Noah
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ORIGINAL: caitlyn
No, I rebut nearly all critics on ANY issue, that only have criticism, without even the suggestion of a solution.
Two other factors contribute to how I see most else as mindless interaction.
The first, is stating as defacto truth, what is really only opinion. The War in Iraq is a good example. I have said many, many times that I don't think we should be there ... but, the moment someone starts saying it's a failure, they are venturing into the unknown. Unless you are the almighty and know the future, you have no idea how things will turn out. Even your puzzle piece example is a leap into the darkness, in my opinion, because it completely ignores that there may be factors that are unknown to posters on a Collarme message board. It is the height of arrogance to think that we know everything there is to know about this issue. I choose not to be so arrogant, and wait and see how things turn out.
I really think your estimation of the height of arrogance misses the mark by a lot. Even if someone had made the claim that they know all there is to know about the situation I think that behavior would rank well down on the arrogance scale below, say, flying a plane into a skyscraper full of innocent people or making the arrangements for someone else to do so. I think it would also rank well below asking someone to give up his life for his country based on a fabric of lies.
But no one, caitlyn, no one here has ever proposed that he or she knows everything there is to know about this issue. If complaining about a problem is tiresome, isn't complaining about being tired of something that ever happened kind a of a weak contribution to the conversation too?
It is absolutely and unquestionably true that there are factors unknown to us. It is exactly as true that there are factors unknown to Dick Cheney and factors in unknown to Billy Bob in Bagdad with Baker Company.
So that criticism is empty.
As for your Existential complaint, every step, caitlyn, is a step into the darkness. If you want to advocate any course that does not involve a step into the darkness you can only advocate utter stasis. And it seems to me that utter stasis is not possible.
We can never have "all" the relevant facts. We can never knwo in advance what the results of our actions may be. Snatch a struggling child out of the undertow at the beach and prevent an innocent from drowning. His mother, Mrs. Dahmer, may thank you profusely for saving her little Jeffrey. It is as you say. We don't know the future. To apply that as a reason not to be critical of past actions and the people who commited them is just wacky and utterly beside any point.
So that criticism is empty as well.
I take my car to the mechanic with a rumbling sound when I step on the brakes and pick it up to find the rumble louder, a brace of new squeaks and the gas mileage reduced by half. May I not complain just because I am not a mechanic myself and don't know how to fix what he clearly broke? And if ten of my neighbors are picketing his shop and complaining down at the mechanic licensing office are they all wrong because they should better shut up until they can suggest ways to fix their cars?
The problem at a certain point becomes the mechanic himself. The solution becomes to replace him. If he is somehow entrenched as the only game in town and proteced by powerful friends it will likely take some rabble rousing to get the change made. But you would rule out any conversation except that which includes suggestions for how the brakes should be fixed.
Retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the Army's 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, said Rumsfeld at one point threatened to fire the next person who mentioned the need for a postwar plan in Iraq.
If you consider Rumsfeld (one of the guys you think everybody should stop complaining about) good company, you're in good company as a person dedicated to silencing critics. It just astounds me that anyone could think that squashing public discourse is the best way to proceed until someone can enumerate a plan, and that anyone who can't propose a plan shouldn't open their mouth.
It is terribly important to get familiar with a problem before proposing solutions. Just as you say, none of us has all the facts. In public discussion facts can come out, completing claims can be analysed. In public discussion, ideas can be generated.
If you see what seems to be clear evidence that a friend's medical treatment is being handled badly while she proceeds with blind faith in a practitioner who in ever more well-documented cases has been needlessly killing his patients, will you refrain from criticizing your friend's doctor until you get a medical degree, complete your internship and residency and study her history and charts? I hope not. I hope you would say: "Look at this evidence. Something is apparently wrong with your care and something is demonstrably wrong with this doctor. I don't know how to make you better but put someone else in charge before it is too late."
It seems to me that your criticism of the criticism here boils down to: "Caitlyn's ears are tired. Caitlyn does not want to hear this conversation. Don't burden Caitlyn's ears this way. Caitlyn want's to hear a different kind of sentence. Please Caitlyn."
Tune out if you don't believe that problems should be discussed and understood before plans are proposed. Tune out if you don't believe in attempting to build degrees of consensus.
And if you don't believe people change their minds based on haring complaints, a ton of polling data says you're wrong.
It seems to me that implicit in many of the complaints you have seen here and elsewhere about these matters is a proposed solution: "Fire this mechanic/doctor/administration and get a new one ASAP."
As for your claim that since he is the horse we have in this race we have to back him, it misses the point entirely. That he is the horse we have in the race is itself the problem under discussion in many of the cases you repeatedly whine about. If your house is on fire you don't say: "Well a burning house is the house we have now so everybody has to get behind having a burning house until sometime when the fire burns out.
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The second is when people can't discuss this issue without calling our President a monkey or insisting he be hung for treason. I'm sorry, I don't care for the man either, but he is the horse we have in the race right now, and trashing our own horse makes us look like fucking morons, in my view. We will have a chance to make a new choice and move in another direction in the next election.
As for not criticising bad leaders because it might make you look dumb, well what makes you look dumber, caitlyn? Electing a man who can't do the job and trying to impeach him or electing a man who can't do the job and suffering at his hands, and letting others suffer at his hands, because you don't want to look dumb?
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So, rebut to your hearts content  ... but don't be too upset if I see a bigger picture. The United States is a world power, and that will probably not change in our lifetime. Vietnam was a complete shambles, and didn't seem to destroy our power base. Watergate ... turned out to be a yawn ... etc, etc, etc ...
What can possibly be your point here? It will take more than a generation for America to lose its status as a world power so it makes no difference what America does? It will take more than a generation for America to lose its status as a world power so therefore it is wrong to speak out against incompetence and injustice unless your every complaint includes a plan for change? What the hell are you getting at?
I'm not sure how old you are but many of us were present as adults when the Soviet Union was a world power. Well within a single generation it has fallen far from that. There is worldwide armed and angry disgust with the US. China and India both stand ready to emerge as the new superpowers and would love to pick up the marbles as the US declines. In fact they have more than just begun to already. If they and the international corporations and banks decide that a world without the US at the top would be preferable to this one do you really doubt it would take more than a generation to get the job done?
The US bested the Soviets in a game of financial chicken. We took steps and made threats which lead them to spend themselves into demise. We spent billions to get them to spend billions.
So far, based primarily on an a operation estimated to have cost the terrorists less than half a million dollars the US has been lead to spend a trillion. I'd say that someone has learned a lesson from history and he's not anyone who is running this "War on Terror", not on our side, anyway. And what do you have you say? "Stop complaining. Ride your horse. We can maybe do something different some day."
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People that are turning what is happening in a sandbox in the Middle East, into some sort of dreadful event for the good 'ol red, white and blue, are just fanning a match, hoping to turn it into a bonfire. The fuel just isn't there. The same applies to those that think electing someone that "may, maybe, potentially" have done something a little questionable in Vietnam, will destroy the nation ... they are inventing alarm and dread out of thin air.
Well that is one hell of a bigger picture you offer. That isn't a sandbox, caitlyn. And those aren't little plastic shovels and buckets which are being blown up by IEDs and American ordnance. It may be your opinion that it is no dreadful thing for the red white and blue that thousands of our people are giving their lives in the furtherance of lies and that tens of thousands of others, many of them innocent people, are being killed and maimed as well, and that our military is being stretched dangerously thin and that thousands of millions of dollars are being sucked from our treasury and deposited in teh accounts of Halliburton and affiliates who as recently as 1995 were selling nuclear technology in your "sandbox". Where I come from that is what we call dreadful.
Your implicit premiss that any event not sufficient to topple this nation is an event about which complaints should not be made is just beneath being naive. Any adjective which would accurately describe it would be insulting to the person who offered such a premiss.
Your other implicit premiss is that everyone who complains about the way this war is being fought and about the people making the decisions is someone who is trying fan a flame that will destroy the United States. The fact of the matter is that vast numbers of people dedicated to the existence of this country and the principles on which it was created are opposing the conduct of this war for the sake of this country, not to topple it.
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So ... I'm all for debate on any of these issues, but see no point in a) creating alarm out of nothing, b) going on and on and on, about events that are already done.
You're all for debate as long as none of it involves pointing out the mistakes and horrors of this escapade, as long as no one gets to talk unless he is proposing a solution. Nice debate.
"creating alarm out of nothing"? 3000 Americans dead on their own soil. A trillion dollar war which according to the consensus of our intelligence experts is making us less safe. Thousands of soldiers dead for lies. Thousands of new terrorists recruited. Civil liberties shrinking year by year. Tens of thousands of Iraqis dead.
"Out of nothing" This is just utterly irresponsible talk, caitlyn. And it is beneath you.
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So, what is left, that is intelligent? Solutions ... point blank.
Caitlyn you have been spilling a lot of ink in this discussion in various threads and I haven't seen you propose a solution to the problems in the middle east and the threat of Islamic terrorism around the globe--unless "ride the horse you have in the race no matter how many of your family members he meanwhile kills and cripples" is your solution.
If the people who are talking about the problem without proposing a solution are wrong, how much more wrong is someone who will only talk about the talk and still won't propose a solution to the problem at hand?
But I don't read these boards thoroughly so maybe I've missed your proposal. Will you lay it out for us here please? Your proposed, intelligent, point blank solution to the problem? Or will you continue to complain about "people who complain without offering a solution to the problem," without offering a solution to the problem yourself?
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