Comradeski,
[quote="Nathan Ilyitch Haleski"]
Kanadian friend:
Red Square is going to charge us some serious back bacon soon for commandeering so much space on his site. But, I must write - as your posts are so funny, and very intelligent, other then a few misconceptions of America that you hold, no doubt thanks to your Ministry of Misinformation up in Ottawa.
With regard to space - Kanada is very large, mostly empty country (not taking into account trees, lakes, wild animals, etc.), so we could, should necessity demand, plant a small server farm on the commune and share it with the collective. And we have the option to back-channel our conversations if they become too tiresome or overly personal for the collective, or tax Red Square's patience. But I am also newer member of The Cube, and I've found that it can help for people to know 'where I'm coming from'... man... it is a short 'getting to know' period, followed thereafter by pithy jabs..
Thank you for compliments - my face is now a similar colour to my hair - but please don't mistake jokes about Amerika for misconceptions... or maybe opinions (which are not absolutes). I am honestly not Left, or Right Wing, or even in the middle. I am truly non-partisan, not because I can't make up my mind or have no opinion, or feel "we must all just get along", but because I feel strongly about most issues, but on an issue by issue basis, and I feel that partisanship is counterproductive in its current guise, requiring me to buy into an ideology, rather than judge issues each on their own merit... and perhaps that is where some of the misunderstanding comes from... and my vast frustration with all politics - US, Kanadjian... One must choose 'one' or 'the other', or sit on the fence till the pole goes up their ass... nothing is ever accomplished, and because partisanship asks that we essentially vote on the issue most important to each of us while not necessarily liking what comes along in the total package - like being forced to buy the meal deal when all you really want is a good meaty cheeseburger... you end up eating the fries and drinking the watered down pop cause you feel guilty just throwing it out (not a particularly poetic metaphor, but I'm sore and grumpy today so it'll have to do) - I'm feeling more and more that all politics is bloated and corrupt and based on fast food ideologies, rather than a holding any of the noble promise of democracy. I'm not so stupid or idealistic as to believe that a democracy can be perfect - it must be imperfect by nature, and there will always be the imprint of the lowest common denominator on it (yup... I'm an intellectual elitist bitch), but compared to Facism or Communism (the same thing in a different coloured shirt) it is the best we have... but I'm incredibly disillusioned and feel that both our current countries' partisanship squanders the best hopes we have of making anything work.
Red Hair! Glorious coloring my comradette! You are a Party Hero! One of the few chosen by Father Lenin from beyond to wear your politics on your head!! You are a masterpiece!
Yes - it is in honour of S.O.'s favoured futbol team - River Plate of Buenos Aires (yes - Argentina... country of origin of The Che)... it's was dyed blue and yellow several years ago and I received lecture on wearing the colours of River's rivals, Boca... just as I endured lecture on proper pronuncitation of The Che's name last night up S.O.'s return from family visit to BA... apparently, despite all the Spanish lessons, my 'ch' is too soft... or perhaps it is that S.O. is devout Kapitalist (MBA - Washington U in St. Louis.) and so spits out the name of the hated one. Funnily, older brother of S.O. is Trotskyite (I gave him an ice pick for his birthday a couple years ago), but upon pressing, says that it's not that he doesn't want people to own nice cars - simply that he wants everyone to be able to have a nice car... all very confusing, as I had assumed that Yugo's and Trabants were not particularly nice cars...
I took a film studies class in my undergrad. We literally watched and had to write a lengthy report on the value of the movie "Battleship Potemkin"! You must have seen that one in the Re-education Screening Theatre for the Glory of the People in your Canadian school.
Good Lord! Must you remind me? The memory is almost too much to endure. Now you're simply being cruel.
I literally took a class called "Women in Asian History" in undergrad....85% of the class was devoted to the glory of Mao-est China and the true equality of women under that system! It was un- freakin' believable!! None of the other students had my background or knowledge of history so what the class became basically was a dialogue back and forth almost daily between myself and the teacher where I continually was a thorn in her ass by calmly raising all the realities of Communist China - it's mass murders - it's miserably failed programs, it's programs of indoctrinating little kids and then turning them against their families and teachers in order to direct attention away from the suffering and death their crappy system of government was causing! She tried to stay reserved and counter my arguments, but she never could of course and so she simply waited me out until I was out of her class.... she ended up giving me a "B" in the class because of it, ruining my almost otherwise perfect GPA.
Classic - and the reason I dropped the classes I did. We may not pay as much up front for our educations in Kanada (though we do pay in taxes which then subsidize indoktrination), but since I've worked full-time since the age of 16 and refused to take out student loans for my edukation, I actually demanded and received one. My few Film Theory courses may have been a bit trying (though we did also get lots of DW Griffith's work... nothing like a little balance in propaganda... and Lillian Gish was Kanadjian)... But produktion courses were teknikal, not theoretical, and the rest of undergrad was of my own crafting in terms of content. I have a very low tolerance for BS, and am not one to elevate professors to place of intellectual Gods. I knew, for instance, that I was in the right Humanities/Lit course, when the professor pointed out the Hitler was only the third worst mass murderer in history, behind Stalin and Mao.
Yeah! Where is Ward Churchill when you need him? My law school in Malibu wasn't left enough! He's a Native! He should be given automatic attorney status and allowed to be Dean of our law school because his 1 ancestor was Grey Owl of Canada!!
Ahh... and here in the Great White North, our noble savages have become Nazis (see:
Ahenakew stripped of Order of Canada.) As usual, it's all the Jews' own fault... apparently, we have single-handedly destroyed the dignity of First Nations People's... And Grey Owl wasn't actually native.. he was an Anglo who went native..
You seriously had an uncle in Tsar Nicholas' orchestra??! That is amazing! Do you know anything more about him? Did he escape before the Bolsheviks assumed total control??!
Yep... much of the family did, many coming to Kanada through Ellis Island and then going 'up to Zion'... They all mostly came to the Kanadjian Prairies (more wheat than forest - that would be western Alberta and BC)... and farmed... some lived in small towns, endured anti-semitism sometimes... my Great-Grandfather owned a brewery for a time in Saskatchewan, but lost the licence when the government changed to one he had not backed (the NDP... watered downed socialism), and their children's children, my parents' generation, all became professionals... as did many of their children... and so we're back to being citified bourgeois intellectuals and dirty kapitalists, rather than shtetl-bound peasants - albeit, literate peasants...
Yeah, your politicians seriously need purging. Is there no movement up there to expose them for the corrupt frauds that they are? Doesn't anyone up there see that the Canadian government could, given the right conditions, turn into a malignant form of leftism at any time? It has to be fought tooth and nail or else we will all end up being shot in front of a mass grave. I will not tolerate any such threat, however remote, and I do not think it is remote with so many Russki nukes floating around out there available to the highest bidder, or in exchange for a case of vodka. Do your politicians simply despise America? Do they, as the French feel, that we received our "just dessert" on 9/11, or even the more insane theory that George Bush actually orchestrated 9/11 in conjunction with Osama?? You are good people - you come from essentially the same stock of people as us Americans. Why wouldn't you fight for what is right? I realize it is a monumental effort - but what else is more worthy? Or is it simply a case where the governemnt clamps down hard on protestors? It couldn't be that bad there right?? I really don't know. When I was in Toronto a few years ago I asked as many Canadians as I could about their system and most of them seemed pretty happy, but resigned, as you are that no real change could ever take effect and a good number of them made it a point to say that their "free" health care was less then adequate.
Well.. this would be a misconception of many Kanadjians. There is a great deal of respect for the ideals inherent and ingrained in the US Constitution. It is a brilliant and truly virtuous document that speaks to the highest potential of mankind. There is some element of defensiveness about our national identity when it comes to the US, because from our POV it is such an edifice in terms of its sheer influence on our culture. And we are, as I have pointed out, still a consitutional monarchy, and have never waged a war of indepedence from mother England. But we're fractured... BC is tearing itself apart between the NDP and the Liberals, Alberta is Progessive Conservative (who I would vote for were their ranks not quite so bloated by anti-semites... just can't make myself do it), Saskatchewan is NDP - socialist, and sinking fast... Manitoba doesn't matter... Ontario is schizophrenic, and Quebec wants to leave Confederation... and everyone in the Maritimes and Newfoundland... well... not enough votes to matter.
<br>Jean Chretien (our last Prime Minister) despised Bush, and did our country no favours, either at home or globally - he wanted to be the next Pierre Elliot Trudeau, gawd-help-us-all... Paul Martin (small 'L' Liberal - fiscally conservative) is trying to fix what Chretien f**ked up so profoundly (he was from Quebec, incredibly nepotisitic and corrupt, and has left the current PM wiht a shit-storm to deal with... currently we have the
Gomery Commission into the Chretien government's corruption and thievery, but there will be a political backlash that will divide our country further - much as the US is facing the rise to power of The Red Queen. And most Canadians would very much like to VOTE for what is right (and many were not happy about the decision to act only as Peacekeepers, rather than deal with certain Middle East regimes once and for all) but are so absolutely disillusioned with ANY of our political parties that the thought of an election makes us nauseous... Ours has been a house divided for too long. Our military, once noble and meaningful, is neutered... we don't even have working helicopters or submarines... and the best operating firepower is wielded by either honest-to-goodness hunters and farmers (they hunt non-endangered species like ducks, geese and deer, and EAT them... though the birds might not be eaten soon with Avian Flu on the way), or by gang-members in urban settings who have fire-arms that have been illegally smuggled across the border from the US (though we in no way have the people-shooting-people issues that the US does and by and large, gang-bangers just shoot each other, which pleases everyone but their West Indian born mothers and sisters - social Darwinism at work)..
I honestly don't think anyone but a few nut-jobs think the US deserved 9/11, or the UK 7/7, but I don't think enough people up here think clearly about the fact that there's every liklihood that we're next... My only hope is that WHEN it happens, and it will, it will wake a few people up.
You actually grew up in Saskatchewan? That place always sounded so exotic to me - like there are small villages of gold mining era looking clapboard houses and lumber jack looking guys in red flannel shirts with suspenders and massive facial hair walking aorund with plates of maple syrup laden flapjacks. Bear and Moose in the eternal struggle for the right to live occurring daily on Main Street and nothing in the grocery store but ammo, maple syrup, back bacon, flapjack mixins', beer and maybe a hockey puck or Wayne Gretsky commemorative disposable dishware.
Kind of... born in Winnipeg, then moved to Vancouver, Edmonton, back to Vancouver, Regina (that's Saskatchewan) and finally Toronto, with some smaller places in betweeen... Your conception of Kanada is pretty funny - geographically, anyway... Southern Saskatchewan is wheat and rape seed (or Canola, now), as is much of Manitoba south, and parts of Alberta... as you move west, you get into range land (cattle) in Alberta, and then the Rockies and BC... forests start about half way up Saskatchewan... there are forests farther south in Ontario.. There are less than 1M humans in the province of Saskatchewan, not many lumber-jacks, many hunters... Maple syrup comes from farther east in Canada... I can't speak to the Wayne Gretsky commemorative dishes... not my thing...
Good guy - that Mr. Gretsky, by the way he lives in Thousand Oaks, CA nearby my law school.... I didn't bother him, or even yell out "We're Not Worthy! We're Not Worthy!" nor did I start kowtowing to him. I probably should have though. He, along with Dan Akyroyd, Martin Short (yes Martin Short, leave me alone, the guy is hilarious even if he didn't choose the best movie parts to take) Michael J. Fox, Catherine O'Hara, John Candy, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis and Dudley Do-Right are welcome here anytime. Good Canucks all of them. And how could I dislike Elwood Blues - who left your country, came to my hometown, and showed it to be the finest city in the world that it is. (although there are some weird racist country singers roaming around in an RV along with some Nazis claiming to be from Illinois)
So I'm told, though I've never met him... I do appreciate the reference to Wayne's World (Mike Myers having grown up in Scarborough - east Toronto), and we do seem to turn out an inordinate amount of comedians who end up on SNL... and yes, we hate Illinoise Nazi's up here too.
Yeah, there is definitely corruption in our Republican Party, as in any large group of people. But they are mostly on the side of justice and truth and the Democrats have spiraled down quickly into obviously anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist radical kooks.
Call me paranoid, but I'm not buying it... and I mean it... really, call me paranoid, because I am... I think there are as many right wing kooks who want to bring about the end of days as there are left wing kooks who hate me for being Jewish without understanding who I am... your argument is that most people are on some kind of even keel in the US, just as I'd argue they are in Kanada, but they don't matter if the people who get into power, Left, Right or Centre (LRorC), are corrupt, self-serving scum-bags, or if they just end up doing the things they bitched about when they weren't in power... The religious right in the US - and I'm not talking about that which is portrayed in the mainstream media... I have eyes and ears and we do get the evangelists on TV here... hear their interviews, read their own websites... we are capable of collecting information from many sources... the religious right in the US is doing precisely what they accused the Clinton administration of doing in terms of trampling their religious freedoms, only they are not separating church and state (which I actually think is a good idea)... Michael Moore and his large hammer aside, Bush says the things he does in Moore's films... He isn't helping the middle class and he's protecting his cronies and keeping their pockets filled... I believe that it's criminal to have the connections Cheney did to Enron and be sub-POTUS, while Amerikans of every class lost their shirts because of fraud... I'm not talking about a response to terrorism... I'm saying that a criminal is a criminal is a criminal, LRorC, and that, sadly, for all the things I do agree with, Bush doesn't have a great track record when it comes to addressing certain moral and ethical inconsistencies in his administration. Is this my disillusionment with democracy speaking - yep... Your own beloved Abraham Lincoln said,"Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men". I see no honesty in politics.
And it is impossible not to be completely and utterly aware of US politics in Kanada, even to the point of ignoring our own as a matter of time management... again, the US simply has too much of an influence on what happens in Kanada economically to not pay attention. That our own political history since the time of JFK has too often been a reaction to what is happening in the US is more knee-jerk protectionism of our own interests (and the fact that Trudeau had way too many people fooled for way too long... that Two Solitudes again, and shame on us for electing Quebecois Liberals...)
...Carter's crap socialist economic programs laid our industry to ruin; gas was literally handed out in quotas and he actually said in a nationwide announcement that these are "dark days in the U.S." and essentially there is nothing we can do about it. Scum traitor idiot. And they say Gerorge W. Bush is an idiot. Oh really.
But then, too many Amerikans assume he's an idiot (well... too many people assume he's an idiot), when I believe that he's quite happy to be seen as slightly slow... It lulls people into a false sense of superiority.
But in any case, there haven't been any more attacks on U.S. soil and we are killing those murderous animals in the Middle East by the hundreds of thousands, and we unthroned Sodomy Hussein, gave women over there some freedom, at least to vote, and have Osama on the run from cave to cave. What was John Kerry's plan? Hmmmm. . . I don't know exactly, it was on his "website" apparently, he never really said, other then that the French, who were profiting hugely from Saddam's government and told us they would never help us overthrow him would apparently ride in to our rescue.
So you're saying that wasn't Heinz Ketchup on his lapel?
O.K., as for America's Founding Fathers hypocrisy as you called it, yes, I know, I understand what you are saying based on todays values and knowledge. But I challenge you to look at the rest of the world at that time. I'm not making excuses for slavery here - I told you, my hero is Abraham Lincoln, alright - but I am a history major and am tired of our Founding Fathers getting dragged through the mud constantly over their "hypocrisy." We were not the first to have slavery. We were not the last to have slavery. There were, in fact, black slave owners in America and elsewhere in the world at the time as there are right now in Africa, today. I'm not kidding. Slavery goes back thousands of years, as you well know. But it was Dutch ships in the 1600's attempting to trade with the Africans - product for product that first encountered slavery and brought them to the New World. It was the Africans themselves, who had a long long history of slavery, who in fact started slavery by the technique of selling off captured POWs as slaves. They had nothing else of value that the Dutch could want so they paid the Dutch in slaves. The Dutch then brought them to the New World and so imported a vicious system from Africa to America. The simple fact of the matter is this - and it's not PC, but I don't care because it is not my view, it is the views of the world back in the times of our Founding Fathers - that black people were subhuman - that they were backward, that they were less then human, that they were mentally inferior and fit only to serve as slaves. Most blacks generally accepted this as fact as well. How could Europeans feel differently when their culture had "evolved" to highly specialized and mechanized socieites and the Africans were literally throwing spears at each other, at rhino and selling each other off in slavery? So to go back and re-write history using a broad Politically correct brush and say oh - the American Founding Fathers were a scam; they lied, people died; they were hypocrites they were all slavemasters is a bunch of leftist propaganda, that we are also taught here in America - so don't feel bad about believing it as truth from your Canadian education.
I concede the point and aplogize for my momentary lapse into Historical Revisionism... but then that goes back to my point about the founding fathers being Deists rather than Evangelical Christians... and yes, the Dutch were naughty (and still often are)... but for gawdsake, Comrade... please stop refering to my Canadian indoktrination... by my count, I have five years on you and I read... actual books.. and not just text books... The cold dark winters give us lots of time to edukate ourselves up here, undoing much of the damage our (or any public school system - even US) might do... do you think your Amerikan plot to lull me into mental-vacancy with Desperate Housewives and The O.C. has worked? I just shut the TV off and pick up a book (though none my Noam Chomksi, as kindling is too dear to waste during our Kanadjian winters.)
As I wrote to you personally via thepeoplescube email, American conservatives are not all hard core religious fanatics. We just are not. I'm not bragging that not all conserevatives are religious, but I am just saying that alot of us American conservatives are not particularly religious at all and the leftist media loves to stereotype us all as bible thumping back assed hillbillies and we are not. The ones that do practice religion are generally wholesome, good, caring people who just want to be left alone to believe in their God. They are not evil freaks like the headcutters over in the Middle East. Personally, I think religion has alot of good qualities and helps instill good values in people, and I feel that most religions generally teach love and tolerance and that you should simply live a good, quality life, helping out your fellow human beings whenever possible, never intentionally doing harm to anyone for any reason, and treat all people with the inherent respect that they deserve, until they prove you wrong and prove they are villians, then I feel you can and must defend yourself. If you do that, you will be rewarded greatly, no matter what religion.
I ain't remotely anti-religion... I'm anti-church... Churches take Wisdom Traditions (to use a phrase coined by Huston Smith) and turn them into political machinery, and subvert the ethics and morality that the framework of a religion provides, and turn it into politics... Understand where I'm coming from - how are the Catholic Church and the Inquisition, the worsening treatment of the Jews under Protestant Reformationism, the Nazis and the USSR any different than the anti-semitism promulgated by fanatical-Islamists? It's all politics in different coloured shirts, robes, Abbayas... that the lowest-common-denominator actually believes the propaganda belies the moral framework that CHURCH provides... Give 'em an enemy and set 'em loose... watch the burning... what's that smell?.... books and flesh.
There's a fundamental disconnect between assuming that if someone holds science in high esteem, they are automatically an atheist... it's a logical fallacy... If we actually live in an infinite universe (discussion of Quantum, Einstein-ian (I made up a word!), or Newtonian physics... string theory, inflation theory, Big Bang, etc. etc. etc. aside), then logically one can not say that God does not exist... at best, one might be agnostic. And I actually believe in a deity. I'm just not so impressed with Churches... even my own. That I often feel frozen by my pessimism about the world - political, religious, environmental - is shameful to me. That I drag my ass out of bed and more often than not, open my mouth (or type), alleviates some of my shame... that I'm beginning to sound like Woody Allen is reason for suicide...
As such I see it as my goal to continue the work of our Founding Fathers and promote liberty, freedom, hard work, and the advantage of self reliance and industriousness every single chance I get. That is the true American way. That is my mission, that is what I feel I must do or else all their work was in vain. All those soldiers who died over all the years of our history will have done so only for America to turn into a despotic, intolerant nightmarish country of lazy welfare junkies. NO WAY. NOT ON MY WATCH.
It's why I am abandoning law and moving into politics full time. Not as a candidate, more as a writer I feel, and I fully intend to use my writings toward that aim and even for profit if possible - I doubt I could pull off an actual candidacy, not really the game show host type of guy, but I will work feverishly behind the scenes. My country is worth it. I think Canada is worth fighting for as well. The United States will not become France or Cuba. No way.
Well friend - just remember those words of your hero, Lincoln. And believe me when I tell you that most of us haven't given up fighting for Kanada either.
Yes - some people, companies will try to take advantage. Some human beings, for whatever reason are defective and will sell their own soul for another dime. That's why we do have good, solid laws in effect to deal with those who price gouge or make a wild unreasonable profit at the great expense of mankind. While I am certainly no socialist, I also do not feel we should regress back to the times of the Industrial Age which is what Southeast Asia is like right now in the present time. There you definitely have companies exploiting children and creating vast industrial wastelands and massive environmental hazards.
As I said in another post once - the Communists are actually the very worst offenders of the environment as they could care less about it -their goal is for the leaders to live as lavish a lifestyle as possible while all resources, human and inanimate are pushed to full extreme output production. Everyone becomes slaves then to a few freak leaders who have absolutely no moral qualms about killing even their own relatives for another ounce of power, let alone us, the general "teeming" masses and "wretched refuse."
Just don't fall into the trap of 'they're worse than us' as an excuse to do nothing. And that's where I do have a problem with Bush's policies, because there are lots of, for example, renewable energy sources that aren't getting funding for development (yeah - science takes research and research takes money and unless there's a military application for it then it takes a back seat) or even the time of day, and the official policy is that the American way of life is based on oil (I'm not making it up... he's actually said it)... but everyone bitches that there's too much reliance on Middle East oil but then gets in their Escalade SUV (or low-end gas guzzler... pick your income bracket and vehicle) and drives alone to work... WTF is wrong with wind farms and solar energy?... it's not some communist plot... someone has to build the damn things (and right now, it's the Dutch... the f**kers)... and they need a certain amount of upkeep, providing jobs... I have visions of my children wading through fields of discarded Foreman Grills and computer keyboards, because the market deems them easier to replace than fix. I say, fund the shit out of alt-energy resource development and take OPEC out of the equation. Let them slide back into their bedouin dust bowls... and if we have to leave Israel, then leave it the way we found it - half over-grazed desert and half malaria swamp, now returned to Eden... yank out every bit of elbow grease and upgrading and leave them sitting in the same shit we found 'em in when we ran the British Blockades, screaming 'f**k Balfour'... Haven't seen much polyester lately? Rayon's better, and it's made out of cellulose... cotton and corn (or wood pulp)... but cellulose nonetheless... It just takes some thought. I'm not asking for perpetual motion and everything has a price and takes energy... My issue is that I see few who are willing to pay the price to find an alternative, but they bitch and bitch and bitch, and wonder why their kids are getting asthma and autism in droves. I say, make money... make buckets of freaking money... just find a way to do it that will actually leave a viable planet to our offspring. I'm a capitalist, but I have a social conscience, and I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive... I'd just like more good examples of enlightened self-interest.
Agreed - the current system has tended to scare away potential future "Lincolns." They have said many times that our President Lincoln would be unelectable in our current day of celebrity idoltry and worship of the superficial and glitzy. It's why Bush gets so much crap for being an "idiot" - simply because he has a Southern accent, they say he is dumb. Which is ridiculous on the face of it - his grades at Yale were far higher then Kerry's were. He ran many successful businesses, including a baseball team and many successful political campaigns. An idiot cannot do those things. His big failure is leaving the borders wide open. That needs to be addressed immediately or I am afraid I will be one of the first casualities of Allah's House of Virgins Western tour sitting on the border as I am.
you simply cannot rely on the government to provide anything for you. To do so is contrary to the simple laws of nature and of history. Governments are slow, cumbersome, unwieldy, corrupt creatures by nature. That cannot, and will not ever change. NEVER. No matter how much people claim they will root out the corrupt and shoot them in the back of the head and all the happy humanitarian hippies will then join hands and dance in a circle like those old Coca-Cola commericals in the 70's. It will never happen. . . Why? Because the vile scum will always rise to the top in a system such as that. The evil murderers will naturally win out and assume total power because of the simple fact that they are the most ruthless and have no ethics. So our Founding Fathers had it right - limit the hell out of government - never really trust it, but set it up so it provides for the common defense. . . there's nothing in anything they wrote that says that America owes me anything by virtue of having been born here. Nothing of the sort. It is the insane Amendments you speak of which have corrupted the original vision, and that vision could have been modernized to eliminate slavery completely, but not allow for this class of layabouts eating Tikritos at the expense of the other citizens. That's absolutely not what this country was founded on whatsoever, and to say it is or that the system is fair in any way as it currently is would be a joke argument and cannot stand on its own.
uh-huh... but neither (sorry Red Square) do I completely buy into Ayn's
whole mythos either... she despised religion, and for all her dislike of forced social welfare, she had many hands up in her life. She hardly did it by herself, despite the difficulties she faced, but she doesn't do much to acknowledge the helping hand she was given over and over again. I can admire her writing - doesn't mean I don't think that the myth of her lacks some truth. I have no issue with welfare - but neither do I have an issue with making people work as long as they are also given the opportunity to improve their education at the same time. Whether they take advantage of that opportunity or not becomes their choice, and where they end up should reflect that. But when Bush brings people like Ms. Mier to the supreme court as a potential lifetime appointee, I have to wonder where merit ends and nepotism begins.
Yeah, Red Square has done a fine thing setting up this site. I've honestly never visited a chat room before ever until I found this one. And I do so, because it is as if he is reading my mind. For many many years - going back to the 70's when I was a kid I and my brothers joked aorund in "Soviet" speak and mocked the left. It has always been good fun in my family. Then along comes Red Square with this site mimicking most everything my brothers and I have said over the years. I've never met him, I don't know who he is, and yet I do know, EXACTLY who he is and so I enjoy actually writing in this chatroom, something I never thought I would do.
Ahhh.... see... another difference... Despite what Al Gore may claim
I invented the internet (I'm joking)... but have been on 'er a long time... newsgathering... plotting... writing angry letter to cafepress et al... including lists of subversive words in my emails so Echelon will get a hit on everything I ever write, including my blueberry cheesecase recipe... I wonder what the CIA makes of the word 'blintzes'. But I'm still mightily happy to have found TPC (giving me an opportunity to bore the crap out of the more seniour members - aren't newbies a pain in the ass?)
To Red Square and all other Comrades - I'll keep 'em shorter from now on, or back-channel it privately.
And, I can call myself a right winger. I understand your general malaise. I understand your feelings of pointlessness. I had them for many many years as well. 9/11 shook me out of my slumber and I will never go back to sleep again as long as I live. Hopefully you Canucks can shake off the dreamy haze that is Canada's brand of "Western European" socialism and create a safe happy prosperous place.
Well... some never woke up and never will, but everyone's got them - the butt useless (as opposed to the lowest common denominator - I believe there's a profound difference, as the do-nothing's at least have an oath to 'do no harm' through doing nothing at all - they're those I refer to as sitting on the fence so long the post goes up their asses, and the pole gets cold up here in the winter, so I'll give 'em credit for taking it)... a few morons DID blame the US but we shot and ate them... but most reacted much as individuals in the US did, and have not forgotten. In fact, most smart Kanadjians expect that we're next and have a sneaking suspicion that ours will be as home-grown as those in the UK on 7/7. I'm not shitting you when I call myself a survivalist, albeit a city-living one. But my upbringing and the self-sufficiency instilled in me by my parents and the communities I grew up in has better prepared me than most. I have no doubt there's a shit-storm brewing and heading in our general direction. I know I'll survive it - the question is, when the dust settles, am I going to want to?
Best
Sister Massively Opiated of the Kanadjians/Cetacean League Against US invasion...
