Just the opinion of one Englishman.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 6:58 am

I'm presenting a post I saw on another web site because I believe it's rather thoughtful and fair, given the typical political mud-slinging that occurs with political threads. (All this just to say it's not mine.) Not in a quotes box to make it easier to read.

Happy '09.

Quote:

You Americans...

With your lousy TV.
Your puritanical and hypocritical "values".
Your inability to treat allies as equals.
Your hilarious insistence that you are right in all things.
Your ideological divide.
Your water boarding.
Your George W Bush.
Your insistence on destroying perfectly [good] food with ketchup.
Your inability to acknowledge rugby as THE real man's sport.
Your brutal treatment of the Queen's English.
Your Rambo movies and your Rambo attitude.
Your Rednecks.
Your Hippies.
Your ignorance of basic geography...

...Your moon shots.
Your Peace Corps.
Your insane belief that all things are possible.
Your brave men and women and your incredible industrial might, arriving late, but in the nick of time, to roll back and shatter the Nazi nightmare.
Your outrageous generosity in rebuilding a burned-down Europe.
Your vigilance in keeping the USSR out of Western Europe.
Your friendly and welcoming people.

We take the piss, we point out your faults, but we really don't know what we would do without you.

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 8:30 am

aristide1 wrote:
..
Your insistence on destroying perfectly [good] food with ketchup.
..

Ranch dressing works better.

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 8:59 am

*shrugs*

It sums up pretty much perfectly why the US is such a bloody frustrating country to have to share a planet with

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 3:09 pm

Hippies are in the wrong paragraph.

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 4:35 pm

spookmineer wrote:Hippies are in the wrong paragraph.

And come January 20th, the White House!
Thank the maker!

http://www.boingboing.net/200812171355.jpg

edit: swapped embed for link.

tim851 · Post by **tim851** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 8:05 pm

Not really fair and thoughtful in my book.

Not thoughtful, because half of it is just prejudice and smack talk.

Not fair, because all the "bad" things are of the present, while all the good things are of the past.

And "lousy TV" ... what the hell? The Sopranos, The West Wing, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Californication, The Wire, Scrubs ... where else in the world would one find TV of that magnitude?

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 12:27 am

tim851 wrote:nd "lousy TV" ... what the hell? The Sopranos, The West Wing, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Californication, The Wire, Scrubs ... where else in the world would one find TV of that magnitude?

How hard have you looked?

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 1:59 am

All the best stuff that's on TV comes from the UK.

Not in a million years could the Americans come up with a new Blackadder, Only Fools & Horses, Fawlty Towers or Bottom.

rpsgc · Post by **rpsgc** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 3:48 am

Anyone who says American TV is great is in grave need of some... uhm, "internationalization"

Pleasing the masses != Being good

L2GX · Post by **L2GX** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 12:51 am

rpsgc wrote:Anyone who says American TV is great is in grave need of some... uhm, "internationalization" Pleasing the masses != Being good

Actually with 7 tv channels in small Belgium it's easy for me to see when big is better.
Good ideas can com from the smallest countries, but sometimes you need money to make good tv. Drama really needs expensive talent, expensive production.
In the US the market is big enough for the 'connaisseur' subset to pay that bill, even with reality tv and 'Walker texas ranger' competing for viewers.
In Belgium... Well, there have been some attempts, but most of TV seems to be low budget knockoffs of foreign series.

I have to point out I don't like Belgian literature on account of our inherent defaitism, and this translates to most Belgian TV. Perhaps I'm not totally fair.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:31 am

tim851 wrote:Not really fair and thoughtful in my book.

Not thoughtful, because half of it is just prejudice and smack talk.

Not fair, because all the "bad" things are of the present, while all the good things are of the past.

And "lousy TV" ... what the hell? The Sopranos, The West Wing, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Californication, The Wire, Scrubs ... where else in the world would one find TV of that magnitude?

1. The Peace Corp are still here.

2. Soon W won't be.

3. We should all be grateful that the US no longer displays "outrageous generosity in rebuilding a burned-down Europe. "
a. The cause of the generosity no longer exists.
b. Without the cause the effect is also gone. Europe is no longer in a state referred to as burned-down.

The Sopranos? That is something very wrong with the US, idolizing criminals. It may have been made well, but I don't care about the problems of the criminal element. If anything they don't have enough problems.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 6:33 am

spookmineer wrote:Hippies are in the wrong paragraph.

Ex-stoners now neocons. Not a positive.

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:08 am

Since hippies founded this county in the first place, maybe they ought to get a chance to fix it?

George Washington was the first president of our country as well as being one of the most successful generals in our military history. Washington was indeed a hemp farmer and he also cultivated marijuana for his own personal use.

Thomas Jefferson, known as The Spirit of American Liberty, was also involved in marijuana cultivation and use. Jefferson even praised hemp in many of his writings.

walle · Post by **walle** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:53 am

TV? Doesnâ€™t matter if the program originates from the States, UK, Europe or what ever, television is pure and utter crap, which is why I havenâ€™t watched the television for over two years now. Why would I want to pollute my brain and mind with crap?!? Seriously people, turn the darn box off, you will feel so much better.

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:05 am

walle wrote:TV? Doesnâ€™t matter if the program originates from the States, UK, Europe or what ever, television is pure and utter crap, which is why I havenâ€™t watched the television for over two years now. Why would I want to pollute my brain and mind with crap?!? Seriously people, turn the darn box off, you will feel so much better.

Turn off the TV and spend your time on the Internet instead. Good idea!

walle · Post by **walle** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 11:15 am

nutball wrote:Turn off the TV and spend your time on the Internet instead. Good idea!

Do not spend that much time out on the Internet to begin with really, but your right though, it is better than staring at the television.

croddie · Post by **croddie** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 12:19 pm

aristide1 wrote:I'm presenting a post I saw on another web site because I believe it's rather thoughtful and fair, given the typical political mud-slinging that occurs with political threads.

I can't see a thought there. It's your typical mud-slinging with a few flowers thrown in.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 2:45 pm

croddie wrote:
aristide1 wrote:I'm presenting a post I saw on another web site because I believe it's rather thoughtful and fair, given the typical political mud-slinging that occurs with political threads.
I can't see a thought there. It's your typical mud-slinging with a few flowers thrown in.

Defining the good versus the bad of any one thing does not have to consitute mud slinging. Such check lists can tell you why you like one thing or person and not another, or it can assure one of the correct perspective of any individual likes or dislikes.

There's no way to love every aspect of every thing or person. Compromise may not always be desired, but it's quite often neccessary.

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 4:32 pm

aristide1 wrote:
spookmineer wrote:Hippies are in the wrong paragraph.
Ex-stoners now neocons. Not a positive.

I'm sure you know what the ideals behind the movement of these people are. If one thinks it's all about smoking weed, having long hair and waving V "peace man", well maybe the latter is most "correct" out of three stereotypic associations.

The ideal they stood for is still a positive, therefor, wrong paragraph.

[The term neocon doesn't mean anything to me, can you give a definition for it?]

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 2:06 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocon

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 5:16 pm

aristide1 wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocon

As a political philosophy (first line in wiki) it is apparently not easy to give a compact definition of it. Wiki doesn't offer a small, useful definition of the word. In fact, it only gives an overview of the history of neoconservatism.
I don't call that a definition.

Anyway...

Weird to say hippies turned neoconservatives. Compare this:
"peace and love"
to this:
"neoconservatism was suddenly everywhere. It was, to its many critics, a unified ideology that justified military adventurism, sanctioned torture and promoted aggressive Zionism".
How did they get from A to B? (granted, "critics" but it sums it up, or can you offer another view?).
The Hippy era was bad, because it was for peace and love. The neocon era is good, because it's for torture.
Now I see... The jedis moved to the dark side...

Whether or not neoconservatism is "not a positive" is a matter of political preference (but I agree it's not a positive).
Neoconservatism however doesn't concern the ideologies of hippies, and I haven't seen an explanation of how hippies went to become neoconservatives.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 5:34 pm

Did you see the movie The Big Chill? The older hippies were now materialistic.

Neocons are more nationalistic crusaders, more like to be the cause of the end of the world than it's savior.

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:00 pm

Is that your explanation? In some movie (a great one, great intro "I heard it through the grapevine", and IIRC a Porsche ripping up some autumn leaves but it's so long ago since I seen it), some hippies (if they were that) become materialistic [note: you didn't say neoconservatives]? In the end the movie is about if each of them made the right choice. Maybe they didn't, but the movie doesn't pursue that thought.

Some say the 80's were the era of materialism, yuppies were upcoming etc. This also reflected in movies (great example: Wall Street). But the Big Chill was about evaluating what was lost, and the choices people make. It doesn't judge whether the right choice was made.

Whereas "Neocons are more nationalistic crusaders, more like to be the cause of the end of the world than it's savior", I think it's safe to say hippies are more likely to try to save the world than end it.
Q.E.D.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:40 am

Sorry Spookmineer, but neocons are an American extremist group who hide behind republican and conservative ideals to further their agenda. They are the Al-Queda of the US, believe God is on their side, they are right and going to heaven, and believe that laws to not apply to them because of their righteousness.

The great harm is that normal functioning thinking people that are caring and decent republicans and conservatives allow them to fester and grow, probably much as many decent and caring Muslims can look the way when they see their terrorists doing their thing.

JoeWPgh · Post by **JoeWPgh** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 12:41 pm

Well, at least we have those brave bible thumpers who will fight to the bitter end to stop gays from having abortions once and for all! They're a pretty insightful bunch. There would have been no GWB without them.
And without GWB, we never would have known that black is white, up is down and torture is freedom!

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 8:16 am

JoeWPgh wrote:. bible thumpers who will fight to the bitter end to stop gays from having abortions once and for all!

Just the opinion of one Englishman.

Just the opinion of one Englishman.

Re: Just the opinion of one Englishman.

Re: Just the opinion of one Englishman.

Re: Just the opinion of one Englishman.