This is why I don't argue this stuff. I have my beliefs and have come to my conclusions. I don't need something else for everyone to tell me I'm wrong or paranoid about. Therefore, I keep them to myself.
So, red chocolate, are you able to discern coded messages in the television and print media? Please share your enlightenment.
Can you be more specific? Any media group that is corporatized cannot be trusted to tell you anything close to the full truth, because they have advertisers and special interests at hand. That was the step #1 red flag for me. A common one you'll see now is the use of the word 'experts' in media. 'Experts say' is a highly common propaganda tool, to get the mind conditioned that the person(s) telling you the information is more informed on the topic than you are, regardless of how much independent thinking or research you do. Of course, we can't really be sure who is an expert and who isn't, because the media is not required to tell you the truth by law. It's also very telling of this society that Gary Coleman's death will get more media attention than the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Wealthy and educated people do not want a wealthy and educated society. Example of 'experts' being used in media: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5547861,00.html
You disagree with my thoughts, therefore I am mentally ill? If I disagree with you, then therefore you are mentally ill, by that definition. Do you not see a problem with having a God complex based on nothing but your perception of your own reality? P.S. Hitler and Stalin called a lot of people mentally ill for disagreeing with their practices.
No, I called out some jerk who made a comment about mental illness because it pissed me off and it wasn't funny.
Okay, my apologies. Resorting to brazen insults is something I have a problem with as well, and these people should be mostly ignored.
I would guess that it involves a desire to appear smarter than they really are. Look, I figured out the puzzle...see how smart I am. That...combined with WAY too much time devoted to watching the X-Files. The truth is out there....oooooooooo...
I think there is also a sense of being a small fish in a big ocean. It is much more comforting to be able to point to massive "well understood" forces involved in a clear struggle, than to admit and embrace the randomness of existence or even to embrace a lack of an explanation about what is happening. I think it is the same thing that made early Northern European people look up at an approaching storm and create an explanation about Thor slamming his hammer to make the lightning, instead of simply saying that it was impossible to understand and predict (at the time) this force that made storms come and leave, and cause seasons to cyclically repeat. There is something very fundamentally upsetting on a very primal level for many people at admitting that one's entire existence from beginning to end is basically inconsequential to the universe, and for that matter so inconsequential that it is even beneath the threshold that would require registering notice. The idea of just being a leaf in the wind is terrifying to some. And once that unease becomes manifest, and you become entranced at staring into the void looking for meaning, it eventually leads to apophenia, similar to some of the numerological secret meaning and codes that some people manage to "find" in random numbers derived from the Bible.
I have a friend on facebook who constantly wants to post things related to the NEW WORLD ORDER (Not lead by Hulk Hogan). His latest post said "Connecting the Dots in the New World Order: The Picture Obama and BP Don't Want You to See" about the oil spill... Come on guys...seriously? If the New World Order was real, they have had HUNDREDS of opportunities in the past to form a united world under their oppression, and I highly doubt this oil spill is a play by the NWO (Or the WOLFPAC, depending on which year youre watching NITRO). You guys who are all conspiracy theorists need to live in a commune together and talk bad about the government, who has given you the chance to live in a great country, and no matter the political party you support, great leaders who care about OUR country. If you dont like it, go live in ANY other country, suffer under their crap, and you can GIT OUT!
What if I don't want to live in any 'country', because 'countries' weren't created by me, and I don't want to live in anyone's system where I am just a taxpaying social security number (slave)? What if I want to create my own country? What happens in a world where a few hundred people get to tell the other 7 billion what to do? Are those 7 billion people likely to be independent thinkers or brainwashed masses?
Thank you, Dr. Freud. I agree that there are many mysteries of the world and universe, and that I will never fully know the history of why we're here today, but to think that everything is random and by coincidence is childish. When you have a system this big and so tightly managed, where money and power is so important, very few big events can be coincidental. Do you think Obama can just come in and completely change a system that others have made trillions of $ from and spent hundreds if not thousands of years perfecting? Hint: Other presidents have tried to do this, and did not exactly live long and healthy lives. But no, it's all random!
The reason America has been coddled for this long is because we're so dumbed down that we aren't really a threat at this point. Rest assured though, what happens to the rest of the world WILL happen here. You do not wear a cloak of invincibility just because you live in some 'country'.
You think? Wow...what a novel idea. All of this coming from the same brain trust that cites science fiction movies to buttress his point of view rather than...you know...wait for it...FACT. And yet you decide to decry how we have been "dumbed down." Funny. You throw out random ideas and sci-fi films and have the balls to accuse us of being dumbed down. That, good sir, is the ultimate of ironies. So tell me Nostradamus, what things that happen to the rest of the world are you specifically referring to? I obviously do not know you or know anything about you. I can tell you that on this BBS, based on your comments, you appear to be completely and totally nuts.
Not to repeat myself, but the fault you are making is in assuming that these "entrenched power brokers" are all a hive-mind Borg working towards the same thing, operating with the same desires and goals. In some respects, entrenched power brokers do all share a specific limited series of goals, but not nearly so many as you thing. And the fact that they have been ruthless entrenched powerbrokers in the first place means that they have no problem stabbing each other in the back for personal gain, over the gain of the "Borg collective". I would categorize your problem here as similar to the one that occurs when people say, "The founding fathers thought...". In point of fact, there is almost no subject that I can think of where all 40 people who signed the Constitution could agree. Truly, it has been reasonably well documented that much of the vagueness of the language therein is because the signers needed language that could mean different things to different people. Obama can't move the scrum very much because of preexisting momentum. But the fact that the scrum is more or less stationary doesn't mean that there have been people on all sides of the pile pushing as hard as they can since before Obama was elected, and these people will keep on pushing in their own individual direction long after he is gone. And the scrum will continue to only shift slowly through halting, shuddering steps. Again, it is comforting to think that the great randomness, stupidity, and shortsightedness of the world is somehow organized to get you. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." These people you think are all so brilliant, nefarious, organized, and perfect are the same people you went to high school with, or just like them. With respect to the limited number of people with real power that I've met, they are remarkable only for their their banality and similarity to everybody else. Does the idea that these people are manipulating the world in a massive conspiracy really make sense?
What are facts? What makes you think you are safe and enlightened because you live in the USA? What makes me 'nuts' and not you? The majority opinion is not God, nor is the minority one. Why do you think the productive labor of the US has been outsourced to South and East Asia? Why are we now a service economy instead of a producer economy? When the mind lives in an infantile state, it starts to forget that predators exist around him.
The front men who appear to run the nation could be someone I went to high school with possibly, but they are tightly managed and know how to take orders. People with certain power-hungry mindsets will step over good people their whole lives to attain money and power. Obama will never do anything other than take orders and live a life of luxury so that the ones above him can have immeasurable luxury. It is our acquiescence to this system which allows them to feel no guilt for their actions. The whole operation is based on the theory that "money is a means to an end". Someone had to create money, no? It's also painfully obvious with all the wars, immeasurable debt, and disasters, that this system cannot be sustained for much longer. No one 'owes you' the right to continue to live in this system, because you never owned it nor controlled it. So what will happen? A slowly manifesting, global system of government will take shape, prefaced by economic collapses and other major catastrophes. Massive poverty, civil unrest, and death will ensue. People will say "Oh what a dreadful coincidence", not knowing that it was all planned out carefully long ago. If you read Brave New World and 1984, you can kind of put these pieces together and see what's happening, and that this was foreshadowed long ago by people who were in higher circles of intelligence than any of us can imagine. In 100 years, your great-grandchildren will be saying, "We at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia." Lo and behold, we are at war with Eastasia right now, and it's not going to end.
Facts are the readily verifiable units of thought rather than blanket accusations based on nothing more than irrational mistrust. Oh yeah...mistrust fueled by, apparently, watching too many sci-fi flicks on late night cable TV. Never said that I was. However, since you ask, it is because I look at situations rationally rather than jump to the worst case scenario because there are things I lack the scientific information to explain off the top of my head. Ummm...well your assertion that you do not need facts to assess any situation. That's a good start. Now lie down on the couch and tell Dr. Crane about your childhood. No...but one opinion is based on science and investigation and the other is based largely on mistrust and a hunch. Cheaper labor...plain and simple. It is actually a pretty predictable evolution of a large economy coupled with a more expensive labor pool. When the mind lives in an irrational state, it becomes confused as to who the predators actually are.
