Originally Posted by Stumper

Madlib, is it not more than apparent that it is nearly impossibile to conduct a conversation without personal assaults, half-truths and lies from those who hold opposing points of view ?

From what I have seen in many threads in this forum it is customary, and almost honourary, to assault each other in these and in other ways.

I have given up posting anything which I consider might offer a glimmer of enlightenment, or at the very least an alternative perspective on an issue. I am tired of the abuse and narrow mindedness that is exposed in many of their responses.

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Madlib, Americans actually believe that they exist in the most democratically correct and superior economic system on the face of the earth. For them, America is #1 in the world and there is absolutely nothing that you or I can say that will convince them otherwise.

It won't be until they experience the travesties of their system on a personal level that their beliefs in their supposed superior political and value systems will be brought into question.

If enough of their personal belief systems are shatterred there will develop a break in the unchallenged discursive terrain that dominates American chatter. It will be into this "vacant moral vacuum", a point just beyond "critical mass", that opportunites will arise, alternatives will be proposed, and where new leaders will emerge who can articulate paradigms for the new American century.

The American Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement are examples of moments in American history where their society convulsed inwardly and was put through a meat grinder of self inflicted violence. Let us all hope that this present day moral vacuum does not require resolution in that direction.

Let us hope that these current standard bearers of America, and the state of affairs in which Americans find themselves, represents the absolute bottom in terms of moral and political self absorption. For if it is not, then you can expect things to get much, much worse.

Our best hope as a global community is for America to accept itself for what it is, as a worthy and one of many, ongoing experiments in the organization of large, nation-based collectives.

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I honestly believe that we are, at times, mimics of what we hear and what we see. My hope is that America finds for itself a new leader who is simply that, a man or woman who can explain their situation truthfully to his or her own people, who has the will and intellectual acuteness to challenge nationally damaging alternative points of view, and who is an honest and good representative for their country within the global community.

American absoluteness is everyone's enemy.

[Stumper]