"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
greater danger. It works the same in any country."

-Hermann Goering (1893-1946) Commander-iin-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President
of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia, Hitler's designated successor.

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the
citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged
sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind....And
when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with
hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the
rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and
blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader,
and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done.
And I am Caesar".
-Shakespeare

"Now a lot of Americans might think "Fuck da world". Perhaps they're right,
since America is the lone superpower left in the world. But as history
has proven, even the mightiest empires have fallen when they became too
big and overextended. America is trying to reshape the world in its image,
and has been doing so for a long time now, and when somone finally bites
them in the ass for their shitty foreign policy (Note: Doesn't anyone on
the right ever stop and wonder "Why do they hate us so?" Hint: "They hate
us for our freedom" is incorrect), they make like the old cowboy war
mongers that everyone thinks they are and tries to stomp a mudhole on
everyone who thinks differently ("If you're not with us, you're against
us" - WHAT FUCKING IGNORANT SHIT IS THAT).

If America continues on its current course, it will soon find itself with
no allies left. Some Americans may not give a shit. As I said, you are the
most powerful country, and you could very well destroy the whole planet
is the whole planet decides to go to war with you. My issue is that I
believe that's where we're headed if this continues: Eventually world
opinion on America will be so low that no one will give a shit the next
time Rome starts burning. And at that point, either America will declare
war on the world (or perhaps, vice-versa), in which case we're all
probbaly fucked, or it'll finally start wising up and behave like it's a
part of the world and not just standing on top of it. As a pessimist,
I'm betting on the former... BUSH NEEDS TO GO, NOW."
-U

"America is the jock in class who fucks all the pretty girls and
occasionally throws a nerd in a locker. You can hate him all you want.
Let's be honest, he doesn't care. He might call you a fag or punch you
in the arm. But, at the end of the day he's just thinking sports and pussy."
-F

(reaction to above statement) "And that jock is a fucking idiot if he
thinks that major repercussions for his actions aren't coming fifty
years down the line."
-KS

And some post-election thoughts:

"Unless they are the very small percentage of the Rich in the US nobody
can tell me they are better off with this Administration than say the
last. The fact of the matter is that people vote for the incumbent because
that's pretty much how it has always been because they already know what
to expect, regardless if the person they vote for has proven to be full
of shit after 4 years. That I believe is quite stupid/retarded."
-SA

"To be honest, Bush being the president hasn't reached as far as one might think, it hasn't had any effect on my state/city. Even if we got terrorized, we're a wide city and not a high one, odds are, I'd be fine. Not only that, there are too many arabs here for us to get attacked, they might as well just attack their homeland.

The thing is, I just agree with what Bin Laden said in his tape too much. I think that this is a president who has fearmongered his way into legitimacy, and is a lemming of a much more powerful, and brilliant hidden (or not so hidden) conspirator. The fact is, our lives are not in jeopardy, none of us here are going to be killed in any type of battle, and none of us here are going to feel the sting of unemployment or taxes.

You have to understand something, access to a wide range of information, and to a further extent, literacy (super-literacy, rather, which we all here posess) is relatively new to the world on a large scale. There are still several very ignorant people in this country, and our school system is failing them.

That's what I'm concerned about, I'm concerned about the level of education. I didn't receive my education from school, I received my social skills there. My education, I received from reading outside of school and prioritizing the internet as my primary study school. Many people in this country don't even understand how to use libraries, and teaching is just another job, it's not a profession.

I'm concerned that we are fighting a war for power and influence under the guise of an unwinnable war on terror. Of course, you would choose an enemy that can never be defeated if you wanted to obscure the cause of your battle. Most of this is one long drama that is playing out with very little effect on our lives.

Those of us with a worldy perspective are very hurt by this, because we understand that the rest of the world is equally as important as this country. But the fact of the matter is this, regardless of us having the worst president in most of our lifetimes, this is still the best country in the world. Those of us who are even able to read this, are among the luckiest of the lucky, alive or dead, in any time in history. The fact is, we live in the best place in the best time, ever, period. Yes, the state of the world and this country is not even satisfactory, but it's still a great country, and it's still the best we've had so far.

The truth about the world and life in general, and while I'd hate to get spiritual on you guys, I feel that I have to, it is a test. The world wasn't designed to be perfect, it is important to view it as a work in progress, that we, in conjunction with whatever God we believe in, are helping to construct, and we have a responsibility to the future, to the past, and to the present, to make the right decisions.

I don't feel that Bush was the right decision in this, but that said, these are mistakes that have to happen for us to learn the lessons that we need to learn and for us to move forward, clearly, or else the situation would not have played out like this. Some of us have further to go than others. But that's why history is important, and if you look at history, you will see a clear pattern in what is going on here. The fact is, the incumbant's team is using both history, and our ignorance of history against us.

This also leads back to the educational system. Nobody with a great deal of power truly wants the people to be educated, because one who has power, has education. Those two words should be synonyms. The more intelligent one is, the more difficult it is to control him or her. This is why money does not get poured into the educational system, it is more of a battleground than even the middle east. It is a process that is designed to weed out the weak from the strong, and the intellectual from the unintellectual. It is not a home base of opportunity, as the idealism behind it, may lead one to believe.

Would Kerry have been a good president? We will never know now. But honest, I don't think he would have. I don't think that he would have done very much different, as his race tightened, he allowed himself to be forced into becoming more agressive and more Bush-esque in his speeches and demeanor, because he had to appeal to the part of America where the votes mattered. By the end, I don't believe that anything that he was saying, was what he truly felt at all, and it was all very dubious. I truly wonder if he would have done anything at all, or would he have spent his four years reforming and repealling all of the shit that has happened within the last four years.

The only real disadvantage of this, that will have the most damaging ramifications, is the possibility of Bush appointing up to 4 (I believe) new Surpreme Court justices, who will definitely do all that they can to push their personal beliefs on this country.

When the head changes, the direction of the body changes, and since that has not happened, then the worst that we can really expect is four years of the same. Just grind it out, because while it's not going to get any better, for those of us who matter, we will survive, and thrive even, regardless."
-DY

"Dear European Union,

The last four years have seen the establishment of a new standard in international politics, with a strong push for preemptive war without concrete evidence of imminent threat or united allied support. "Police actions" for the sake of preventing and punishing transgressions against a nation's own people have also raised the idea of humanitarian war to a new level.

In light of these developments, I humbly request that you exercise this newfound freedom of Western nations and declare a preemptive military strike. The target in question is a nation that has the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, biological, and chemical - in the known world, and admits to the most extensive programs for developing and manufacturing new ones. This nation is the only one to have ever deployed nuclear weapons against a military or political target.

Morever, this nation is also a known sponsor of terrorism throughout the world, in particular Africa and the Middle East. The government of this country has trained, supplied, and at times even harbored terrorists from countless groups for dubious reasons. This country had known ties to Saddam Hussein and many other prominent and dangerous despots and terrorist groups.

As if the above were not reason enough for preemption, this nation has also been guilty of some of the worst human rights violations in history. An unacceptable percentage of this country's population lives below the poverty line, in conditions deemed both unsanitary and unsafe by modern standards. Many in this country are denied equal rights on the basis of differences of religious or sexual orientation. They carried out the systematic eradication and later relocation/interment of indigenous peoples. They have, in the past, forced their own citizens into prison camps based purely on ethnicity. They even condoned slavery at one point.

Though you may not wish to become involved in such affairs, take into consideration that the country in question has engaged in war with much smaller and less advanced nations periliously close to your region. They are establishing a military presence in this area and now pose a clear and present threat to any number of your member-nations and their allies.

For the sake of spreading the ideals of freedom, equality, and prosperity to oppressed people, it is undeniably necessary to remove the despotic dynasty in power and rebuild a democratic government in place of the archaic system currently ruling this country. Please, for the good of the world community, the American Problem must be dealt with.

Looking forward to the invasion,