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Thread: Evidence We're in a Third--or Fourth--Turning - Page 446







Post#11126 at 04-05-2007 04:02 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Quote Originally Posted by Semo '75 View Post
This particular discussion is running away from the original point, so this'll be my last post on the topic.

The term "designer drugs" isn't used in the same way as terms like "designer jeans" or "designer handbags" -- to denote high-priced status items made primarily for the wealthy.
And the term "know-it-all" is used to describe someone who believes he does but in actuality probably does not.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#11127 at 04-05-2007 04:30 PM by Finch [at In the belly of the Beast joined Feb 2004 #posts 1,734]
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Quote Originally Posted by Semo '75 View Post
Those who can, do, and those who can't prophesize. (sic)
Ooh, I like it! I'm going to add it to my whiteboard of pithy sayings (with the grammar corrected, of course.) It will go up beside What is the question that YOU are the answer to?, which was one of the topics of my pastor's Palm Sunday address.

It explains why I feel much less inclined to dire pronouncements lately, as I'm finally starting to regain my footing and feel like I can be a force for good again.
Yes we did!







Post#11128 at 04-05-2007 05:21 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Quote Originally Posted by Semo '75 View Post
If only one day I might reach the lofty heights of wit and comedy that you inhabit -- and seemingly so effortlessly, too! I'd ask how you do it, but writing smarmy little one-liners that simply rehash old sayings must take a lot of practice. As I said a while back, you're wasting your talent -- the Improv is waiting, man.
It was long ago established that Linus is a big, dumb jerk type but it's long past time someone pointed out just how unfunny he is too. Sir, you are thanked for this insight.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#11129 at 04-05-2007 05:25 PM by Pink Splice [at St. Louis MO (They Built An Entire Country Around Us) joined Apr 2005 #posts 5,439]
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Quote Originally Posted by Semo '75 View Post
You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.

But the specifics of your vision are beside the point, as I was speaking to the tendency around here to wallow in a kind of fire-and-brimstone variant of futurism, with all the requisite prayers for a cataclysmic apocalypse that will punish the wicked, reward the righteous, topple the mighty, empower the weak, and send the buttercup buzzing after the bee.

Dramatic unbridled futurism is nothing more than a cover for a sense of powerlessness and dissatisfaction with one's lot in life (I may be useless now, but just you wait and see!), whereas grand prophecy is a cover for a kind of pragmatic myopia (for lack of a better phrase). Which is probably a good thing, given how frequently both are married to misanthropic visions of a desparately hoped for Reckoning-style apocalypse.

But ultimately, it boils down to this: Those who can, do, and those who can't prophesize.

PS: What makes you think I was trying to be subtle?

You mean, this is the *internet*?







Post#11130 at 04-05-2007 06:31 PM by Arkham '80 [at joined Oct 2003 #posts 1,402]
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Quote Originally Posted by Semo '75 View Post
You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.
You say apple and I say orange. Pointing out that change is inevitable and that the future will be a different kind of place is not prophecy, it's historical awareness. We do not live in a fossilized Roman Empire, just as our descendents won't live in a fossilized Anglosphere. Bad futurism is that which posits a future that looks remarkably like the present, only with cooler gadgets and electoral reform, which is what I see everywhere on these forums and in the Western world in general. People are losing -- if they haven't lost it already -- the ability to contemplate genuine change. It's as if everyone has bought into Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis, and it's capitalism and democracy forever and ever, amen.

But the specifics of your vision are beside the point, as I was speaking to the tendency around here to wallow in a kind of fire-and-brimstone variant of futurism, with all the requisite prayers for a cataclysmic apocalypse that will punish the wicked, reward the righteous, topple the mighty, empower the weak, and send the buttercup buzzing after the bee.
I'm curious. Would you say that an astute observer of world events in 1936 who warned against a coming global war of unprecedented destructivness was preaching fire and brimstone? Would you say his attitude was defective for doing so?

Dramatic unbridled futurism is nothing more than a cover for a sense of powerlessness and dissatisfaction with one's lot in life (I may be useless now, but just you wait and see!), whereas grand prophecy is a cover for a kind of pragmatic myopia (for lack of a better phrase).
Absolutely. Those who find themselves constantly frustrated by a perverse political, economic, and/or social order have every reason to desire substantive change, even if that demands a cataclysmic realignment. If that desire grows strong enough, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And rightly so. The aspirations of ordinary people cannot be kept in a bottle indefinitely because they might inconvenience some wealthy mucky-mucks who don't want to lose their privileges.

Which is probably a good thing, given how frequently both are married to misanthropic visions of a desparately hoped for Reckoning-style apocalypse.
As opposed to the misanthropic vision of anointed elites to perpetuate the status quo forever?

But ultimately, it boils down to this: Those who can, do, and those who can't prophesize.
Bunk. Our civilization is designed to suppress any human potential that cannot be readily harnessed for the ends of capital. That leaves whole dimensions of human nature unrealized, creates tremendous amounts of pent up creativity, and leads to a pathological atmosphere of unrelieved tension, anxiety, and depression. Millions of us now have to drug ourselves just to function "normally" in this society, to the point that fresh water supplies are becoming polluted with psych meds -- like Prozac -- from sewage. And these aren't miniscule amounts: fish are getting stoned off the stuff and failing to reproduce properly. You cannot tell me that the average American or Briton is pissing anti-depressants because he's a loser who needs to suck it up and mush harder.

PS: What makes you think I was trying to be subtle?
Everyone knows who you're talking about when you identify persons by their uncommon views. Might as well name names.
You cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. -- Heraclitus

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes." -- Walt Whitman

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Post#11131 at 04-05-2007 07:21 PM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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A good chunk of futurism is crap based on the futurist's own prejudices and assumptions. Karl Popper rightly pointed out that since we cannot predict with a degree of certainty future technological changes, and that technological change affects historical change, that predicting the future to any degree of accuracy is impossible.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#11132 at 04-05-2007 07:40 PM by Arkham '80 [at joined Oct 2003 #posts 1,402]
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Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
A good chunk of futurism is crap based on the futurist's own prejudices and assumptions.
How does that distinguish futurism from any other human activity?
You cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. -- Heraclitus

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes." -- Walt Whitman

Arkham's Asylum







Post#11133 at 04-05-2007 09:44 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by Semo '75 View Post
You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to.

But the specifics of your vision are beside the point, as I was speaking to the tendency around here to wallow in a kind of fire-and-brimstone variant of futurism, with all the requisite prayers for a cataclysmic apocalypse that will punish the wicked, reward the righteous, topple the mighty, empower the weak, and send the buttercup buzzing after the bee.

Dramatic unbridled futurism is nothing more than a cover for a sense of powerlessness and dissatisfaction with one's lot in life (I may be useless now, but just you wait and see!), whereas grand prophecy is a cover for a kind of pragmatic myopia (for lack of a better phrase). Which is probably a good thing, given how frequently both are married to misanthropic visions of a desparately hoped for Reckoning-style apocalypse.

But ultimately, it boils down to this: Those who can, do, and those who can't prophesize.
I think that most of us will be satisfied if the only mighty ones toppled are those who misuse their power. Apocalypse of any kind tends to take innocent with the guilty. Many innocent people died in the Man-made apocalypses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.







Post#11134 at 04-05-2007 10:25 PM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
I think that most of us will be satisfied if the only mighty ones toppled are those who misuse their power. Apocalypse of any kind tends to take innocent with the guilty. Many innocent people died in the Man-made apocalypses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The attempt to produce Heaven on Earth often produces Hell. -Karl Popper
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#11135 at 04-06-2007 04:14 AM by Arkham '80 [at joined Oct 2003 #posts 1,402]
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Quote Originally Posted by Semo '75 View Post
All while you bitch and moan and wait for your own variant of the Rapture to free you from your unsatisfactory life.
*shrug* Whatever. You play dress-up with friends and imply that it's some kind of meaningful activism, schmooze through the bohemian scene, and believe that social clubs are the answer to the problems of modernity. Then you upbraid people on public forums for upbaiding people on public forums. Shall I continue spinning your position, or have I made my point?

Well, I don't mean to burst your bubble, but my post wasn't about you -- it was about something a little bigger than you, of which you are only a small part.
Oh, get bent. I know that the post as a whole wasn't about me. But the line I commented upon clearly was -- unless I've missed the parade of anarchists through these forums the last four years -- and I wished to issue a clarification. If you were in fact referring to someone else, fine. I'd be interested to see the posts to which you were alluding.
You cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. -- Heraclitus

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes." -- Walt Whitman

Arkham's Asylum







Post#11136 at 04-06-2007 04:24 AM by Arkham '80 [at joined Oct 2003 #posts 1,402]
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Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
The attempt to produce Heaven on Earth often produces Hell. -Karl Popper
We are already trying to produce Heaven on Earth, and it is creating Hell. What is the impetus of Western civilization other than the re-attainment of Eden and the end of history? We can't just leave people alone and let them work out their own solutions. Everything has to be part of a program. One program.
You cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. -- Heraclitus

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes." -- Walt Whitman

Arkham's Asylum







Post#11137 at 04-06-2007 07:43 AM by Mikebert [at Kalamazoo MI joined Jul 2001 #posts 4,502]
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Quote Originally Posted by Arkham '80 View Post
We can't just leave people alone and let them work out their own solutions.
Because people get into each other faces and pretty soon you have gridlock and nothing can be done. So in the interests of expediency, some people's rights get ignored.

For example, as a consequence of paper mill operations PCBs and other toxic chemicals are present in large quantities in the Kalamazoo river in rural area that is undergoing development. These chemcials are there because paper companies many decades ago did their own thing (made paper) on their own land--just as you advocate.

The locals want the chemcial removed. The paper companies are willing to remove it, but they need a place to put it (destroying it costs too much). They came up with the idea to put it on the premises of one of the old paper mills right in the middle of the city of Kalamazoo, about a half a mile from where I live. The paper companies explicitly did not want to the city or neighborhood associations around the dump area broguht into the negotiations (this was a dealbreaker). Obviously the city folks would object to having the stuff dumped in their backyards so to speak. So the only way the rural area could get the paper companies to remove the stuff from their area was to try to see if they can dump the stuff quietly.

This also is people doing their own thing on their own property. In the original case it was urban mills dumping toxins into the river which ended up in rural (then powerless) communities. Now that money is moving out to rural areas (the exurb phenomenon) they want to move the waste back to the mills which now are in a blighted working class (now powerless) neighborhood.

In order for people to do their own thing, often they have to walk over someone else. As people become more sophisticated they object to being walked over. People feel why should they put up with unpleasant externalities that rich folks aren't asked to put up with?

If you try the resolve these issues privately what you find is you can't do anything. We call it NIMBYism.
Last edited by Mikebert; 04-06-2007 at 07:47 AM.







Post#11138 at 04-06-2007 08:11 AM by Justin '77 [at Meh. joined Sep 2001 #posts 12,182]
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Quote Originally Posted by Arkham '80 View Post
If you were in fact referring to someone else, fine. I'd be interested to see the posts to which you were alluding.
For a second I figured it might have been me; but I've been posting a whole lot less in the time since Semo came around; so probably not.







Post#11139 at 04-06-2007 09:45 AM by Virgil K. Saari [at '49er, north of the Mesabi Mountains joined Jun 2001 #posts 7,835]
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Right Arrow The Memory Progressive

Quote Originally Posted by Her Majesty

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.


Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Andrew J. Bacevich
The Semiwarriors in The Nation

The real affliction is more insidious. For want of a better label, call it "semiwar," a term coined after World War II by James Forrestal to promote permanent quasi mobilization as the essential response to permanent global crisis. A man who saw demons everywhere, Forrestal was convinced that he alone grasped the danger they posed to the United States.
Forrestal was also a zealot, the prototype for a whole line of national security ideologues stretching across six decades from Dean Acheson to Donald Rumsfeld, from Paul Nitze to Paul Wolfowitz. Geoffrey Perret's acerbic description of Acheson applies to them all: His "mind turned to the apocalyptic as easily, if not as often, as other men's thoughts turn toward money or sex." For semiwarriors, time is always short. The need for action is always urgent. The penalty for hesitation always promises to be dire.


...There is a great irony here. The semiwarriors surrounding Bush had spent the Clinton years carping about the absence of strategic coherence. Their own moment having arrived, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and company embarked on a reckless course so fraught with contradictions as to make Bill Clinton appear the very model of a prudent statesman. "The fate of the country," writes Holmes, "was abandoned to the personal eccentricities, obsessions, compulsions, and tunnel vision of a handful of political operatives." Chief among those personal eccentricities was a disdain for history. Pre-eminent among the obsessions was a devout faith in the efficacy of military power. Looming large among the compulsions was an itch to have another go at Saddam Hussein--not because he was strong and posed a danger but because he was weak and represented an opportunity. According to Holmes, "the Administration viewed Iraq less as a threat than as a showcase. The purpose of unleashing American firepower in Iraq was not so much to take out a cruel but puny dictator but rather to advertise the folly of defying the United States."

...But in their contempt for politicians and journalists, Americans should not be too quick to let themselves off the hook. Any serious effort to reduce the presidency to its pre-imperial proportions would imply rethinking the premises of US foreign policy, based on self-aggrandizing assumptions about American wisdom, competence and prerogatives and about the capacity of others to manage their own affairs. Given our chronic inability--or is it unwillingness?--to see the world as it is and to see ourselves as we really are, such a reassessment seems exceedingly unlikely. In an age of the citizen as consumer-spectator, Americans care enough to complain, but not nearly enough to act. Long live the emperor.
The Semiwarriors (Not-Warriors) have Millennial Fevers that make the wish for apocalypse into a Modern Tradition. They wish for violence so that the world to come (the Looming Crisis) may be held at bay; their mirrors wish for violence so that world to come (the Crisis Compleat) may be unleashed. One sells the sizzle, the other the steak. Providence will disappoint both in the longer run... they will get their violences, but the Children of Men will not become Providence no matter how hard they endeavor to that end.







Post#11140 at 04-06-2007 10:06 AM by Virgil K. Saari [at '49er, north of the Mesabi Mountains joined Jun 2001 #posts 7,835]
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Right Arrow And, the Angel of Commerce said, "Fear! A Lot!"

Quote Originally Posted by the noted Not-Warrior, Tweedled..

I'm very brave generally, he went on in a low voice: only to-day I happen to have a headache.



The only thing we have to fear is the ‘culture of fear’ itself in Spiked

"How human thought and action are being stifled by a regime of uncertainty."


Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Frank Furedi
So, the meaning and experience of fear are continually shaped by cultural and historical factors. The historical fear of famine is very different, for example, to today’s ‘powerful fear’ of being fat. The meaning that societies once attached to fear of God or the fear of Hell is not quite the same as today’s fear of pollution or of cancer. And fear does not always have negative qualities. The sixteenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes regarded fear as being essential for the realisation of the individual and of a civilised society. For Hobbes, and others, fear could be seen as a fairly reasonable response to new events and big changes. In the individual, too, fear has not always been viewed as a negative emotion. As David Parkin argued in his 1986 essay ‘Toward an apprehension of fear’, as late as the nineteenth century the sentiment of fear was linked to ‘respect’, ‘reverence’, ‘veneration’. ‘Fearing the Lord’, for example, was culturally celebrated and valued. In contrast, the act of fearing God today sits far more uneasily with the prevailing cultural outlook.

... Anxieties about being ‘at risk’ or feeling ‘stressed’ or ‘traumatised’ or ‘vulnerable’ show very clearly that today’s individualised therapeutic vocabulary influences our sensibility of fear.

...However, as I noted previously, it is likely to be the privatisation of fear that makes it so arbitrary and fluid today.

In contemporary societies, fear is unpredictable and free-floating. It is volatile, often because it is unstable and not focused on any specific threat. So today, fear can migrate freely from one problem to the next without any causal or logical connection. When in June 2002 the Southern Baptist leader Reverend Jerry Vines declared that Mohammed was a ‘demon-possessed paedophile’, and that Allah leads Muslims to terrorism, he was simply taking advantage of the free-floating fear narrative. Strikingly, he latched on to two big fears in contemporary culture: paedophilia and terrorism (55). This arbitrary association of paedophilia and terrorism has the effect of amplifying the fear of both.

...‘Vulnerability’ is now seen as the natural state for most people. As a label it is used to describe entire groups in society. Officials and community groups now frequently use the recently-constructed concept of ‘vulnerable groups’. ...

And it isn’t just children who are defined as a vulnerable en masse. So are women, the elderly, ethnic minorities, disabled people, the poor. Indeed, if all the groups designated as vulnerable by experts and policymakers were added together, they would probably constitute nearly 100 per cent of the population!


I think the longing for Crisis is a portion of the wish for things to be "settled" so that the agitations of Our Commercial Republic might be quieted. But, the Brand FEAR! has for so long been utile in impelling and informing the Commercial that even a Crisis endured will lead to the maintaining of that Brand in the following High as it did in the last go 'round. I think the Department of War>>>The Department of Defense>>>Department of Concord will have need and use of FEAR! for a few Turnings yet.







Post#11141 at 04-06-2007 10:08 AM by zilch [at joined Nov 2001 #posts 3,491]
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Cool The Power of Saddam

"...There is a great irony here. The semiwarriors surrounding Bush had spent the Clinton years carping about the absence of strategic coherence. Their own moment having arrived... Looming large among the compulsions was an itch to have another go at Saddam Hussein--not because he was strong and posed a danger but because he was weak and represented an opportunity."
This is quite correct. Saddam, who had to resort to merely rewarding the parents of child suicide boomers with $25,000 checks, possessed none of the power held by 19 young men who easily brought down the World Trade Center towers.*

Hell, even Clinton understood Saddam was a weak weenie. Which is why he told the American people in December of 1998 that lobbing a few hundred cruise missiles would put an end to Iraq's "nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors."

So successful was Clinton's strike in 1998, that Senator Clinton is now regretting her sucker vote in 2002, authorizing the neocons to take Saddam out completely.




* Rosie and her friends notwithstanding, these 19 young men were not working for the Bushlicker CIA.







Post#11142 at 04-06-2007 10:17 PM by 1990 [at Savannah, GA joined Sep 2006 #posts 1,450]
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3T or 4T? Let's go through S&H's questionnaire:

- Are leaders describing the problem in larger rather than smaller terms, proposing grand solutions, and seeking to destroy (and not just contain) enemies?

Obama is, and some would say Giuliani is, but interestingly the two presumed frontrunners for years (McCain and Hillary), both of whom are no longer considered odds-on favorites, are talking small.

- Is there a shift away from individualism (and civil liberties) toward community purpose (and national survival)?

Um, no. People aren't quite as live-free-or-die as they were ten years ago, but public opinion is definitely not in "greater good" territory yet.

- Are the old "culture wars" arguments beginning to feel lame, ridiculous, even dangerous to national unity?

Yes. This started in 2005, and it's getting to the point where even the most committed culture warriors are getting flaccid. Witness drag queen / multiple divorcee / pro-choicer Giuliani's popularity among evangelicals.

- Is the celebrity culture feeling newly irrelevant? Is youth fare becoming less gross and less violent?

Perhaps. I do hear a lot more "who gives a shit?" about celebrities these days. But there's still a guilty pleasure factor. I would say that youth fare is, ever so slowly, calming down. The popularity of sickly sweet concoctions such as High School Musical is evidence of a slow trend. But then again, I thought this was the case when bubblegum pop came back in 1999.

- Is immigration reversing? Are mobility and openness declining? Is there more nativism in our culture and less "globalism" in our commerce?

Not in our commerce, but in public opinion. The economy is more dependent on the rest of the world than ever before, but people are sick to death of it. They're sick of outsourcing, illegal immigration (this is a big sign after the Touchy-Feely '90s), and "free trade", three things that were all but consensus during the Clinton years (see GLOBALIZATION).

- Is there a new willingness to pay a human price to achieve a national purpose? Will we harness technology only to reduce casualties and inconvenience, or also to achieve a total and lasting victory?

Hmm...not yet. The mess that is Iraq has made people quite averse to violence for a 4T. Any world war is going to be delayed for a few years now.

- Is each generation entering its new phase of life with a new attitude? Are aging boomers overcoming narcissism? Are Gen-Xers on the edge of midlife, circling their wagons around family? Are Millennials emerging as a special and celebrated crop of youth?

It seems to be happening from the youth up. Just in the last year I have started hearing my parents' friends praise young Millies as a "great generation", and I'm seeing their few Xer friends reaching a certain maturity too, realizing the Indian Summer is winding down. No, it's the Boomers who are slow to catch up, probably due to their "delayed aging". Which is perfectly fine. I don't want to feel old in my fifties either.

So it would seem if we are 4T, it's still quite early. I see only the earliest trends for these questions. If our next president is either Obama or Giuliani, though, I consider that the first big shift. Both guys like talking big (Obama with his so-inspiring-you-think-they-popped-out-of-an-Aaron-Sorkin-movie words and Giuliani with his "tough guy talk"). I can't see the 44th prez being McCain or Hillary, since Hillary seems (for now) somewhat stuck in the 3T and McCain in the 2T or earlier. Edwards is an interesting case -- his focus on economic issues would at first seem out-of-date, but in a way it's very forward-thinking. He sees that people are tired of war and ready for some real solutions to everyday problems.
My Turning-based Map of the World

Thanks, John Xenakis, for hosting my map

Myers-Briggs Type: INFJ







Post#11143 at 04-06-2007 11:24 PM by K-I-A 67 [at joined Jan 2005 #posts 3,010]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
I think that most of us will be satisfied if the only mighty ones toppled are those who misuse their power. Apocalypse of any kind tends to take innocent with the guilty. Many innocent people died in the Man-made apocalypses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yah, well, the Japs killed plenty of innocents before we were ATTACKED. How many innocent globals have the Imperial Japanese killed since? The Japs got their asses kicked one bloody island at a time. Gosh, it's not as if they didn't have plenty of opportunities to re-evaluate accept defeat and surrender before we nuked them. Well, they made a decission to ignore the truth and payed the price.

Hey, until you guys reveal the secret liberal love potion that can dispensed from our war planes, you're gonna have to be satisfied with the time we have to waste going through all the global red tape, presenting our justisfications in front of the UN, waiting for permission or a denial before we drop bombs on peoples heads or invade with force. Once we enter a conflict, you're gonna have to be satisfied with the pieces of paper that inform innocent people to get out of the city, we're gonna be bombing and shelling some buildings followed by an invasion with house to house fighting next week.







Post#11144 at 04-06-2007 11:45 PM by the bouncer [at joined Aug 2002 #posts 220]
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Quote Originally Posted by K-I-A 67 View Post
Yah, well, the Japs killed plenty of innocents before we were ATTACKED. How many innocent globals have the Imperial Japanese killed since? The Japs got their asses kicked one bloody island at a time. Gosh, it's not as if they didn't have plenty of opportunities to re-evaluate accept defeat and surrender before we nuked them. Well, they made a decission to ignore the truth and payed the price.
gosh, it's not as if bu$hco hasn't had plenty of opportunities to re-evaluate, accept that he made a damfool decision about invading iraq, and now gooper amerika is paying the price. funny how that happens.







Post#11145 at 04-07-2007 12:55 AM by Roadbldr '59 [at Vancouver, Washington joined Jul 2001 #posts 8,275]
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Quote Originally Posted by K-I-A 67 View Post
Yah, well, the Japs killed plenty of innocents before we were ATTACKED. How many innocent globals have the Imperial Japanese killed since? The Japs got their asses kicked one bloody island at a time. Gosh, it's not as if they didn't have plenty of opportunities to re-evaluate accept defeat and surrender before we nuked them. Well, they made a decission to ignore the truth and payed the price.

Hey, until you guys reveal the secret liberal love potion that can dispensed from our war planes, you're gonna have to be satisfied with the time we have to waste going through all the global red tape, presenting our justisfications in front of the UN, waiting for permission or a denial before we drop bombs on peoples heads or invade with force. Once we enter a conflict, you're gonna have to be satisfied with the pieces of paper that inform innocent people to get out of the city, we're gonna be bombing and shelling some buildings followed by an invasion with house to house fighting next week.
Amen. I say this as someone whose Dad was in line to invade Japan, had Truman not dropped the Bomb.

In addition, I recall reading that the United States did, in fact, drop thousands of leaflets in advance of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings... advising people living there to leave ASAP, that their cities would soon be destroyed by a weapon of then-unimaginable destructive power. Judging from the death toll, it would seem the collective response was: "Yeah, right".
Last edited by Roadbldr '59; 04-07-2007 at 12:56 AM. Reason: typo correction
"Better hurry. There's a storm coming. His storm!!!" :-O -Abigail Freemantle, "The Stand" by Stephen King







Post#11146 at 04-07-2007 10:08 AM by Bob Butler 54 [at Cove Hold, Carver, MA joined Jul 2001 #posts 6,431]
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04-07-2007, 10:08 AM #11146
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Quote Originally Posted by the bouncer View Post
gosh, it's not as if bu$hco hasn't had plenty of opportunities to re-evaluate, accept that he made a damfool decision about invading iraq, and now gooper amerika is paying the price. funny how that happens.
I noted a while ago that American crisis wars tend to last 4 or 5 years. This is the time it takes to fully mobilize, learn the tactics of the era, and decide that war is hell and get decisive. On the other hand, defeats against insurgencies and resistance might take about 10 years. If you look at the Union reconstruction efforts, the Vietnam War, the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan and now Bush's efforts in the Middle East, I'd suggest it might often be easier to fully mobilize and kick butt than to recognize failure when one attempts to do something less than a 100% effort.

And the Japanese were attempting a 100% effort. Yes, it should have been obvious that they had lost. Thing is, the sort of stupid mentality that leads a government to start a war of choice in the face of professional advice that one might very well not win is the same sort of stupid mentality that doesn't allow a government to admit defeat, that keeps them throwing lives into lost causes.







Post#11147 at 04-07-2007 12:18 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
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04-07-2007, 12:18 PM #11147
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Quote Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59 View Post
Amen. I say this as someone whose Dad was in line to invade Japan, had Truman not dropped the Bomb.

In addition, I recall reading that the United States did, in fact, drop thousands of leaflets in advance of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings... advising people living there to leave ASAP, that their cities would soon be destroyed by a weapon of then-unimaginable destructive power. Judging from the death toll, it would seem the collective response was: "Yeah, right".
I always figured more Japanese would eventually die had we not dropped the bomb.







Post#11148 at 04-07-2007 12:25 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
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04-07-2007, 12:25 PM #11148
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Quote Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54 View Post
I noted a while ago that American crisis wars tend to last 4 or 5 years. This is the time it takes to fully mobilize, learn the tactics of the era, and decide that war is hell and get decisive. On the other hand, defeats against insurgencies and resistance might take about 10 years. If you look at the Union reconstruction efforts, the Vietnam War, the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan and now Bush's efforts in the Middle East, I'd suggest it might often be easier to fully mobilize and kick butt than to recognize failure when one attempts to do something less than a 100% effort.
It's not just America. Most crisis wars last 3-9 years, or are at least well short of 20. This isn't a problem from a saecular standpoint, since nearly all Heroes would still have the opportunity to fight and your average Artists would be born either before or in the early part of the war.

And the Japanese were attempting a 100% effort. Yes, it should have been obvious that they had lost. Thing is, the sort of stupid mentality that leads a government to start a war of choice in the face of professional advice that one might very well not win is the same sort of stupid mentality that doesn't allow a government to admit defeat, that keeps them throwing lives into lost causes.
The Japanese had no chance. All Japanese commanders had recognized that they might win the first six months of the war, but would eventually, inevitably, lose. They still proceeded with all their pointless fury. That's a crisis war for you.







Post#11149 at 04-07-2007 12:31 PM by Mikebert [at Kalamazoo MI joined Jul 2001 #posts 4,502]
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Leaflets and A-bombs

Quote Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59 View Post
In addition, I recall reading that the United States did, in fact, drop thousands of leaflets in advance of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings... advising people living there to leave ASAP, that their cities would soon be destroyed by a weapon of then-unimaginable destructive power.
No leaflets were dropped on Hiroshima before the attack:
Quote Originally Posted by [url=http://www.doug-long.com/letter.htm]The Historian's Letter to the Smithsonian[/url]
In yet another label, the Smithsonian asserts as fact that "Special leaflets were then dropped on Japanese cities three days before a bombing raid to warn civilians to evacuate." The very next sentence refers to the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, implying that the civilian inhabitants of Hiroshima were given a warning. In fact, no evidence has ever been uncovered that leaflets warning of atomic attack were dropped on Hiroshima. Indeed, the decision of the Interim Committee was "that we could not give the Japanese any warning."*

*Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed, see Appendix L, "Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting, May 31, 1945," p. 302
This site says that leaflets were dropped after the bombs were dropped:
Quote Originally Posted by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
The Enola Gay exhibit also repeated such outright lies as the assertion that "special leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities" warning civilians to evacuate. The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed.







Post#11150 at 04-07-2007 01:23 PM by Roadbldr '59 [at Vancouver, Washington joined Jul 2001 #posts 8,275]
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Quote Originally Posted by MichaelEaston View Post
I always figured more Japanese would eventually die had we not dropped the bomb.
Oh, for sure. There would have been hundreds of thousands... or millions... more killed on both sides had the main Japanese islands been invaded a la Normandy. That was my point.
"Better hurry. There's a storm coming. His storm!!!" :-O -Abigail Freemantle, "The Stand" by Stephen King
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