[extropy-chat] Enlightenment and the election

[Kevin Freels]

This has nothing to do with living in a bubble. I think it is a matter of
priorities. I think that if you asked, you would find that most people here
agree that Bush has made some grave mistakes over the last few years.

The real debate is whether or not Kerry would have made the same, or even
larger mistakes when it comes to the interests of people in this country -
(and the world)

Personally I think that Kerry, in the same situation as Bush, would have
done the same thing. In fact, he supported it.

I also see Kerry as unpredictable due to his flip-flop nature and desire to
be everything to everyone. This unpredictability means to me that he would
drag us into an even greater mess as he tried to capitulate to every country
in the world and make everyone happy...which is impossible and usually ends
up in pissing everyone off and putting you right back where you started.

The opinions of other nations should not be ignored, but at the same time,
they are not the deciding factor. Our president is the president of the
United States of America, not the president of the world. He doesn;t answer
to everyone else. His job is to look after the interests of the US. His job
description does not include doing what is best for China, or India, or
Pakistan, or Iraq. His job is to protect America. If someone intentionally
threatens, pretends to have the capability, is wanred in advance, and
chooses not to back down, then you go to war. This war was of Saddam's
doing, not Bush's. If Saddam wanted to protect his people, he could have
quit acting like a criminal. He wouldn;t have hid military equipment behind
civilians.

For some reason, you think of Bush as a warmonger who wanted to go to war
and kill civilians. You treat this as if Kerry would have done differently.
You put the blame of the war squarely on Bush's shoulders. Here is where you
are making your mistake. Your priorities are the lives of foreign civilians
over the protection of the US civilians against people like Saddam who
clearly want to kill us. They say so at every opportunity and do so when
gioven the chance.

Let me restate this....12 UN resolutions...all ignored. Who's fault is this
war again?

I can understand your reason for not supporting Kerry, but I don;t think you
have made an honest attempt to understand why some of us support Bush. Or
maybe we haven't made it clear enough. Maybe this will help.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Samantha Atkins" <sjatkins at gmail.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 1:07 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Enlightenment and the election


> When we speak of California you are already speaking of around 13% of
> the population of the country.  Not exactly a negligible out-of-touch
> little sanctuary as nearly portrayed.
>
> I do not understand how anyone with open eyes to the many errors and
> horrors of the last four years attributable to Bush and his
> administration could possibly vote for the man.   I think that is a
> very fair question that has nothing in the least to do with "living in
> a cultural bubble".   I don't see how being in one of the swing states
> such as Ohio would make the decision to vote for a president with one
> of the worse records in our history more rational.
>
> I find that portraying those who don't understand what if any rational
> decision making was behind this win as living in some out of touch
> bubble is itself not in the least helpful to understanding and just
> adds more polarization.
>
> - samantha
>
>
>
> On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 18:56:01 -0600, Greg Burch <gregburch at gregburch.net>
wrote:
> > I've kept my mouth shut here (but certainly not elsewhere -- on my blog,
for instance) since the election.  I've seen that the Europeans and the
Americans who voted for Bush need to vent: They're tired and scared.  But I
can't go on without registering that things like this article are part of
the problem.  It's hysterical nonsense from people who live entirely encased
in a cultural bubble that includes zero contact with anyone with whom they
disagree.  Frankly, all the preaching about tolerance and diversity from
people who live in such bubbles seems ironic at least and outright
hypocritical at worst.  How many times have I read and heard in the last few
days that people in New York and San Francisco and Seattle and London and
Brussels can't understand how America elected Bush?  They can't understand
because they have no intercourse with the people who voted for Bush.  Their
conception of huge swaths of American culture is a shallow caricature that
would be funny if it wa!
> sn!
> > 't so sad.
> >
> > I'm an atheist.  I'm a libertarian.  I don't suffer from a lack of
literacy or even education; I know that humans evolved over a period of
billions of years -- imagine that!  I didn't have to vote for Bush because I
live in the capital of Red State America, Houston, Texas, so I had the
luxury of voting symbolically for the libertarians.  But if I'd lived in
Florida or Ohio, I'd have voted for Bush.  My liberty to be irreligious and
follow Enlightenment values has not been curtailed and, contrary to what one
would think from reading the New York Times, the LA Times, watching all but
one of the major American news networks or reading basically all of the
press in Europe, my liberty to be irreligious is not in immediate danger.
> >
> > GB
> > http://gregburch.net/burchismo.html
> >
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