OT: US Pres election

[lch]

Originally Posted by lch

Oh please. Do you really believe that? The Iraq war was an invasion of the country by the USA army. I don't expect the people there will forget that. What would you do if your country would have been invaded by a vastly superior military force and thrown into chaos for years to come? Would you attempt to understand the ulterior motives of the attacker? Doesn't seem so given the 9/11 reaction.

Since I can't edit my own post anymore:

Al Quaeda isn't that much of a threat, anyway. It won't be able to triumph over the Juggernaut that is the USA. It didn't even manage to make it backpedal or slow down a little, like they might have hoped by attacking its supposed "financial heart". It merely gave it a pretense to fight a war with support of its citizens, help the president in charge keep his place, pass some unpopular laws and manage to put drastic public surveillance into use.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by lch

I am stumped by that everytime, too. The CNN calculated that the 9/11 attack killed 2,973 non-terrorists. That's a tragedy, for sure, but as a number it really isn't that much. Compare that to the death toll of war - among citizens, not soldiers, again. Or to the death toll from natural catastrophes. How are those three thousand lives any more valuable than other human lives? The 9/11 attack came as a shock, of course, but the reaction it caused was largely hysterical. It's not like Al Quaeda or anybody else would be able to start a real war or even fight on US American grounds then or at any time in the future. Judging by what they can do, almost everybody is safe from terrorists.

Why, you make it sound as if we're more likely to win the lottery, get struck by lightning, die in a train wreck, or give birth to triplets - than to die in a terrorist attack! I mean, ummm, wait.....

O.o

Not to downplay what US led/hired forces have directly caused by way of loss of innocent life in Iraq, it makes me wonder how many people our presence has indirectly caused, by increased strife and sectarian violence in the nation. It has to be far more than died in 9/11. People who also were just trying to live their lives, killed by terrorists because of our military actions. Yet those numbers are not only almost invisible in the media, but when people even see them, or are made aware of the reality - they want to wave it away, and dismiss it.

I think it's important to note that most of those people did not support, nor take pride in the single noteworthy terrorist attack on human soil, much as most Americans did not support, nor take pride in our wanton invasion of a largely innocent nation. Even if we all somehow manage to agree that Saddam himself was SO vile, so despicable that he simply had to be forcibly removed - it's highly unlikely that the current state of affairs, in Iraq, or globally as relates to world view of America would have actually been any worse than they are now, had we simply evacuated from the country to let THEM pick up the pieces from the damage that Saddam caused. Right now many of them are probably wishing we had just left Saddam in power, because they would have largely been safer and more comfortable than they have been these last several years.

They often go without running water or electricity - and they conduct their daily lives with the everpresent threat of somthing just randomly exploding - how is that freedom?

[Agema]

I was faintly interested by a comment earlier by Trumanator stating that the Americans were there to elect a leader for themselves and the rest of world didn't matter. This is true. It's an American election for Americans. However, Americans should consider world opinion, because the USA's ability to express its power depends on the rest of the world.

George W. Bush has managed to alienate not just traditional enemies of the USA, but even its friends. Confidence in the USA in Europe is probably lower now than ever before. It's not just belligerence over Iraq, Iran, Georgia and so on. It's the contempt for international organisations and treaties; denial of climate change; advocating backward social practices (abstinence to stop AIDS, anti-abortion, Creationism etc.). McCain-Palin looks like much of the same to the world.

US power, in relative terms, is declining. It's not just economic and military might, but political power due the loss of international prestige and credibility as above. For instance, whilst the British supported the USA over Iraq years ago, I do not think it's people would do so now if a similar position arose. I know lots of Republicans have contempt for the rest of the world, even fairly friendly nations. But the USA's allies grease the wheels of its power by supporting them militarily, diplomatically, and in many other ways. It's possible they would not cooperate more and more in future if there is continued GWB-style leadership. That will leave the USA increasingly diminished by isolation.

[HoneyBadger]

It's not intentional, Quantum Mechani, it's instinctual. Human brains are just not designed in such a way for us to automatically care very much about more than the people in our immediate surroundings. We're not hardwired to properly process pain and tragedy on a global scale. Any additional compassion we may feel towards people in other countries is supplimental and beyond the normal human scope of interest.

It's a bit like reading a book in a foreign language-it's obvious that a book ought to be read in the language of it's author, but it's not automatic that we do so, if it's not a language that we read. Even if we find a copy in our language, something probably gets lost in the translation.

You can probably name somewhere around 150 people (or less) who's funeral you would attend. I doubt you could name 15,000. And there's upwards of 7,000,000,000 people on the planet. It's a little hard not to generalize, when it comes to the sheer scale of humanity as a whole.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

It's not intentional, Quantum Mechani, it's instinctual. Human brains are just not designed in such a way for us to automatically care very much about more than the people in our immediate surroundings. We're not hardwired to properly process pain and tragedy on a global scale. Any additional compassion we may feel towards people in other countries is supplimental and beyond the normal human scope of interest.

That's understandable- I don't think it's avoidable or even necessarily desirable that the suffering of a stranger mean as much as the suffering of anyone you know personally. But this is an entirely different matter, sorting people by their nationality/race/culture. To many Americans (and probably similarly for other nationalities) the suffering of an American they don't know means a lot more than just a person in general they do not know... and that's something in my opinion far less excusable.

[Sombre]

I don't vote, never have and never will. It is an exercise in futility when all the parties are essentially the same, you don't believe in the system and beyond that don't even care who is in power, because they are unable to change anything anyway.

I just completely ignore them. It's quite common in the UK. When they say nearly 40% of people aren't voting, they mean 40% of people who actually registered to vote. Most apathetic people like myself don't bother to register.

[HoneyBadger]

I vote so I can complain about who gets elected. If you don't (or if your candidate wins), then you've no right to--and I can hardly pass up a chance at righteous indignation.

[Micah]

I did some research into this a couple of weeks ago, one of the facts I picked up was that if we got our healthcare system up to the standards of the top countries in the world we would save 100,000 American lives each year. That's 33 times the death toll of 9/11, and that's PER YEAR, so just over 230 times as many people over the remainder of the Bush presidency. I'm pretty sure the Iraq war funding could have been better spent saving American lives by fixing our broken-*** healthcare system instead of using it to kill people, including plenty of innocents. I'm sure there are plenty of other things we could be doing instead, but I like this one for an example.

Also, WRT global warming, I can't see how anyone can look at this: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/tr..._data_mlo.html and not at least wonder what effect that might have on things.

Oh, and Palin installed a sheriff in Wasilla that forced women who had been raped to pay for their own forensic test kits, just in case they hadn't been traumatized enough.

Obama sure as hell isn't as shiny as a lot of his supporters make him out to be, but in this case I must say that "bad" is a whole lot better than "worse." Sure, I'd love to see pretty much the whole US political system razed to the ground and rebuilt, but unless that's gonna happen in the next month and a half I'll stick with voting for the best choice I can for now.

[llamabeast]

When people suggest global warming doesn't exist, or even may not exist, it makes me want to cry.

There are few scientific theories so well supported by evidence, I believe. If it was in people's interests to believe it, everyone would have thirty years ago.

As a scientist who studied a lot of atmospheric chemistry in my undergrad, seriously it's a no-brainer.

The trouble with all these things is that in a world with so many facts, you can always find a few to support any argument. So the anti-GW people can put together a very convincing argument, backed up by real facts. If you're not willing to spend a lot of time on it, it's hard to distinguish it from, say, a pro-GW argument which is backed up by like a hundred times as many facts. Because they can't fit that many facts into a coherent argument.

/End of distressed rant

[lch]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

When people suggest global warming doesn't exist, or even may not exist, it makes me want to cry.

There are few scientific theories so well supported by evidence, I believe. If it was in people's interests to believe it, everyone would have thirty years ago.

Actually, I believe that evolution is even more backed up by evidence, but there are still some people who opt not to believe that. Hard to fathom for me how you can accept genetics for solving crimes and making cosmetics but don't accept it when comparing genetic material of creatures, or how you don't see the strong hints during the evolution of the human fetus.

The global warming one still perplexes me. Twenty years ago, when I was a kid, it was presented to me as a fact, there were even doomsday scenarios about an unstoppable end of the world where mankind would inevitably maneuver itself into, one way or the other. Back then, you vowed to change this, you didn't want to hurt your environment after all. In the meantime, you accepted that it isn't easy to solve and tried to always look for "greener" ways to do things. Now suddenly the US begins to see the big honking unmistakeable evidence, as if they found it hiding under a rock or behind a bush twenty years later, and even get a big political campaign around it, with former vice presidents writing bestseller books about it. Duh, slow on the uptake much? Guess it was the media difference.

About the presidential election: That Bush was voted once was a mistake, that he was voted twice made me lose faith in the voters. It seems that people are influenced a lot more by the political campaigns than I'd like, in which the republicans have more success by appealing to the voters' emotions and offering simple solutions which are easy to understand and believe in, even if they might be useless. The democrats only seem to be able to convince intellectuals and do-gooders, while the republicans win by having the ordinary people on their side, the mass of the voters. As much as I'd like them to, I don't see the democrats winning the election.