Sift Talk Posts Being Viewed Right Now
1. A knight in shining armor and a Security Gaurd. (Eia Talk)
2. Bored (Cinema Talk)
3. Gold Mine of Undiscovered Siftable Material Just Uncovered (Geek Talk)
comment listing type:
Top New Vintage Videos by Vote
Subscribe
Top 15 Sifters of All Time
Top 15 Sifters of the Past Week
VideoSift Links
Jiminy Glick interviews Jon Stewart
The Best Bicycle Accident in History
Gold Mine of Undiscovered Siftable Material Just Uncovered (Geek Talk Post)
Christopher Hitchens is Waterboarded
Oh Dear God… This Is Our Country
It's trendy right now to "dislike" America and Religion. At one time maybe it was independent thought,
Oh, really, we're just doing it to be trendy?
Ok, here are some reasons:
USA: I think what most of us can agree on is that we don't dislike the USA as such, just what the current government is doing, and the voting majority who brought the same moron back into power a second time. With some of the populous actually getting behind bullcrap like 'Freedom Fries' when the French refused to join in on the lie of a war that was/is Iraq. With the ridiculous 'you're either with us or you're against us' attitude towards your own populous by many... Your insane love of humoungous gas guzzling SUVs that has leached over to other countries (sadly Austrlaia is afflicted with this too), the general impression that you lot seem to think that the USA is the be all and end all of what a country should be. That is spends such an ungodly amount of money on war when just a fraction of that being spent on your failing education system would create a new generation of elightened kids who could help steer the US of A back on course.
These things and more are what annoys a lot of us about the US, and the fact that it is the largest, and the strongest country in the world and does these things affects ALL of us.
Religion: Oh this so isn't badnwagon jumping on the anti religion crowd, this is those of us who don't believe in religion getting to a point of deciding enough is enough and having to speak up. When religion starts forcing its way into politics, when schools start having their SCIENCE classes changed to teach 'INTELLIGENT DESIGN'... COME ON, how can we not get angry, you are creating children who think it's ok to believe in something jut because a book colaboratively written by a bunch of guys a long time ago and then altered inumerable times thereafter says so.
We have more than enough reason to be really shitty at religion and the US at present.
BUT.
I know a number of people in the states personally, and they're great people who also hate the direction the country is headed, I know there are millions more of the same mindset. If you can just get the country to start going in the right direction there is still hope and the US can become a beacon once again, rather than a demonstration of how NOT to do things.
And religion... in the right context can be great, when you don't try and force said beliefs on others, don't try to teach 'gospel' in our classrooms as scientific fact, don't persecute people because they don't believe in what you do... then it's fine. Live by those 10 commandments (actually live by them, especially 'do unto others') and we'd all be happier I think.
Don't try and belittle people who have valid concerns by trying to suggest we're just 'bandwagon' jumpers, that's just small minded and cheap.
Of course, we know this video is all about the cheap shots... doesn't mean we don't find it funny... Find me a similar one on Australia, and I'll upvote that too... we have a sense of humour about our country, we don't get all antsy at the smallest whiff on 'non patriotic' behavior.
edit: Actually, The Simpsons take on Australia I remember I got a bit shitty about this way back when, took it to heart a bit. But these days I find it piss funny. You have to know with these things that people don't think they're REAL, they know it's all a JOKE... Lighten up.
Street Fighter : The Movie : The Game : The Intro
Garfield and Friends - The Picnic Panic
IssyKitty and I are Leaving The Sift.... (Blog Entry by dystopianfuturetoday)
critttter
In reply to this comment by critttter:
Sorry to be oblique - it's a pronunciation thing. It's the funniest way of saying buffet I've ever heard, and I couldn't pinpoint his accent if my life depended on it. Burfay?
Soliders blow up some random guy's sheep
I'll let someone else tear you a new one. This makes me wish we had a mandatory military like germany. It would really open your eyes to the respect your taught to give everyone even your enemies. Go to a recruiting station for any branch and tell them you want to shoot people and that's the reason you want to join. Please do so and tell me what they say. I think you'll be surprised.
Of course, no one in his right mind (i.e. not mentally ill) would say that he likes to kill people to anyone, army recruiter or not. You'll have to revise your 12th grade pop psychology and look up "subtility", "concealment", "repressed desire" and "uncounscious desire". Man is a machine with a big and powerful nervous system (yes, that last bit means essentially "powerful brain") and it would be idiotic to think everyone is always open about their feelings to others and even to themselves, or that they even know about their true feelings, emotions or beliefs. This may go against your christian-centric "freedom of will and everything else" worldview, but science doesn't care about you or religious ideology.
On another note, I too would like for mandatory military service, like Switzerland (they provide for a much better political and economical model than Germany at present), but obliviously for different reasons than your warmongering american ones. There is value in defending one's life and the lives of your kin (which, in my book, should a priori include every human being in the world), but essentially your right to do so stops where the right of the others to defend themselves begins. This may be a cliché, but it is a useful one nevertheless. Of course, where to draw the line in real situations is difficult, but the principle should be remembered. When you are invading a whole country with the pretense of defending yourself, in this case Afghanistan and Iraq, you have to ask yourself some big and important questions, and the answers should be as strong as your claim is: that you somehow have the right to invade someone else for your own protection as a defensive action. Now, you may think, and probably many americans do, that you have the right to bully and push around anyone else you may want to just because of the fact that you exist: that's called "survival of the fittest" thinking (or "being a dick" for short), and as game theory shows, it won't take you far in the long run.
If you can't be a dick and your freedom to defend yourself is restricted, why would you want a military, let alone a mandatory military service? Two big reasons: one, you sometimes do need to actually defends yourself against "I-have-a-bigger-dick-than-you-so-do-my-dad-and-I'll-show-you-why" type of idiots, who either don't know, don't understand or couldn't give a fuck about game theory if their lives somehow depended on it (yes, military officers know about it, but your COMMANDER-IN-FUCKING-CHIEF, the supposed equal of George Washington, has got not even a hint of the most little clue) and they are best dealt with a quick and impressive show of actual or what seems like actual force, not bombastic military parades though these can serve to frighten some kinds of idiots. Two, being in an actual conflict, even and perhaps especially on a peacekeeping mission, can sometimes have a calming effect on trigger-happy or shoot-first-ask-later kind of young men and women. This effect is of course not guaranteed since every one is different (another useful cliché, in moderation).
As an aside, a corps of able and ready young people can be useful in humanitarian situations. Military training can also provide useful skills that some might not want or be able to get elsewhere (navigation, survival, basic weapon and self-defense, etc.). If not misused, a military can be a boon, like everything else in life.
Sorry for the long posts, but even with this (or maybe because of it? The internets are not used to reading long, thoughtful and rhetoric- and logic-filled discourses, especially not this abstract) many don't get what I'm trying to say, so imagine if I just said "EXCUSE THE FUCK OUT OF ME?". That could be deviously misconstrued as rock throwing if I was former military personnel, proud of my time of duty, responding to an anti-military statement!
P.S. I never said everyone in the military is lowlife scum or that everyone is joining to protect their country. From what I said would follow that in the worst case, half of everyone would be lowlife scum, and the other half would join to defend their country (in the case of the present american army stationed in Iraq at least). Of course I do not think it is so clear-cut, that was rhetoric. But far worse and damaging rhetorically is the typically american FOX-Newsy "misunderstanding" (conscious or not) of quoting me as saying they were all lowlife, or that they were all joining to defend their country. These are statistically very improbable situations, to say the least! There are also those who join because they need money they can't get otherwise, those who want to make their daddy proud, those who want to continue a familial tradition, those who are planning their political careers, etc. But they are not the focus of this discussion since I believe they form a minority, all the more so when you look at the true, hidden motives.
Another connection between Death and Drinking...
Another connection between Death and Drinking...
Another connection between Death and Drinking...
Another connection between Death and Drinking...
Kraftwerk: Tour de France