On a personal note by dreamtrove

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

On a personal note

POSTED BY: DREAMTROVE
UPDATED: Sunday, February 19, 2006 19:22
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 402
PAGE 1 of 1

Sunday, February 19, 2006 7:22 PM

A little something about me.

When I was very young, my mother moved up to upstate New York, My dad stayed in Phildelphia. We lived in an empty stone castle, no electricity. It was sometimes cold, we were very poor. I made it through the first 5 years of school. Eventually, we got electricity, but grew a lot of our own food, we never got Tv, which eventually came to town. We got a computer when I was 13, and I started hacking in to video games, changing the code. I got pretty into it at some point. Played lots of D&D, got interested in stuff, science, politics. When I was 16 I went to college in Kentucky, I picked up a lot of lefty liberal views, spent way too much time partying, not enough time studying. Came back after two years, became a serious student, still a liberal, I went to marches and chanted stupid slogans like an automaton. Old farmers would tell me their views, in this little no horse town, well, lots of horses, no stoplights. They were all pretty conservative. I was pretty sure I was going to be nothing like them. I guess, time passed, I had various jobs, went several times to England, every couple of years, I have a friend there, he works for the UN, lives in a little no horse town with little stone houses, no stoplights. I've been to the city, live in a city, came back here. Fought for victories for liberal policy, won, seen it turn out really badly, read a lot of history, watched a lot of time roll by and see it all fall apart, consistantly. Now I grow tomatoes and sell books and rant at younger folk who think they know better. Funny thing is, to the people here, I'm that guy who knows about computers. It's all in your perspective. Across the street is a post office, where there are rows of little wooden boxes someone built up int he 1700s some time, postmaster there is a hunter, just gave up on Cheney. And next door there's a general store. It's been open and running for 220 years. The guy who runs it never got a computer. He says he means to someday, but he's not sure. They changed the cash register a couple years back, now they have one that adds. Other than that, it's pretty much the same. That's big change in my no horse town. I guess you could say, in short, like Riley Finn, I grew up in a Grant Wood painting. But it's not a Theme Park, this ain't no tourist town. No one ever comes here. This is America, and it still exists.

I guess, I've seen the other side. Bright lights, big city, everything moves pretty fast there. Then the in between, life ruled by convenience, the constant urban sprawl. I know when I look at the "no blue states" map, you've all seen it, I can see, blue cities, big red countryside. We're pretty conservative out here, I guess I'm not exception to that. Maybe it's because we have something to conserve. It'd probably all be Walmarts and condos before you know it we didn't. Maybe that's why a lot of places are all Walmarts and condos. I don't like that, wouldn't like it to happen here. I've been to Walmart, don't care for it. I like to go somewhere where i can hang around the counter and yack with the storekeeper about who's worse, Bush or Clinton. Neither of us is totally decided on the issue. The other night he gave me an underground tape full of stuff on Clinton. It was all pretty convincing. But then Bush is pretty bad. It's like coke and pepsi though, it's not really a contest, they can both suck equally.

The point of this little flavor piece is so that all you know more or less where I'm coming from. If something on the left if bugging me, it's usually because that's something I tried, took me some years to figure out was wrong, and now I'm pretty sure it's wrong, and don't want to go back to it. Not that everything the left ever says is wrong, I never said that. A lot of it, but, keep coming up with new ideas. There always have to be new ideas. But like after you try planting tomatoes too close, and the leave touch and some fungus jumps from one to another, you lose the crop, and then you don't try it againg, that sort of thing. Some stuff is just pretty much proven wrong, and at the very least needs to come back as something new, with a little more work. But new ideas are always good. The other place I have a problem is where any idea says "You have to do it my way." No, I don't. I can do it my way. A lot of left policy has a sort of "everyone will do it this way" angle to it. That's more or less the same thing.

And, dare I say it, but: I get where Mr. Bin Laden is coming from. I really do. That doesn't make him not wrong, he's very wrong. You can't go attack people like that, whether it's towers in NY or school kids in Russia. But he thinks we're edging on his land, telling him how to do stuff. And we are. First, it was the Soviets, came in, told him everything had to be there way. When I think about this whole Iraq thing, I think about that. There's Mr. Bin Laden and all his Mujahadeen, and there they are living it up in Afghanistan, they have their wheatfields and sheep and poppies, and Mr. Bin Laden can have poppies if he wants, and there comes the Soviet Union rolling in with tanks. I think about what if the Soviet Union had coming rolling into my town with tanks. Well, suddenly Osama and his friends at the Mujahideen can't kick back anymore. Well, this is what we are to him. We come into Iraq, and we tell everyone how everything is going to be. If you disagree with us, it's off to Abu Ghraib with you.

And Mr. Bin Laden is a right wing extremist, no doubt about that. Not a leftist bone in his body. He's still the enemy and all, and he better not come around New York, but I get his angle. And I think he has a point. maybe we should get our nose out of his business.

Now here's something Bin Laden did wrong. You can't take the fight to them. Esp. since muslims seem to have a funky vague idea about who the them is. I guess the rumor is that Osama was miffed about the CIA not coming and backing him up after the collapse of the Soviets, and so he decided to strike New York. Well, New York has never really been big with war, and I get the whole stoning the devil symbolism and all. I guess, another concern I have, is I don't like where all this is going. I studied a fair amount of history, and one thing leads to another, and it doesn't take a genius to see where this one is leading to. Over in Europe I imagine there are folk right now making plans to move muslims into special 'designated' areas, so everyone over there, feel free to teel me you think this is random conspiracy theory, but it's just what my gut tells me. They don't like muslims coming in and telling them how they have to do it their way either, who would. Esp. after the Russian school thing, 40,000 car bombs, madrid, london. But I see this turning into some big organized purge, a major endless pointless war with Iran, like the soviets had in Afghanistan. I see Hillary Clinton and a draft, and then suddenly, it's all crawled into my own home town, and I don't want it. I don't want it for me, and I don't want it for those folks in Iran who are growing grapes and not building nuclear bombs. I don't have anything against the military, my sister works for the military, has for many years, up at the VA hospital. But a couple friends of mine lost their lives in the military. I know you gotta fight only when you really gotta fight, and you guys know I'm no fan of war. If it's Nazis on the doorstep, then get me a shotgun, but I'm not here to tell the Iranians how they've got to do it my way. They do it their way, and if that's perfectly fine with them, then it's perfectly fine with me. And, I hear if they don't like it, they can leave. And sometimes the do. There are some million of them or so in the US. They like it our way, they came here, and that's fine too. But if Dick Cheney, PNAC and the whole Shachtmanite set gets *their* way, then there is only going to be one way. I see that as not a good thing. When we get to a world where there is only one way, then if you don't like the way, then it's probably off to Guantanamo with you.

And that's more or less where I'm coming from.

If anyone else cares to share, please do.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

YOUR OPTIONS

SHARE THREAD

NEW POSTS TODAY

USER	POST DATE

USER

POST DATE