You Know What I Was Thinking?

Question

Just observing from all of the different questions and anwers, I've come to the conclusion that if we don't do something now about this Liberal/Conservative debate we are going to drive a wedge between each other that may result to something as drasctic as a second civil war. What bothers me the most is that it seems no one realizes that we are FORCED to choose between one side or the other, as we have but two major candidates to choose from. What about those of us who are not hard liners to either side, but borrow from the ideas of each view point to reach our everyday opinions? Personally I feel that those who categorize ALL liberals or ALL conservatives by their stereo types are forgetting the hard work we've done the past 100 years to reach a sort of equality in this nation. We should push toward more voices in our Presidential elections as opposed to 'OK ya gotta pick A or B'. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm tired of eating oatmeal and toast every morning.

Answer 1

If there was a vote for BEST QUESTION this would be it.
We all despise corruption and deceit...we all want good education and jobs...we all want proper health care. We are being FORCED as you so eloquently put it to choose between A or B and conform to a silent obedient consent of policies that most of us view as "insane". We need to shut the country down for however long it takes to get the attention and have our voices heard. United We Stand.....Divided We Fall. This can be done and it doesn't require us to choose a side. It requires us to remember the power we have if we stand together and get back to the very ideals our founding fathers set out for us.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security" - Declaration of Independence

Once Again.......Brilliant Question.

Answer 2

There are other people every election who run for president or whatever other elections you consider, the fact remains that the MAJORITY of voters consistently vote and nominate two main parties, the others who run, (like Perot and Dole) are always in the gray area between the two with the least votes.

Until the majority can be closely represented by three parties based on voting preference then we will continue on with the red and blue being dominate in each race.

Answer 3

Good luck with that, but all a third party does is water down the vote, it has worked that way with the repuglicans (Ross Perot) and with the democrats (Ralph Nadar) The system is not flawless but you will never get a third party president unless somebody steps forward that is known and also rich. The last independant to even come close to winning a state was the governer of Alabama in 1968 I think. George Wallace.

Answer 4

I think our founding fathers realized this, which is why you see the checks and balances that you do in our government. Unfortunately as our country continues to grow, so do all the little exploits that political parties take advantage of.
I just wish that more people would do their own research or footwork when it comes to certain issues instead of blindly listening to talk shows or political propaganda. I can't count the number of times I've seen someone go spouting off on a topic because of something he/she heard on a talk radio show without checking both sides of that particular issue. It really gets disgusting after a while.

Answer 5

Indeed. There are several third parties out there, but the way the election laws are written, none of them seem to be able to threaten the status quo on a national level. Libertarians, Constitutionalists, Reformers, Greens...rise up! Give us another choice!

Answer 6

the version between human and animals that we've a "wondering options" ... We human use our minds to do many stuff in our daily existence... by wondering we do issues extra ideal... even as animals were given minds .. yet they don't use it. wondering procedure is diverse .. because of the issue you're save in. For some how motives.. from time to time you do not imagine proper it is because of the hard difficulty you're in. The extra we are expecting of.. the solid we consequences we benefit.

Answer 7

I agree...there are some issues I tend to be more liberal on, and some that I am conservative....I just want to know what the candidate stands for....that's how I vote...I don't care if he/she is red, blue, green, or purple....just tell me how they feel and what they think, and what their plan is....

Answer 8

Amen.

Answer 9

too long big thinker!

Answer 10

,




Noted historian John Titor predicted that the new American revolution would start in 2004. He didn't explicitly mention Harry Knowles as one of the causes, but it was implied.





by Dr. Albert Oxford, PhD.

Revolution does not begin with spilled blood and falling buildings. It begins in the minds of the countless uninformed dumbasses required to fuel any good uprising. If you were to go back to see the seeds of revolt germinating in any of history's rebellions, you would need only to listen to the contentious conversations of the common man, in the pubs and at the university and in the bath houses.

But today we have the internet, wherein millions converse in virtual pubs and universities and bath houses and here is where we see the first tendrils of smoke on the American meltdown fuse.


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We out here in the rest of the world knew it was just a matter of time. Your country was born, after all, over a bloody revolt based on a tax on soft drinks. Violent defiance is etched into your DNA. You long to be the Luke Skywalker that destroys the Death Star, the Neo who brings down Skyynet. You do not look for common ground and compromise; you hunt for the one irreconcilable difference that will justify becoming the gun-slinging Diehard Mclean of your dreams.

Do a Google search for terms like "Bush" and "message board" and "Haliburton" and "**** you" and browse the hundreds of thousands of internet forum postings that result. There is an acidic ocean of online screaming matches out there boiling as we speak, Right vs. Left, Bush vs. Anti-Bush, being conducted by millions of apoplectic web surfers. And everywhere you see that imaginary line on which every American thinks he must stand to one side or the other, like picking teams for an American game of Freedom Ball or whatever it is you play there in your country.

I see seven Information-Age factors behind the brewing conflict that will ultimately undo America:

1. The Online Confederacy of Dunces:
or How the Web Killed Journalism and Then Pissed on Its Corpse

There was a time when the average American's TV news intake consisted of one of three nightly newscasts, each hosted by a grizzled old journalist who had tasted mud clots with foot soldiers in Korea. Their print news came from their local newspaper. You see, back then not just any Harry Knowles* could take to the keyboard and command a gargantuan audience.

*Note: For the purpose of this discussion, a "Harry Knowles" will be defined as any uneducated new-media opinion jockey with a massive American following rivaled only by the author of the McDonald's Value Meal menu. I could have easily referred to this person as a Matt Drudge but have chosen not to for arbitrary reasons.

There was a sort of stupidity filter back then, so that the fringe rantings and conspiracy theories could be pushed to the margins where normal people were ashamed to tread. You all had your differences, but all sat down to watch the same news and thus were fed the same worldview.

With the birth of cable and talk radio and, most significantly, the internet, the sphincter of news has been stretched wide to allow a torrent of bad journalism to flow forth. It turns out that, after all, Americans were better off with no information than this flood of bad information in which you now float. The ignorant citizen was content in the knowledge that he was ignorant. Today's American, on the other hand, spends much of the day reading blatantly-biased ox droppings and then thinks he is well-read as a result.





The ignorant can be trusting and thus can be governed. The misinformed are impossible to govern because they cannot be talked out of the skewed rubbish they think they know. For example, by 1998 I was receiving e-mail forwards declaring that Bill Clinton had commited 49 murders. A great many of my educated American colleagues forwarded me this message with the subject line, "makes you think, doesn't it?"

No, it does not. Now, I shall not engage in some partisan bicker over the moral character of your former president. For the sake of discussion, let us assume that Mr. Clinton was more ruthless and bloodthirsty than Vlad the Impaler. It would still be a physical impossibility to so perfectly cover up that many killings disguised as "suicides" and "accidents" under the eyes of local law enforcement and federal investigators and scandal-hungry journalists and opportunistic Republicans in your Parliament.

Or, to put it more simply, Mr. Clinton was unable to keep the wraps on the tongue-lashing of his Minority Whip by an intern, but he was able to perfectly silence a crime 1,000 times as large and involving 1,000 times as many knowing parties? And it was kept absolutely hidden from all of the hundreds of rather powerful men who were desperate to see him led from the Oval Office in handcuffs? Everyone, in fact, except some anonymous e-mailer?

In the bizarre hall of mirrors that is the internet, it is difficult to catch flying dung. In a culture where 20% of the people get their news exclusively from late-night talk shows and Saturday Night Live, the concept of what is or is not a credible source of news vanishes. On the internet, it all looks the same.

I have a double doctorate in American Historical studies and Internet Analysis. Could I not also write this if I were some 14 year-old masturbation enthusiast or a ranting homeless man posting from the public library whilst flicking lice out of his beard? How would you know?

Even worse, the internet disease has spread to the actual paper pulp publications. They were losing readership to the New Media and had to market to this new demographic of "stupid" readers. A wonderful example of this emerged in the Summer of 2004 with the Swift Boat Veterans controversy, wherein a group of John Kerry's comrades from Vietnam came forth and alleged that Mr. Kerry's war medals were won, not based on valor in combat, but on a single victorious pie-eating contest.





This is a story that would never have seen the light of day in the old days of actual journalism, but was pushed by the Drudge Report and talk radio until the ink-press publications were forced to acknowledge it. The new pseudo-media dragged the old media to a place that, right or wrong, it had no desire to go. Which brings me to...

2. The Online Confederacy of Dunces, II:
The Oliver Stone Factor

The phenomenon that will form the first real cracks in your Democracy begins here. There has begun a strange sort of anti-cynicism where the average American will believe nothing the politicians from the opposing party tell them, but will believe any piece of rubbish they read on a website ("Socialists are building concentration camps to imprison American patriots!" "The 9/11 plane that flew into the Pentagon was an elaborate hoax!") as long as it supports the political party they have aligned themselves with.

Now, a storm of talk radio jockeys and a herd of bloggers on both sides of the aisle and have brought the craziness into the main arteries of the politicial zeitgeist. Thus, today one can also crack open an issue of a Florida newspaper, settle in for a boring article about the electoral college, and then run into this proverbial turd in the punchbowl:

"After Bush's theft of the 2000 election and his clear swoon in the electoral vote tabulations, he is widely believed to have a dirty trick up his sleeve. Pakistan may have trapped Osama bin Laden in an Afghan cave and be planning to help Bush produce him – three years late – just before Nov. 2. A few months ago, there were press rumors that trucks hired by the United States were shipping weapons of mass destruction into Iraq, for timely discovery. And the way has been prepared to postpone the election if we suffer another major terror attack."

Again, let us assume that George Bush is a supernova of evil. And let us assume that he is the most cunning genius ever to have walked the planet. This journalist would casually have us believe that the same man whose people cannot keep the UK press from filming him undressing by a window can keep what would be this century's most explosive secret (the capture of the most important world figure since Adolf Hitler, or the buying and smuggling of WMD's, the single most illegal and monitored substances on the planet) to the point that not a single person involved speaks out.





Never mind the hundreds of people involved in such an operation. American military and civillians at home and in the Middle East, Pakistanis living in the area, Afghanis living in the area, journalists from America and Al Jazeera covering the war, politicians in all of the involved countries. Hundreds of people, many of whom detest Bush like a vampire detests the sun, all safely holding in the one secret that could undo his presidency and change the course of human civilization away from what many see as a one-way train to Destructionburg.

On top of all that, Al Queada doesn't release a tape proclaiming that their leader has been captured and that Bush is keeping it secret? The one revelation that could bring down their nemesis more effectively than an assassin's bullet?

Of course I know that your opinion on this matter is based entirely on which side of the Imaginary Line you stand. This is my point; to dismiss any rumored charge against Bush in the presence of certain opinionated people brings a response of, "that man's capable of anything!"

Anything? What if I told you he was capable of flying? That Bush can, in fact, fly around the Earth so fast that he can reverse time itself, so that he could go back and, say, stop left-wing civil rights leader Rudolph Gunderson from being born? What? You've never heard of Rudolph- OH NO! It has already happened! Go e-mail your friends!