I feel I need to clarify the previous item. I made it into a joke. But when I first read Winer’s comment, I was so spitting mad I couldn’t see straight. The simple fact is, I hate what this country has become, literally in the blink of an eye. I hate it. What I love is the idea that there’s still some hope to get it back.
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The premise of any just military action should be that the “good guy” should promise not to have any monetary gain from the victory. So, the US gets none of Iraq’s oil. Neither do any companies who the President and his staff have any ties with. If the reasons behind the war are so ethically compelling, America should have no problem giving all the profits to the poorest citizens of Iraq.
There’s simply no political or diplomatic possibility that we won’t rape Iraq’s oil. None. It’s going to happen. Even if heads roll, it won’t change the reality of what is absolutely, positively going to happen. No investigative Senatorial exploratory committee is going to change that. Our nation has become overtly imperialistic, with all of the historical paralells that implies. Read Leonard Peikoff, “The Ominous Paralells”.
This country hasn’t changed in the blink of an eye. Awareness of what this country has become has changed for some.
Sparky: Maybe it is about perception. But it’s hard for me to stomach the idea that this country has always been this venal, rigid and apathetic.
Fiberoptic cable really did bring us closer together. Now we have to look at one another.
Well, there’s a middle ground between changing in the blink of an eye and having always been. I believe the process has been gradual, and while there have been landmark moments, you’d be hard pressed to find a distinct beginning to it. Once you start looking back, you find that it just keeps on going, and then it all just kind of fits into the span of recorded human history. You know, warfare, subjugation, injustice, etc.
I think the only thing that’s really changed over time is the tools humans have to act out their dramas. We really always have been war-like, unthinking, tribal, violent and all those other things that make us human. We just have better tools to communicate and act it out. Match that with the geographic and political growth of the county, and it’s Rome with stealth technology (which, incidentally, you an actually DO in Civilization III (www.civ3.com).
*(grins)*