THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DON'T GIVE A FUCK!!!

[adwinistrator]

It would be a lot more sensible, and a lot less extreme.

Anyone who considers themselves patriotic should feel a sharp twinge at the base of their skull whenever they're discussing which states, and which American citizens, should be purged from our nation.

That sharp twinge is your brain attempting to make you aware of the hypocritical cognitive dissonance that's part of your core ideology. It's a warning.

What are you, kidding? That core ideology is the very essence of America, I mean, the Civil Wars are the defining events, to this day in fact, it's been one long Civil Cold War with periodic hot war outbreaks, that's the story of your people.

I agree with you, that is the story of America's people. 240 years of bloody, factional power struggles. I do think it's slowly gotten better in the last 150 though.

Patriotism: vigorous support for one's country.
National identity: the sense of a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, language and politics.

Patriotism is putting your loyalty to the country before your loyalty to a faction.

Patriotism is not the same thing as national identity, even though it might be a part of it.

No one should feel the need to consider themselves patriotic if they're not, but unfortunately, part of our national identity is how patriotic we all are, even when we aren't.

[adwinistrator]

You do know why you keep fighting wars overseas, right? It's American Civil War by proxy, in order to avoid another Antietam, you basically take all the high explosive and drop it on the Vietnam's of the world instead, you hijack other people's civil wars, so you can get to killing and blowing shit up, it's a safety valve, if you couldn't bomb Vietnam & Co into the stone age, the tension would explode on Main Street USA, you need the overseas military adventures, just to blow off steam on some hapless patsy, lest you start shooting at each other in a fit of rage.

To be fair, we can multitask... We still do a good job of shooting at each other in a fit of blind rage at home.

[Smitty-48]

You do know why you keep fighting wars overseas, right? It's American Civil War by proxy, in order to avoid another Antietam, you basically take all the high explosive and drop it on the Vietnam's of the world instead, you hijack other people's civil wars, so you can get to killing and blowing shit up, it's a safety valve, if you couldn't bomb Vietnam & Co into the stone age, the tension would explode on Main Street USA, you need the overseas military adventures, just to blow off steam on some hapless patsy, lest you start shooting at each other in a fit of rage.

To be fair, we can multitask... We still do a good job of shooting at each other in a fit of blind rage at home.

Not with B-52's, whenever the POTUS's and their supporters go overseas to bomb somebody else's civil war because they are gridlocked domestically, it's because what they really want to do is bomb their poltical opponents at home, gotta bomb somebody for this shit, so look out Third World, you're getting it, just so the Americans don't have to nuke each other.

[Speaker to Animals]

Canadian government seems to be getting a little chaotic. Would be a shame if there were a chemical weapons attack on Quebec.

[Smitty-48]

Canadian government? Nah, there's no movement there at all, it's not a republic, and Canada has the mindset of a colony, doesn't really control its own destiny, so Canadians don't really care that much, Canadians don't really think they are actually in control, so they don't get too wrapped around the axle as Americans do, and pretty much just let the bureaucracy run the country as a result.

In Canada, you just focus on your own life, you don't bother paying much attention to the big picture, because in Canada, there is no big picture, the big picture is in the USA, so we just spectate.

"Canada" actually means "The Village", and that's kind of what it's like, it's a small town company town, and what goes on beyond the outskirts of the town, is not something people really focus on.

[Lemonade]

I agree w/ the thread title.

I have a friend who is an electrical engineer, 1st generation Afghani American. I thought he and I could talk for hours about US/Afghanistan back when that was starting up, and get into the gritty of it. Nope, he didn't know a damn thing or even care to.

What I find is most people just aren't informed beyond the TV news, things like DCF/MH doesn't come to you, you have to seek it out. That just makes any discussion kind of difficult to get in to without sounding like a know-it-all.

[Ph64]

I agree w/ the thread title.

I have a friend who is an electrical engineer, 1st generation Afghani American. I thought he and I could talk for hours about US/Afghanistan back when that was starting up, and get into the gritty of it. Nope, he didn't know a damn thing or even care to.

What I find is most people just aren't informed beyond the TV news, things like DCF/MH doesn't come to you, you have to seek it out. That just makes any discussion kind of difficult to get in to without sounding like a know-it-all.

I sometimes wonder why I have fakebook, over time I've set at least 3/4 of my "friends" to unfollow/ignore them... I thought about replying on a post from an old HS classmate who thinks "that asshole Assad deserves bombing and worse for gassing children"... but then I thought better of bothering with the concept of explaining gas pipelines and thinking about why he'd do it when he is/was winning and we'd just said regime change was off the table... I mean, do you really think he's (and Russia) that stupid???

... but I thought better of trying. It'd accomplish nothing, I wouldn't change their mind because they're too stupid/brainwashed to even consider anything but what they hear on the news... might unfollow them one of these days. Not like I'm planning on attending that 35th reunion in October... 10 miles is too far to drive to meet up with people I mostly didn't like then, and don't really care to see again now.

[Smitty-48]

The inclination of the Glorious Union, to Spread the Blessings of Liberty, and Free the Slaves everywhere, by Terrible Swift Sword, is so deeply ingrained into the American Religion, that there's no sense in trying engage in rational arbitrage with it, culture is destiny, and you can't make a reasoned argument against mythology.

[kybkh]

I agree w/ the thread title.

I have a friend who is an electrical engineer, 1st generation Afghani American. I thought he and I could talk for hours about US/Afghanistan back when that was starting up, and get into the gritty of it. Nope, he didn't know a damn thing or even care to.

What I find is most people just aren't informed beyond the TV news, things like DCF/MH doesn't come to you, you have to seek it out. That just makes any discussion kind of difficult to get in to without sounding like a know-it-all.

Maybe 3 people out of the 50 I talk to in a month even get me to feign interest in something they say politically because my contextual understanding of situations is just beyond their scope (and we all know I am fucking crazy). I'll spend more time talking about what happened 10 years ago and how it's affecting the current situation than I will the actual topic.

When people start running off at the mouth about shit with only the MSM context...take this piece of propaganda tweeted out by none other than the world renowned foreign policy expert Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group:



Nice piece of propaganda. Assad is responsible for all 400k of those killed in Syria obviously because this guy the MSM says is an expert just tweeted this.

However:

"What we know is just a part of what is going on," says Bassam al-Ahmad, the spokesman for the Violations Documentation Center in Syria (VDC), a monitoring organization that gathers information from inside the country to maintain a running count of how many people have died in its nearly five-year-old conflict. Using a three-stage documentation process, the VDC has confirmed the deaths of 4,406 people at the hands of ISIS so far. But Ahmad says that is by no means the total number. "What is the percentage of what we know?" he asks. "Maybe around 50 percent...And uncovering the information needed from ISIS territory presents even greater challenges. "

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... alty-count

To suggest Assad is the only one with bloody hands is totally disingenuous. Ian Bremmer knows that the situation is much more complicated.

He knows that without DIRECT help from NATO and the UAL Assad would never have had to kill 10,000 people and this war would have ended years ago.

Just like Russia has propped up Assad, extending the war and raising the the death toll so have we.

Putin knows it, Assad knows it and Ian Bremmer shoulda of fucking known better.

But that is the depth of discussion the people with enough gumption to follow the "experts" are getting. JV league memetic warfare.

[Smitty-48]

Y'all need to learn to stop worrying about what you can't control, most Americans don't give a fuck, because they well know they aren't in control of it, so they are just getting on with their lives, I wouldn't blame people for being rational about not engaging in rational arbitrage with something which is so clearly not subject to it, in the end, you're as much spectators to all this as we Canadians are, so might as well just kick back and enjoy the show.