That's pretty much inevitable. The divide between the liberals and the conservatives is real, and each side wants things the other side loathes the thought of. There's probably no way to discuss world events without that divide surfacing and generating anger.Originally Posted by Readthebooknowwhat
Yes, in general Americans may be blamed. Indeed, many Americans who disapprove of the Administration may feel "shock and awe" by another spectacular terrorist attack.
That's highly likely. But it was highly likely without a war in Iraq, too. It doesn't really make any difference.Yup.
I didn't vote for this president, I don't support this action by American forces, and I'm saying it in front of the whole world.This is your war since it's being fought by American forces, under orders from the American president, and the world will count it as yours.
I doubt the world will much care. No offense intended.I didn't vote for this president, I don't support this action by American forces, and I'm saying it in front of the whole world.This is your war since it's being fought by American forces, under orders from the American president, and the world will count it as yours.
Disinterest in the War?
One article does not disinterest make.
I disagree with this premise. Where I sit, there seems to be ample interest in the war, its outcome and its consequences.
Our independent FM radio station here, which mostly espouses an antiwar view, has gone just as completely to war programming as has the more pro-war AM news station. The programming is different but it shows a great interest in the war. There seems to be crossover between both these stations by people finding a place to express their views on the call in shows and get news in general. I have heard those who support the war effort on the FM (ant-war) station and those who think the war is foolishness on the AM (pro-war) station. I have heard some of the same voices on both at different times during the day. The war is all there is on television--with short breaks to announce the NCAA scores, etc.
There was a "peace" rally here in downtown Albuquerque in which the protesters attempted to close down the interstates at rush hour. They were responded to with tear gas and police in riot gear. The next day there was a meeting with the mayor to hammer out an agreement by which people could demonstrate and yet not block traffic. This really just p.o.'d commuters who were listening to the war on the radio as they tried to get home. They called both the AM (pro-war) and the FM (anti-war) stations on their cell phones to express their annoyance and then went on to express their views on the war.
There were counter-demonstrations in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Alamogordo put on by those support the war effort and the president in this time of national crisis. Last night at the Round One NCAA division play-offs for Midwest Region Women's Basketball, held here at the "world-famous" Pit, a statement was read about our pride in our country and the need to sober-down (no-half-time entertainment, for example) because of the war.
Here in New Mexico there seems to be ample interest in the war and a great deal of concern about it. And, of course, we all support the troops!
What I am describing seems to be the case in other locations where I have contacts and friends. New York, Chicago, central Illinois, Los Angeles and vincinity, Florida.
This was true to some extent in 1991, but I do not recall this degree of patriotism and there was little in the way of organized protest.
Again, a sign of early 4T is not that everyone dutifully marches lock-step (that did not happen after the Crash of '29) but rather the seriousness of the approach taken to world events. People on both sides and those somewhere in the middle are taking this much more seriously than we took 1991. There is a great deal more concern about where this will take us all.
Early 4T is where I would put us.
Elisheva Levin
"It is not up to us to complete the task,
but neither are we free to desist from it."
--Pirkei Avot
But I do care.
You can try to squelch me by saying that my opinions don't matter in the grand scheme of things.
You can hammer me softly with propaganda while Marc Lamb fires off his howitzers overhead.
But I'm not going away.
From one '61 cohort member to another:But I do care.
You can try to squelch me by saying that my opinions don't matter in the grand scheme of things.
You can hammer me softly with propaganda while Marc Lamb fires off his howitzers overhead.
But I'm not going away.
We may be mostly X, but the above shows that there might be just a bit of the boomer the first cohort of the X generation. :wink:
Elisheva Levin
"It is not up to us to complete the task,
but neither are we free to desist from it."
--Pirkei Avot
I am not sure if you are joking or not, HC.This is your war since it's being fought by American forces, under orders from the American president, and the world will count it as yours.
The reason people aren't much interested is the same reason they weren't much interested in the Clinton impeachment, or the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia, or any number of other issues: it's hard to get the public very excited about anything in a Third Turning.
I simply find it hard to believe that anyone could still think we are in a 3T.
I had my doubts, even, at times, after 911.
But everything that's happening now--and the attitudes and ENORMOUS interest I am seeing, leave absolutely no doubt in my mind that we are well into the 4T. Hell, you can't watch anything else on TV these days and it's getting hard to find a station that's actually playing music anymore (unless it's patriotic songs or the National Anthem).
Perhaps you're in denial.
It's everywhere.
Suddenly no one is much interested in the composition of Britney's breasts, in Sharon Osbourne's cancer surgery, or in whether Michael Jackson's emotional growth was stunted by an abusive and overbearing father. No one cares anymore about who's the Survivor, who is going to be our American Idol, or who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The only reality show in town right now is this war. Of course, the mood was much the same for a short time following 911, but I still believe that was the real beginning of the 4T. Now it's just certain, and I think it's a safe bet that S&H would say we're in one too. Back then our feet just got wet; now we're knee deep. And the water is swiftly rising...
I've had the news on nearly nonstop now for 3 days , and it's pretty clear to me that things are escalating quickly.
I wonder how much interest will be shown tonight in the Academy Awards. Of course, if people are interested and do watch, that does not mean we're still in a 3T. It just means we want to escape. During the last crisis, movies and movie stars were definitely a big deal.
I also think there's a reason the Orgy thread on this website has been so active. It's a little less active than it was prior to our invasion of Iraq, but I think this is temporary because we've been distracted. That it continues to be active--and to avoid the usual petty quarrelling so common on other threads--to me simply means that we fourthturners, like everyone else, need to seek comfort and cobble together a sort of community, even if it's only an online one.
It makes us all feel a little bit safer.
It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it.
- Charles Bukowski
I don't want to silence you. I'm making the point that the peace movement has missed the point. No amount of protesting will alter the world's perception of America, because it isn't about Iraq.But I do care.
You can try to squelch me by saying that my opinions don't matter in the grand scheme of things.
You can hammer me softly with propaganda while Marc Lamb fires off his howitzers overhead.
But I'm not going away.
We must be listening to different stations. I haven't any patriotic music on the radio in months, except for the occasion Toby Keith song.I am not sure if you are joking or not, HC.This is your war since it's being fought by American forces, under orders from the American president, and the world will count it as yours.
The reason people aren't much interested is the same reason they weren't much interested in the Clinton impeachment, or the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia, or any number of other issues: it's hard to get the public very excited about anything in a Third Turning.
I simply find it hard to believe that anyone could still think we are in a 3T.
I had my doubts, even, at times, after 911.
But everything that's happening now--and the attitudes and ENORMOUS interest I am seeing, leave absolutely no doubt in my mind that we are well into the 4T. Hell, you can't watch anything else on TV these days and it's getting hard to find a station that's actually playing music anymore (unless it's patriotic songs or the National Anthem).
I can't see much sign any interest levels higher than general news. Almost all the things that were supposed to have changed at 911 have gone back to the way they were before.Perhaps you're in denial.
It's everywhere.
Suddenly no one is much interested in what Britney's breasts are made of or Sharon Osbourne's cancer surgery, or whether Michael Jackson's emotional growth was stunted as a child. No one cares anymore about who's the Survivor, who is going to be our American Idol, or in the individual who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Of course, the mood was much the same for a short time following 911, but I still believe that was the real beginning of the 4T. Now it's just certain, and I think it's a safe bet that S&H would say we're in one too. Back then our feet just got wet; now we're knee deep. And the water is swiftly rising...
I don't feel any less safe now than I did six months ago, or six months before 911, for that matter.It makes us all feel a little bit safer.
It's obnoxious as hell. All these AM talk stations have allowed themselves to be pre-empted all day long every day by the national "feed" of their parent companies. And all these radio stations all over the country are now owned by just two or three companies, all of whom are the most enthusiastic propaganda whores imaginable for the Bush administration. You cannot listen to local talk show hosts in whatever city because they have all been replaced by a line-up of (might as well be) pre-programmed androids on the national corporate feed. So you get these morons hosting on the national feed who indeed act like they honestly believe that all of us Americans (INCLUDING THEY THEMSELVES!!!) have been hiding under our beds for the past 12 years in mortal fear of Saddam Hussein and his "weapons of mass destruction." And the only calls that seem to get through are morons with equally tragic memory problems. On the rare chance that you can pick up a non-pre-empted local host in some city you might very well get a radically different perspective. For example, I picked up a Cleveland host the other night who voted for Junior but was like "what is this Iraq BS?" And every call that got through was also like "what is this Iraq BS?" They were all saying that this Iraq nonsense would cost Junior reelection. Night and day! Whooooaaaaaaaaa!
Incidentally, these whoring national radio corporations pulled similar crap after 911. I think local programming was pre-empted every day, all over the nation, for at least six weeks. This was certainly the case in the evenings when you can pick up stations 1000 miles away. They had the "patriotic" bumper music and incessant sound bites of Junior, making the imbecile sound like the next face due to be carved on Mount Rushmore. After the six weeks or whatever, the local stations finally went back to their normal programming but, to this date, we still have to put up with these "heroic" sound bites from the Forrest Gump clone in the White House, with moving patriotic music in the background, whenever the national corporate owner identifies itself on a local station (every hour or two hours or whatever). It is just SO obnoxious. Goebbels never knew such success.
And, no, nothing of the kind happened during the first Gulf War or at any other time in the years before 911. When there was breaking news, yes, the national news would break in with an update for a few minutes. But there was no effort to completely pre-empt all local programming week after week after week so as to spew nothing but brainless, blindly obedient pro-administration propaganda. Of course all these radio stations were not bought up by just two or three companies until very recently, which makes a difference. But I still think it is clear that the mood is different and we are no longer in 3T.
If this be 4T then Nomads presently occupy the Hero soldier role. This may provide new material for post-Crisis editions of the S&H books.
RFLMAO!
(really!)
This is hilarious. The truth often is.
It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it.
- Charles Bukowski
If we use 1980 as the first Millie year, then the Heroes span enlisted paygrades from E-1 to E-5, probably forming the overwhelming bulk of those E-3 and below and, among officers, they would be O-1s exclusively. If we use 1981 as the first Millie year, then they span E-1 to E-5 and account for very few O-1 officers even. If we use 1982, then they span E-1 to E-4 with just a few E-5s and they would be totally absent from officer ranks (unless somebody graduated from high school at 16!).
Nomads would span E-1 to E-9 forming the bulk of those E-5 and above. Among officers, they would span O-1 to O-6. There would be few if any Nomads who have made flag rank although it would be about time for the first of them to make O-7, if I am not mistaken. Prophets should form the bulk of flag officers for a few more years (unless some sort of "fast-track" promotion should be instituted in wartime).
I phrased that badly. I combined two separate points in one statement.Um, no, you have missed the point. The protesting is about stopping an unjust war, not altering anyone's opinion of America.
The peace movement has missed the point, as I've said before, in that the techniques they've chosen to make their point have effectively [/i]neutralized[/i] that point. In fact, in practical terms, they might have made the war slightly more nearly inevitable than it otherwise was.
(I don't think that myself, I think the last real chance to deflect war was months ago, before the peace movement even got going. But it's theoretically possible.)
Exactly my point.I doubt the world will care what you think any more than it cares what Kiff thinks.I doubt the world will much care. No offense intended.I didn't vote for this president, I don't support this action by American forces, and I'm saying it in front of the whole world.This is your war since it's being fought by American forces, under orders from the American president, and the world will count it as yours.
Well, 'American Idol' beat NBC's war coverage in Los Angeles the first night and there are ten times as many people registered on realiiity.com than here, so I wouldn't say "no one". However, the members on realiiity.com are generally displeased by the war and the site admistrators are out-and-out against it. I wouldn't be surprised that part of the reason is that they still enjoy watching the flagpole sitters and are not keen on them coming down just yet. A big war might just make that happen.
As for the Academy Awards, I watched it. Michael Moore made a strongly Left statement about Bush and the war ([Documentary film makers] prefer non-fiction, which is important when we live in a fictitious world, with a fictitious president, waging a war for fictitious reasons) and got both wildly cheered and loudly booed for it. Bet he doesn't get nominated for awhile. :-? The other statements about the war managed to be both heartfelt and neutral at the same time. BTW, the short subject documentary winner was "Twin Towers", balancing out "Bowling for Columbine".
"Dans cette epoque cybernetique
Pleine de gents informatique."
I thought that after 9-11 we were not in 4T, and certainly the post 9-11 mood did not last. I think we may be in 4T now, and probably are; but it depends on what happens after the war against Iraq. The war itself will be short, and thus the mood will peter out again quickly; unless Bush gets his way (and stays in office long enough to carry it out) and starts the third in what he hopes is a long series of wars (and this will also continue and expand the peace movement, and the resulting heightening of the red/blue cultural split).
If so, we are in 4T. We could also be in 4T depending on what happens during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. If troops are tied down in civil war, we will also be in 4T I think. Also, it depends on whether there are more terrorist attacks.
Certainly the danger of these is high as long as Bush remains in power and keeps the wars going. However, if he is replaced (in a genuinely democratic election this time), there is a chance (perhaps a small one) that new policies will be implemented which will demonstrate to the Middle East and people elsewhere that we have come to our senses. We will in that case demand that Israel make peace in Palestine, we will be able to pull our troops out of the region, and we will not engage in any more illegal preemptive wars. Presumably by then we will also have defeated our real enemy, Al Qaeda.
Since the chances of this change are unlikely, the chances are we are in 4T now, and 9-11 will be seen to have been the catalyst-- in which case we are in for a Crisis/4T that will last at least 27 years.
Another wild card is whether Bush is assassinated, as some of us astrologers have suggested might happen, either this year or 2005. How that would affect our turning status is anyone's guess. But I think it would have to be this year if it is to offer a chance of returning to 3T, because if Cheney survives, he couldn't possibly win the election.
I liked the idea of the "phoney 4T," which is a reference to the Phony War before Hitler's invasion of Western Europe. That means we are in some kind of limbo between 3T and 4T, and depending on how things go, that could last a while.
If you can listen to the radio on your computer, I recommend:
http://www.kgoAM810.com
(I hope I have that right, or just try http://www.kgo.com)
between the hours of 7 PM and 5 AM weekdays, Pacific Time, if you want to hear a mainstream radio station that bucks the trend. Naturally, it's a San Francisco/San Jose/Oakland station, and if you're in our area you can hear it at 810AM.
I find it relaxing and consoling to hear good sense about the war and the protests over the air. I am so lucky to live in an area where this is possible, despite the corporate media monopoly. And of course we also have our Pacifica station KPFA 94.1 FM (which my pacifist Dad helped to found and physically put on the air in 1949), which may also have a web feed, and my own station KKUP which doesn't.
And by the way when we can we need to act together to repeal the law which allows one owner to own 8 or more stations in one market! They ought to be forced to divest! Or do we want free media in our supposedly "free society" we claim to be "defending"??
I dunno, it seems to me what happened during the Gulf War was very similar. And the press was much more stifled, and we got even more lies. We were given TV images of pilots flying and bombs dropping all day and night, and were told they were sending "smart bombs" that reached their targets, which wasn't true. We were also told patriot missiles shot down Saddam's scuds, which wasn't true. The Gulf War was called the video game war, probably because not only did the pilots fight it from the screens safely overhead in their planes, but that this described the mindless coverage we were getting. And there were also fewer worldwide protests, and a LOT more flags and yellow ribbons, at home. There was a sizeable protest movement then at home too, both before and during the war. But I felt a lot lonelier being against the war then.
But the lies then, do make me wonder a lot: how much truth are we going to get this time around from our even-more monopolistic media? Will we be told that they found WMD, when they didn't? Will they tell us how many civilian casualties there were in Iraq in 2003, when they covered up the civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2001?
Right, Xer. It is Dubya's war. Things could have continued to be left in the state they were in. Saddam was mostly or entirely disarmed anyway-- and Clinton helped. I hope the world realizes that this war is Dubya's war. Then they will not hate America, but realize this is only a temporary aberration foisted upon us by an illegitimate and incompetent regime. As President Chirac (I believe) said, if the hanging chads had fallen differently, we might not have been in this whole mess. Regime change begins at home. We'd better do it.Hussein did this, not Dubya. War with Hussein was inevitable sooner or later, since Gulf I was left in the state it was left (and yes, that was more Bush Senior's fault than Clinton's, though Clinton didn't help any). The only thing W. affected was the specific timing.
Thanks for your utopia re-post, Marc.I am more disposed to believe the truism that there is almost noting dispiriting than getting exactly what you always longed for. It is commonplace--which doesn't make it false--that human beings are apt to measure happiness by progress toward a goal. Not having but hoping seems to be the big thing with us; not so much *being* well off as getting better. Once you have everything you have dreamt of, it's awfully hard to sustain the tautness of will to hold onto it-- much less get more.
What I noticed about the above statement is how well it now applies to our war situation. In effect, we got everything we wanted when the Cold War ended. But as the Russians warned us, our new problem was that we no longer had an enemy. We couldn't handle this new peace, or sustain the will to keep it; and so we've had to dream up a new enemy, and new wars; thanks to Rumsfeld, Wolfowicz, Perle and Co., with some help from Bin Laden, who supplied their "hoped-for new Pearl Harbor." Perle's Pearl.
We needed the Soviets to keep us in line, perhaps. Now we are unrestrained, and we'll destroy ourselves.
Unforetunately, Al Qaida demonstrated their fanaticism with September 11th. Even if the US gov't were to completely withdraw from the Middle East tomorrow, I would anticipate terrorist attacks for years to come.
Perhaps the 4T will last 27 years. If we get sensible post-Regeneracy administrations it will still take a couple decades for the younger fanatics to age into couch potatos.
Indeed there is. ;-)From one '61 cohort member to another:But I do care.
You can try to squelch me by saying that my opinions don't matter in the grand scheme of things.
You can hammer me softly with propaganda while Marc Lamb fires off his howitzers overhead.
But I'm not going away.
We may be mostly X, but the above shows that there might be just a bit of the boomer the first cohort of the X generation. :wink:
