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Post by JesusLooksLikeMe on Jul 29, 2004 13:02:12 GMT -5
Fair enough CF. Lets just drop it then, as I don't much enjoy personal arguments.
FWIW, I have total and utter respect for the views of each and every poster who constructively engages with this thread, whether I agree with them or not.
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Post by Thorngrub on Jul 29, 2004 14:12:11 GMT -5
Fair Warning: Below Is Printed An Impromptu Essay Dealing With Vague, Abstract Analogies About The Body Politic
*It Is Fully Intended To Be Vague And Abstract In Order To Get Across A Point Which Could Never Otherwise Be Reached Due To The Invariable Host Of Intercommunicative Complexities Featured By Our Dear Readers And Contributors Of This Here Board*
{If you indeed have something thoughtful and constructive to say about it, that would be most welcome. If all you have to offer is a bitch-fest that I didn't specifically point out legitimate details or personages, then you have entirely missed the point I am on about, and are therefore asked to remain mum about this sub-thread, which, after all, was only started by that wack rabble rouser & conspiracy-theorizing, Left-Wing extremist, Bush-Bashing, totally insensitive, Atheistic, probably Chauvinist and possibly even communist, Pinko-Asshole Thorngrub}
You know how when, a patient might be lying on the slab with a bunch of doctors peering over their surgical masks while rooting throughout his brain in search of a cluster of cancer cells to remove? Forgive me for the crudity of this analogy, but it should serve the purpose of the point I want to make. Essentially those doctors (if the patient is lucky) might end up telling him that they might end up being able to remove all the cancer cells, and they have him sign a consent form and all that so that he understands the risks, etc. Let's say the doctors manage to isolate this cluster of cancer cells, and remove it. Let's further assume they successfully remove 100% of the cancer cells, and the patient is effectively cured. He was one of the lucky ones.
Personally, I think that our National (and hence borderline Global, here in this 21st century environment) Body Politic is afflicted with something that might be considered, by direct analogy, as "cancerous".
I believe this "cancer" has spread beyond the point of being "benevolent" and has achieved a deeply and firmly rooted "malevolent" status.
About the only good thing I can see coming out of this whole mess is the very fact that as an analogy, one must remember that "The Body Politic" and the individual human body are two very different entities.
If an individual human body is diagnosed as having a malevolent cancer rapidly spreading, more often than not there is little to no hope for that individual human being to survive. Cancer = Death
Hence if the "body politic" is, say for the purposes of my argument, hopelessly riddled with this deadly cancer, the only good news about it is -- that the nature of a body politic is such that, as an entity, it is not an "individual being" per se; rather, a sort of colony of interfaces and relations which make up its bulk. In other words, should this "cancer" prove "fatal" to the body politic -- a percentage of We The People shall survive as surely as the next sunrise will come up over the horizon.
I.E; Good riddance to this bloated, shambling corpse sucking its last breath through the oxygen mask. And may Prosperity or whatever drives our development onwards look down on Her leftover constituents to oversee their reconstruction of the new age economy, Amen.
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Post by Thorngrub on Jul 29, 2004 14:13:11 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]FWIW, I have total and utter respect for the views of each and every poster who constructively engages with this thread, whether I agree with them or not. [/glow] I guess that rules me out, eh JLLM -? (You said "constructively"...)  |
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Post by melon1 on Jul 29, 2004 18:55:19 GMT -5
The absurdity of women in combat that's been shoved down Americans' throats with propoganda such as Courage Under Fire and especially G.I. Jane is utterly detestible, in other words too absurd to even debate.
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Post by shin on Jul 29, 2004 19:19:25 GMT -5
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Post by Meursault on Jul 29, 2004 20:18:55 GMT -5
Fucking balloons can't come down fast enough, god damn this world and the state it is in.
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Post by stratman19 on Jul 29, 2004 20:21:45 GMT -5
Relax Shanester, it's just politics.
(as far as the fucking balloons are concerned...the same thing is going to happen at the Republican convention in a month or so)
I can't speak to Canada, but this country is extremely divided/polarized. I don't see it ending anytime soon. To me, it comes down to a battle of ideas, and this country is split, pretty much down the middle. The candidates are really fighting for the 10% or so, of voters that haven't made up their minds.
I don't really see an end to this for the forseeable future. I think Mary said some time back that she saw the same thing (forgive me Mary if that's not accurate, I'm going on memory). Mary had brought up, at the time, that she couldn't see any reconciliation between the two sides (I'm paraphrasing) because they are so far apart. I agree with that.
Christ, for as much love and affection that the liberals (and Europeans) have here for Clinton, he never got even 50% of the popular vote in either of his presidential elections. He was as polarizing to me, as Bush is to you (liberals). This is a country divided, a battle for ideas...nothing wrong with that. Democracy is ugly, but I think America has proven that it works...we have over a coupla hundred years of experience in the great experiment. We went from a colony to the most powerful nation on Earth in little more than 200 years. I think that says something about our system of government, and I also think it means that we have nothing to apologize for.
If that makes me an "ugly American", so be it.
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Post by Meursault on Jul 29, 2004 20:25:24 GMT -5
I suppose the lacking confetti is just a figment of my imagination to?
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Post by shin on Jul 29, 2004 21:22:04 GMT -5
Fucking balloons can't come down fast enough, god damn this world and the state it is in. Don't worry, Shane. Hope/Help is on the way. |
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Post by PC on Jul 30, 2004 0:11:00 GMT -5
The absurdity of women in combat that's been shoved down Americans' throats with propoganda such as Courage Under Fire and especially G.I. Jane is utterly detestible, in other words too absurd to even debate. Care to elaborate? I'm not attacking you, I'm just curious on why you think the idea of women in combat is so asburd. If women want to go to war, let them go to war. I certainly don't - the military is not for me. |
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Post by Mary on Jul 30, 2004 0:18:49 GMT -5
Like I said, I concede there are lots of potential problems with women in combat, but it's not just some unthinkable hollywood fantasy either. Women fought alongside men in all combat positions in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. There is historical precedence for this, it's not beyond the pale.
...the other thing I meant to respond to was chrisfan's post earlier about the differing mental capacities of women and men, and womens' greater emotionalism. It's always impossible to make any kind of definitive argument for nature vs. culture in these matters, but all I can do is suggest that I tend to think women have been relentlessly socialized into these sorts of roles, and that military training is precisely the sort of thing that produces the opposite socialization and creates the kind of subjects who will go and confront the intruder or whatever. In short I think any woman who successfully completes milliary training would no longer fit the "typical mental mode" that you've ascribed to most women. But it's a speculative position of course...can never really prove such things one way or the other.
Personally, I've never fit into that emotional, caring, nurturing gender role that is ascribed to most women, and I worry that even when women assert these characteristics in order to celebrate them (like Carol Gilligan and all the cultural feminists), they are basically buying into the stereotypes of women that have historically justified their exclusion not just from combat roles in the military but from any kind of participation in public life outside the domestic sphere. No doubt men and women really are different, but I question any way to determine which differences are somehow "natural" in a society with such an overwhelming history of socially constructed gender roles.
Cheers,
M
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Post by chrisfan on Jul 30, 2004 6:35:04 GMT -5
Like I said, I concede there are lots of potential problems with women in combat, but it's not just some unthinkable hollywood fantasy either. Women fought alongside men in all combat positions in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. There is historical precedence for this, it's not beyond the pale. ...the other thing I meant to respond to was chrisfan's post earlier about the differing mental capacities of women and men, and womens' greater emotionalism. It's always impossible to make any kind of definitive argument for nature vs. culture in these matters, but all I can do is suggest that I tend to think women have been relentlessly socialized into these sorts of roles, and that military training is precisely the sort of thing that produces the opposite socialization and creates the kind of subjects who will go and confront the intruder or whatever. In short I think any woman who successfully completes milliary training would no longer fit the "typical mental mode" that you've ascribed to most women. But it's a speculative position of course...can never really prove such things one way or the other. Personally, I've never fit into that emotional, caring, nurturing gender role that is ascribed to most women, and I worry that even when women assert these characteristics in order to celebrate them (like Carol Gilligan and all the cultural feminists), they are basically buying into the stereotypes of women that have historically justified their exclusion not just from combat roles in the military but from any kind of participation in public life outside the domestic sphere. No doubt men and women really are different, but I question any way to determine which differences are somehow "natural" in a society with such an overwhelming history of socially constructed gender roles. Cheers, MI don't disagree with you that a great deal of the emotional differences are more "nurturer" traits than "nature" traits. But that does not discount the fact that they are there. |
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Post by chrisfan on Jul 30, 2004 6:36:02 GMT -5
Fucking balloons can't come down fast enough, god damn this world and the state it is in. Don't you know? The balloons and confetti did not fall at the normal speed because of all of the pollution that the Bush administration has pumped into the air.  |
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Post by JesusLooksLikeMe on Jul 30, 2004 12:00:01 GMT -5
Was Kerry's convention speech any good then, folks? If 8% of Americans are undecided on voting intention (as claimed in my newspaper the other day), he's got to be seeking a bounce of 3-6% in the polls I'd have thought. No positive movement at all would be quite ominous, I'd have thought. Mary - very interesting article by Naomi Klein in today's Guardian that I thought you might enjoy. Ignore the headline - it's more a critique of the left than of Bush:- www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1272503,00.html |
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Post by Mary on Jul 30, 2004 12:03:07 GMT -5
Well, last night I watched about two hours of the Democratic Convention, which was the sum total of what I watched this year (I find party conventions about as exciting as reading the phone book). This included only about half an hour of Kerry's speech, at which point my friends came by so I turned it off and we went out.
As with any convention, about 99% of the rhetoric was utterly vacuous. I was put off by all the military metaphors, like the Democrats are trying to out-Republican Republicans by proving how tough and pro-mililtary they are. Joe Lieberman reaffirmed why he's the most insufferable Democrat on the face of the planet, with a speech that was completely indistinguishable from a George W. Bush speech, just overflowing with right-wing ideological nonsense. Every three sentences were about "Islamicist terrorists who hate us more than they love their own lives", interspersed with charmers like "the thing that makes America so great is our shared faith in one God" - though Lieberman was hardly alone in trying to mention God every other word, even Nancy Pelosi got in on that act. I guess we non-believers aren't exactly a significant constituency!
Kerry's speech, from what I saw of it, was utterly unremarkable, so unremarkable that I can no longer remember a single word of it. God, I really hate these wankfest meaningless conventions that are so predictably scripted from the very first minute that they might as well just hire a bunch of robots to deliver the speeches. The masturbatory emptiness of American politics never fails to amaze me. I wish Ariana Huffington would do another shadow convention this year, that was the best damn part of the 2000 conventions.
I'll vote for Kerry, yeah, but fuck knows I can't remember the last time I was actually excited about a single political candidate.... maybe Clinton back in 92, but I was 14 at the time!
M
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