Reposted from another location

The last few days have been, while an emotional rollercoaster, in a way exhilarating. I've learned more about some people I'd made assumptions about, and it's always good to have my assumptions replaced with actual substance. Dialog and discussion are a good things, if all parties are agreed to be non-abusive, and to chill if things get to the non-funny ranty stage. Even that chill period of backing off is useful. It allows me, at least, to think through new information and incorporate it into the perceived worldview of the person, or people, I'm talking with. And sometimes, they're more right than I've been.

But people who have their minds made up going in, and who aren't willing to incorporate new information into their perspective, aren't worth discussion time and energy. There are people from the websites I frequent who've left in a huff because everyone didn't join them in their dudgeon and agree that all is lost, there's no point in fighting for democracy--for the poor and disenfranchised as well as the christian right and the wealthy. Everyone else has been thoughtful, in that full sense of the word: full of thought.

The next few years are going to see worse economic conditions across the country than we're already in. More people are going to die because they can't afford the medication or the treatment that would save them. More young American men and women are going to die in foreign countries, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives consigned to the pyre of his ego for the mistaken and egotistical notions of a man unwilling (or unable) to think things through, who believes the ideas he hears in his head or the hunches he gets in his gut come from his creator. The environment will be further degraded and raped to fill the pockets of the corporations in which he and his inner circle have ownership, and the "upper tier" of economic society. None of that money is intended to ever be circulated in the general population. Of the inevitable damage done to the environment, some of it will be irrecoverable, and what can be recovered will take decades.

In spite of all that, if we survive without igniting a nuclear war which will give Bush and his "end times" believers the Armageddon they want, perhaps we'll emerge stronger as a people, with more sense of purpose, and a determination as well as a plan to not be sheep to the next egotist's slaughter. That goal is worth discussion, I think. Which is why I'm glad to see it going on in several places online, and in life off the internet.

Reposted from another location

The last few days have been, while an emotional rollercoaster, in a way exhilarating. I've learned more about some people I'd made assumptions about, and it's always good to have my assumptions replaced with actual substance. Dialog and discussion are a good things, if all parties are agreed to be non-abusive, and to chill if things get to the non-funny ranty stage. Even that chill period of backing off is useful. It allows me, at least, to think through new information and incorporate it into the perceived worldview of the person, or people, I'm talking with. And sometimes, they're more right than I've been.

But people who have their minds made up going in, and who aren't willing to incorporate new information into their perspective, aren't worth discussion time and energy. There are people from the websites I frequent who've left in a huff because everyone didn't join them in their dudgeon and agree that all is lost, there's no point in fighting for democracy--for the poor and disenfranchised as well as the christian right and the wealthy. Everyone else has been thoughtful, in that full sense of the word: full of thought.

The next few years are going to see worse economic conditions across the country than we're already in. More people are going to die because they can't afford the medication or the treatment that would save them. More young American men and women are going to die in foreign countries, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives consigned to the pyre of his ego for the mistaken and egotistical notions of a man unwilling (or unable) to think things through, who believes the ideas he hears in his head or the hunches he gets in his gut come from his creator. The environment will be further degraded and raped to fill the pockets of the corporations in which he and his inner circle have ownership, and the "upper tier" of economic society. None of that money is intended to ever be circulated in the general population. Of the inevitable damage done to the environment, some of it will be irrecoverable, and what can be recovered will take decades.

In spite of all that, if we survive without igniting a nuclear war which will give Bush and his "end times" believers the Armageddon they want, perhaps we'll emerge stronger as a people, with more sense of purpose, and a determination as well as a plan to not be sheep to the next egotist's slaughter. That goal is worth discussion, I think. Which is why I'm glad to see it going on in several places online, and in life off the internet.