Why do you think the way you do?

[hubris 1]

LF, seems to be a troubled soul. I just dont understand what a person like him is trying to accomplish in this world with his views. And, I know he aint alone either. I have a brother in law that I like very much, but he shares some of the same outrageous thinking LF seems to. I just make fun of him anymore instead of debating him. I just say, Tim....if you thought like me, you too could have this in your life. It amuses both of us.

But, I was thinking today about a memory I have that is very clear as if it happened yesterday. Its part of who I am I guess. I was probably about 12 years old, so it had to be 1968. My dad woke up this day with a mission I could just tell. Around 10 oclock he told my brother an me to get in the car we were going out. In the front seat I went, my brother being younger always sat in the back when I was along. It was a classic......an American Motors Rambler. The official car of the family that also had a push mower.
Anyway, I could see my dad was not in a mood for any small talk, this was another one of those saturday morning lessons. There were alot of those in my house and they always seemed to revolve around me.
We drove into the city of Philadelphia......to the mean streets, Ill never forget it. The name I remember was Diamond and whatever.....5th, 25th, it didnt matter. It was a jungle out there. I remember the window was up which made me feel safer although think about that today it makes me laugh. Here comes the lecture......alex and jimmy, see this? See these people? This is what happens when you dont think! How many times have I told you to think, think, think!!!!! They were every where. I didnt see them as black, I saw them as lost.....angry......standing on the street waiting for a sucker to walk by. The homes were awful, every other one was boarded up, each person looking at us as we drove by ....in a car that actually "ran!" I wasnt sure if I was looking at them or they were looking at me. My father talking the whole time, I dont think I could even hear him.........what? what? I had never seen anything like this in drexel hill where we grew up.
At some point weather real or imaginary, I got the impression my dad was going to let me out and I began to cry. So too did my brother.........
Finally we were it seemed being released from the horror of living like that as we drove down each block. I could feel my heart slow down and instead of tears I just licked them up thinking I was drinking out of a fountain.
I was 12 years old, it changed my life.......it made me want to do better for myself. These people seemed to be sitting around waiting for something awful to happen. I sure wasnt one of them and was going to make sure I never was.........that was my dads point in it all I later realized. Think for yourself or someone will think for you, it will never be pleasant was what he called it and it sure struck home. LF, I didnt know what democrat or republican meant at 12 years of age but that day I became a republican. I was going to lift myself out of my own way and make a life for myself, pass or fail....but I wasnt going to look or act like the people I had just witnessed. They were waiting for someone else to make their life better. That bus never comes down those streets, that I knew.
Its 42 years later, the govt has been catering to those same people for all that time and yet......there they are. 25th and Diamond, still a jungle, angry, waiting, and voting democratic.
So I ask you LF....what was your waterloo? When did you decide you were mad at the country, they needed to do more, There was great injustice? I think we all wind up living through 75 years of great change and then we die, because what happens next, or never happens..... would also kill us.
I have tried to find out why my brother in law thinks the way he does but, he always avoids that question........Therefore I come to my own conclusions.......I dont want to live that way so I dont, I think different than they do when they stand on a corner waiting for the "man." Stop giving us rhetoric LF, tell us who you are.......I just did.

[Captain Michael Buffington]

it will be another lie. Thats all he does. He lies. So who are the partners Turdhustler? He has never and will never answer that simple question. The reason he ignores the question is HE MADE THEM UP to suit his agenda.

Mike

[hubris 1]

it will be another lie. Thats all he does. He lies. So who are the partners Turdhustler? He has never and will never answer that simple question. The reason he ignores the question is HE MADE THEM UP to suit his agenda.

Mike

I want to see if its a life experience or if he truely does just make it up. Right now mike, Im with you........they imagine it, for lack of a more dignified word. Like Ronald Reagan said, its not that they know so little, its that what they think they know just aint so.

[bigfish4me]

Finally, some one steps up to the plate.........lowbrow has what it takes but that was more than I expected you greek freaking god....there is a difference in being taught the values of earning your way....as opposed to having your road paved for you......you should be mad at your father for not funding a 3 year worldwide education enhancing tour on his dime

[bigfish4me]

it will be another lie. Thats all he does. He lies. So who are the partners Turdhustler? He has never and will never answer that simple question. The reason he ignores the question is HE MADE THEM UP to suit his agenda.

Mike

The only thing your good at is killing critters.......I knew I liked you for reason........you fellas have him pegged

[Captain Michael Buffington]

I want to see if its a life experience or if he truely does just make it up. Right now mike, Im with you........they imagine it, for lack of a more dignified word. Like Ronald Reagan said, its not that they know so little, its that what they think they know just aint so.

well stated. Sean this dumb ba$tard hung himself. It was pretty apparent he was a complete dipchit when Dummie agreed with him and then that wawaweasel dude chimed in JESUS H. THRICE I HAD TO TIP MY RIGGERS TO THE IDIOTIC TRIO Then one day he says he is buddies with two of my business partners who are ashamed of me because I am a radical right wingnut with racist tendencies Thats when I knew he was smoking drugs and full of chit

Mike

[longfisher]

Stop giving us rhetoric LF, tell us who you are.......I just did.

I've said this many times here, H. But perhaps you didn't listen.

When I returned from the service I had a pivotal event that to me was even much more severe than the one you had with your father (a stunt which you and he misinterpreted but I don't want to get into here). After my service years, I was back in college trying to finish my degree. In that environment I was more free to read widely and to think freely and to reflect on my experiences in the military than I was in the service.

So, I finally picked up the Pentagon Papers which had been published to much fanfare in 1971 - 1972, while I was in the thick of it all doing my Marine thing. Of course, the Pentagon Papers were greatly downplayed in the service and even Stars and Stripes gave it short shrift. So, I hadn't read them.

Besides, at the time I was a pretty rabid Marine. And, coming from a southern military family and just returning from the service where civilians were essentially viewed as vermin I really didn't want to hear criticism of the country or the military (much like most of you don't want to hear criticisms of the U.S. today). It was a severe case of willful ignorance (much like many of you today). Crazy, huh?

When I finally read them thoroughly and compared them to the statements of U.S. officials at the time it was clear that the government had not only lied repeatedly and spectacularly to the American people but that they'd lied to me specifically AND PERSONALLY. It was also clear that their lies had cost us about 59,000 dead.

Taken to it's logical conclusion, I felt the government had taken sick advantage of my patriotism and tried to kill me. Furthermore, I felt that they didn't value my life or the lives of the 59,000 who died at all. I felt the same way about the civilians who aggitated for war as they had a hand in perpetuating that damned war well beyond the point when it should have been logically concluded.

It's estimated that more than half of those 59,000 would have survived had the war been terminated when within military and political circles it was judged to be unwinnable. So, the war-loving mostly right-wingers amoung us who had aggitated for continued combat due to some misplaced pride or miscreant patriotism were the causative force which allowed the killing of another 30,000 soldiers and Marines when it was completely unnecessary. I hold those people responsible for the deaths of my then brothers.

The government treated me and the other soldiers and Marines as country rubes, serfs and slaves. Clearly, they considered each of us completely expendable as we were stupid enough to volunteer to fight an illegal war waged illegally and to kill and die for their lies. It made my blood boil to the point of CRIMSON STEAM. And, it changed the way I thought and think about government forever.

I felt lucky to have survived and I felt what some call survivor's guilt where you don't feel worthy or, at least, there's no particular reason to have been saved and the others died, despite the fact that we were all lied to uniformly. I guess in a way I wanted to make up for my undeserved good fortune.

So, I took a vow after reading and absorbing the Pentagon Papers that I would never, ever sit quietly by when the U.S. government lied us into another war. I simply was not going to be one of the many rubes who believe everything the government liars said because of some illogical misplaced sense of patriotism. I'm loyal to the Consitution, period. I'm not loyal to any party or politician. And, I'm completely opposed (violently so) to citizens who stand by and tolerate lies by politicians which result in the deaths of our servicemen for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT POLITICAL CRAP.

So, I developed a real sketicism about government overall to the point that I paid a lot of attention to what they said and what domestic and foreign news sources said, particularly when the two were not in agreement. The volume of lies that were remarkably easy to detect was and remains astounding. And, that was mostly before the Internet. It's far easier now. It's so easy now that IMHO there's not excuse for citizens to feel any way other than the way I feel.

Over time, had I kept records of the lies I'd uncovered and recorded each on a single piece of copy paper, I'd have an absolute mountain of documented cases of government lying when it matters most, foreign affairs and foreign inteventions. That mountain would be larger than the dumps on Staten Island, one of the largest landfills in the world.

Let me say that perhaps with the exception of city and county government and the U.S. post office, I regard virtually all elected officials as exceptionally corrupt and self-serving and slaves to the monied interests that put them into power and keep them there. They simply lie to us all the time and they do so without any apparent regard for our lives, our families, our communities and, most especially, our liberties.

Now, let's take a breath here and examine where are the philosophical roots of my beliefs. Where do they fit in on the political spectrum?

At that time, at least, and up until 9/11 my views fit cleanly into conservative thought and perhaps even more tightly into Libertarian thought. Ronald Reagan once correctly said that Libertarianism is the core of the conservative movement. So, given my upbringing it was perfectly natural to feel fear and loathing for the government. Accordingly, I found great comfort in belonging to the conservative movement, or perhaps more specifically to the Libertarian movement and voting regularly as a Republican as there were then few Libertarian candidates on the ballot.

All my view of the party and my willingness to support it changed radically with Bush II's illegal invasion of Iraq. In support of that brazen war crime and with the attendant loss of and projected loss of many servicemen's lives, the Republican Party suddenly pivoted decidely away from traditional conservative values. Remember my vow about lies getting us into wars? Bush easily committed the greatest crime of the century with the invasion of Iraq and IMHO murdered many servicemen but without a single complaint from the members of the Republican Party.

I couldn't tolerate that as so many were killed and were destined to be killed over his lies. But the Republican Party as a whole, fell in line behind Bush. As the right-wingers had done during the Vietnam conflict, they again betrayed the very servicemen they claimed to support by protecting Bush. The do so still.

So, I left the party after that and won't return. I won't return even though Bush left. I wouldn't return even if Bush were, hopefully, tried for his crimes and executed.

I won't return because of the ascendance of what have been called the super-patriots like some of you on this board. Those people and some of you are but analogs of the Nazi Brown Shirts and you took great and underserved liberties during the period immediately after 9/11. There was no vile thing including assault and murder that were beneath you.

You absolutely encapsulated evil of the Nth degree during the years immediately after 9/11. You do still.

The threats and intimidation that people like you spewed and continue to spew like you own the place make the hair stand up on the back of my head with rage, a rage I've not felt since my service years. You're fools if you underestimate the power of a free man's rage at his oppressors. You super-patriots are not the only ones with guns, you just think you are.

As far as I'm concerned, those who defend lying politicians with their votes, their money and their words when their lies take us into war are just as bad as those lying politicians and guilty of the exact same crimes. Those elected criminals could not survive a moment in an objective world that expected accountability for their war crimes. But the legions of super-patriots like some of you guys changed all that. YOU through your unseemly AND UNPATRIOTIC political pressure ensured that Bush got away with it all...4,700 U.S. soldiers and Marines dead AND HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF IRAQIS KILLED...FOR NOTHING BUT LIES.

You say you're all for accountability but you're not. You say you support the troops, you don't other than displaying near meaningless tokens like flag pins and Old Glory on your property. Not one of you has the courage to say what I'm saying, despite it's obvious truth. You say you're for taking back America when you personally ruined it and brought executive level tyranny to America. You're for accountability for Democrat politicians...not anyone else.

You're the poison in the stream, the crap in the food and the filth in the air. Your collective evil is far worse than that rumored to be of the Devil himself. You're the absolute scourge of America, as I said in a previous post as you enable the continuous littany of lying politicians to be elected and re-elected. You personally stand in the way of better America, a more civil America and a more just Amerca.

SO I DESPISE YOU SUPER-PATRIOTS AND ALL OTHERS WHO STAND IN THE WAY OF ACCOUNTABILITY FOR BUSH TO THE POINT OF BITTER BLOOD-LUST-FILLED HATRED AND PURPLE RAGE.

Did you hear me this time, H?

LongFisher

[Reel Sharp]

Well,
That's an answer if anyone wanted one. I actually hear that from quite a few vets.

[getreel]

Not only are you a total douchebag, you're psychotic too. Get a life!

Where were you on April 19, 1995?

..... You super-patriots are not the only ones with guns, you just think you are.

.... You say you support the troops, you don't other than displaying near meaningless tokens like flag pins and Old Glory on your property. You say you're for taking back America when you personally ruined it and brought executive level tyranny to America.

SO I DESPISE YOU SUPER-PATRIOTS AND THOSE WHO STAND IN THE WAY OF ACCOUNTABILITY FOR BUSH TO THE POINT OF BITTER BLOOD-LUST-FILLED HATRED AND RAGE.

LongFisher

[scattered_grass]

Not only are you a total douchebag, you're psychotic too. Get a life!

Where were you on April 19, 1995?

some would say..