Letters to the Editor
walter_map
Published Letters: 1324 Editor's Choice: 20
-
Retired Military Patriot
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I learned quite some time ago the hard way not to try and help people who don't want my help or who I believe I can't help.
It is always a mistake to try to save the world. The world resents it, and will kill you for it if you're not careful. Look what it got Jesus.
Some individuals can be helped. You're welcome to try to seek those out if you like, but you might be just as well off if you didn't bother.
As for myself, I've just been hanging out all these years to see if the decline and demise of human civilization turn out as predicted. It's been a long time coming, but it's almost there.
The threats are many and enormous, and could only have been countered by a degree of cooperation among individuals and among nations that is simply not in their natures. The great mass of humanity is much stupider than is generally supposed, and political leaders are the stupidest of all. It became too late years ago, and the outcomes are no longer in doubt.
It's not just going to be ugly. It's going to be weird ugly.
-
L.W.M.
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Do you doubt it?
Respice, adspice, prospice. Post lux, tenebras.
-
L.W.M.
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There are some assumptions and assertions you make that don't conform to the consensus view.
Sheer presumption on your part, that you'd entertain the conceit of knowing anything about it.
Can you name the major threats facing human civilization? And if so, do you suppose there is anything at this point which can be done to mitigate any one of them, much less prevent all of them?
We've touched lightly on one of them: incipient global fascist totalitarianism. Coming soon to a planet you cannot escape. Just that one will prevent civilization from dealing with any of the others.
Noch weiz ich an im mêre
Daz mir ist bekant,
Einen lintrachen
Sluoc des heldes hant,
Er badet sich in dem bluote:
Sîn hût wart hurnîn,
Des snîdet in kein wâfen:
Daz ist dicke worden schîn.Remember our little conversation here when the world is coming down around your ears. Remember your scorn. And remember that we gloated over your presumption and your failure.
-
bucky1
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, there are around 130 other countries also, but I do not care to list them all. The money wasted in having troops there is stolen from the people of the USA, and the poorest pay the highest price for it --- it is a Trillion dollars out of the mouths of the unemployed, the homeless, the working poor, and the soon to be in trouble middle class.
Exactly so.
You should be able to get a sense of my take on this issue in these posts:
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/05/obama/permalink/d07d7a62463c986f751450110d133cf3.html
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/05/obama/permalink/80ad7dbe0b9b155474d75383d892d8b8.html
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/05/obama/permalink/27612ace069896888e1dd8aed22143f6.html
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/05/obama/permalink/70c4bf2314a18e488683f2776759ddb4.html
I perceive that the neoconservatives and the neoconservative posing as 'liberals' and 'progressives' have taken over these boards on Salon, exactly as they had taken over the old NYT forums before they were shut down.
All very pernicious.
-
art guerrilla
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]ps you do know that there is no such thing as 'race', right ?
Exactly so. Carleton Coon was discredited forty years ago. Unfortunately most people find the concept convenient and it still captures the public imagination.
Most people are unaware that, on average, there are more substantial genetic differences between one 'white' individual and another than there are between 'black' and 'white' persons. This is how we can be certain that the concept of 'race' is false.
make no mistake, there is DEFINTELY such a thing as 'prejudice', but were we to all be the same shade of beige, there would be class, money distinctions we would hang our bigotry on...
Also exactly so.
Humans seem to be predisposed, or conditioned, to focus on differences to the actual exclusion of commonalities. Worse, people are also predisposed to associate 'sameness' with 'good' or 'desirable' and 'otherness' as 'bad' or 'undesirable' and to attach a primitive, unthinking emotionality to these.
In ages past these traits may have served some survival value. In modern times these traits are seen to be contrary to survival of civilization as a whole, and increasingly proves itself to be a source of the undoing of civilization as well as the undoing of individuals, since large-scale social order is dependent on cooperation.
It's difficult to exaggerate the negative consequences of these tendencies, for they are easily exploited by the ambitious for destructive purposes.
"It is in your nature to destroy yourselves," said The Machine.
Is it not so?
-
GlennGreenwald
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm so politically exotic - so many hidden allegiances at once, all uncovered by the investigative geniuses here.
Few of whom seem prepared to simply take you at your word. Those who do see you as only trying to be perfectly reasonable, relying exclusively on the evidence.
Your detractors cannot argue against your facts or your logic, and therefore are compelled to resort to lame smears to advance or preserve their agenda.
And a lot of them are paid for it.
-
blunderdog
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]GG is actually a Templar/Illuminatus who is responsible for absolutely EVERY political event of the past 7 years.
Not true. There are rules against interfering in the natural evolution of backwards cultures.
Or devolution, as the case may be. Human civilization isn't doing so well.