I got fooled.

[Jenne]

I think that we live in a world where most people don't give a shit about real issues and of course won't do anything about it because they are comfortable in their state of mindless ignorance.
Why worry about how to better the world when you can just choose to live in blissful ignorance? Why bother to really go through long mental processes when you can choose to just eat the brainnumbing propaganda some major publisher wants to shove down your throat? They will shove anyways, so why not just open wide and learn to not gag while they fill you up with their creamy bullshit?

Some already know too much, or gave certain things too much thought. It feels wrong somehow, to give in to the perverted ideas of modern society. In time the propaganda will have adapted and give us a new feel of what is natural; then the last bits of thought crime will be eliminated and we can all enjoy being stupid and just doing our share for the big machine.

Be it due to intelligence, pride, trauma, madness, obsession to rebel - a part of humanity won't just swallow this crap, no matter how hard it's being shoved in... These people will have be taken care of; or they will take care of the machine. Which obviously can't be allowed. The strange times are also interesting times - the final battle is already raging. Silently for some, and others are kicking and screaming until the drugs kick in again.

Meh; (yay for even more semicolons) I shouldn't just rant away without proper structure and without knowing where I am going with it. Ah well, time for my pizza; factory made of course, nicely decorated with pressed chicken, spinach and some kind of sauce - randomly puked onto it by some robot. HUZZA!

I know what you are saying--I have the very same sentiments on board.  I guess I've been un/lucky enough to inspire others IRL to try to make a difference, even if in the end the experience wasn't nearly as rewarding or brought the amount of change they truly wanted.  The point for me, though, was to not just keep on keepin' on.  Because my conscience wouldn't let me.

I think what you said has held true for a long, long time.  And knowing exactly how far we've come in the information age yet how far we still have to come in the "decent behavior towards others" stage is exactly where the rubber meets the road.  There's little justification for having enough food and shelter and not giving a shit enough to try and continually make things better, except that the comforts of having enough food and shelter tend to produce exactly that reaction in the human mind.

That can be something to get butthurt about, even if it carries a large amount of hypocrisy, or it can be something to accept and move past/around/through in order to carry on with whatever it is that makes you tick.  The hard part is the momentum--hard to initiate, terribly difficult to sustain.  And again, this is another thing to get upset about, or simply accept and power through/forgive/forget.

I'm at heart an activist, so I rarely accept the defeatist attitude, though I certainly do my share of raging and venting...because I care (if you don't care, you don't bitch, amirite?).

[Roo]

If EVERYONE decided that it's too difficult to deal with the consequences of giving a shit and doing something about it...and decided fuckitall, I'm done...what would happen?
   

Isn't that pretty much what's going on now?

Do you REALLY think that?

I don't think EVERYONE has decided "fuckitall, I'm done", but I do think an awful lot of people have.

[nostalgicBadger]

If EVERYONE decided that it's too difficult to deal with the consequences of giving a shit and doing something about it...and decided fuckitall, I'm done...what would happen?
   

Isn't that pretty much what's going on now?

Do you REALLY think that?

I don't think EVERYONE has decided "fuckitall, I'm done", but I do think an awful lot of people have.

What difference does it make? What can people really do? Do you honestly think who you vote for is going to make any difference? The democrats selected Obama, the republicans selected McCain, and if the handful of people running this country honestly thought that either of these people was going to deviate too radically from the status quo, their names would never appear on a ballot; they would be nothing more than obscure senators, and even if they were running, you would probably never know it.

So what do you do? Voting is useless. People, short sighted as they are, look around at all of our problems and blame the current administration, as if everything would be just fine if we had elected Al Gore. Forget it. George Bush is a symptom, not the disease. The real problem is with the system itself. It's too old. It's too bloated. The Constitution was designed to govern a few colonies on the east coast, before mass media and corporations and billion dollar ad campaigns.

Obama is not your answer. Neither is McCain. The system is failing, not because it's inherently flawed, but because it has not adapted. Too many people have learned to use it for selfish gain, and too bloated is the beaurocracy to keep repairing it. History has shown us what happens, though, when the people are dissatisfied with a system that cannot be fixed.


UNDERSHAFT Vote! Bah! When you vote, you only change the names of
the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments,
inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders and set up new. Is that
historically true, Mr Learned Man, or is it not?

CUSINS. It is historically true. I loathe having to admit it. I
repudiate your sentiments. I abhor your nature. I defy you in
every possible way. Still, it is true. But it ought not to be
true.

UNDERSHAFT. Ought, ought, ought, ought, ought! Are you going to
spend your life saying ought, like the rest of our moralists?
Turn your oughts into shalls, man. Come and make explosives with
me. Whatever can blow men up can blow society up. The history of
the world is the history of those who had courage enough to
embrace this truth. Have you the courage to embrace it, Barbara?

[Ari]

 
I love how this forum is swarming with thought criminals...

[Holding Dongs]

Like the NRA nuts say "They'll have to pry it from my cold dead fingers."  Not because I think i should HAVE to own one, just that I think I do.

How's that for thought crime?

I use a target from the shooting range I go to as a bumper sticker, with my shot group circled.

[nostalgicBadger]

Like the NRA nuts say "They'll have to pry it from my cold dead fingers."  Not because I think i should HAVE to own one, just that I think I do.

How's that for thought crime?

I use a target from the shooting range I go to as a bumper sticker, with my shot group circled.

wtf are you talking about?

[Holding Dongs]

Like the NRA nuts say "They'll have to pry it from my cold dead fingers."  Not because I think i should HAVE to own one, just that I think I do.

How's that for thought crime?

I use a target from the shooting range I go to as a bumper sticker, with my shot group circled.

wtf are you talking about?

I am so jaundiced by this election and concerned as to where we are headed that I didn't really look at what I wrote before I wrote it.

To answer the question, I have no fucking idea.

[Requia ☣]

What TGRR said.

And also, -10 pts for using the Fox News "messiah" bullshit. 

As a former Obama supporter, I can state the term 'messiah' is completely accurate in the effect he has on his followers.

[nostalgicBadger]

What TGRR said.

And also, -10 pts for using the Fox News "messiah" bullshit. 

As a former Obama supporter, I can state the term 'messiah' is completely accurate in the effect he has on his followers.

Honestly, it freaks me out.

[fomenter]

I love how this forum is swarming with thought criminals...

if only the spread of thought crime was  as viral as the spread of herd thought - baaaad discordians questioning the leeeeaders obaaaama and  mccaaaaain we haaaaave goooood choices...

[Ari]

Thoughtcrime will become a real problem in a few decades.

Concerning the election as european spectator and general maniac:
I think it won't really matter who is going to win - since most global politics are already initiated and are going to be steered by other means; and like pointed out above - any candidate up for vote certainly went through the system and therefor can't be changing anything too radically.
It's the same bullshit here; I've seen it in Germany and there lobby-ism is really going nuts in the recent years - and the closer I look at Sweden the more I see the same shit again and again. At least here the general populous is still going hard on the free-speech matter and in public radio you can still say what you want. Not like Germany where press-censorship is seriously trying to compete with the USA.

[Jenne]

If EVERYONE decided that it's too difficult to deal with the consequences of giving a shit and doing something about it...and decided fuckitall, I'm done...what would happen?
   

Isn't that pretty much what's going on now?

Do you REALLY think that?

I don't think EVERYONE has decided "fuckitall, I'm done", but I do think an awful lot of people have.

What difference does it make? What can people really do? Do you honestly think who you vote for is going to make any difference? The democrats selected Obama, the republicans selected McCain, and if the handful of people running this country honestly thought that either of these people was going to deviate too radically from the status quo, their names would never appear on a ballot; they would be nothing more than obscure senators, and even if they were running, you would probably never know it.

So what do you do? Voting is useless. People, short sighted as they are, look around at all of our problems and blame the current administration, as if everything would be just fine if we had elected Al Gore. Forget it. George Bush is a symptom, not the disease. The real problem is with the system itself. It's too old. It's too bloated. The Constitution was designed to govern a few colonies on the east coast, before mass media and corporations and billion dollar ad campaigns.

Obama is not your answer. Neither is McCain. The system is failing, not because it's inherently flawed, but because it has not adapted. Too many people have learned to use it for selfish gain, and too bloated is the beaurocracy to keep repairing it. History has shown us what happens, though, when the people are dissatisfied with a system that cannot be fixed.

You don't think the system started OUT this way?

I get the feeling in this thread that there's the thought there's been entropy.  That the system is on a crash-course to failure if it hasn't gotten there already.  That it's ENDED UP that way, not just going on as it has begun.

Let me tell you something:  there are still more people, better off, better educated, better fed, etc. etc. since this whole shebang started.

And now ask yourself how it started.  And then point me to where THAT was a bad thing.  (eta:  in aggregate, asshats, in aggregate--you're always going to break some eggs to make an omelet)

The trump card is always going to be the fact that this is still America.  This is still the US.  And you are all bitching because you care, and because you want it better.  You are the lie to the truthyness of "it's all going to hell in a handbasket."

I think it does matter who is going to win:  the new stats on what Bushfuck did to our bottom line point to that right off.  More Americans are in a shittier position after he took office than before.  In fact, the world is in a shittier position...so yes, it definitely fucking matters.

[nostalgicBadger]

Does it? Things are worse in America than before Bush took office, yes, but if you think that is all because of Bush, you're failing to take basic economics into account. Economics runs in cycles, it doesn't just keep going up and plateau -- what goes up will eventually come back down, and may or may not go up again. The economy was beginning to decline at the end of Clinton's second term. Admittedly, the Iraq war probably did not help, although it is hard to say, because even though war costs money, it does tend to employ people.

Some people will always care. That doesn't mean the system isn't declining. The real issue isn't anything that happened during Bush's rule; it's the fact that Bush was reelected at all.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Does it? Things are worse in America than before Bush took office, yes, but if you think that is all because of Bush, you're failing to take basic economics into account. Economics runs in cycles, it doesn't just keep going up and plateau -- what goes up will eventually come back down, and may or may not go up again. The economy was beginning to decline at the end of Clinton's second term. Admittedly, the Iraq war probably did not help, although it is hard to say, because even though war costs money, it does tend to employ people.

Some people will always care. That doesn't mean the system isn't declining. The real issue isn't anything that happened during Bush's rule; it's the fact that Bush was reelected at all.

Who said that? Jenne certainly didn't.

[nostalgicBadger]

Does it? Things are worse in America than before Bush took office, yes, but if you think that is all because of Bush, you're failing to take basic economics into account. Economics runs in cycles, it doesn't just keep going up and plateau -- what goes up will eventually come back down, and may or may not go up again. The economy was beginning to decline at the end of Clinton's second term. Admittedly, the Iraq war probably did not help, although it is hard to say, because even though war costs money, it does tend to employ people.

Some people will always care. That doesn't mean the system isn't declining. The real issue isn't anything that happened during Bush's rule; it's the fact that Bush was reelected at all.

Who said that? Jenne certainly didn't.

I think it does matter who is going to win:  the new stats on what Bushfuck did to our bottom line point to that right off.  More Americans are in a shittier position after he took office than before.  In fact, the world is in a shittier position...so yes, it definitely fucking matters.