US government Options

[Respudious]

How many of you feel like you are highly educated on our government? Do you feel like imperialism has dominated the inner-workings of our government and it is the interest of top corporations that reign supreme over the interests of the people nowadays? What are your feelings on the Wolfowitz Doctrine? I'm sorry for all the questions but recently I have devoted time to trying to uncover the other side of our war policies and it's startled me. I feel like our nation has been misled greatly by the inentions of our government. I saw in another post that someone said only 28 civilians were killed so far this year or something like that? Fallujah was a massacre!! Soldiers were told any person walking was an enemy target, and this is from the first hand testimony of a soldier himself. Don't take this as an anti-american rant because I love our country, yet I feel there are flaws within our country, mainly foreign policies. 9/11 was a pain inflicted by our own country! If you are offended by this I'm sorry, but all the facts point to this conclusion. What are your feelings on the government, and how did you reach these feelings?

well I hope I didn't scare away any potential debaters if this is a subject over your heads, or hopefully you debaters are just gathering up your ammo by doing research which I encourage, because this is not a subject to come mis-informed on.

(posts merged)

This post has been edited by Smoogrish: Apr 13 2006, 07:14 PM

[*CrackedRearView*]

I feel like our nation has been misled greatly by the inentions of our government.

You made this statement in your first post, and I agreed with it. You postulated that the highest ulterior motive of the United States' government is an imperialistic inclination to aiding large corporations in their fights for power, and I agreed with it. You said you don't like Bush, I wholeheartedly agree.

In fact, Respudious, I would venture to say that you and I are nearly political equivalents in that we share a good portion of the same ideals concerning American policy/politics. For that, I applauded you (and I happily read this thread). However, you ventured off into Stupidville with the 9/11 conspiracy theories. You officially lost my attention with this little nugget of wisdom:

9/11 was a pain inflicted by our own country!

That's so false it's almost sickening.

If you look at the statement literally, you're essentially saying that 9/11 was fabricated by our government in order to put a veil of urgency over our eyes -- you're theorizing that over 3,000 people lost their lives in a planned collapse of two of the most expensive buildings in the world while the administration sat in their offices snickering and giving each other football butt taps; I can't bring myself to logically believe this (and trust me, I've fallen victim to far dumber gullibility traps).

If you look at it figuratively, you're saying that the United States is solely responsible for the attacks through indirect actions (i.e., we're not diplomatic enough, we piss off Middle Eastern countries, we're too unilateral in practice, etc.). This, again, is only half true. While we aren't the beacons of diplomacy and we have utilized our position of power for unilateral interests on several occasions, you simply can't blame our nature for the events that happened on that ugly Tuesday morning. To the contrary, you have to look at the social contrasts.

We're a major Christian nation; the Middle East is dominated by Islam. We're industrialized and we enjoy several luxurious amenities (like the Bill of Rights, for example); almost none of the Middle East compares in that respect. We're (one of) the richest countries in the world and we pretty much turn the globe when it comes to politics (when you see that almost any important action in world politics hinges on a decision made or not made by the United States of America); these Middle Eastern countries are buried by our political mud and their voices are drowned out by ours.

These are some of the major factors that your argument would be missing if you looked at it in a figurative stance. If you looked at it the other way, I'd chuckle, e-slap you, and continue about my day.

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Now, onto your belief that I'm just out to get you.

1) You're in the Debate forum on CreateBlog.com. Let me tell you what this means (and don't take this as patronization, but you really only have 18 posts and I don't think you understand the inner workings of this little Utopia we cling to). First, almost all of the respondents you'll encounter in this particular subforum have been pecking away little factoids of debate knowledge for a year, a year and a half, and some for more than two years now (I joined in March 2004). What this means is that we've all developed a unique approach to answering arguments, this much is true. How are our responses unified, however? They're always going to be sardonic in nature and will often portray us as overly pompous. This is not the case -- we're all very down to earth, happy people -- most of us just enjoy basking in our pedantry.

2) You're giving yourself way too much credit when you say that I'm simply here to "mock" your arguments. Slow your roll, back up two steps, read my previous point. You say that I only attack your sources and that I never offer others. How could I? It's a conspiracy theory, so, naturally, only the biased sources will be available. You tell me that you chose to cite "911Busters" of all places because it was the convenient website of the time. Wait, how'd you phrase it?

There are actually more sites but I just found that one interesting at the time.

Total crock, and you know it. 911Busters and the Loose Change video (which I have seen, FYI) epitomize biased, partisan Internet trash, designed to suck in troubled teens who neglected to take a course on media trends and what they do to the human mind. I'm not saying you're a troubled teen, I'm simply showing you the nature of the sources.

Be a realist; would non-partisan publications waste their time with such nonsense? Even the most liberally inclined publications, The Washington Post or The New York Times, for instance, have yet to support this ludicrous, inane propaganda because it isn't grounded enough in fact even suitably to print in their publications. So where do you come off with the nerve to tell me that I'm too uninformed to reply with sources (key word: credible) of my own? Point the way to those sources, maestro...whip me up a Big Mac and a Coke while you're at it. I'm saving my third wish for later.

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Look, what I'm eventually leading up to is simple. 9/11 was an awful tragedy (I lost two family members to it). We all felt the shock and awe following it. I'd love to believe that the Bush administration conspired to fabricate 9/11 or even that they willingly let it happen in order to be justified in attacking the Middle East. However, I don't want my intelligence to get fat, so I exercise it. In this case, exercising my intelligence means knowing when and where to draw the line between Debate forum-worthy and just plain stupid.

I drew that line at the gates to "911Busters.com"