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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (52069)	9/14/2001 8:28:34 AM
From: Lone Star	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

>I just want to add that this lack of interest is somewhat by design. It is in the best interest of the inept politicians to keep the public in the dark so they can live free of scrutiny< And, yet, if we became somehow self-aware, we could virtually change overnight. One constantly hears complaints about the "media", how bad Springer and his ilk are,how bad our politicians (and, once elected, our officials) are, how Hollywood spews out so much garbage, how its too bad every town now looks the same with McDonalds and Pizza Hut everywhere, and on and on. But we are, theoretically, a near perfect democracy. If we ( we, being the US populous in the aggragate) didn't watch Springer, he would go away. If we didn't eat at McDonalds, they wouldn't proliferate like toxic mold. If more of us voted, and actually had some criteria other than sound bites to choose the people we hand over >50% of our income to, we could undoubtedly find and attract some real leaders. The "media" responds to capitalistic pressures like everything else.There is no consequential portion I'm aware of that doesn't exist without support from advertising- if you think Dan Rather is biased, turn the bastard off, let CBS know about it, and let the advertisers know about it. If you like Dan Rather, same deal. But we are dis-engaged, and have, again, in the aggragate, come to believe we are powerless, are victims, when in fact we have all the power if we have the focus and energy to use it. For Trekkies, if we were the Borg ( a societal colllective) all decisions small and large would automaticaly be done in this fashion. But we are not- we must individually choose to engage, become truly informed, and God knows we have more avenues for information now than any time in history. Will recent events change our collective focus? We shall see.

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (52069)	9/14/2001 11:37:08 AM
From: FiloF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Over the past decade or so, there have been have pushes for for more transparency in our intelligence organizations (i.e. no covert ops; everything out in the open). Have you considered this as one of the reasons (not THE reason, but one of them) for the intelligence failures in this tragedy. Many who demanded transparency are now the ones denouncing the intelligence community for its failures here. They are also the ones who decry the use of government funds on military and intelligence issues. You can't have it both ways (and I do not mean you, personally, here). I, for one, am willing to put up with a degree of covertness if it will help protect our nation. Just trying to add a bit of reality here...