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Karl Hungus said:
You're an idiot. I've long noticed that any time I take the time to actually get into anything with you, you eventually whine that I'm wrong and then ignore what I said.

*a whole lot of shit that doesn't real mean anything*



On the contrary Karl, I've argued with you in long drawn out conversations, that I probably shouldn't have wasted my time on, in numerous other threads on these boards. In each one I've shown you to be full of shit.

Nothing you wrote is unique to any of your past diatribe, thus I won't respond to it.

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Im Not Mister Mxypltk said:
My point is that you justify doing horrible things in the name of what you believe and they're doing the exact same thing.



The problem with dubbing what I propose America should do as "horrible" is that you have very scattered defintions of what's considered as such. For example, you think "murder" and "killing" are the exact same thing.

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So what's the difference? Why should the fact that you think you're right count for anything if they share the exact same conviction?



The end to their means is much different then the end to mine.

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In the bigger picture the whole situation is just two cultures reacting to each other. Take an objective point of view and you'll see that the only undeniable effect this conflict has had is the loss of millions of innocent lives (in both sides).



Actually, that's an intrinsically ignorant POV. In only viewing us as two countries fighting against eachother, you generalize all wars and refuse to look at the intent of either culture and analyze how unique one is from the other.

I suppose this means that you feel the history between America and Chile is just a intercultural reaction devoid of any real meaning?

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You say they're a poison to the world: to most of us so are you.



Yes. I'm sure you feel that way about me.

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You said it yourself, you do whatever you have to do to protect your own interests. Well, the result is that many nations, like mine, have been damaged irreparably by your influence. How is that not a virus? Considering your perspective (in that particular case), is like trying to look through the eyes of a cancer eating through your body. It's also protecting its interests. It also thinks it's right.



I'm sure you wouldn't have minded the domino effect taking place in your country, but I can't say that I'd feel very comfortable living not too far away from such a nation. That brand of government is just another disease more refined than the Mid Eastern governments.

Sorry Mxy, but I'm not going to consider helping out a coup a form of terrorism or even "irreparable damage." I can't say I'd be too happy if the Middle East or some other nation with ethnic influence in the US helped endorse a coup on my government. But since actual US citizens, merely sponsored by outside sources, would carry out such a coup, I'm not going to consider that terrorism or even a form of "damage" either. U.S. citizens forcefully switching political paradigms isn't the same thing. I will, however, admit that there’s a fine line between a revolution and terrorism: The former needs enough constituent volume not to be considered the latter.

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We're going around in cirlces. When I ask you to think logically you insist in going back to your subjective opinion as if you were incapable of distnacing yourself from it even for a second, and when I ask you to think empathically you dissect the situation with logic. The former paragraph is YOU analysing the situation, not the 8 year old. How hard is it to take his place for a moment? It wouldn't be human to react any other way in an extreme situation like that. I'm saying that your country's violent response only motivates innocent victims to join the conflict and keep it going. If you're agreeing with that and using it as an argument to destroy them all, then just say that.



What I’m saying Mxy is that if those innocent casualties want to jump the gun and become terrorists, it’s not my fault. By your very reasoning, America should’ve been traumatized enough by the WTC to have gotten as irrational as that 8 year old and just nuked the entire Middle East by now, and yet it hasn’t happened. You say we live in fear and yet we haven’t lashed out the way one of your caliber thinking would predict. If we really weren’t any better than the Middle Easterners, we wouldn’t have given them enough respect to actually take them to war instead of bomb them back to Allah. If anything, our responses have been inferior to what we should be dealing out. Our example has been one of extreme tolerance; America tolerates the Middle East murdering and torturing Americans due to pacifists like yourself who continually say we shouldn’t be fighting even though we’re being fought against in the process.

So when an 8 year old’s family gets blown to bits by friendly fire and they become a suicide bombing terrorist, you’ll know it’s the ME culture that’s encouraged him or her to do such a thing. They sure as hell haven’t used us as an example for their behavior.

In the end, I’m the one who becomes the radical because I keep telling the people here in America that I shouldn’t have to empathize with the child since I’ve already empathized with the people who are victims of terrorist attacks—Unprecedented victims who weren’t even given a declaration of war. You see Mxy, the terrorist attacks aren’t going to stop even if we did cease our siege of the Middle East. So it wouldn’t be very bright to just ‘turn the other cheek.’ That eight year old would definitely suffer as a casualty, but your suggestion that we should allow ourselves to be killed for the sake of those innocents (who’re probably going to grow up to fanatics in the future) is both unpractical and suspiciously retarded. I’m sure you didn’t care when Hezbollah kept bombing Israel even after Israel pulled out of Gaza, but they sure as hell cared when Lebanon’s powers ended up killing their citizens.

I’m rather confused as to how you’d think there would be any sort of peace if we stopped fighting. I guess you just forgot to take into mind the chicken and the egg. i.e. You refuse to analyze my culture in pursuit of only empathizing with another that opposes mine.

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It becomes more and more clear to me that the only reason your country has no problem going there and perpetuating the violence is because you, too, have been raised to respond violently.



Which means you’re making an unfounded assumption about my history. This is because you boil down America to a stereotype of violence based on gun ownership and [jingoism/blind patriotism]. What you refuse to take into account is that America is country that’s in an ideological conflict with itself. My mother and father for example are both on opposite extremes of the political spectrum. Neither of them however, gave much of a crap about how I turned out after I turned 16. In which case, I was raised in a very nebulous atmosphere that didn’t involve a lot of extremes until I actually bothered to discover them for myself. So no points for you.

They don’t have these kind of options in the Middle East. It’s undeniably an oppressive culture, which doesn’t allow any form of dissent away from the norm. It doesn’t make sense to compare my upbringing to theirs except for the sake of being facetious—As per your usual mannerisms in an argument.

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The examples r3x and I have given could easily be attributed to a "whites are inherently evil" theory...I mean, if someone was motivated to start that theory the way you're motivated to start one about arabs. Let me explain myself with an hypothetic situation: what if, instead of being white, the Columbine kids had been of arab descent?



If the recordings they left were identical to that of Reb and Vodka’s, then that means they were victims of the clique. If the recordings were about Allah, that would make them fundamentalists. If they didn’t leave recordings, that would be evidence of fanaticism until an observation of their lifestyle and personal beliefs would say otherwise.

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The exact same situation, but they happen to have a different ethnicity. It wouldn't be the Columbine Tragedy, it'd be the Columbine Attack. Their violence would suddenly mean something else. It would be used as proof that arabs are predisposed to violence. There would be a ten page thread about it here and G-man would bump it every two weeks with an article about an arab kid pushing another while standing in line. But no, since they're white, it just means that videogames are evil, or something.



Again, you’d first have to assume that the evidence and recordings didn’t exist for this to be true. You’d also have to overlook the fact that we already know trench coats aren’t spiritually significant garb to Muslims. If they were would-be Muslim terrorists, why would they bother to name themselves “The Trench-Coat Mafia?”

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To do what, conclude that that kid is better off dead?



To conclude whether or not the inadvertent sacrifice of the kid’s family is an acceptable risk that’s proportionate to the past loss, as well as potential future loss, of American lives. When one cultural ideology is threatening the survival of another, you have to ascertain those kinds of balances.

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Corrupting the overview with extraneous elements is exactly what you're doing in the other part of our debate.



Uuh…Okay.

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Why is it that hard to "compromise your principles"? What's the big deal? It's just your opinion. By logic, everyone should seriously reconsider their position at least once in their lifetime, especially when they involve matters like these.



Would you compromise your principles? Don’t bother answering, I already know you wouldn’t.

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I don't need to say I could be wrong, because to me that's implied in everything everyone says, including myself.



But you wouldn’t consider it while you’re arguing or else you’d destroy your consistency. How can you expect to be taken seriously when you operate on a pre-disposition of possibly being wrong? The answer is that you don’t operate on such a pre-disposition because you don’t make reservations or compromising statements. No matter what anyone says, you always spin it in that direction because you know that even if you view the method of our actions in the wrong context, you’ve still convinced yourself that we’re criminal and war-mongering any which way you slice it.

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It's not that important when you're having an argument about who would win in a fight, Superman of Goku (Superman), but when we're talking about wiping out an entire culture, it's not only important, it's necessary. The direction the world has been moving for the past 60 years or so is one filled with escalating wars and loss of life. I don't know for sure in what direction it would move if nations valued empathy over protecting their interests, but it can't be worse than that. After all, what's empathy if not looking out for the greater good?



What you’re ignoring is that you’re continually telling me that your way is the greater good when I’m making an effort to prove to you that your viewpoint is corrupted. If I actually think that I act for the sake of the greater good when you say I’m doing the exact opposite, how is that all on its own supposed to convince me that I’m wrong? You don’t even bother empathizing with my views and you expect me to turn over in my beliefs?

The fact of the matter here is that you’re incapable of viewing me and my culture in an objective light because you still hold a grudge against it. There’s really no use trying to convince someone who thinks the worst of you, for whatever reason possible, of anything.

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I AM predisposed to that posibility, which is why I don't take extreme positions (such as saying a whole culture should be wiped out).



But you do take extreme positions. The only reason you don’t think so is because you’re used to thinking of “extreme” as a form of violence. Telling another culture to be pacifistic when it’s surrounded by hostile elements is just as much an extreme position as being open to endorsing or participating in a war.

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I don't support abortion for the same reason: I personally don't think a two week old fetus is alive, but what if it is? That fetus is worth defending for that posibility alone.



That much I agree with, but I don’t see that as being extreme so much as it is common sense.

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I don't think in terms of "correct" or "incorrect": they're all equally valid, because we're all equal. If someone's conviction directly undermines all the rest, then of course he needs to be restrained from doing what he wants to do



If one of those perspectives undermines the others and encourages you restrain the more hostile one(s), then that proves that you don’t actually believe all philosophies are equal. And since cultural individuality is built upon mass practiced philosophies, that means that not all cultures are equal or “equally valid.”

Are you honestly going to tell me that you don’t feel a viewpoint that’s violently disharmonious with all others isn’t “incorrect?” Are you really not telling me that I’m “incorrect” in what I posit?

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But if you stopped fighting, you would make it so.



We weren’t actively fighting the ME when the USS Cole was hit or the WTC was attacked both times and yet we were still being assaulted. Now that we’re engaged in a war with them, we’ve stymied the fanaticists of the population and our heightened security both in America and in Europe has intercepted numerous terrorist attempts. Our greater success at fighting terrorism on both fronts proves that just raising security here, when we can also be interrupting their ability to plan there, is an inadequate strategy.

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Destroyed by what? Peace?



The greatest obstacle I encounter when arguing with you Mxy is that you suffer from the delusion that America is the root of all the violence. Do you honestly think that America would be left alone by the rest of the world if it just withdrew into itself? Time and again, we’ve been shown that things don’t work that way.

There are much more terrifying things in this world than the US Mxy. It’s rather tragic, and stupid, that you were raised to believe that we’re the monsters under your bed.

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Didn't Socrates say "that what I don't know, I don't think I know"? A more accurate translation would be "all I know is that I know nothing". He was predisposed to the posibility of his entire system of beliefs being wrong, which from my understanding is what gave him so much clarity of mind.



That’s not evidence of pre-disposition. I just as easily say that I acknowledge that possibility that I’m wrong regarding all things, but I’m not about to admit it when you give me no evidence to the contrary except for your feelings. Socrates didn’t use his feelings as evidence, he inferred upon reality based on logical observations.

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On the contrary, I think what isn't fair is putting so much value in your personal opinion that you'd be willing to commit genocide.



I put more value in my personal opinion because opposing opinions are combating mine. The fact that I don’t agree with them means I’ve already analyzed them. Genocide is more contextually appropriate in describing murder. I argue that annihilating the ME, in the pursuit of destroying its culture, is a form of self-defense. I know you don’t agree with that, but that’s the point of the conversation.

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If the situation that we already percieve as evil imperialism were to be exalted, our response would grow as well. And what's the next logical step? Taking action to stop it.



Again, past history of international relations shows us that the world is pretty much apathetic to the mass extermination of people aside from some lip service that it’s an awful tragedy. The spotlight is only on us because everyone is s bitter towards us. We’re trying to protect our population whilst the ME inserts itself into our culture and harms us and yet you put China, Russia, the ME itself, and the nations within Africa, in the background even though their violence and oppression towards others is totally unprecedented.

Darfur isn’t going to be avenged. The ME will be though (if the world actually DID react). Not because it’s a tragic loss; it’s just because everyone hates America.

The world is petty, jealous, and pathetically shallow. I’m glad that I’m not considered apart of its population considering every other country makes such great efforts to distance themselves from us.

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What's more excessive than wiping out a culture, even if it means going into a world war? Take the end result out of the picture for a second: you're talking about how much you'd benefit from a civil war. Maybe you'd also benefit from spreading a plague, ever considered that? This reminds of the conference where the "Yes Men" (a group of activists) suggested causing natural disasters for profit in front of oil industrials, and were cheered. That's psychopathic behaviour.



War is just the most sincerest form of disagreement. Here in the US, we’re divided on everything. Every damn little thing that comes to the table has be argued and dissected, then argued and dissected, and then argued and dissected again—It’s ridiculous. We don’t get anything done because the modern belief, yours, is so concerned with spreading the idea that there’s no such thing as an absolute truth. But we shouldn’t have to waste our time on this idea that all views need to be taken into account. The only reason that other countries actually get shit done is because they don’t waste so much time analyzing and just do what they need to. Why exactly do you think the UN, as disgusting an organization as it is, turned out to be such a failure? It’s because no one can agree on what to do about anything. In any case, it’s getting to the point where it’s become dangerous and stagnating just to sit around and do nothing.

It’s very possible that a civil war would actually give you what you wanted Mxy. Depending on who won it of course.

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Ever thought that maybe you're responsible for that bitterness for sticking your nose in other countries to protect your interests? If so, then I guess it must be totally justifiable.



Actually Mxy, I’m not really talking about Chile or the Middle East. I’m talking about Europe, Asia, and Mexico. Each and everyone is denouncing us and threatening us with sanctions, and yet they’ve done more to us than we ever have to them in the past. This includes stealing our technology, intelligence, and money. Living on our soil and trying to devastate our country with nuclear destruction (see also: Bay of Pigs). On top of all this, Europe tries keep us in bondage so the other nations can go to work. And while all of this is going on, we’re donating and aiding other countries and trying to stabilize our greatest enemies.

Fuck them. And fuck you.

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If the Middle East wiped you out for whatever reason, I'd take arms against them. It's not the altruist american soldier I'm against, it's the unspeakable crime he commits.



Again: We’re all aware of how you define “crime.”

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Listen to yourself. It's that exact attitude what got you in this problem in the first place.



The terrorist cells would eventually die out if we destroyed their culture. If we just try to fight them without actually going to the source, we’ll have to be dealing with them forever.

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As I said: that's exactly where your current path leads you, and it's disturbing that you seem to have no problem with it.



As I said: The world is dishonest, conniving, ungrateful, and pathetically/impressionably shallow. I have no problem disassociating myself from such an establishment.