[geeks] Re: [rescue] God bless America

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 06:20:47AM -0500, Amy wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, David Cantrell wrote:
> > For the same reason that the US doesn't seem to learn from history but
> > always chooses to repeat it.  People are stupid.
> stupid, ignorant, or naive?

One would hope that those making the decisions are none of the above.
But given the evidence of their actions, I would have to accuse them of
all of the above.

>           apparently *noone* has learned from history. not them, not us,
> not you, not nato, not anyone if we're gonna sit here and spend our time
> placing blame instead of fixing the problems.

I'm not going to deny that - the British Empire screwed up in pretty
similar ways, and previous superpowers, like Spain and Rome, had too.
However, to fix a problem you first need to know what the cause of the
problem is.  I'm not really blaming individuals, other than individuals
in power who really should have known better.

> >                             I don't think many Americans realise quite
> > how much they are hated by the huge numbers of people who are victims of
> > your government's foreign policies.  You crow about your much-vaunted
> > democracy, and yet you fail to use your democracy to elect decent people,
> > instead electing racist war-mongers.  THAT is how much of the world sees
> > you, and your failure to use that democracy, unfortunately, makes many
> > see individual citizens as being the enemy.
> 
> i'm of the opinion that you are absolutely correct in this.
> 
> david, i'm sure statistics are available somewhere from your recent
> elections up there. how much of the voting populace participated in the
> latest p.m. race?

Not enough.  If only I could be bothered to do anything about apathy :-)
Assuming you mean the latest parliamentary elections (there is no
seperate election for the prime minister), then depending on how you
massage the figures it was either the lowest turnout for 80-odd years or
the lowest ever, at 59.2% of the adult population.

The confusion arises because the immediately post-WW1 election had a
*vastly* increased franchise, so a huge number of first-time voters who
didn't know what to do, and plenty of soldiers were still abroad.  It's
probably not a particularly good comparison.

FWIW, I don't think that *any* of the so-called democracies come even
close to real democracy, with Switzerland possibly coming closest.  The
constitution of the Swiss Federation makes a *really* interesting read.
See http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/law/sz00000_.html for an English
translation.

>                                      give the people time to think and
> recover from all this and you might find a few changed minds, policies,
> and agendas.

Yes, I think so too.

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

  This is nice.  Any idea what body-part it is?