Agreed. Never in history has so much hate, opposition, misinformation and sheer obstinance been focused on a president. Entire news organizations have dedicated themselves to his destruction. Look at your posts alone; every one is another attack on Obama.
Demonizing people
- Thread starter Sorcerer
- Start date
Agreed. Never in history has so much hate, opposition, misinformation and sheer obstinance been focused on a president. Entire news organizations have dedicated themselves to his destruction. Look at your posts alone; every one is another attack on Obama.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
At least since George W. Bush, who preceeded him.
Actually most of the American national opinion media were ecstatic at the idea of a politically-left black man being elected president. In 2008, they treated Obama almost as if he was the long-awaited messiah. He was brilliant. He was unprecedented. He was the harbinger of an entirely new age. It wasn't just Americans doing that either, witness his Nobel Prize, awarded to him for the wonderful achievement of simply being... him.
Subsequently, the thrill seems to have gradually evaporated. That was probably inevitable, seeing as how no mortal human could possibly embody all of the dreams that the American and world left poured into him. But he still gets something of a free-pass, I think. Hollywood celebrities still flock be seen with him, and there's still a hesitance in most of the New York news/opinion media to criticize him too aggressively. He's still their guy after all.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I think that it was, and intentionally too. The founding fathers and the framers of the constitution were terribly concerned about the possibility that the new American government might eventually become just as autocratic and oppressive as the government that they had so recently rebelled against. So the framers were very careful to create a separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches. They wanted each of the branches to serve as a speed-bump to prevent any of the other branches from collecting all power into its own hands.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's this idea circulating that the best government is the most active government, and that government effectiveness is measured by how many new laws are enacted each term. But are more and more laws, micromanaging every tiny aspect of human life, really the goal that we should be pursuing?
i came across this somewhere else in the forums, and thought it would look nice here, right under this bit.
too sweet for my taste, but at least the mod isn't asleep.
too sweet for my taste, but at least the mod isn't asleep.
Are you here to taunt or is there something intelligent you wanted to say?
Still trolling me, scifes?
Still, the rest of my post did point out that by neutering govt you are letting the corporations more-or-less run the place. How much of the Iraq war, for example, was driven by the need for corprate profits?
read post #208 if you're looking for unintelligent taunting.
the intelligent things i had to say are just in the previous page, not 10 pages ago.
am still waiting on the mods regarding my report. post #224 is exemplary moderator action. though here it'd be lacking on the promptness side.
i can't debate properly if the rules aren't held. it's a basic requirement for functioning in any system.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Jung would disagree with you. Religion is a set of archetypes, instinctive beliefs hard-wired into our neurons by DNA. (The same images, rituals and stories recur over and over in nearly every culture and era--for example, the Flood, or the human or other animal rising from the dead.) Since most archetypes have obvious roles in survival (e.g., instinctively running away from a large animal with both eyes in front of its face), it's hard to figure out where religion came from. But there have been at least two genetic bottlenecks in the recent history of our species (Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam), so it may simply have slipped through, like the unique little webs between our fingers that give life to the Aquatic Ape hypothesis.
Even in the old days. Many married heterosexually simply as a cover. Today it's even easier with surrogacy and artificial insemination.
Bonobos, Pan paniscus, are the free-lovin' hippies of the jungle. They have orgies that last for hours, involving literally every member of the tribe, including the kids and the old folks. They stand in stark contrast to the other, larger, better-known species of chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes. The "true chimpanzee" is clearly our closest relative. They waylay and murder members of other tribes.
For decades, no one realized that there were two different species, so zookeepers threw the bonobos in with the others. What a disaster!
Jung had a lot of batshit-stupid ideas, religion being hardwired into us certainly numbers among them.
Religion is a means of coping. It's the comfortable answer to a lot of uncomfortable questions. The stories passed down are no different than other myths and legends unrelated to religious beliefs. Many endure today, even among rational secularists, such as luck, and destiny. In other words, if anything is hardwired into us, it's our inquisitiveness. Religion and other myths and legends are a byproduct of that.
You apparently only want the rules to apply selectively, and only as you interpret them, apparently. I didn't break any rules, yet you've done almost nothing BUT in the time since.
Try getting over it.
Given his tagline, and given his modus operandi here, that's pretty clear.
All we are saying, Is give peace a chance..
crap..i knew I should not have mentioned the presidency..i get lost easier/quicker when ppl are talking politics than hard science, at least the hard science I try to understand..
crap..i knew I should not have mentioned the presidency..i get lost easier/quicker when ppl are talking politics than hard science, at least the hard science I try to understand..
Mod note
If you wish to criticize someone, you open yourself up to needing to support that criticism, especially if berating others on scientific knowledge. Refusal to do so would seem to be intentionally vexatious. If you have no intend to support your argument then why make it at all [rhetorical]?
If you wish to criticize someone, you open yourself up to needing to support that criticism, especially if berating others on scientific knowledge. Refusal to do so would seem to be intentionally vexatious. If you have no intend to support your argument then why make it at all [rhetorical]?
Support my criticism? Look at his post.
How utterly unsurprising that once again Syne has chosen to attack the atheist while doing nothing about the rabid religious zealot.
Seriously, LOL @ you.
Mod note
If you report someone's post, you should leave it at that. Taunting and trolling are not a good idea.
If you report someone's post, you should leave it at that. Taunting and trolling are not a good idea.
Apparently you could not be patient enough for me to post the next mod action. What were you saying about "rabid"?
But here is your chance. Explain how natural selection is NOT about breeding.
Oh yeah, I'm sure you were just about to do it.
You're boringly predictable. Go bother someone else with your power trip.
Talk about taunting and trolling:
Oh, that's right, it's perfectly okay for moderators to do it. They don't count as members, right? Something like that?
What are you compensating for?