in that post. This, I'm sure I must point out, because it looks insincere nestled alongside the last comment, is not sarcasm. Really. And there's no way to make it look better, so you'll have to take my word on that. Which is also not sarcasm alluding to the previous comments on Bush. Oh hell, forget it.
2. Re: gay marriage. Sigh. But. I thought I said that--you know--I would actually be willing to make the pet-marriage for gay-marriage trade. I'm crazy like that, I guess. Anyway, I do see your point, as the conservative devil's advocate.(And forgive me for thinking you personally held such opinions. I usually use those crazy quote squiggles to indicate an idea is not my own, so I figured you were making a personal argument.) Though I think the institution of marriage has historically had far more to do with property than procreation (and is thus a matter of society, not nature). Anyway, as it seems no one else has any interest whatsoever in this post (I've literally received more feedback on a picture of a teacozy) feel free to continue the conversation by emailing me at siddity_at_gmail_dot_com, if you haven't already grown bored of it. Also, do you have a blog? And can I visit? purty please?
How much fun would it be if you knew my identity? It's more fun this way :-)
Damn, I really haven't gotten the time to respond in detail.
Meanwhile, you can call me Joe Black, or Anonymous Coward, if you so wish. To answer your question - yup, I do blog. Will let you know, all in good time.
Damn. Just when I had decided you were Dizzy Girl linked over on Baby Girl's Blog. Are you ;p ? I was gonna blogroll her, too. Actually, I still will. Keep your friends close, and all that... and if you aren't her, at least you'll have a likeminded blog to visit, won't you?
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