Page 1 of 2 [ 25 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

Tahitiii
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 1 Jul 2008
Age: 68
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,214
Location: USA

11 Oct 2008, 9:26 pm

(If a bunch of Aspies can’t be honest, who can? And if not now, when?)

I volunteered a couple of times recently for the Obama campaign.
Someone called today to ask me to do it again.

I asked him whether he was aware that we are living under marshall law, that we have no constitution or representative government, that we have a self-proclaimed dictator who was never even elected, and that Obama supported Bush last week in his most blatant attack of all.

The guy on the phone said, “Oh, well, you gotta go along to get along.” In other words, this guy got it. He is half-awake, and he still supports this bread-and-circuses campaign. Why?

That “crap sandwich” bailout bill was way beyond stupidity or incompetence or even greed. It was nothing but a terroristic attack on the economy. (The Nazis printed up millions of counterfeit bills and flooded the British economy, and this was intended as an attack.) The administration is completely out of its mind. And the people are just lining up, as though they can’t wait to have a taste.

How long do you “go along to get along?” What is the limit? Is there a limit? How bad does it have to get?

We have no elected officials at all who have any power over anything. Why isn’t everyone alive rioting in the streets? The administration itself was expecting it. They have hundreds of shiny new Halliburton concentration camps, locked and loaded. Where is everybody?

How many times do we need to re-learn this same old lesson?



Fuzzy
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Age: 51
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,223
Location: Alberta Canada

11 Oct 2008, 10:10 pm

His was a statement intended to sound sympathetic whilst blowing you off at the same time.


_________________
davidred wrote...
I installed Ubuntu once and it completely destroyed my paying relationship with Microsoft.


Orwell
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 8 Aug 2007
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,518
Location: Room 101

11 Oct 2008, 10:14 pm

Fuzzy wrote:
His was a statement intended to sound sympathetic whilst blowing you off at the same time.

I'll never understand NT's. :?

Why can't people communicate unambiguously?


_________________
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH


Tahitiii
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 1 Jul 2008
Age: 68
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,214
Location: USA

11 Oct 2008, 10:14 pm

That was my first thought. But I don't buy it.
The tone was like my friend last week who nodded as if to say,
"I know, I hear you, but keep it down."
If you know enough to react that way, you must be at least half awake.


I mean, seriously. Think it through.
You know that they are NOT going to let him do anything as president.
Either they already know that he's the biggest Uncle Tom of all time,
or they are going to assassinate him.
Either way, they win.



NeantHumain
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 24 Jun 2004
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,837
Location: St. Louis, Missouri

11 Oct 2008, 10:30 pm

Tahitiii wrote:
(If a bunch of Aspies can’t be honest, who can? And if not now, when?)

I volunteered a couple of times recently for the Obama campaign.
Someone called today to ask me to do it again.

I asked him whether he was aware that we are living under marshall law, that we have no constitution or representative government, that we have a self-proclaimed dictator who was never even elected, and that Obama supported Bush last week in his most blatant attack of all.

The guy on the phone said, “Oh, well, you gotta go along to get along.” In other words, this guy got it. He is half-awake, and he still supports this bread-and-circuses campaign. Why?

That “crap sandwich” bailout bill was way beyond stupidity or incompetence or even greed. It was nothing but a terroristic attack on the economy. (The Nazis printed up millions of counterfeit bills and flooded the British economy, and this was intended as an attack.) The administration is completely out of its mind. And the people are just lining up, as though they can’t wait to have a taste.

How long do you “go along to get along?” What is the limit? Is there a limit? How bad does it have to get?

We have no elected officials at all who have any power over anything. Why isn’t everyone alive rioting in the streets? The administration itself was expecting it. They have hundreds of shiny new Halliburton concentration camps, locked and loaded. Where is everybody?

How many times do we need to re-learn this same old lesson?

No offense, but this kind of hyperbole is exactly what is most offputting about contemporary political discourse to me. Despite the obvious failures of the Bush administration, we in the United States are not living under "marshall [sic] law." Calling a controversial piece of legislation "beyond stupidity or incompetence or even greed" really forgoes meaningful debate on a complicated problem and a complicated proposed solution.

The reason why "everyone alive [isn't] rioting in the streets" is because most people don't fly off the handle whenever politics doesn't go their way. We have more constructive ways to make things happen when we think things are going the wrong way. Ideological platitudes and populist whining might be a way to vent, but the world isn't all black and white.



Phagocyte
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 15 Oct 2007
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,757

11 Oct 2008, 10:42 pm

Orwell wrote:
I'll never understand NT's. :?

Why can't people communicate unambiguously?


It's really not the difficult to understand. He was apathetic about the OP's point but simultaneously wanted to avoid hurt feelings/time spent/confrontation.

I really hate to say it, but the art of bullshitting is actually a very valuable tool.


_________________
Un-ban Chever! Viva La Revolucion!


Orwell
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 8 Aug 2007
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,518
Location: Room 101

11 Oct 2008, 10:51 pm

Phagocyte wrote:
Orwell wrote:
I'll never understand NT's. :?

Why can't people communicate unambiguously?


It's really not the difficult to understand. He was apathetic about the OP's point but simultaneously wanted to avoid hurt feelings/time spent/confrontation.

I really hate to say it, but the art of bullshitting is actually a very valuable tool.

Yes, on an intellectual level, once it's pointed out, I understand what he was doing. But I would never notice that immediately as it occurred. It certainly wasn't immediately obvious to me as it did to Fuzzy.

Well, the art of bullshitting may be useful. That doesn't make it right, though. I wish I owned a copy of "The Speed of Dark" rather than just having gotten it from the library- there was a good quote early on in that book from Lou Arrendale. Something along the lines of "I do not call lying a social nuance. I call lying wrong."


_________________
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH


claire-333
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 19 Jun 2008
Age: 53
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,658

11 Oct 2008, 10:59 pm

I think it is possible the guy just needed to get more volunteers in to man the phones and did not know how to respond to your comments.



Magnus
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 24 Jul 2008
Age: 49
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,372
Location: Claremont, California

11 Oct 2008, 11:00 pm

"You gotta go along to get along." :?:

I think that guy has been eating way too many Cheetos or something.

Apathy bugs me too. I just want to shake those people. Have you considered your tone may be have a tinge of paranoia?
You have to talk like you don't know anything and let them figure it out with little hints and questions. Otherwise they'll be suspicious because the media portrays people who are awake as crazed home grown terrorists or loony conspiracy theorists.

Remember that what your dealing with is brainwashing at a very sophisticated level.


_________________
As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.

-Pythagoras


Fuzzy
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Age: 51
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,223
Location: Alberta Canada

11 Oct 2008, 11:14 pm

I'm sorry Tahitiii, but that man had an agenda when he called you, that is, to elicit your services as a volunteer. Even if he had been sympathetic to to your view point, he blew you off in discussing it.

It was neither the time, nor the place, nor in his interest to discuss that matter with you. He didnt even agree with you subtly. “Oh, well, you gotta go along to get along.”, translates literally to "we have to play by the rules to get ahead." Which he was doing. Which he was telling you to do.

That tone in his voice is called lying and its mixed into your hopes for a common viewpoint. The people that do job like his are the people that are extremely good at bonding with out people. They will make your agenda seem like theirs so that their agenda will be adopted by you. Sometimes its lying, sometimes its not, but its the basis of charm and charisma.

And it worked. You felt he agreed, shut up about your point and eagerly listened to his own; he was now a kindred spirit.

As near as I can figure it out how they do it is to strongly imagine(subconsciously) something very pleasant and agreeable to them, even as their words speak of something else. Its the flip side of empathy.

But that isnt evil, its just how NTs make progress.


_________________
davidred wrote...
I installed Ubuntu once and it completely destroyed my paying relationship with Microsoft.


Magnus
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 24 Jul 2008
Age: 49
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,372
Location: Claremont, California

11 Oct 2008, 11:20 pm

I agree with Fuzzy.

I thought Tahiti was the solicitor at first.


_________________
As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.

-Pythagoras


monty
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 4 Sep 2007
Age: 62
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,741

12 Oct 2008, 9:23 am

Are we living under martial law? Not sure about that - it depends on your definition, but I do NOT see curfews, military checkpoints on my way to work, or men in uniforms telling our elected officials to stay home, they are in charge.

There are serious challenges to parts of the Constitution - ie, widespread electronic surveillance, suspension of habeus corpus in some cases, a breakdown of Congressional oversight, etc. I suggest that the best way to improve the situation is to use the elections to change out the elements that are responsible for these unsavory policies.



Phagocyte
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 15 Oct 2007
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,757

12 Oct 2008, 11:01 am

Orwell wrote:
Well, the art of bullshitting may be useful. That doesn't make it right, though. I wish I owned a copy of "The Speed of Dark" rather than just having gotten it from the library- there was a good quote early on in that book from Lou Arrendale. Something along the lines of "I do not call lying a social nuance. I call lying wrong."


NT perspective: It's really not that black and white. To a certain degree, the convenience of strategic lying completely outweighs its moral ambiguity. There are some really pushy, volatile people out there to whom the blunt truths that so define the conversational styles of those with AS would earn them abrasive words or a punch to the face.

It really sucks, but it's necessary. And people wonder why I'm turning into a misanthrope.


_________________
Un-ban Chever! Viva La Revolucion!


chever
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Aug 2008
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,291
Location: Earth

12 Oct 2008, 11:25 am

Whenever people offer me a drink, I claim that I'm allergic to alcohol.

LOL


_________________
"You can take me, but you cannot take my bunghole! For I have no bunghole! I am the Great Cornholio!"


Tahitiii
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 1 Jul 2008
Age: 68
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,214
Location: USA

12 Oct 2008, 11:53 am

No.

The point is not that they can fool me.

The point is that they are already half-awake.

I am horrified that we can kill a million people for no reason, and that nobody cares.
That is the main horror that I can't get over. The simple, human-nature fact that
the argument is not "is it true?" but "why should I care?"
The bottom line is that there is no decent answer to that question.
The basic premise has already bypassed everything that matters.

Ok then, let’s forget morality completely. (I can’t, but let’s pretend.) How about rational selfishness? Doesn’t anyone have even a slight preference for his own survival?

By now, everyone has some suspicions concerning 9-11, but they're all at different levels of awareness, each matched with a different level of imagined immunity. The professed beliefs range from the fully anesthetized, "You're a crazy conspiracy theorist" to the fully awake, "Of course the bankers own the world -- where have you been?" and everything in-between. Everyone knows. They just don't care.

The bulk of it is happening far away, mostly to Arabs, so it's a non-issue. We have all been marginalized. Divide and conquer. Everyone imagines that there's a line somewhere, and that he is on the safe side of the line. Ethnic group, profession, geographic location, income level... for whatever reason, "We are the pretty people on the hill." They would never bother us. Even the young black man in Mississippi, who everyone knows will be the first to go, manages to fabricate some delusion of immunity. Or are they just hitting the bottle a little harder than usual?

My brother-in-law works for one of the big boys on Wall Street. (Translation: top of the food chain.) He was on the 25th floor that day. He and most of his friends got out. He was so traumatized that he didn't talk for weeks. Then he went back to work in the new location. How can he possibly imagine that he and his family are safe? What does he really believe? I will probably never know.

It's just a huge social fiction. No one wants to put the pieces together and acknowledge
that we're all screwed because, as individuals, they're still hoping to squeeze by somehow,
at the expense of someone else. And that clinging to your status or your identity politics will somehow make a difference.

When the sh/t hits the fan, it won’t make any difference. The powers-that-be see no difference between my brother-in-law and the young black man in Mississippi and the law-abiding Arab. A house slave is still a slave.

The problem is not that I don’t understand the social fiction. The problem is that I do understand it. They signed our death warrant on October 1st, 2008, and no one cares.

Selling out won't help you. Whether you're selling that Arab or that Mississippi resident or your next-door neighbor or your own children, they are still not going to be your friends.

The same lesson, a thousand times in history. Here we are again, and no one will speak up.

"They came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then... they came for me... And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
– Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)


_________________
Occupy Everything!


Last edited by Tahitiii on 12 Oct 2008, 12:13 pm, edited 5 times in total.

skafather84
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 Mar 2006
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 9,848
Location: New Orleans, LA

12 Oct 2008, 11:56 am

Orwell wrote:
Fuzzy wrote:
His was a statement intended to sound sympathetic whilst blowing you off at the same time.

I'll never understand NT's. :?

Why can't people communicate unambiguously?


because they're considered as*holes.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzoPTtTfcrA[/youtube]


/credit louis ck...for whom the as*hole riff was stolen from.


_________________
Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. ~Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1823

?I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.? - Hunter S. Thompson


Last edited by skafather84 on 12 Oct 2008, 3:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.