OT: Today's youth - I'm scared!

I had a wonderful time yesterday at my nephew's graduation party. I had the opportunity to talk with the 18-21 year-old crowd. Understand this group of kids didn't have a silver spoon upbringing, it was GOLD. They were all raised in suburbia without a single want, Suv's on their 16 th. birthday, clothes out the wazoo. All their parents are Dems that have never raised a callous on their pink little hands. They or their parents have never cut their own lawn, done their own dishes or laundry, or vacuumed their house. Here's what they really, really believe:

  1. Bush started the war just to give oil to Halliburton and told any lie necessary to go to war.
  2. America supplied and sanctioned WMD to be used by Iraq. But they never had any WMD of their own, and anyone killed by Sadam was at the order and approval of the US and their lives meant nothing.
  3. Clinton was solely responsible for the booming economy of the '90s.
  4. Gay marriages should be condoned and encouraged.
  5. Abortion is like having a wart removed.
  6. Edwards has charisma and great hair. Kerry is a hero. (and great hair)
  7. The US will prosper in a service economy.
  8. They never heard the term: "Red China" or "Communist China" Vietnam is ancient history.
  9. The media is neutral to conservative, NPR is neutral, Fox is reactionary and run by the Republican party.
  10. Hollywood has an obligation to help steer the country on the correct path.
  11. Everybody that looses their manufacturing job shall be retrained as a medical tech. or computer programmer. They should have paid attention while they were in school and gotten a REAL job to begin with.
  12. Big business is the ultimate evil along with the republicans and they want to rule the world and bring back slavery.
  13. All manufacturing, mining, and corporate agriculture must be banned for the good of the environment.
  14. The only trustworthy source of information is obscure websites.

The sad thing is that if I had the same exposure and upbringing, I'd probably see things the same way. Hey, wait-a-minute...If I sign-up to the Dems, will somebody cut my grass and give me a new Suv? (kinda' humorous how many vegan environmentalists have V-8 Suv's)

Vote for Kerry and keep the landscapers in business!

Reply to
Tom Gardner
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Oh, Tom! Not to worry about the landscaping! We'll have lots of immigrants and illegals to do all that stuff.

Reply to
Robert Swinney

Read: Bush Administration including Cheney, Perle, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet, Wolfowitz, et al. The kids don't realize that it's not the oil per se, but the surrounding business, such as equipment, drilling, and so forth.

The kids are a little off on this one. The US did supply questionable materials to Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war.

The change from a deficit to a surplus was a boon to the economy. The current administration has given these kids a huge deficit.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Congress shall make no law regarding establishment of religion. (I don't care one way or another about gay marriage, but I don't like homophobes.) Some decry the collapse of families. Fine. Here's a way to make more nurturing, supportive, stable families to replace the broken ones. YOU don't have to marry a gay. Leave 'em alone.

Loaded terminology, but basically true. Let each person control her own life. Liberty, again. (I'd like to see more effort spent on instilling a sense of personal responsibility.) Abstinence is a fine idea, but it ain't gonna happen.

OK. Kerry, unlike recent past presidents (2) actually served. Ask Dole how much that helps in an election...

This is the corporate line, and has been for some time. As long as primary productivity keeps up, it's true. Lose the productivity, and we get an instant depression.

The corporate interests like trade with China. Both the quoted terms are negative. Hence, they are no longer used. Might make people reconsider buying Chinese goods and services.

True.

Well, everyone has this responsibility.

A little harsh, but basically correct. Someone who pays attention in school has a better chance of finding (or creating!) a livelihood. In the limit, one runs into problems with plumbers and philosophers. (All readers will, of course, recognize the reference.)

True. The notion of a corporation (versus a company) eliminates personal responsibility. Unrestrained greed, untempered by accountablity, leads to problems. The kids aren't the only ones to notice this, and the recent crop of indictments and convictions is a refreshing turn for the better.

Remember, the Republicans champion "States' Rights," but that's a codeword for Southern racism. Any state (Oregon, Vermont) which actually tries an experiment in democracy gets squelched by the Republicans, who conveniently forget the notion of states' right when it suits them to do so.

They missed on this one. Where would their playstations come from? These enterprises, however, must come to terms with a crowded world. What might have been reasonable behavior fifty or a hundred years ago is simply inappropriate today.

This needs clarification: By watching a broad range of information sources, all biased one way or another, one can read between the lines and get a notion of what is really going on.

If you had the same exposure, you would indeed come to the same conclusions. The thing is, you see, that there really is an objective reality out there. Those who live by jingoism, neo-conservative wishful thinking, and theocracy will keep denying reality until it bites them in the assets.

BTW, I'm a fan of latter-day Goldwater and John McCain.

Reply to
Australopithecus scobis

I liked this point in an op-ed from yesterday's New York Times ("Let Them Eat Wedding Cake" by Barbara Ehrenreich):

"Opponents of gay marriage claim that there is some consistency here, in that gay marriages must be stopped before they undermine the straight ones. How the married gays will go about wrecking heterosexual marriages is not entirely clear: by moving in next door, inviting themselves over and doing a devastating critique of the interior decorating?"

d8-)

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Only if there both websites are actually working from facts, not making it up from whole cloth. Trying to work out the colour of aliens by visiting many websites is probably not going to work very well.

And a website can't add anything over the original sources. Websites 3 or 10 times away from the original sources are going to be victims of chinese whispers.

Reply to
Ian Stirling

Ian Stirling wrote in news:40f2b4f9$0$39738$ snipped-for-privacy@ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net:

What are "Chinese whispers"? Are they like the results of the game "telephone", where a message is whispered from person to person around a circle, with the original and final messages compared for laughs at the end?

Reply to
Hitch

Agreed. I have no personal experience with the websites under discussion. Are we referring to blogs? As I wrote, I was thinking of my own hotlist of world newspapers' online editions.

Reply to
Australopithecus scobis

My personal belief is that gay couples should have the same rights, priveliges and pitfalls that straight couples have but the word "Marriage" should be reserved for straights. Call it a civil union or anything but "Marriage"

Reply to
Tom Gardner

While I'm waiting for some welded stuff to cool...

For your illustration, growing up in suburbia is not silver spoon upbringing. May be, dunno, silver plated stainless or something. Certainly not gold.

Overall these kids does not seem substantially more imbecillic than the rich conservative snots I had to finish high school with. They and their parents were indeed silver spoon, machist, racist, and violently homophobic (by daylight that is, of course the honest to God daddys could be seen late at night downtown in their Mercedes picking up boys. The hypocrites)

You employ derisively the term "Dems" as if political affiliation were an indicator of intelligence, fitness, morality and so on. The same type of claims are done in regards to gender, race, wealth, etc, etc. All baseless stuff.

Reply to
Camilo Ramos

Hey. Works for gunner. :^)

Jim

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Reply to
jim rozen

Better belief, IMO: Leave 'em the hell alone to live their libes as they see fit, same as you want them to do for you. What's the difference whether they're filed under the heading of "civil union", "marriage", or some other label? I can't see one, and I don't see anybody stopping them from doing it, whatever the name that gets applied might be. So I'm left wondering what the fuss is about.

A rose by any other name...

Reply to
Don Bruder

Don, you know what? You are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!! Thanks for the reality check. At least I'm constantly reexamining habitual thoughts and beliefs. Even I'm surprised at the things I've discarded.

2004.
Reply to
Tom Gardner

Yes.

Reply to
Ian Stirling

How could you be? Better than half your post is utter bullshit.

Gunner

That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. - George Orwell

Reply to
Gunner

Most gays are super-promiscuous by heterosexual standards; this includes those who are in relationships and those who are not. So we are to bring under the cover of marriage a group that openly scorns the entire concept of secual fidelity. This same group will have the same rights to adopt children. What kind of families will such couplings make, I ask you?

2004.
Reply to
Daniel Heneghan

Actually, I was impressed that these kids HAD opinions, although I felt that they were single sourcing and parroting the popular theme of their peers. I knew most of these kids grandparents were blue collar and their parents made the leap to serious prosperity...and good!!! If I could hit the reset, I would have gone to law school too. I did get a good chuckle when I stated that I wasn't going to lock my car until I saw all the "Kerry" bumper stickers.

I didn't disagree with these kids at all. I just listened mostly and offered: "Follow the money" and: "Everybody has an agenda, be aware" I was most amazed with their opinions about banning manufacturing and agriculture. -shades of things to come?

When I think of my "Demms" I think of the professionals that have lots of money, drive new luxury cars, have a bunch of perfect kids and do volunteer work and are involved in the community, church and schools. I envy not making more time for such.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

They are the sites that Gunner gets most of his reposts from.

Reply to
Glenn Ashmore

Does this mean Republicans do not live in suburbia, do not drive SUVs, and have no inherited wealth (silver or GOLD spoon) and they buy no clothing for their children?

Seems Jenna and Laura Bush ( and their cousin in Florida) had few constraints placed on them (monetary or social), and I doubt they are registered Democrats.

Or was this some kind of parody?

Either way, I do not understand.

Reply to
???

Zing!

(I'll bet I can find a website that will support the theory of

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Why shouldn't they get the benefit of being able to buy cheaper health insurance,

Tell me why you need to have a parner or be in a group to get a better rate on health insurance. Steve

Reply to
Steve Peterson

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