We have also flagrantly backed out of numerous treaties. And while the American people have been thoroughly propagandized by Bushco, the rest of the world has been far less so. They know we didn't have UN authorization for the invasion of Iraq. They know that Bush perpetrated a hoax on WMD and Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda. Its only dumbfucks like Tom Friedman who are still in denial on these points.

Its not hard to understand why we're so hated.

We got a MILLION Iraqis killed in a war that was justified based on a hoax. A MILLION people died. And as everyone knows who is not a complete neocon ideologue, those MILLION people were killed based on a freakin' hoax.

This is a huge stain on America's reputation that most Americans have failed to come to terms with yet. This puts Bush in the same league as -- dare I say it? -- Hitler. There. I said it: Hitler.

Hey, you get a few hundred thousand wogs killed in the era before mass communication and its no big deal. You get several hundred thousand massacred in Central America and there are ways to spin it that work well at the New York Times and The New Republic.

But we got a MILLION people killed in Iraq based on flagrant bullshit. Once the death count gets up into the MILLIONS, you've got a serious PR problem that is hard to spin. And the rest of the world just isn't buying the spin.

Neither am I.

I don't think it helped our international reputation much when Colin Powell got up in front of the whole world and gave a WMD presentation that was proven to be filled with lies and horseshit the very next day by Glenn Rangwala (Google it).

These kind of interviews are just so much wanking. Let's just cut through all the bullshit and get right to the point. Do you or do you not believe that there is an afterlife? If you do, you're religious. If you don't, you're a philosopher.

The difference, though, is that I wouldn't call myself an atheist.

Really? Cause I would. Kind of a confused one, but an atheist nonetheless.

To be an atheist is not to be stunned by the mystery of things or to walk around in wonder about the universe.

Really? Cause I'm an atheist and I'm stunned by the mystery of things all the time.

Debating theists is exactly like playing hide and go seek with a 2 year old. The 2 year old doesn't really fully have the concept of other people's perspectives and thus is really bad at hiding.

And that's what theists inevitably are reduced to doing when they debate the justification for their beliefs. They're always having to hide the weak part. The thing is - the reason they are like 2 year olds -- is that they have to hide the weak part from themselves too, which means they can't examine it too carefully lest they come to recognize its weakness. As a result, they tend to hide the weakness of their arguments very ineffectively -- like the 2 year old hiding behind a tree that's not quite wide enough to hide him and only hides him from certain directions.

Their other favorite trick is to try to hind behind obscurity of language. They use common words to which they assign brand new senses that are, naturally, very hard to pin down.

Yet another favorite trick, which they share with neocon blog commenters, is the accusation of inappropriate or disproportionate anger. No matter how provocative their own claims and no matter how well reasoned their critics' arguments, to the theist their critics are all mere rageaholics who can't stay calm long enough to appreciate the theists (very) subtle wisdom.

If the shoe fits, wear it, bro.

Because the social sanctions punishing atheistic beliefs are severe, while the actual evidence for religious beliefs is absolutely and completely non-existent, theistic arguments are automatically very weak which doesn't prevent them from being typically issued with an air of certainty far outstripping the evidence.

If you ever wake up, you'll understand.

At least he acts like he doesn't get it. Bloggers don't have budgets to collect their own facts so of course they rely on media reports. But what the bloggers do that the journalists seem to be incapable of is asking the right goddamn questions!

In many cases, its just a matter of asking any question at all. Today's media whores simply suck at asking questions. They frequently fail to ask any followup questions at all or fail to pursue them with any tenacity.

Also bloggers seem to be much smarter than the average media whore. Your typical media whore can be easily misled with the most obvious and weak bullshit. But bloggers see right through the bullshit and do their best to call the bullshitters on their nonsense. Media whores just want to bask in the glow of fame and are afraid to do anything that might damage their standing at the Village club.

Cid: 12th Night is full of particularly good Fool quotes as well.

I laugh my ass off every time some cretin commenter says, "hahaha, you really live up to your name, yuk! yuk! yuk!"

Glenn is right as usual. Our country is living in deep denial. Most people don't realize that we thwarted the UN and most people don't realize that to the rest of the world we look -- for good reason -- like a country that perpetrated a flagrant hoax, sending Colin Powell out to lie to the world and then after the hoax waged an illegal war of aggression that resulted in 1,000,000 Iraqi deaths. Oh yes, and along the way we killed and tortured prisoners.

The rest of the world is right, and our neocons and media whores are wrong. Its too bad Obama isn't man enough to break it to our people.

great post, dude

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