What would the world look like without vaccinations?
How long would it take for diseases to spread through our population if vaccine producers halted all production tomorrow?
Do you ever make decisions for your family that are good for your family, but arguably bad for society as a whole?
If a presidentail candidate could promise peace within our borders at the expense of upheaval in the rest of the world, is that a reconcilable choice?
If a presidential candidate could promise peace in the rest of the world but division at home, is that a reconcilable choice?
Why do some people believe the wildest conspiracy theories, but when told something simple and straight out of high school physics refuse to believe?
Why do people want to believe the worst of others?
Why do women care how other women give birth?
Why do women care how other women chose to feed their babies?
Why do some think it is reprehensible for mothers to work outside the home, yet they get mad if a woman takes government assitance enabling her to stay at home?
Why is it okay for a widow to raise children as a single mother, but a single mother shouldn’t raise children as a single mother?
Is there a secret underground city beneath Denver International Airport?
Does Mexico actively encourage its citizens to cross the border illegally?
What would the world look like with universal open borders? Would it be a safer place, or more dangerous? Would relatively peaceful countries be overrun by nuts, or would the nuts continue enjoying each others company indefinately? Would peaceful people be more willing to leave their countries, filitering in to dangerous hot spots?
Limited or unlimited atonement?
How can Christianity be so simple yet so complex at the same time?
If evolution is true, shouldn’t we welcome climate change, the fluxuation of species (including extinction), and any display demonstrating the fit are surviving? If the fit see fit to mess with climate, why should they be stopped? Won’t species adapt?
What is the oldest species? What is the youngest? When was it sponteously produced, and why?
Is it possible to speak of evolution without using the words “made”, “produced”, “created”?
Is mathematics—specifically geometry—proof there is meaning and order in the universe? Where did math come from, and why?
Can you prove love exists?
Why don’t I like Greek food?
What are the inherent, important differences between males and females? What is perceived as an important difference, but really isn’t?
What is perceived as a similarity between males and females, but really isn’t?
Are males being ignored or denigrated in our society as the result of hypersensitivity toward girls being “left out” for so long?
What does a society of weak men look like?
What does a society of weak women look like?
Why are people threatened by gender roles or the possibility that genders are different?
Why are feminists threatened by the choices of other women?
Why do traditional women feel threatened by feminism?
Are public schools actively trying to undermine parental authority? Is there a hidden agenda? What is it?
Do people who homeschool share the blame regarding the decline of quality, free, public education?
Under what form of government over the course of history have people led the happiest lives? How do you define happy? Is one person’s “happy” another person’s “miserable”? If all one has known is totalitarian rule, is there something inside that tells one there is a different way?
Could World War II have ended through sheer diplomacy if efforts were made earlier in the war? Or was it inevitable? How do you decide which wars are justified and which are not? What criteria, i.e. “hoops” must be jumped through to justify war?
Is the main stream media biased? Is it possible for a journalist to be 100% unbiased or impartial? Do we want them to be?
Do my rights end where your rights begin? Do we have the right to be happy? Do we have the right to have free healthcare? Do we have the right to have free food, clothing, and shelter—since those are necessities.
Should sixteen year olds of astonishing intellect be allowed to vote? Should adults with poor reasoning and life skills be allowed to vote? Who would determine such a thing?
Is “majority rule” an outdated idea?
Why are the people who brag about how tolerant they are often the most intolerant people? If one person is mad at another for being “intolerant” aren’t they being intolerant? Is tolerance today’s piousness?
When adults realize how romance does not equal love, why do thy perpetuate the idea, especially in media the young and naive are likely to watch?
Do people who enjoy or participate in p0rn mind when their daughters and sons end up in the business?
Is Islamofascism a real threat, and what would most Americans do if directly confronted by a physical invasion of our borders? Do Americans have the fortitude, ability, and equipment to fight or would we roll over and surrender?
Is the United States dying? Already dead? Thriving?
Wow. This is great, Gretchen.
Does your brain feel better now? That was a slew of questions.
Lexie—I thought of dozens more, including these questions: “Why am I asking these questions? Who will answer them? What is for lunch?” so I decided to sign off.
Yep, my brain feels more spry.
I recognized a lot of those and was tempted to start answering . . . but I realized that was a lifetime of discussion you just introduced. The one that concerns me right now is the feeding babies. I am conflicted.
“Why are the people who brag about how tolerant they are often the most intolerant people?” I wish I knew.
Now I need an Advil…
I think what was left of my brain just exploded.
I think I need a new tagline. Rather than “action is eloquence” I will use “inspiring headaches across the heartland.”
Yes. There is a secret city underneath the Denver airport. Why else would it be so far away from the actual city of Denver? The real question is….who lives there? Humans or aliens?
Wow!
A lot to think about here and I don’t have answers to most.
Re voting, another question would be “Why do so few people vote?”
Re romance, I think it’s “perpetuated” because romance stands for hope of love and I think hope is what keeps us all going, but I confess that whenever Josie asks me to read the Little Mermaid to her I change the end to say that Ariel and the Prince are friends forever, instead of saying that the marry and live happily ever after, I’ve felt guilty for doing it (does it mean I’m a hopeless cynic?) but I just can’t bring myself to recite that silly ending.
Happy Birthday Eve.
I’m not sure I have a head ache. I must wait for my head to stop spinning before I’m able to determine whether it’s aching!
Seriously, I thought these were great questions.
Lots and lots of good thought-provoking questions.
As a former member of the “mainstream media,” journalists cannot be 100% unbiased, and any journalist who tries to tell you he is is full of bull honky. The journalist’s job is to present both sides of the story in a fair way. If a journalist was “unbiased” there would never been any news reports, because no one would say – “hey, this is wrong. We need to let people know about it.”
That was a lot of thinking. I have to go lie down.
Great questions though!
A very comprehensive list. I’m pretty sure my head just exploded.
Just wanted to agree with Heth that there is most definitely a secret city underneath the Denver airport. DH used to fly in there regularly, so he knows. And, for the record, it’s circus clowns under there. Given the bigtop-like exterior, could it be anything else?
We’re creating dangerous climate change much more quickly than human life can adapt. We won’t evolve anywhere nearly soon enough.
Q: What would the world look like without vaccinations?
R: Like Skloth from the Goonies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goonies).
Q: How long would it take for diseases to spread through our population if vaccine producers halted all production tomorrow?
R: 27 minutes and 19 seconds. This will never happen, however, because non-American producers care too much about humanity, and American producers care too much about profit.
Q: Do you ever make decisions for your family that are good for your family, but arguably bad for society as a whole?
R: This is only a valid question if one’s family can be isolated from society.
Q: If a presidential candidate could promise peace within our borders at the expense of upheaval in the rest of the world, is that a reconcilable choice?
R: This is very similar to the previous question in that „our borders“ is a tangible thing that isolates a people. Is it?
Q: If a presidential candidate could promise peace in the rest of the world but division at home, is that a reconcilable choice?
R: We have always been a divided people in a divided world. If we traveled one road, we would all walk together but the moment we reach a fork there’s a decision to be made and we do not all travel in the same direction. Actually, it’s all the same road, we just don’t see it that way. Our way is right; other ways are less right.
Q: Why do some people believe the wildest conspiracy theories, but when told something simple and straight out of high school physics refuse to believe?
R: Wild conspiracy theories are more fun. And you don’t have to prove them. It’s the difference between an opinion and a belief. An opinion is based on some knowledge, some facts. A belief is based on whatever one would like or on nothing—it’s just believed. With belief you are free. With knowledge and facts you are constrained. The difference between work and play is constrained and unconstrained.
Q: Why do people want to believe the worst of others?
R: Is it a case of „want?“ Do we have choice or some choice in this? Putting aside the cases of ‚angry personality,’ maybe it’s natural self-protection. I’d ask the question differently: Why do some among us make the rest of us suspect the worst?
Q: Why do women care how other women give birth?
R: Craftsmanship.
Q: Why do women care how other women chose to feed their babies?
R: Technique.
Q: Why do some think it is reprehensible for mothers to work outside the home, yet they get mad if a woman takes government assistance enabling her to stay at home?
R: Those who object to welfare, unemployment insurance and other forms of social assistance (i.e., the New Deal) think with their money. They’re selfish. They don’t share. They don’t play well with others because they’re afraid. Fear makes for selfish, greedy people. In anthropology, there is or was the Lifeboat Theory. There’s only so much room in the boat, so we can’t let everybody aboard. There are so many fallacies to this that I don’t where to start. I guess the first fallacy is that there is a lifeboat.
Q: Why is it okay for a widow to raise children as a single mother, but a single mother shouldn’t raise children as a single mother?
R: A widow has had a husband. A single mother has not. It’s the dead husband that makes it different.
Q: Is there a secret underground city beneath Denver International Airport?
R: Yes, yes, there is. It’s a utopian community of ex-Sixties dropouts. We’re all down here because we got tired of being vilified as „baby boomers.“ We wear tie-die and Frye boots. We have Fu Man Chu mustachios, the women don’t shave, and every street corner has a lava lamp. There’s a concert all weekend, every weekend. We have an Earth Shoe-based economy. And we roll our dope in paper that looks like money, the peace flag, and Ho Chi Minh. The rumor that Ché is dead, is just that. He’s sitting here with me, now. We’re very happy, by the way.
Q: Does Mexico actively encourage its citizens to cross the border illegally?
R: It doesn’t matter. The „Free Trade“ agreements of NAFTA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafta), CAFTA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAFTA) are the cause of great wealth for a small, select group of people, and great poverty for the rest. I am greatly humiliated to say that in 1993 Bill Clinton made the rape of the Mexican worker a reality. It is the poverty ensuing from „Free Trade“ that gave us the „illegal immigrant.“ American plants were built in Mexico (among other South American countries) because the Mexican establishment agreed to allow play without rules. Soon the Mexican workers began to organize. The Americans took their ball and bat to play elsewhere—where there were no rules to protect people and the environment. Hungry Mexican workers hiked north. These aren’t “illegal immigrants,†they’re displaced people, victims.
Q: What would the world look like with universal open borders? Would it be a safer place, or more dangerous? Would relatively peaceful countries be overrun by nuts, or would the nuts continue enjoying each others company indefinitely? Would peaceful people be more willing to leave their countries, filtering in to dangerous hot spots?
R: In a sense, I’m certain it can be argued that we have open borders. That’s what globalization has brought about. The borders we do have are a classification of paying the taxes and getting the tax-based benefits of any particular government (where a government might have benefits for any but the wealthy). Your question, however, might be answered by looking around the world. You are here in the nice neighborhood; they are over there in the violent, impoverished slum (Africa /Harlem /Watts); they are in the hard-working, semi-violent slum (South America /LA barrio /Miami); they are in the … ummm, I don’t have an equivalent for Asian slavery (China /Indochina /etc.). The idea here is that under our current system of the profit-based society nothing would be different without borders—there are no longer any rules, that’s what defines globalization and the Free Market.
Q: Limited or unlimited atonement?
R: I’m not sure if you mean the reconciliation of God and humankind through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ or reparation for an offense or injury. If it’s reparation, then it’s got to be limited or you’ll be depressed all your life because you’re never going to get by without giving an offense or injury. As for the former, well, the question is only valid if you believe in God, and then the decision is yours to make.
Q: How can Christianity be so simple yet so complex at the same time?
R: Christianity is simple, it is the Christian that makes it complex.
Q: If evolution is true, shouldn’t we welcome climate change, the fluctuation of species (including extinction), and any display demonstrating the fit are surviving? If the fit see fit to mess with climate, why should they be stopped? Won’t species adapt?
R: Evolution is benign. „Survival of the fittest“ is a capitalist interpretation. Taking that interpretation to it’s conclusion, one can use evolutionary theory to justify genocide. After all, if you disagree with me about this, when I kill you my notion prevails and yours does not. My notion is, therefore, the fittest – I am the fitter. However, in some respects I agree with your question. If things were supposed to be this way or that way, should be this way or that way, etc., it would be. Perhaps, as we shape the object place to best suit ourselves we will destroy the very thing that keeps our genetic combination existent. It may be that we are accelerating so quickly that we implode, and the environment goes with us giving rise to some other dominant genetic combination (allowing we don’t nuclear self-destruct). As for adaptation, nothing adapts that quickly. The incredible growth of technology in our lifetime is astonishing. My grandmother went from ocean liners to space travel, from hot mustard poultices to miracle cures in one lifetime, and the better part of that at the last half of her lifetime. Never has humankind witnessed such accelerated change.
Q: What is the oldest species? What is the youngest? When was it spontaneously produced, and why?
R: Like all the „which came first, the chicken or the egg“ conundrums this is an invalid question. One is looking at the result and attempting to extrapolate backwards. There is no „oldest species.“ Life evolved /evolves as simple or compound or complex genetic combinations. Species are only a differentiation of genetic combinations. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? What came first was millions of years of evolution. Or, if you’re a Fundamentalist, God put them there as they are five-thousand years ago.
Q: Is it possible to speak of evolution without using the words “madeâ€, “producedâ€, “createdâ€?
R: Language is a very limited tool—and it is only a tool. I am „inside“ because the boundaries (walls, floor, ceiling) make it so. I say I am „inside the room“ if I need to tell someone where I am but there is no „inside,“ there is only „outside.“ (Because one contrary exist does not mean it has a corollary, there can be a true outside without an „inside“—„inside“ is the part we invent and then we need to call the other “outside.â€). The word universe means all that exists. But if I could connect all the farthest points of the universe, that would be a boundary, and I would be „inside“ it. Therefore, I am „in the universe.“ What’s „outside“ the universe? Nothing. Maybe but I don’t think so. There is no „outside the universe,“ there is only the universe and it does not exist „inside“ anything – the universe is outside. But as creatures (genetic combinations) of this planet, we are conditioned to our language tool set and can’t conceive of there being only a universe any more than the religious can conceive of existence without a „god“ to explain it. It’s all a little scary without an explanation. To say that the universe exists in nothing, is the same as saying the earth is flat. I perceive the earth is flat as I walk along the street but we know the earth is kinda round. Right?
Q: Is mathematics—specifically geometry—proof there is meaning and order in the universe? Where did math come from, and why?
R: Again, mathematics is a tool, like language. Would mathematics exist without us? Can blue exist without there being a light wave hitting an object? There is no Blue but there are blue eyes and blue skies. Math as with so much else comes from the need to plan, as in how many jugs of wine will I need for my guests. With geometry we’ve smoothed-out the rough, as we have with so much of our experience. Take care that in finding such concepts as meaning and order in existence you are not projecting. Because you have a tool which brings meaning and order does not mean that existence has meaning and order without you.
Q: Can you prove love exists?
R: I believe that one’s capacity to love is in direct proportion to one’s capacity to sacrifice.
Q: Why don’t I like Greek food?
R: You’d have to do some self-examination to figure-out this one. Let’s try an analogy with music. Music brings you a personae, much like putting on a costume and enacting a character. I like lots of music. Many people only like some music or specific music. Why? Listen to your favorite and least favorite music and examine what it evokes in you. There’s an emotion, a pose, gestures, brought about by a particular combination of rhythm, melody, tone, and background. It’s an aesthetic experience. You’re identifying it as Greek food, and you don’t strike me as a bigot. Is it a combination of tastes, textures, and color? Maybe you don’t like goat cheese because it’s from a goat or because it’s crumbly or because it’s slightly bitter. Maybe you’re not crazy about the two most common ingredients: lemon and cinnamon. Is it Greek culture or aesthetics? One can legitimately reject a culture or aesthetic. There’s something within or underneath “Greek food†that you don’t like.
Q: What are the inherent, important differences between males and females? What is perceived as an important difference, but really isn’t?
R: This is two different questions. Until you were about ten, you were pretty much like the boys. The boys developed more hair, muscle, and began ejaculating. You, however, transformed. Your hips widened to accommodate the birth canal. You began menstruating. Your breasts enlarged. Since you were born you were oriented to giving and nurturing life. What’s our difference? Women bring life, men bring death.
Q: What is perceived as a similarity between males and females, but really isn’t?
R: Our consciousness, for want of a better word.
Q: Are males being ignored or denigrated in our society as the result of hypersensitivity toward girls being “left out†for so long?
R: I’m reluctant to say what I really think but you’re actually asking about white males—see, I’m not allowed to say that or I risk being smeared as a racist, just as I can be smeared as a male chauvinist pig, an anti-Semitic, a communist, blah-blah-blah. This is not a gender question. It’s not just because girls had been slighted that males are being denigrated. Ask yourself if black males fit into your question. Or Asian. Or Mexican. Or any males other than white ones. It’s fair to charge that white males have ruled our society (as males rule most societies) and had advantage. The banding together of non-white non-males has created a majority that is taking advantage of its majority. When some human beings can dominate other human beings the dominant do seem to like to beat the subjugated.
During the Sixties, Jane “Of The Jungle†Goodall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Goodall) performed an experiment. She placed a pile of bananas on a trail frequented by a tribe of chimpanzees. When the chimpanzees first arrived upon the banana pile, they happily danced around. But very quickly one of them strode to the top of the pile and forced the others to pay homage to him whereupon he gave them a banana. Maybe domination is a genetic trait we all carry.
Q: What does a society of weak men look like?
R: Weak men do not efficaciously reproduce or produce. Ergo, such a society is improbable. Take a tribe (family) of a hundred adult men and women, for example. There are a few extra players we have to introduce: a leader, an assistant leader, a spiritual leader, and their wives. In the event of some disaster, the hundred men are sent out, and we’ll say they’re all killed. That leaves us with three males and a hundred-and-three women. These women can reproduce at the rate of seventy-five children a year living to puberty (reproduction age). Multiply this by a few years and the tribes in good shape pretty quickly. Now do the math with a hundred women being killed, and the hundred-and-three men left with three women. Not a good number. Life (the gene pool) requires the men to be sacrificed so that life may continue. Women are the future of men. Therefore, weak men threaten the survival of human life.
Q: What does a society of weak women look like?
R: Oh, this you can find just about anywhere. Unfortunately, strong women exhibit male traits. During the Women’s Liberation years, it was assumed by women that women would be better at running the world than men because women are nurturing, kind, giving, cooperative, etc. Turns out, however, that the women who moved up the hierarchy were just as cruel and greedy as men. It could be successfully argued that this is due to the nature of the system. But that doesn’t change the existence of cruelty and greed in both genders.
Q: Why are people threatened by gender roles or the possibility that genders are different?
R: In the great bell curve of life, as someone is dominant then someone is submissive. You can no more have tall people without short people and all the people in-between (the bell curve). If you ask someone (usually someone under forty) what they are capable of, the overwhelming majority will say they can do anything you pose to them. The young and the foolish have unbounded egos. There are those who want to keep their adolescent egos and be unbounded. A role would bound them as surely as handcuffs—or so they see it. In a society in which we once arrived at adulthood at twenty-one through twenty-five, fifty is the new thirty. Accepting one’s role is a matter of wisdom and love.
Q: Why are feminists threatened by the choices of other women?
R: For the same reason that any identity group is threatened when any of its members diverge: it weakens the group’s identity argument. If women who are feminists pose a self-justifying argument about equality or superiority on some aspect of women, and some woman /women contradict that argument, then the argument is undermined—there’s a weak spot in the battle line. It’s my observation that most women who are feminists don’t know feminism’s origin or what it is. I’ve asked numbers of self-proclaimed feminists if they’ve read Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, and they’ve never heard of Millett, the godmother of feminism. Most feminists are actually following the vain, shallow lifestyle of Helen Gurley Brown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Gurley_Brown) who claimed that women could have it all, “love, sex, and money.“
Q: Why do traditional women feel threatened by feminism?
R: They don’t want to be told they have to be someone else. No person, society or country can be an ideology—or theology. It is normal to be afraid or at least suspicious of party politics.
Q: Are public schools actively trying to undermine parental authority? Is there a hidden agenda? What is it?
R: Lacking historical knowledge, you have this backwards. It has been parents who have undermined themselves by using school as their surrogate. In the seventies, parents began making increased demands on schools to take-over parental roles. If children were disruptive, hire a school psychologist /psychiatrist to deal with it. First Spanish-speaking parents wanted bi-lingual education for their cultural pride. They got it. A couple of decades later, parents realized that lack of proficiency in a country’s language relegated non-proficient children to second-class status. Ergo, schools must hire ESL teachers. And so it went, and on it goes. As for me, I think we ought to dump PTA. Parents should not govern schools. They become a faux corporate management—education know-nothings managing know-something’s.
Q: Do people who home school share the blame regarding the decline of quality, free, public education?
R: I see your fundamental question as whether or not „home schoolers“ are members of our society—much less our community. Home schooling is a euphemism for religious isolationism or perhaps more accurately, supremacist. Nobody should be exempt from paying taxes for public education. And I am very much opposed to so-called home schooling.
Q: Under what form of government over the course of history have people led the happiest lives? How do you define happy? Is one person’s “happy†another person’s “miserable� If all one has known is totalitarian rule, is there something inside that tells one there is a different way?
R: You’re making yourself your reference point. Politics and society are not apart from the individual, they are an expression of the individual. As a former student of Anthropology, I will say that there have been societies in which „people have been happy.“ When a family of people are of a common mind and there is no interference in their relationship to each other and with nature /environment, they say they are happy. Therefore, whether the group is democratic, totalitarian, socialist or other, if it suits the social family’s nature, then they are „happy.“
Q: Could World War II have ended through sheer diplomacy if efforts were made earlier in the war? Or was it inevitable? How do you decide which wars are justified and which are not? What criteria, i.e. “hoops†must be jumped through to justify war?
R: You misunderstand the basis of WWII. The war, as presented by the Nazi Party to the people of Europe (though to Germany in particular), was one of prosperity through war. Every major political body in the world understood war as the effective means out of the catastrophe of The Great Depression. All other issues were a condiment. No, that war was as inevitable as The Great Depression. And it was resolved, as all capitalist conflicts are, by „the survival of the fittest.“ Our disastrous presence in Iraq is the way some cruel and greedy people took to generate a war economy that drives tax money to the war profiteering corporations, as was the genocidal Viet Nam war.
Q: Is the main stream media biased? Is it possible for a journalist to be 100% unbiased or impartial? Do we want them to be?
R: We used to have a reasonably impartial media. That has changed as our society has changed. Our Edward R. Morrow’s are few and far in-between. There used to be a generation of adults that cared about, cared for, and looked out after one another. In our contemporary profit-driven society, it’s everyone for themselves—even to battling between husband and wife, parents and children. Money, money, money. The media has now turned in on itself, as a huge set of corporations, to serve its own ends. Therein lies the difference: media cares about its profits and power, rather than you, I, America, Democracy, and the American vision most of us have been taught in public school.
Q: Do my rights end where your rights begin? Do we have the right to be happy? Do we have the right to have free healthcare? Do we have the right to have free food, clothing, and shelter—since those are necessities.
R: Your separating us, again. Rights are something we share with each other; we hold Rights in common. Social health care is not free; Medicare and Medicaid are paid for through our common taxes. All social services are not a Right but something we give to /share with each other. There are just an awful lot of selfish people among us. Two-thirds of Americans, when asked about social services, say they should be freely available. Our representatives don’t seem to hear this message as clearly as they hear their corporate sponsors and their own greed.
Q: Should sixteen year olds of astonishing intellect be allowed to vote? Should adults with poor reasoning and life skills be allowed to vote? Who would determine such a thing?
R: In a democracy, there is some „unfairness“ in dispensing justice and equality. We have tens of thousands of laws and their myriad exceptions from themselves. If we grant „sixteen year olds of astonishing intellect“ the vote, do we exempt the rich /wealthy from the death penalty or even from going to jail when they reveal a CIA agent’s identity. If you’re old enough to vote, you should be a voter—with no exceptions. There was a study commissioned by the government prior to WWI to determine the age of competency for draftees. The American Psychiatric Association concluded that at eighteen we are at the age of consent, at twenty-one at the age of contract, and at twenty-five we enter adulthood. Ergo, the three ages we bandy about. A similar study done by the same group concluded that contemporary adulthood commences at forty. So, would „sixteen year olds of astonishing intellect“ necessarily be adults. The idea being that adults vote.
Q: Is “majority rule†an outdated idea?
R: It depends on what you consider a majority. In our society, money rules. Period. Those with the money rule. They have the majority of the money. Do you see any poor or working-poor, working-class or even middle-class running for the presidency, a governorship, for mayor … anything above dog catcher? How about for county council? It doesn’t matter how many people make-up a voting majority, it’s a question of who they are allowed to vote for.
Q: Why are the people who brag about how tolerant they are often the most intolerant people? If one person is mad at another for being “intolerant†aren’t they being intolerant? Is tolerance today’s piousness?
R: I suspect that most people tell you who they are by claiming to be the opposite because the opposite is a lot better than what they are. It’s reverse projecting. It’s like it being rude to tell someone they are rude. Is it warped piousness? Probably. I define most of this batch of behavior as supremacist. That’s the belief that one is more worthy to live than others.
Q: When adults realize how romance does not equal love, why do they perpetuate the idea, especially in media the young and naive are likely to watch?
R: First, I suspect you might be using romance as a substitute word for sex or that and the experience around it. Second, as I mentioned earlier, I define love as sacrifice. If I give-up watching the big game so I can help my daughter with her homework, then it can be said that I showed love (my decision and act define that word). We live in a business society and it defines that not as love but as duty, obligation, responsibility, etc. because such a society defines us as workers, consumers, tax payers but not as people. In such a society, love is relegated to that great feeling we have at orgasm—a mistaken notion, but what are we left with?
Q: Do people who enjoy or participate in p[o]rn mind when their daughters and sons end up in the business?
R: According to the news, some do.
Q: Is Islamofascism a real threat, and what would most Americans do if directly confronted by a physical invasion of our borders? Do Americans have the fortitude, ability, and equipment to fight or would we roll over and surrender?
R: The invasion scenario is farfetched. Looking at our military performance since Korea, however, I’d say we really don’t care about and don’t want to fight anyone, anywhere. We inherently understand that war is a waste of our time /lives. There is no noble cause for us (i.e., American Revolution – The War For Democracy, American Civil War – The War For Equal Rights, WWII – The War Against Fascism). „Islamofascism“ is another neo-conservative /warmonger talking point—Iraq is something only morons could get us into, and we fell for it. It’s about oil and ego. If we can be certain of nothing else, we can of that. There are those who are so rotten of soul that they manipulate the best in the rest of us for their own dirty ends.
Q: Is the United States dying? Already dead? Thriving?
R: None of the above. We’re just going through changes.