Timewaster's Guide Archive

http://protomen.com/

For those who love Mega-Man.

Sorry Green, I'd normally be around at least five minutes, but it's a Friday and that means gigs.  :-D.

Ummmm actually not a fact. Go read some Kant. According to him all knowledge of good is a priori knowledge. The compass is there people just choose not to follow it. Oh and  just because you have a certain belief about something doesn't make it a fact. End of story.

Philosophy and science are different.  There was a philosopher who believed that the dark spots on the moon were made out of lemonade (true story).  However, psychology is a science, and it studies things like criminal mindsets in multiple types of studies (including, but not limited to laboratory and case studies).  The science behind the stance agrees with what I said.  I know, I know--science isn't always right.  And you're welcome to believe what you want.  But the evidence I've seen in my exposure has pointed towards both not all humans having the capacity for a moral compass (due to genetic and chemical abnormalities) and morality being a learned status.

I guess we could go ahead and say there are no such things as facts, if evidence towards something doesn't make it a fact.  I'm okay with that.  In that case, I'll word it a different way.  The probability of humans not being born with a moral compass as a race is, according to the evidence currently know, extraordinarily low--to the point of being null.

Gorgon, Gorgon, Gorgon.......Clinton was in office when we were attacked.  In fact, we were attacked 3 times while he was in office (first Trade Center Bombing, African embassy, USS Cole).  Clinton himself deemed Sadamm Hussein an enemy of America.  He sent a few cruise missiles Hussein's way as well. etc.

A) I was talking about the attacks that were the focus of the discussion.  And, as far as I know (feel free to correct me if you can find evidence otherwise), Clinton wasn't accused of blatantly ignoring evidence of any attacks beforehand, nor was he accused of ignoring evidence skewing evidence in order to go to war.  I'm sorry, I don't see, "being attacked" and "failing to take any necessary steps to prevent an attack when information was available" as equivalent.

And yet, somehow under Clinton's rule (and this was not all, and very likely not even mostly, his doing), we still had the highest period of economic expansion.  So, I'm sure you can see how I'm willing to say, "In the beginning it might have been a slump, but he had to work with what he was given" (just as you are doing with Bush and the terrorism).  Also, I'm sure you can see how I look at Clinton handing over a country with the highest surplus in American history (at least so is what I have been told), and getting from Bush the biggest deficit in American history.

Maybe I'm not aware of all of the terrible scandals surrounding Clinton's presidency, because I was so young.  Enlighten me?

I don't have time to go into anything further right now.  I've been as busy as a horse with six legs and two heads.  I don't even know what that entails, but it's true, I swear!  Take a look at torture, wire-tapping, the USA PATROIT Act, etc.  I know, you're going to say the PATROIT Act was fine, well--I disagree.  I'm sure a solid internet search of "Bush, civil liberty repeal" will do wonders.  I don't feel like trading off civil liberties, even if it doesn't directly affect me or anybody I know, for feeling safer is a good trade.  I feel like to be a superpower, one must show itself as vigilant and in order to really be a shining beacon of freedom and democracy, one must demonstrate true love of freedom and democracy, even when it is hard to do so.  Freedom for everybody we encounter, including our prisoners.

I think what bothers me the most is that, because I disagree with Bush, people just label me as some democrat who blindly follows the democrats.  And yet, while I also challenge democrats when they get my country into trouble (like the democratic house and senate that promised some change, but has yet to do anything of importance except start to crumble into lobbyists, etc., on the topic of offshore drilling...).  Yet, most Bush supporters at this point, for whatever reason (probably because they're so outnumbered and perhaps feel surrounded, often by morons, which is often the case), don't criticize his presidency at all despite the fact that he has obviously done some harm.  Unless they agree with the points they tend to ignore, too.  Like, I haven't heard you comment at all on the multiple mentions I've made of his firings of non like minded thinkers, or a complete monotone cabinet.  Whether or not Brown had done a good job, he was completely under qualified for the job when he was hired.  Mistakes have been made, and perhaps the side that dislikes Bush wouldn't be so (from your view) overly vigorous, if the side that likes Bush wouldn't just accept everything he's done as being swell.  And then try to completely push the blame for things that happened under his presidency on the last guy.  Clinton had some blame, like I already said, but don't you think that the guy in power probably had some control over what was going on?  Or should have?

Like I said, I wasn't sure if you were genuinely offended or anything; I'll modify it immediately after I post this.  I'm not standing in a public square and I can't word things however I want.

The point is that he hid things successfully in the past, and there was intelligence both for and against WMD's.  The weapons inspectors were still finding illegal weapons in 2002, and the Hans Blix comment was made in 2003!  We could not afford inaction anymore, bottom line.  There were plenty of other reasons to go into Iraq and get him out.  You can use hindsight and Monday morning quarterback all you want, but the fact that our lack of response to unconfirmed intelligence resulted in the 9/11 attacks demanded we be more proactive.  I bet if you researched hard enough you could have found plenty of intelligence that countered what we now know was the plan to hijack planes and fly them into buildings.  You should be more outraged that Clinton spent 8 years allowing Al-Qaeda to practice bomb US targets all over the globe and responded with a couple of random cruise missiles instead of making a true response.  Clinton was a Democrat, though, so he gets a pass, right?

Ugh, in a hurry.  Clinton didn't set things up as well as he should have, but he wasn't the one in power at the time of the attacks, nor was he the one to ignore important memos, like one entitled something along the lines of "Bin Laden Determined to Attack the US".  If this administration had done something like oversee the longest period of economic expansion in our country's history, I would be much more forgiving for its shortcomings.  Instead, it has worked around the constitution, made false information or hidden true information, fired people because of alternate political views, given important jobs to unqualified people (FEMA, anyone?), and Bush had taken 250 vacation days by August 2003.  By 1999 Clinton had taken only 152.  The fact is, I don't like Clinton more than Bush because he's a liberal--I like him more because he screwed up less (or at least to my knowledge he did, since I was all of 12 at the end of his presidency, I can only go by what I've learned, which isn't a whole ton since he had an end of office approval rating of 65%, the highest since WWII--which means he doesn't get a lot of post-presidency smearing).

Was he perfect?  No.  I think he was better that Bush.  That being said, I think his wife would have been equally incompetent as Bush and I would have refused to vote for her under almost any circumstance, and she's a liberal.

Edit: Content (Language)

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=84518&title=philip-zimbardo

"No, people are not much more evil than they appear on the inside."
"We see how quickly the good boys become brutal guards and the nice boys became pathological prisoners."
"It really is the situation that leads us down the path towards evil."

I have to tell you, it's easy to say power corrupts because of these results.  But that doesn't change the fact that the prisoners simply filled their roles as well.  I also have to tell you that in modern psychology texts and classes, this is taught as a way of showing the power of assumed role.  If you assume the role of a guard (who were told to delouse, etc. the prisoners, although it got out of hand), you will act how you believe a guard is supposed to act.  That leads, of course, to corruption--but it wasn't like the power "went to their heads" or anything.  It was the fact that they were not themselves, they were prisoner 10239 or Prison Guard James, or whatever they may be.  If you watch some interviews with those persons involved in the experiment, I'm practically quoting one of the guards when I say that he wasn't being himself, he was playing a role--and that role required him to act the way he did.  It wasn't the power he was given, it was the role he was filling.

No time to talk to anybody else, that was just a blatant mistake I had to fix.  In fact, I'm late to my personality psychology class (irony, anyone?)