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Not logged in — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 21:38:22 +0000

That was a very thoughtful, well-written post. I appreciate a call for more substantive participation in the U.S. democratic system. What bothers me most about the neo-conservative movement, whose latest incarnation resides in the Pentagon -- though key proponents like Wolfowitz, Perle et al are out of the administration, is it messianism. Our self-appointed savior complex is, thereby, the instrument to justify needless militarism. We want the whole world free: but toward what end, in what way? There is an eerily Marxist tinge to the President's frequent references to our historical "calling", or "our generation's challenge". This teleology, infused with the necessary military predominance and support of revolutions in the name of global freedom, is a radical departure (to put it lightly) from US foreign policy. Our "gift to the world" is "God's gift to humanity," as Bush declared himself. Thus we have assumed the mantle of God, and feign surprise and shock when we discover that people take offense. I do not at all agree with the "pessimists" who fear an impending fascist state or a theocracy in this land. That will not happen, because Americans will not let it happen. To ensure that, more public participation is needed. Half of the population votes, and that's of those registered. And an end to the "two"-party system would remind the people that there is hope, and that they have decision-making power. The voter 'apathy' is really a rational realization that there is no point: the decision has already been made. Until we give ourselves real choices in government, unlike the laughable (and regrettable) non-choice of Bush or Kerry, progress will simply remain a slogan.

jrc on "IQ of voting must go up to increase IQ of president-elect"

jrc — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 19:39:28 +0000

The way to raise "voting IQ" is to vote for sensible things (like ideas) rather than silly things (like would Tweedle-Dee or Tweedle-Dum do a better job of "representing" us). I think global population pressure has raised percolation (i.e. transformed itself into the "Beast of Armageddeon", threatening to drag us to our doom with it's 4 Horsemen of Famine, Plague, War, & Avarice) to a level which can no longer be contained by our archaic institutions, it can only be contained by total freedom (i.e. anarchy) or electronic Democracy (i.e. the people raise, discuss, & decide issues themselves). P.S. Do you have a reference for that Greenspan quote?

IQ of voting must go up to increase IQ of president-elect,

deteodoru — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 10:28:01 +0000

As a victim of communism from early childhood, I spent 30 years of my life burrowing and infiltrating it to know it so well as to become free and secure from it. In the process I learned that it was not the smartest people who were the professional anti-communists in politics, military and cultural opposition to it and that too often they did not share my passion to know it and control it rather than have it control me. In fact, while many dedicated people gave their lives far more heroically and daringly than me to fight communism, those who led them often were opportunists and selected on the basis of almost every reason but ability. Anti-communism soon became a profit motve affair, fully reinforcing Lenin's alleged statement: when time comes to hang the capitalists they will be trying to outbid eachother to sell us the rope. Yet, somehow, we managed to slowly defeat Communism; it seems that was because, with time, far dummer people came to lead the Communist world than the dumb people leading capitalism. We were indeed, in an historical sense, the lesser of two evils. But no sooner had we ended one epic global struggle that we found ourselves in yet another: the war against global Islamic terrorism. Once again, we attented to the enemy in terms of what he does instead of what he is. And, once again, being in the World Trade Center (WTC) on the morning of 9/11/2001, I was as directly affected by this epic struggle as I had been by the one against communism. But this time I no longer involved myself as a helpless child knowing nothing of what hit me, but I was confronting an Islamic movement that I had studied for 40 years in my involvement with the Cold War in the Middle East. Islam, however, is not like communism. It is not a world state and it is not a movement that seeks to engulf everyone. Furthermore, it is based on spiritual faith, not on ideology. While both Communism and Islam demanded total self-sacrifice from adherants, Islam does discociate from material life and is based on cultural norms that are common to most Western cultures, as it derives from the same sources. Lastly, most Isamics are not enemies because they are Muslims; only a few are enemies because they would destroy the non-Islamic way of life in order to eliminate its corruption of Islamics. On our side there is one major difference in our side's state of being in the struggle against Islam as opposed to the struggle against communism. Most of us grew up in liberal society believing that commensurate with authority came a minimum level of responsability. No matter what corruption we thought power inflicted on our leaders, we assumed a certain reliable rationality on their part; hence, political science tended to analyze politics through a "rationalsit" lense. However, since the end of the Cold War several events have caused us to question this obligate link. Firstly, the events involving Enron, Worldcom and other corporate giants make it clear that very many of our economic leaders in no way associate authority with a given level of responsibility. An almost child like perverse corruption has infected all levels of capitalism; in the words of Allan Greenspan, "Capitalism is a failed system," because of this immature disociation between authority and responsibility. At the cultural level, analysis and informatics have become a means of entertainment rather than aids to responsible democratic participation. And, at the political level, our national leaders are of such a low intellectual caliber as to insure near total political irresponsability. It is rather shocking that in characterizing himself, at a Yale U Commencement, President Bush said that if you are a C level student, you too can become president. And, more recently, refering to Vice President Cheney, he said that if you "drop-out" of higher education, you too could become Vice President. The unintended reference to lack of intellect (ie. depth of analysis) in this Administration when it comes to the responsability of decision making suggests that we face the Islamic threat with far less of a national IQ than we faced communism, far less of an ethical standard and far less of a sense of responsability, leaving the average American helpless and vulnerable both from within and from without. Worst still, zealotry is substituting for brilliance and sycophany from ingenuity, as we fight the war on terror weighed down by "mutual interests and cronism in the Executive Branch and in Congress. While the former represents a new low, the latter is the smae old thing. But nothing is more dangerous, in my view, that the psychopathic cabal that calls itself "neoconservatives." The moral corruption, psychological imbalance, bravado and rampaging hate of this small group that hides behind slanderous charges of "anti-semitism," leveled against anyone who questions the morality and sanity of this group and the Sharon regime in Israel that it champions, has with sureptitious funding from various wealthy individuals taken control of right wing publications and think-tanks in America and Israel and has published hateful books that give away its Stalininst roots in the early Cold War and in the New Left in the 1960s. Everything America stands for is under assault by a sunnami of ambitious mediocrity begining with President Bush all the way to the neoconservatives in JINSA. These are dangerous people who send young Americans to die while they profiteer from influence peddleing kickbacks from the very military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us to be weary of. As billions of dollars are squandered in conspiratorial projects like the ill-conceived war in Iraq to disable fraudulently documented weapons of mass destruction and to finance Sharon's creeping wall into the very lands Bush promised to the Palestinians, America is failing to apprehend the evil individuals who brought 9/11 upon our country, while feeding alQaeda more hateful shaheeds fired up by our blank check to Ariel Sharon's regime in the Middle East. Who will speak for the United States of America? Who will take back the ship of state from the sub-standard corrution that is sinking it? Who will bring us back to the moral standards that made this the land all manknid seeks to emulate? Lastly, who will save the Diaspora Jews and the Israelis from slander and staning with the salatious claim that they should abandon the Jewish tradition of individual responsability before God and each man thinking for himself for sheepish submission to criminals like Sharon and his corrupt neoconservative handfull of payed agents. God forbid that the Jewish people should be associated with such debased thiefs of shum change. That is what the corrupt Arab leaders with whom the Bush-Cheney crowd beds love to see so that they can say: if you love Sharon's corruption you will really love ours. But it's an endless case of the pot caling the kettle black, while Bush fiddles tunes about trips to Mars instead of talking about how we will take back our national independance by using out technical ingenuity to become energy independent from these Arab sheiks. Our oil dependancy is not only setting us up for our vulnerability to the terrorists, as we support the crooked masters of the Mideast, but is also forfeiting the independence for which our forefathers shed their blood. It's time to get crooks like Cheney out,,,but not to be replaced by crooks of another party. We the people must show the intelligence we expect of our leaders in choosing those who will raise again our leadership IQ to the level that won the Cold War. We are runnig out of time, out of jobs and out of soldiers.

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IQ of voting must go up to increase IQ of president-elect,