NationStates Jolt Archive

The full text of Cheney's diatribe around his meeting Edwards:



The intent of what he was trying to convey was clear. That Edwards wasn't doing his job in comparison to what Cheney did. The fact that he lied about being there performing his duties presiding over the Senate on Tuesdays, and clearly had encountered Edwards on AT LEAST three occasions caught on tape make that an extremely misleading statement. I call it missleading to the point of being deliberately untrue - i.e. a lie. So does my wife.



You are also as bad at trying to spin things as Cheney is. I was very specific in pointing out Cheney repeating oft-refuted allegations of Saddam-al qaeda links, and of implying a supposed nuclear threat from Iraq. I did NOT discuss any general "support of terror" because his payments to families of Hamas bombers is well known.

Having a valid statement to make does not excuse repeating the invalid ones by the people running the country.


Nor is deliberately targetting my wife a great way to try and engage in adult discourse with me.
Kapow! You rock!

Concidering I was off line for most of it... I try to shoulder my own responsibility when Im here.

If you read further, rather than just reply to each post as you come to it, you would see that Zepp and I did have a discourse... and I acknowledged that Cheney did engage in dirty politics to insinuate that Edwards was never in the Senate.

I also appologized for calling his wife a spin doctor.
Good of you to apologize. I apologize for not knowing you were again online and reviewing this thread (given there are many threads to view). Zepp wasn't the only entity in your discourse and your point(s) should be valid with all individuals, not just one. Note that i obviously don't respond to every thread or idea (how many pages here?) just the ones i thought merited some kind of response from myself. I am reading as fast as a person can, given circumstances and late in this thread, and only reply in points i think are valid enough to stand even if the entity to whom i respond may have already gotten bored or moved on. I also have a significant amount of time offline and regrettably enter some of the more interesting discussions late.

My post is directed primarily toward InfiniteResponsibility, but all are naturally welcome to read it and make comments. Forgive me, but I feel our posts have grown far too long for quotations.

To get it out of the way, I not only used an "a" in privileges, but I typed it out as "privalges". This is wrong in multiple respects and I'm sure you can find several others like it throughout my posts. For some reason I have never felt the need or desire to use a spell check or to proofread when typing to protect myself from the raging grammar and spelling Nazis that patrol online forums. A fish is a fish is a gheti, and I've always been of the mindset that no one speaking English is in any position to nitpick and tell others the "correct" way to spell a word that has probably already changed several times in the past, and will be probably be spelled differently still in the not so distant future (It's enuff that teh subject is able to get there message accros).

Anyway, I would like to focus on one of the later things you said, because I believe it illustrates one of the most basic rifts in our thinking. You seem to think that the world has changed, and you claim to have seen it. I would like, if possible, for you to describe exactly what it is that is so different.

I am a student of history and psychology. If I have learned one thing it is that man has not changed significantly since he emerged on this Earth. The same primitive drives that motivated our ancestors direct our actions still today. Man was and remains a selfish creature. We murder, rape, steal, desecrate, lie, covet, &c. The only thing that has changed is the arrival of a relatively new concept called "civilization".

Civilization is a term used to describe the relatively brief lapses in history in which human beings in a given area abstain from their baser instincts in order to secure some "greater good". It is the concept that allows people to sit at their breakfast tables EVERY morning and somehow STILL appear shocked and offended by the daily news of death and injustice in the world. The civilized sit in comfort watching television and flip the channels past scenes of poverty, racism, and genocide. Then they thoughtfully scratch their heads and wonder to themselves how people in this day and age could ever act so "uncivilized" and if they should send $5 to Sally Struthers.

The civilized are people who elevate themselves above the thoughts and behaviors of their ancestors and cannot even begin to fathom how one ever became an SS officer or ever agreed to follow their orders (to recycle an earlier example). They are the people who only 50 years ago cheered the pilots over Dresden and Tokyo as heroes, but dehumanized their counterparts over London and Pearl Harbor. They are the people who cannot rationalize or understand war, but find themselves surrounded by it. The inconsistances that arise from these notions are appaling. We have all seen the emaciated, skeletal figures of women and children thrown into mass graves and furnaces captured forever more through the cold glass eye of a video camera. Why is this allowed to sill happen?

After all, man has for thousands of years outlawed most forms of killing and violence. That ought to do it right? What the hell, let's arbitrarily declare war itself illegal (which we did in the Kellogg-Briand Pact and hope to do again through rediculous bodies such as the United Nations). Let's also establish and attempt to enforce global law. And while we are at it, let's tell people how they can and cannot think and feel about each other. All these measures do is repress our drives until they can no longer be contained. I think the track record if these measures speak for themselves.

Finally the time gradually rolls around in which we, the "civilized", have a little disagreement with other "civilized" people. We agree only on one thing, that we are both, some how, defending ourselves, truth, and reason. And so we wage beautiful war on each other. The years of peace and prosperity that our civility has bought have simply increased the scale of things. Thousands of dead are now millions (and inevitably billions) as more people with greater technology reap a richer harvest of death. We develop newer, cleaner methods of achieving the same ends, the death of our enemies and a small assurance of our own survival.

All the religions, philosophies, and sciences that have evolved throughout our long history have been unable to change this basic nature of man. In fact, we have managed to manipulate just about every piece of knowledge every concieved of at one point or another to support our selfish ambitions. Sure we often feel bad about it when these things happen, we always have. We may decide to give a few dollars to a local charity so we feel better about ourselves. We may even point to notable exceptions of selflessness and heroism. But we do so only in a futile attempt to once again raise ourselves above the past, before we come crashing down once again.

I believe that your examples of "non-violent" revolutions, led not by hatred, couldn't be more wrong. Ghandi was down right apalled and offended by the way in which England treated Indian subjects. He acknowledged several times that he favored a WAR of revolution with England, but chose the route of non-violence simply because it was more plausable due to insufficient military equipment and training. The Indian army was, after all, controlled by British officers and armed with British rifles. Most importantly, his actions were SELFISH in that he was attempting to better the Indian people and himself at the direct cost of the British (not that this was a bad thing). Further more, in Ghandi's "non-violent" movement (this applies to the other movements as well) there were several instances in which his followers took matters into their own hands and killed police officers and local officials. Don't get me started on the subsequent Hindu/Muslim conflict that followed shortly there after as well. Let it rest at the fact that it is one of the greatest overlooked examples of tragedy and mass genocide in the modern era. Though all these movements were founded upon principles of non-violence, there were martyrs in all of them. Jesus, MLK, Ghandi... these men all died because of hatred from one source or another. It is hatred that gets men on the battlefield and it is hatred that allows a man to sit in silent protest as policemen beat him with clubs. If it is not hatred of the enemy himself, it is hatred for what he stands for, how he treats you, and what he may do or has already done to your way of life, to your your family, etc. This is often disguised or sublimated, but the fact remains that hate drives us to do things, often very great things.

However, the "advances" enjoyed by given facets of society, for example women or African Americans, are simply temporary and localized boosts in specific areas following a previous decline. American society is no more egalitarian with respect to women and blacks than many past societies, and it will assuredly be no less egalitarian than many future societies. With every gain, there is a loss. Any individual, ethnicity, culture, nation, you name it, that improves its own position does so at some cost to someone, somewhere.

In the end, the end turns out to be just another beginning and you realize you're reading the same pages over and over again. 75% of any given chapter in history is essentially the same as any other. A few italicized names and dates are different, but the message remais the same

The bleak past, present, and future that I have described here is the truth as I see it. You may disagree, though I don't really see how you can on the overall picture. Instead I expect that you'll bring up the fact that there are certain people who are apparently trying to move away from these things and that we should all pull together as a team, and that just because these things exist or once existed, that doesn't make them good or right.

I will simply state that I believe lasting and significant change to human nature to be impossible without direct outside intervention (in essence, brain washing). It is also not to our advantage to do so. What makes the human race so amazing and dynamic is our relatively short and, ideally, difficult lives. True stagnation results not from my inability "to parse something into my Weltanschauung" but from the removal of personal incentives and selfish drives. Competition makes us stronger, and I will always promote a certain degree of conflict throughout the world. Hiding from these forces and denying their existance and/or value leads to true stagnation. I simply believe in shamelessly bringing them out into the open and making use of them.

The current battle, which you seem unable to identify, is a monumental battle of ideology. The very idea of "America" is under attack. Many people deny the existance of a true American culture or shared American values, but I believe they exist. What is most important is that the people who kill us and wish to see us destroyed believe they exist. A terrorist isn't going to give a damn if you're a liberal or conservative. Anyone who shares or is sympathetic to American values is their enemy (which is why they also strike our allies, and even non-allies with similar beliefs) Our enemy, in reality, is anyone who desires us to change the values that lay at our very foundation and have led us to become the greatest nation in the history of this world. It is up to America to stand steadfast and battle anyone who conflicts with our views (let me be the first to say that battles come in many forms and violence is not necessarily required or implied). If America is to be defeated, so be it. If it is to be so, it is because something better or stronger came along and removed us from our position. However, I WILL NOT sit idley by and allow for America to transform and abandon its values without testing them against the mettle of our enemies. I would rather see our nation go out with a bang then a whimper.

Victory belongs to the strong, and the weak must go to the wall.

So, answer the question... what does it mean to you to "meet" someone?
To me, sitting next to someone for breakfast, being sworn in by said person for the Senate and several other events that did happen would qualify. I suppose I could be in a crowded resturaunt next to people and not "meet" them, but at a table in the situation of the prayer breakfast, you've got to be kidding me. This is just getting stupid and you have nothing intelligent to say.