Under your thumb
I’m interested in how much recent events have affected us. How much they’ve changed our lives, if at all.
In France, like everywhere else, we have problems of our own – the country’s civil service has been on strike off and on for over a month – so the continuing Iraq saga is not the top story these days, albeit still very present.
We go about our day to day and, for most of us whities, the effects of the Middle East drama remain largely intellectual and emotional for the moment. Some are suffering the repercussions of boycotts and lowered tourism – the impact felt, as always, by people just trying to get by, and who have nothing to do with government policy.
More than anything, I think what recent events have done was to put us face to face, in the most jarring way, with our increasing inability to resist American hegemony, and the extent to which it affects us all.
It’s no longer just discomfort with the ubiquity of McDonalds, Nike, Microsoft et al; it’s far more pervasive and insidious than that.
For decades now, there has been a sustained sense of awe when thinking about the United States. Of course negative stereotypes exist – as they do for every country – but anyone who ever looked beyond the surface invariably came away with a great deal of respect for such a bold sense of self, the desire to move forward and innovate, and a stunning body of work and thought.
There was an understanding that, like everywhere, greedy pricks were on top, but what lay beneath was worthy of admiration.
So for the longest time, I felt that I didn’t have the right to express what I felt about the state of America– in the same way that you can insult your family, but nobody else can – but then I realized that this impression that we all have a personal stake in what goes on in that country is not entirely of our doing.
The US have been making promises to the world for decades now: promises of shared democracy, protection and prosperity… Promises that have not only been broken, but derided. Promises of good faith around which world politics have been built. But it’s now come to the point where debate doesn’t even seem possible, the “healthy” balance of power wilfully undone and all pretence of respect for other nations’ viewpoints eradicated. It’s your way, or no way.
So I think that what the rest of the world feels now is an enormous sense of betrayal, and a growing anxiety. There is a feeling that America can no longer be trusted, no longer the protective big brother who may push you around from time to time, but who’s ultimately looking out for you. All talk of democracy comes well behind the promotion of capitalism and self-interest, and the luscious words equality and justice are just bouncing around an echo chamber – almost worthy of parody now.
Iraq is not the only issue but is well emblematic, and bodes ill for the future. We’re no longer faced with just the annoyance of a lack of cultural diversity, but the looming possibility that our way of life and what remains of our autonomy could be bullied away.
(I can’t believe that I’ve been forced into supporting a pompous crook like Chirac!)
It’s only mildly reassuring to know that dissent exists in the States; its ability to counter the effects of corporate greed seems to be dwindling near daily.
It’s outrageous to say (and frightening to hear the claim) that the opposition voiced inside and outside the US to increasingly imperialist measures is coming solely from “intellectuals” – shabby playing on the drive to foster contempt for the intellectual community and implying that dissent is merely cerebral, hence impractical: callow utopian fluff.
(Does this mean that only hicks and rednecks support the policies? Well, if the government says so…)
If Americans shaken by the events of 9/11 get the feeling that they’re no longer safe, imagine how the rest of us feel knowing that the present administration is smug in its divine mission to swoop into any strategically desired nation, armed to the teeth.
It’s villainous and obtuse to cheer a war being waged eight thousand miles away and to believe that it’s on your behalf or heroic in any way, vicarious thrill in the safety of your living room. The victims of your actions dehumanized, reduced to anonymous targets in a desert video game, never once evoking the heinous tragedy of it all. And now annoyed and surprised that the captives are being uncooperative. Bloody ingrates.
Should I take comfort in history: knowing that like all empires of the past, this one too will fall?
Will we all in the meantime just slump back, exhausted, and say, ‘oh… whatever, as long as I’ve got my TiVo.’
For months before and throughout the invasion of Iraq, whenever a plane flew over our house, my 10-year old son would go pale, grab my hand and ask whether we were under attack from the US.
It’s not as funny as it sounds.
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Comments Closed
- Voices like yours are getting louder. Maybe one day even the “hicks and rednecks” will begin to be exposed to the massed insights of a million thoughtful bloggers, whose message might start to drown out the mass-media squealing of the few “greedy pricks”. Chin up.
— Dan Jun 16, 8:43am # - ...yeah, until someone figgers a way to make money off that ‘inter-net thingy’ and then not even those voices will be heard. Still, tis better to have blogged and lost, than never to have blogged at all
— Jerry Jun 16, 8:54am # - No, that anecdote at the end is not funny. If democracy were still in affect rather than the electing body that is the Supreme Court, it might happen. Daily, I hear someone say that “now that we are done with Iraq, we need to go into France.” There’s the senator that is calling for a law to make import of French liquor illegal. It’s downright frightening for Americans too. If we do invade another country, the blind awe and love for Bush will dwindle, when families see their brothers, fathers, sisters, and mothers being sent to a war that they don’t understand. It all seems all most Huxlian. And, sad to say, we still have five more years of Bush.
— Doug Jun 16, 10:57am # - This is, as I’ve called it, “a soul-sucking machine” of an administration, and I watch with growing dread how America is hated around the world, more and more with each passing day.
My one vote next year is puny comfort. I will get off my ass and go work for my candidate. I hope others stuck in this depressing nightmare will, too.
Your anecdote is painfully not funny, the way grim realities never are.
— peggy Jun 16, 11:40am # - As a citizen of the United States I would just like to say “here here!”
Us “intellectuals” have certainly taken a severe beating in the last few years. I comfort myself with the thought that it’s because They just aren’t playing fair, but the combination of some dissenters being pathalogically nice, and the rest of us simply unexcusably apathetic (I won’t guess as to which one I am) it’s time to start admitting that we’re losing. Badly.
And no, the anecdote wasn’t funny. It was terrifying.
— Emily Jun 16, 3:11pm # - May I just register my discomfort with the phrase “hicks and rednecks” that’s being tossed around? That’s large portions of my family you’re talking about. We’re all in this together. (And need I remind you there are plenty of “intellectuals” who are, as usual, licking the boots of the powers that be?)
— language hat Jun 16, 5:16pm # - off post but on . . . http://www.the-tls.co.uk/this_week/story.asp?story_id=27334
— raymon Jun 17, 3:55am # - “hicks and rednecks”
I think that was meant as sarcasm, and that the whole point is that we’re all in this together and that it’s stupid to categorize the people on both sides.
— Jun 17, 4:18am # - > democracy comes well behind the promotion of capitalism
Democratic Capitalism is an oxymoron. See Michael Kinsley’s recent screed this. It’s right on target.
It gets worse every day, but like the Whos in Whoville, we must scream our asses off to escape the Wickersham Brothers’ boiling oil.
Keep screaming, everyone.
— Beerzie Boy Jun 17, 2:35pm # - I have a great fondness for the French people. I just returned to Ukraine after 2 weeks in Paris, and found the people to be lovelely.
This doesn’t, however, extend to French political culture. Your talk of American broken promises rings a LOT hollow. The fact is, America DOES do her part. We stopped the genocide in Bosnia while the French were still yammering on impotently. Because that is what the French do. They talk.
They also deal with every repressive regime on the planet. Whether it’s Libya, Syria, Iran or Iraq, French whorishness knows no bounds. They’d sell grand-meres if only there were a market for them. Given that the French government is the best friend of dictators everywhere, your complaints about Americans not fostering democracy seem a bit farcical. Just my 2 centimes.
Again though, while I despise the French political culture, I love the French themselves.
— Discoshaman Jun 17, 10:38pm # - Beerzie Boy, Mr. Kinsley has forgotten his American history:
“Democracy presumes and enshrines equality.”
Apparently the word “democracy” can be used in multiple senses.
Certainly Jeffersonian democracy—which is to say rule by the aristocracy—does NOT presume and enshrine equality. Part of the justification for representative democracy was/is that the commoners are too passionate to know what’s best for them. Better to have elected representatives to act on their behalf. It stands to reason that a system created by aristocrats more or less for aristocrats (whether this is bad or not is a matter of opinion) does not have “equality” as its primary objective.
Also, “equality” is something of a weasel word: there is a vast difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.
Kinsley seems to ignore the fact that it was not until Jackson—the one who thought the Indian tribes were beyond redemption—that America embraced the idea of a vote for the common man. It wasn’t until the Progressives during the late 19th century that the Senate was popularly elected.
I don’t see capitalism and democracy as incompatible. From an empirical standpoint, democracy is relatively stable, I think; stable government and enforcement of contracts sure do help out individual property rights. Democracy, then, to some extent, aids capitalism. As to whether capitalism aids democracy or not, I am willing to guess that most people who comment on this site think capitalism hinders rather than helps it. Again the problem of imprecise terminology becomes a problem: when some people say “democracy” they mean “one vote, one person, once” and others mean individual liberty, etc.
More on the relationship between capitalism and democracy in Jihad vs. McWorld by Benjamin Barber. Half of it is about the Middle East and America, the other half is about globalization/capitalism and America.
— Warren Jun 18, 4:24am # - I guess it doesn’t help anymore to point out that there was a coup, and that we are living under a facist regime. I just can’t even begin to describe what it is like to know that your votes are being counted by Microsoft and it’s ilk, and that there is no oversight what so ever. We all know that computers never make mistakes. I have been told to shut up or leave by family and friends alike, so many times I can’t count any more. Any amount of speaking out can mean physical threats.
I know how your son feels. I am much more afraid of this government than any outside terrorist.
When I read your entry it made me feel somewhat sad, about the loss of my country and about my decision to leave it. There are so many people here who don’t think that anything is wrong. So many who don’t want anything to change.
I am so very sorry.
— disenfranchised Jun 18, 12:14pm # - First, I’d like to make it clear that criticism of one government should by no means be interpreted as praise for another.
I’ve lived in France for over 10 years and though I adore this place for reasons too numerous to mention, even under torture I’d be hard pressed to sing the praises of its administration. Everyone knows that it has an appalling history, but I know of no nations without an army of skeletons in its closet.
Human history is bloody and brutish; analysing events in tit for tat and us and them only condemns us to perpetuating our adherence to base instincts.
What overwhelmed and moved me about the lead up to Iraq was the outcry across the world, the fact that millions of people – living the most diverse lives imaginable – were outraged by exactly the same thing.
That thing, in my view, was not so much the United States as a nation as the fact that we’d once again fallen into an old pattern. Worldwide nausea. The US is merely emblematic, and the current most daunting foe. It is the new imperialist nation and the countries of Europe and Asia are its predecessors. No one is better or worse, but this is our world now.
Snapping over who saved whom in long ago wars is retarded. We can’t influence the past, but hope against hope that we can affect the future. Why? We’ll all be gone soon enough. Why do we care?
I am as disgusted with US foreign policy as I am with France’s behaviour in Africa as I am with the repression in China, as I am with…
It’s all a product of the same mindset and it’s all a reflection of our abdication and the ultimate powerlessness of we, the masses. It’s never been otherwise, but we’ve occasionally been lulled into thinking so.
So are we condemned to repeating our cycles ad infinitum or can we, as a species, finally recognize our patterns, and break them? Can we create a worldwide democracy; are we, in our hearts, ready and willing to do so?
I realize that it’s facile to say what I don’t want, and that the “left” is often accused of just whingeing (I expect that’s what is always said of the opposition). So perhaps we should begin now to think about, and to state, what we do want; what is feasible and what is crucial to turning the tide.
Is it possible?
— gail Jun 18, 3:03pm # - Firstly, you are factually wrong:
“The US have been making promises to the world for decades now: promises of shared democracy, protection and prosperity Promises that have not only been broken, but derided.”
Who the blazes do you think restored freedom, democracy, protection and prosperity to France some six decades ago?
Secondly, who do you think has made more broken promises of democracy, protection and prosperity since 1945, America or France?
Why, France! Think only of Algeria. Or Indochina, where France left America to pick up the pieces after its disaster at Dien Bien Pho, which was itself the result of France’s absurd post WWII denial of democracy, protection and prosperity to the people of Vietnam.
Or think of France’s abiding ability to deal with people and regimes the rest of the world holds in contempt for their denial of democracy, protection and prosperity to their own people—most recently illustrated with reguard to Zimbabwe, just as France was strutting it’s self-imagined high moral ground over Iraq, where it had been making illegal deals with Saddam for years that it stood to loose if his regime fell.
And there is nothing new about this; it is how France has always behaved. No wonder so many peoples find themselves like me, with the pleasure in meeting individual French people defiled by the moral stench eminating from the French body politic.
— Jim Jun 18, 6:16pm # - Good of Jim to come by and announce he can’t read.
Good Jim, good.
— Dean Allen Jun 18, 7:20pm # - “It is the new imperialist nation and the countries of Europe and Asia are its predecessors. No one is better or worse, but this is our world now.”
I think much of what you said was admirable. I have to disagree with you here though. Europe isn’t “unimperalistic” because it’s had a born-again humanitarian experience. It’s born out of military and political impotence. When the realpolitick reality is that your military is farcical, the best thing to due is make a virtue of your weakness.
Secondly, I think it’s incredible facile to call America’s war in Iraq “imperialism.” Neither was Afghanistan. It’s about eliminating national governments which sponsor terrorism. (It was ALSO about WMDs and Saddam’s repressions.) What it was not about was constructing a long-term empire.
It’s part of a bold attempt to remake the political culture of the region. But Europeans have become so cynical in their decadence that they can’t recognize it. It’s impossible for them to think outside of traditional political categories of imperialism and racism.
Does this mean a person must automatically support this project? Of course not. But it should at least be acknowledged for what it is… An attempt to upset the rotten status quo in the Middle East. Rather than simplistically lumping it in with Old Europe’s rape of Africa and Asia.
— Discoshaman Jun 19, 12:08am # - Heh. I just reread my post and noticed several typos. That’ll teach me to try and be coherent at 4 o’clock in the morning…
— Discoshaman Jun 19, 6:35am # - Easy to ignore Jim’s silly strawman tirade against the murderous French, but this dewy-eyed delusion is simply too rich to pass by:
“who do you think has made more broken promises of democracy, protection and prosperity since 1945, America or France?”
Laugh. Out. Loud.
— Edwin Jun 19, 8:17am # - The French are not so much murderous as perfidious.
And a question cannot be a delusion. The answer might be, but not the question.
(If this is the best retort to my original message, I take it I’ve won, as it were.)
Go away and grow up, Edwin.
— Jim Jun 19, 11:12am # - Actually, Jim, that was a pretty good retort to your original message – which had anyway been rendered irrelevant by the clarification Gail posted hours before your delightfully trite and richly off-topic Francophobia spilled onto this page. Such a lot of effort you put into indicating you can’t read!
>> I take it I’ve won, as it were.
Priceless.
Best of luck in your continuing unimportance, Jim.
— Dean Allen Jun 19, 12:02pm # - I think it’s incredibly naive to think that Iraq and Afghanistan were only about eliminating governments that sponsor terrorism, and that either were altruistic.
You think Afghanistan was a success? Sure, why not. (Al queda’s regrouped, the country’s a mess, and they’ve been left out to dry).
If Iraq was about WMDs, it seems we’ve had ample evidence to dismiss that claim, and why didn’t they let the inspectors stay? And if it was about Saddam’s repression, why did the US push for 10 years of sanctions that didn’t hurt Saddam but all the people it was so eager to “liberate”? Liberate by now making them subjects of military occupation. And what about all the other tyrants around the world? Why pick on the weakest?
Come on.
Sure it’s bold all right and narrow-minded and potentially very dangerous.
Guantanamo is bold too.
And anyway can you tell me what right the US has to single-handedly upset the status quo in the Middle East? What right it had to upset the status quo in Central America, in South-East Asia? in the Philippines? In Iran? We could go on like this forever but it’s stupid. it’s just bitch slapping, it’s not debate.
Do you really think that racism isn’t a problem in the States, have you talked to someone of Arab descent lately? How about blacks who are still battling racial stereotypes?
Cynical?
How about that little purging of electoral lists in Florida? How about the defence and reconstruction contracts being handed out? How about the top officials’ perfidious ties to big business?
What? we should be starry-eyed about this? Shrug it off? How much do you need to realize how corrupt this administration is? How morally bankrupt? How cynical?
And decadence – you say the moral and cultural decline of Europe has made it blind to world realities. Wow! I think it’s terrific how people who are offended by what seems a generalization about their own country, see no hypocrisy in making sweeping statements about others. Whatever.
And I don’t know why anyone is attacking Gail for France or for Europe’s history. I’m not absolutely sure, but I doubt that she’s responsible. Get some fucking perspective.
Anyway, this kind of approach to a debate is inane. If your only defence is going to be yeah, well, we’re still better than all those rotten old cultures, we’re richer and mightier and have a real great plan like the world has never seen, yadayadayada, and nothing more substantial—- yawn, I think you’d find a more suitable home on some other site.
— MikeD Jun 19, 12:03pm # - “Actually, Jim, that was a pretty good retort to your original message which had anyway been rendered irrelevant by the clarification Gail posted hours before your delightfully trite and richly off-topic Francophobia spilled onto this page. Such a lot of effort you put into indicating you cant read!”
So Gail is the originator of this tread?
Sorry. I can read, but I’m not psychic.
In fact, I largely agreed with the post from Gail that appears just before my first and indeed was encouraged by it to post my own comments, believing I was re-enforcing the views set out by Gail. This was because from reading it, I assumed (as any reasonable person would) that it was from someone arguing against the position of the originator, and certainly anything but a clarification by the originator.
I’m not trying to defend the position of the current US administration. It’s just that I find it particulary rich that criticism of the type expressed at the start of this should come from France of all places, the one country of the so-called western world whose government has an even worse record than America when it comes to things like keeping promises of democracy, etc., etc.
— Jim Jun 19, 5:49pm # - Gail, I am sorry about this. I was directed to this particular thread directly from another blog altogether. I had no idea who “owned” this thread and did not suppose it matters.
There is no indication on this page that you—or indeed anyone else in particular—are the “owner” and it’s only now that I have found this out.
I apologise for the confusion.
— Jim Jun 19, 6:55pm # - “I think it’s incredibly naive to think that Iraq and Afghanistan were only about eliminating governments that sponsor terrorism, and that either were altruistic.”
I’m curious what our ulterior motives were in Afghanistan? Did we covet their sand? Or maybe it really was as simple as it seemed (though less satisfying to the Baby Chomskys of the world) and we really were going after a government that was sheltering al Qaeda and had literally named bin Laden a defense minister? I think that has a little more plausibility than a Blood for Sand hypothesis.
“You think Afghanistan was a success? Sure, why not. (Al queda’?s regrouped, the country’s a mess, and they?ve been left out to dry).”
Yeah, al Qaeda’s really regrouped. Much of their senior leadership dead or imprisoned, and even Saudi Arabia is beginning to dry up their funding. The only attack they’ve managed since 9/11 was INSIDE a Muslim country. They’re really on a rampage. Any more regrouping like this and they’ll be as defunct as the Abu Nidal Organization. The country has not been left out to dry. Our special forces are still in-country helping to stabilize it. The US is still actively engaged in Afghanistan.
“If Iraq was about WMDs, it seems we’ve had ample evidence to dismiss that claim, and why didn’t they let the inspectors stay? And if it was about Saddam’s repression, why did the US push for 10 years of sanctions that didn’t hurt Saddam but all the people it was so eager to “liberate”? Liberate by now making them subjects of military occupation. And what about all the other tyrants around the world? Why pick on the weakest?”
You ask a lot of questions without making any points of your own, which is typical of your sie. Thy are only comfortable on the attack. This is because the Left hasn’t had a fresh idea in about 30+ years. They don’t know how to build, only attack. But I’ll answer as many of these Qs as I can given the format.
— Discoshaman Jun 19, 7:25pm # - Why did we attack the “weakest?”
There are several reasons…
First, he was hardly the weakest. Assad is much weaker. The reasons are thus:
1. 16 UN resolutions and a broken ceasefire agreement.
2. A continuing history of genocide against his own people.
3. Two foreign wars of agression.
4. Repeated use of WMDs.
5. A ten year failure of non-military means to effect change within the regime.
Why not N. Korea or Iran instead? Iran is a powder-keg right now. It’s very possible that it will fall apart of its own accord (reformists regularly garner 75-80% of the vote and there are ongoing protests.) North Korea has 12,000 artillery pieces within range of Seoul. We would be counting the civilian casualties in the hundreds of thousands at least. Our hands are effectively tied by this. Plus it is utterly dependent on China for surival, so there is hope that diplomatic leverage from this direction may produce some positive changes. None of these were the case in Iraq.
— Discoshaman Jun 19, 7:32pm # - Iraq wasn’t about WMDs exclusively. This was an aspect of it. As was Saddam’s continuing sponsorship of terrorism. As was his defiance of 16 UN resolutions. As was his firing at our air craft. As was his genocide toward Shi’as and Kurds. As was his violation of the ceasefire agreement. He could have averted the WMD aspect by simply demonstrating where the chemical and bio weapons he’d previously claimed to have had gone to. Some evidence of their destruction. He chose not to, which left us with no alternative than to believe he had them.
The ten years of sanctions DID hurt him. His military was greatly weakened, and he was able to only marginally rebuild it, despite help from European companies. They only hurt his people because he diverted food for oil monies to building palaces, finding thug squads, paying bounties to Palestinian suicide bombers and the like. And I would remind you that these sanctions were under the imprimatur of the UN, which as all good Lefties have taught us, is a sacrosanct organization and the sine qua non of international rectitude. I’ll ask you to speak in more worshipful tones when you mention its sanctions?
“Sure it’s bold all right and narrow-minded and potentially very dangerous.”
Narrow minded as compared to what? What could be more narrow than slavishly holding to the failed policies of the past 3 decades? Or do you have some fresh new idea to stop the problem? That would make you something of an anomaly on the Left then. As for potentially dangerous, what?s the worst that could happen? Skyscrapers exploding and incinerating thousands of my countrymen?
“Guantanamo is bold too.”
Cry me a river. Anyone who was training in an al Qaeda camp deserves a lot worse than a hut in the tropics. And I dare say it?s a bit cozier than the caves they were in before.
?And anyway can you tell me what right the US has to single-handedly upset the status quo in the Middle East??
Are you asking in an international law sense, or in an abstract universal justice sense? The first is that international law recognizes the right to self-defense. These countries are sponsoring terrorists which pose a direct and immediate threat to our country. The abstract moral argument is much the same.
“What right it had to upset the status quo in Central America, in South-East Asia? in the Philippines? In Iran? We could go on like this forever but it’s stupid. it?s just bitch slapping, it’s not debate.”
I’m not looking to bitch-slap you. In fact, I’m enjoying talking with you. I hope you read my comments in the lightest possible vein, because I truly mean no disrespect to you personally.
— Discoshaman Jun 19, 7:34pm # - “Do you really think that racism isn’t a problem in the States, have you talked to someone of Arab descent lately? How about blacks who are still battling racial stereotypes?”
This seems like a bit of a non-sequitor. Could you tell me at which aspect of my argument this is directed, or is this just an addition to the litany of America-is-badness?
“How about that little purging of electoral lists in Florida? How about the defence and reconstruction contracts being handed out? How about the top officials’ perfidious ties to big business?”
You’re really going to start waving the bloody ballot? God, I hope the entire Left keeps up this type of attitude. You are doing a HUGE help to the Republican Party. Americans rally around a president when he’s attacked. Further, voters almost never go for the angry party. Look at the R’s in ‘96. This sort of hatred is contributing to long-term majority status for the R’s. It warms the heart. My great hope is that the Left will continue to nurse an irrational hatred for Bush.
As for the rest of it, you believe that America is somehow more perfidious in this sense than which country? The oligarchies of the former Soviet Union, the Corpacracy of Japan, Mr. Berlusconi’s Italy, or Chirac’s France? Let he who is without sin toss the first stone. Do you REALLY believe that we went to war just so Boots and Coots could get the well fire-fighting contracts? The big resource contracts are all going to be handled in open bidding, as per international law.
‘What? we should be starry-eyed about this? Shrug it off? How much do you need to realize how corrupt this administration is? How morally bankrupt? How cynical?’
Again, it’s the same thing the R’s did with Clinton. Now it?s the other sides turn to see the President as the incarnation of evil.
‘And decadence ? you say the moral and cultural decline of Europe has made it blind to world realities.’
I don’t believe I said blind. They fully recognize realities. And they?ve accomodated to them. Which is why Hamas can still raise funds in many European countries. And why they cozy up to Khaddafi and Assad and Arafat. If you had an angry, unassimilated mass of Muslims in your county (who could in the foreseeable future comprise a huge minority) and you were militarily impotent you might make friends with terrorist supporters rather than fighting them as well.
Much of Europe has made a decision akin to a 95 pound guy with a 300 pound prison cellmate. They’ve become the terrorist’s (and their state sponsor’s) prison bitches, and thus generally get a free pass. Take Holland, for example, where virtually any violent radical group in the world can raise funds, so long as they don’t actually blow something up in-country. (I believe the Dutch have finally started to tighten this up a bit.)
— Discoshaman Jun 19, 7:40pm # - “Anyway, this kind of approach to a debate is inane. If your only defence is going to be yeah, well, we’re still better than all those rotten old cultures, we’re richer and mightier and have a real great plan like the world has never seen, yadayadayada, and nothing more substantial—yawn, I think you’d find a more suitable home on some other site.”
I’ll be happy to accept your criticism just as soon as I see you make a substantive point of your own. The Tories were called the Stupid Party because they opposed everything and proposed nothing. Anytime you’d like to show a better way to stop the terrorist threat, I’ll be happy to listen. My contention remains that regime change in the region is the only viable choice given the nature of the threat. Let’s hear your alternative. Unless you’re simply an old Tory at heart.
— Discoshaman Jun 19, 7:43pm # - I love debate, and freedom of speech, however, what I must say that it is easy to condemn America if you don’t live here. Instead of pointing fingers, and “sticking a stick in it and stirring it up” as my grandma used to say.
Then you get all these people with their high ideas and intellectualism- I say, if you think you can do better then run for office- run for president!
— eddeaux Jun 20, 12:02am # - What I’ve never understood is how these eloquent, meaningful musings always seem to turn into the most basest of ripostes. Kind of sad, and proves part of Gail’s point, I suppose. The cycle continues.
— Neil Jun 20, 1:29am #
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