WTLF is a Retro?

Originally posted by Nep Parth


Invoking the royal "we", are we now? Why shouldn't you trust what your teacher says? What, did you only read the title of the book Lies My Teacher Told Me? Truth is subjective, but what most teachers do is an excellent service to the community. Putting up with thintellectuals is just one thing they have to endure, leave them alone. Saying that scientific law is another religion doesn't fly...especially when it comes to life after death <G>

No, not 3rd person we, just as as people. Furthermore, I said we don't _have_ to. That is, we can question their claims and investigate for ourselves if we choose to. I personally did more often than not.

Originally posted by Nep Parth

What the hell are you talking about? The west wasn't some foreign country. Are you basing a logical argument off a folk saying? That's like saying, "You are what you eat," and then claiming you're Jesus because you consumed the sacrament.

Well, actually, is _was_ some foreign country to the Europeans that first came here. But, I was referring to the fact that the "west" in that case is the fronteir in the late 1860's. The US teaches all of it's children (via the public school system), that it was "won" like it was some kind of contest, and it does so without mentioning all the lies, unkept contracts and other deals, and downright inhumane treatment of the people who were here first, by the US along the way. It is also neglected to mention that the AmerIndians were simply _defending thier home_. "We" were the aggressors. (the quotes there are due to the fact that I can only include some of my ancestors, some of them were the ones who were defending their homes. Though I only found that out within the last year, and my attitude has been the way it is long before that was learned.


Quarto - See? I didn't touch on religion, hard though it was, I did withdraw from that part of it. :D :)
 
Originally posted by DetailedTarget

Well, actually, is _was_ some foreign country to the Europeans that first came here. But, I was referring to the fact that the "west" in that case is the fronteir in the late 1860's. The US teaches all of it's children (via the public school system), that it was "won" like it was some kind of contest, and it does so without mentioning all the lies, unkept contracts and other deals, and downright inhumane treatment of the people who were here first, by the US along the way.

Really? Here in Montgomery County, MD I suffered through twelve years of Indians-are-great! sensitivity training followed by about an hour and a half of "Also, other stuff happened!".
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF


Really? Here in Montgomery County, MD I suffered through twelve years of Indians-are-great! sensitivity training followed by about an hour and a half of "Also, other stuff happened!".

Well, there is that saying that there is an exception to every rule. Noo doubt everybody will chime in now with the same thing just to be contradictory and make me look wrong, but all of the people I've ever dealt with around the country all had similar experiences to mine in the public school system.

This is another debate that can get quite heated, but it sounds like your complaining about your experience. Do you also complain about "Black History Month"?

In short, we did far more terrible things to the AmerIndians, are still screwing them, and making light of their plight and existance. The phrase "how the west was won" is merely and example of the smugness of the US in that area. But it was mentioned to support the well known fact that history is written by the "victor", and people tend to color things to fit their perceptions as well when they do record them. That is all.

If you wish to open a debate about the relative amount of screwing the US has done to the various minority's, I'm game (assuming I have time), but it totally besides the point that it was brought up for in the first place.

In any event, in general, you and I are in agreement on this whole Retro thing anyway, so why should we be having adversarial positions at all? :)
 
Anyone my age or younger probably has had the same experiences -- public school systems started on a downward slope towards being ultra-politically correct about 15 years ago. (Certainly Maryland is a far more conservative area -- but my experiences are that it's the direction all government funded schools are headed in...)

I certainly do complain about my experience -- not that I don't believe it's an important lesson, but it's what the importance the school system placed upon it year after year. There are equally important things to learn that get ignored in favor of teaching everyone to be politically correct.

I actually do have the same complaint about Black History -- the fact that we place *so* much importance on it to the point of overlooking everything else. If I want to take an evening history course (I work in the day) at my current college I have to choose between "American History" and "African American History". It simply seems to me that these *should* be one and the same and that they should *not* be considered vastly more important than classical or modern world history.

I also feel that while it's intentions are good, it's an inherently racist concept to spend a month focusing on *Black* history. The minute you go beyond "this guy did this great thing" and say "this guy did this great thing... and he's black!", you're implying something I don't like.

I also don't think it's fair to single out the US as the horrible oppressor of all minorities -- many, many countries have done equally or more horrible things.

(Furthermore, I fail to see the significance of the phrase 'how the west was won' -- it's *not* something you find in common use today... and it dates back to before any of our times.)
 
Originally posted by DetailedTarget

The phrase "how the west was won" is merely and example of the smugness of the US in that area.

Interesting phrase, but in all honesty, when was the last time you heard it used in anything even remotely resembling a serious manner (not counting b&w movies filmed decades ago)?

I don't even remember reading it in my school history books, and that was over a decade ago.
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
I actually do have the same complaint about Black History -- the fact that we place *so* much importance on it to the point of overlooking everything else. If I want to take an evening history course (I work in the day) at my current college I have to choose between "American History" and "African American History". It simply seems to me that these *should* be one and the same and that they should *not* be considered vastly more important than classical or modern world history.

I also feel that while it's intentions are good, it's an inherently racist concept to spend a month focusing on *Black* history. The minute you go beyond "this guy did this great thing" and say "this guy did this great thing... and he's black!", you're implying something I don't like.

I also don't think it's fair to single out the US as the horrible oppressor of all minorities -- many, many countries have done equally or more horrible things.

(Furthermore, I fail to see the significance of the phrase 'how the west was won' -- it's *not* something you find in common use today... and it dates back to before any of our times.)

The History Channel had a series hosted by Kenny Rogers that I beleive was titled that. It was on about a year ago in the morning (may even still be). Furthermore, it _is_ part of the lexicon. You want a more modern example? How bout the football team that represents the friggin capital of the country? The claim that it's meant to honor them is a bunch of crap. Let's do it all around, let's have a team for an important city called the Ni$#@%^ then, see how well it's recieved. BTW - those are _both_ racial slurs that are on the same level. Most people don't know that. Ditto for 'Eskimo'.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if you think that giving special attention to the history of a particular race, as well as phrases such as "African-American" are seperatist. If so, they we agree with one another there as well.

Plus, I hate political correctness. Sounds like we have an awful lot in common. So why are we arguing again? lol :D

Also, I'm not singling the US out in a manner to suggest that it was not done elsewhere. If you inferred that, then you misunderstood what I said.

Actually, I don't understand why you singled that part of my post out and when off on it (so to speak). Do you disagree with the statement that history is written by the victor? If so why? If not, then what?
 
The History Channel had a series hosted by Kenny Rogers that I beleive was titled that. It was on about a year ago in the morning (may even still be). Furthermore, it _is_ part of the lexicon. You want a more modern example? How bout the football team that represents the friggin capital of the country? The claim that it's meant to honor them is a bunch of crap. Let's do it all around, let's have a team for an important city called the Ni$#@%^ then, see how well it's recieved. BTW - those are _both_ racial slurs that are on the same level. Most people don't know that. Ditto for 'Eskimo'.

These aren't really modern examples, though -- the Redskins were so named in the early thirties and "How the West Was Won" was a TV show from the seventies (which itself came from a famous book in the sixties...).

Furthermore, I'd certainly question the idea that words remain offensive even when they've fallen into so disuse. You can examine the histories of plenty of words and find that they came from something we'd be horrified of today -- but that doesn't mean Redskins fan has secretly been a horrible racist. If the general populace doesn't assosciate a word with hating someone -- and they use a word without any hate intended -- can they really still be considered offensive slurs?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if you think that giving special attention to the history of a particular race, as well as phrases such as "African-American" are seperatist. If so, they we agree with one another there as well.

It may be a special case -- I don't see any difference between African American history and American History. They're just completely intertwined and I don't think it should be *possible* to divide them. There is *never* a time when African Americans *aren't* also Americans... so to single them out in that respect is silly.

The terms themselves make sense -- you can divide people into how they look just like you can divide cars or boxes into how they look. When you assume that this creates *any* type of connection is when you get in trouble -- there is no correlation between the color of someones skin and the importance of what they've done.

Plus, I hate political correctness. Sounds like we have an awful lot in common. So why are we arguing again? lol

Also, I'm not singling the US out in a manner to suggest that it was not done elsewhere. If you inferred that, then you misunderstood what I said.

Actually, I don't understand why you singled that part of my post out and when off on it (so to speak). Do you disagree with the statement that history is written by the victor? If so why? If not, then what?

While I wish I had an answer for that, the truth is that I'm just too lazy to read entire days worth of missed threads so I jumped right in to whatever I grabbed first :)
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF

If the general populace doesn't assosciate a word with hating someone -- and they use a word without any hate intended -- can they really still be considered offensive slurs?

I agree with you on this point, but this is what political correctness is aimed at. You may say something, with absolutely no intention of giving offense. And others may see it as such. But there's always that person who does get offended. And that's what political correctness is about. Being guarded in what you say so as to avoid accidentally giving offense.
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
Furthermore, I'd certainly question the idea that words remain offensive even when they've fallen into so disuse. You can examine the histories of plenty of words and find that they came from something we'd be horrified of today -- but that doesn't mean Redskins fan has secretly been a horrible racist. If the general populace doesn't assosciate a word with hating someone -- and they use a word without any hate intended -- can they really still be considered offensive slurs?

To a degree I kind of agree with you there, but, just because we think (as a whole) that it's not bad doesn't mean it isn't. It's more than possible to offend somebody or a whole group of people without meaning to. Intent is not always that relavent.


It may be a special case -- I don't see any difference between African American history and American History. They're just completely intertwined and I don't think it should be *possible* to divide them. There is *never* a time when African Americans *aren't* also Americans... so to single them out in that respect is silly.

Sounds pretty much like what I was saying. It's a devisive action/phrase that is used just to divide or seperate a group from the whole. The intent may be to stand out, but it's really just a way to draw proverbial lines in the sand.


The terms themselves make sense -- you can divide people into how they look just like you can divide cars or boxes into how they look. When you assume that this creates *any* type of connection is when you get in trouble -- there is no correlation between the color of someones skin and the importance of what they've done.

Here we do disagree, I don't think the names make sense at all. If you're a white immigrant from south africa, does that make you an "African-American"? Do you fit in that category? Futher, it's just plain ridiculous, why don't we all play that game? We can have European Americans, Latin-Americans, and Asian-Americans to go along with the African-Americans, and nobody will just be an American (except for the few AmerIndians who are actually left perhaps). And who would the president address then? "My fellow americans" wouldn't really fit then. lol

If there is a need or reason (many of which are completely harmless) to group people, and color is the particular qualification of this grouping, then use color - white, black, etc. There never was any harm in that, and most still don't think there is today either (on both sides).

Plus, think of the dualistic (ie 2-faced) nature of such politically correct phrases. I never thought about it until a black comedienne pointed it out (might have been Wanda Sykes-Hall, who's voice in the end of one of those collect call commercials, I think one of the carrot top ones), words they claim are unacceptable to use when referring to them are accepted if it brings them something (Black History Month, United Negro College Fund, etc). I hate dualism in people. But that's neither here nor there. The point is that I think the '-American' phrases are bad no matter who they are applied to because it is separatist in nature.


While I wish I had an answer for that, the truth is that I'm just too lazy to read entire days worth of missed threads so I jumped right in to whatever I grabbed first :)

See? I knew we had a lot in common, I'm lazy too! lol :D
 
Originally posted by Penguin

But there's always that person who does get offended. And that's what political correctness is about. Being guarded in what you say so as to avoid accidentally giving offense.

But that's an argument against political correctness. There's always going to be that one person who gets offended, and by catering to that one person (or small group) many other's options are severly limited.

Don't get me wrong...I don't want to insult a racial group. Still, in public schools, I went through 7 years of Indian assignments, like writing a letter to the government to protest the seizure of Indian land. And don't call them AmeriIndians, as the very word Indian isn't racist, it's a perfectly respectable word. When Columbus landed in the New World, he didn't think it was India. Instead, he found a kind, gentle people. He called them, "Una gente in Dios"...A people in God. In Dios, In God. It's a perfectly respectable word.

While I'm on it, there shouldn't be such a thing as a hate crime...distinguishing attacking a black man over a white man simply promotes racial disharmony.

And finally, "How the west was won" is a folk phrase, and I haven't heard it being used in a couple of years...certainly never by my history teachers. If The History Channel used it as a title, it was only for name-recognition, so people would watch the show.

Friggan Retros.
 
Originally posted by Nep Parth
And don't call them AmeriIndians, as the very word Indian isn't racist, it's a perfectly respectable word.

Ok, so context aside (something which isn't always available), how do you distinguish between the 2 groups called "Indians"?

Native American and American Indian, while both being accurate, take too long to say, and Indian is too vague.

To correct this, I use a 2-fold method. I refer to plains indians as AmerIndians, and people from India as Hindus. I know that the latter is not very PC, and I know there are Muslims (and probably a few other relgious types as well) in India, but for better or worse we seem to have a general public association with Hindu-ism and India, so when you talk about "Hindus" people tend to know just what you mean. Besides it's better than some of the alternatives. :)
 
Originally posted by Nep Parth


But that's an argument against political correctness. There's always going to be that one person who gets offended, and by catering to that one person (or small group) many other's options are severly limited.

...

While I'm on it, there shouldn't be such a thing as a hate crime...distinguishing attacking a black man over a white man simply promotes racial disharmony.

...

Friggan Retros.

Your first point hit the nail on the head IMO.
As for your second point, again you're right, but unfortunately there are hate crimes. Because of their nature they have to be treated differently than regular crimes.
Your last statement, I think, ought to be "Friggan bigots/fanatics." Just yesterday I heard a quote from a show called Samurai X, which I think is apt: "There is no point in listening to those who will not listen to you."
 
Originally posted by Penguin
Your first point hit the nail on the head IMO.
As for your second point, again you're right, but unfortunately there are hate crimes. Because of their nature they have to be treated differently than regular crimes.
Your last statement, I think, ought to be "Friggan bigots/fanatics." Just yesterday I heard a quote from a show called Samurai X, which I think is apt: "There is no point in listening to those who will not listen to you."

Ok, I have a question then. Isn't killing somebody still killing somebody regardless of what color the participants are?

Truthfully, every violent crime is a hate crime. Maybe you want revenge on him or people like him, maybe you just plain hate people like him, maybe, just maybe, you hate people period and he happened to have been there for you to kill.

Having a classification of hate crimes is wrong on every level. The only time intent matters is if it's self-defense. Otherwise, what the intent was is meaningless, all that matters is if there was intent to kill or not, not why.

Basically, why should it make a difference why a person commited murder? Murder is murder. (Note - in this case, I'm talking about intentionally killing somebody. I'm not talking about manslaughter, or the degrees of murder as recognized by the Lack-of-Justice System. It's arguable whether it's any different to kill somebody in a fit of rage vs. methodically planning it out, but "heat of the moment" can come from any # of reason, including racial ones, so singling race or sexual preference out and calling it a "hate" crime is messed up.)
 
Originally posted by Penguin

Just yesterday I heard a quote from a show called Samurai X, which I think is apt: "There is no point in listening to those who will not listen to you."

Man, you can get any information on philosophy from Kenshin. :) But seriously, without adequate discussion, what's the point of even expressing yourself?
 
Wow. You check the board in the morning–no action, go to work, come home, and find you’ve been left in the proverbial dust.

Originally posted by Bandit LOAF:
I am against extrapolating a completely unintended meaning based on technical arguments rather than anyones intentions.

I think I remember this correctly; it’s been a long while since I read it. There’s an amusing account that Isaac Asimov gives in one of his books about the time he anonymously attended a lecture where a professor interpreted one of his stories in a way that Asimov never intended. After the lecture, he proudly introduced himself and set about “correcting” the professor only to be rebuffed that his being the “distinguished” author gave him no right whatsoever to dictate how others should interpret his writing. Reflecting on that, Asimov finally decided that the professor was right, as deflating as that was.

I’m with Asimov. I’m still not sure if we have a general disagreement here though. I guess your term “technical arguments” gives me pause. But maybe it’s not important in the present case.

It's clear that the Church of Man is intended as more than something else to blow up... but it's also clear that the intent is to be a commentary on the supposed hypocracy of religion.

And in going over my posts and thinking about what it was that attracted me to the ongoing discussion, I believe that I accepted that intended meaning. It’s just that I was out to skewer it. I disagree with the commentary, as some of my prior remarks to DetailedTarget perhaps makes clearer.

To then take this and decode something else *simply* for the sake of trying to sound impressive seems like a waste.

I really don’t think anyone was doing that. I certainly wasn’t. In fact, with a few off-the-cuff exceptions, I’ve never posted on this board unless I was sincerely interested in the topic and honestly thought I could contribute to it. (And I offer my embarrassingly low post count as at least some proof, either of my humility or slow mind. Your choice.:))

The difference with the case of Blair is that it's something we truly *don't* understand -- and so it becomes almost necessary to try and sort it out in our minds.

But a difference without much of a distinction, I think. When one truly disagrees with something, that too usually begs to be sorted out.

Originally posted by DetailedTarget:
I don't understand why you would think that faith is "an inescapable state of mind". . . . For the most part, we can try the experiment(s) ourselves and see that they are true. . . . For things where we can't recreate the experiments . . . we are left to use logic and question what is presented to us.

You’re telling me that you yourself have proven that the Earth revolves around the sun? (I thought about going with general relativity, but I wanted to give you a chance.) If so, I salute you. If not, your belief that it does rests on faith. (And if you deny you have that belief at all, I’m going to accuse you of mocking Sherlock Holmes.:)) In any event, none of us has the time to personally confirm every “truth” on which we rely in our lives. Faith is therefore unavoidable no matter how skeptical and “open-minded” we like to think we are.

Remember, logic is your friend.

But not always the friend of truth. It was mostly “logic” that sustained Aristotle’s conception/misconception of physical reality for around two thousand years.

As for religion, well, good bad or indifferent, religion is and always has been used as a mean to control people.

It’s easy to criticize the ways in which the most fundamental questions we can ask about birth and death and everything in between have been “institutionalized”. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that religion and mythology comprise a valuable body of knowledge in the form of metaphor, a curious hybrid of truth and faith. And that “baby” can’t take being split in two either.

Originally posted by Nep Parth:
Saying that scientific law is another religion doesn't fly...

No one said that. What I essentially said was that when it comes to the person-in-the-street, science is mostly a matter of faith. But I will say that science too, as an intellectual discipline, comprises a fair amount of faith. Just take a good hard look at theoretical physics today.
 
To a degree I kind of agree with you there, but, just because we think (as a whole) that it's not bad doesn't mean it isn't. It's more than possible to offend somebody or a whole group of people without meaning to. Intent is not always that relavent.

I disagree, intent is everything -- it seems impossible for the individual to bear the collective lexigraphical neurosis' of the entire population. Practically *everything* offends *someone*... where does it end? As long as I don't intend to say hatefull things I should be able to sleep at night (and make complete use of the English language in the day).

Your last statement, I think, ought to be "Friggan bigots/fanatics." Just yesterday I heard a quote from a show called Samurai X, which I think is apt: "There is no point in listening to those who will not listen to you."

That quote doesn't really make sense, though -- ignoring ignorant people just makes you one of them <G>

I’m with Asimov. I’m still not sure if we have a general disagreement here though. I guess your term “technical arguments” gives me pause. But maybe it’s not important in the present case.

I don't completely agree with Asimov -- it's certainly possible for a work to come to have completely unintended meanings, and for this to be for the better. But this case in point -- "Retros are the opposite of what they are!" -- isn't a case of this... it's a direct contradiction with what we all *know* (it's even stated in the game...) we're supposed to think about them.

I really don’t think anyone was doing that. I certainly wasn’t. In fact, with a few off-the-cuff exceptions, I’ve never posted on this board unless I was sincerely interested in the topic and honestly thought I could contribute to it. (And I offer my embarrassingly low post count as at least some proof, either of my humility or slow mind. Your choice.)

Ehh, I was talking about Quarto :)
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
Ehh, I was talking about Quarto :)
In that case, I'd like you to tell me, what exactly it is that I said "just to sound impressive". Or, for that matter, to try to "make the Retros the opposite of what they are" - unless, of course, you gave my posts a meaning totally different to what I had intended (which, by your reasoning, is apparently the sort of pseudo-intellectualism that nobody likes :)). I was merely pointing out how stupid it is to make a big deal of the Retros' hypocrisy, when everybody else out there are also hypocrites. There are much more condemning things that can be said about the Retros, so why resort to something that stupid?

In the meantime, you did confuse me on one point. Many of the timeline mistakes that you insist on fixing, seem to go against the intent of the authors (just one example would be the date changes in the Confed Handbook). So, even if somebody was trying to make the Retros completely different to what they had been intended to be, how can you criticise them for it?
 
In that case, I'd like you to tell me, what exactly it is that I said "just to sound impressive". Or, for that matter, to try to "make the Retros the opposite of what they are" - unless, of course, you gave my posts a meaning totally different to what I had intended (which, by your reasoning, is apparently the sort of pseudo-intellectualism that nobody likes ). I was merely pointing out how stupid it is to make a big deal of the Retros' hypocrisy, when everybody else out there are also hypocrites. There are much more condemning things that can be said about the Retros, so why resort to something that stupid?

Woah, there, bucko. Although I do consider pretty much everything you posted in this thread horribly stupid "look-at-me-I'm-so-smart" type pseudo-intellectualism, I think it's pretty obvious that I was kidding. See the smile-y?

In the meantime, you did confuse me on one point. Many of the timeline mistakes that you insist on fixing, seem to go against the intent of the authors (just one example would be the date changes in the Confed Handbook). So, even if somebody was trying to make the Retros completely different to what they had been intended to be, how can you criticise them for it?

I don't really see that at all -- if you'd actually bother to provide a specific example I'd be happy to talk about it.
 
Originally posted by Quarto
In that case, I'd like you to tell me, what exactly it is that I said "just to sound impressive".
Almost everything out of your mouth has had that sort of tone to it since you showed up. But don't worry, only us actually smart people ever notice.
 
I'm too lazy to go back point by point on these past few posts. I planned too, but I got tied up at work, and now just don't have the energy. lol

Oh well, that just means more time to shoot down zeros and practice carrier landings (CFS2 rocks! :cool: ).

In any event, I still would like to know what "WTLF" means. Can somebody please enlighten me? I posed the question once, but it was either missed or ignored it seems. :)
 
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