I've Lost Confidence
Below are tidbits from a fun conversation I (Amelie Lillith) recently had with an acquaintance that Aisling would likely be good friends with. I feel that these excerpts truly illustrate the problem that I have with most right-wing conservatives. I have changed the screen names in order to protect those in the conversation. This all sprung up from my status message saying: In 1492 Native Americans found Columbus lost at sea.
Conserve-Ative: The point is, you’re lucky that we exploited the Native Americans as much as we did (as bad as that sounds).
me: No I’m not.
Conserve-Ative: Why’s that?
me: I’d take still living in any of the places my ancestors were from over living here if it meant we didn’t destroy one of the greatest groups of people ever to live.
Conserve-Ative: You DO realize none of those places would be as they are today without America.
Conserve-Ative: Who did we destroy?
me: The Native Americans, their culture, their lands, their language, their laws, and their history.
Conserve-Ative: Sure, to a certain extent, they still exist though. It worked out well for us.
me: No it didn’t. Soon, the whole destroying the land thing is going to come back to haunt us big time.
Conserve-Ative: Oh come on “Global warming” ridic.
me: There is already a global food shortage and I am not even talking about global warming. The food issue would exist with or without global warming..
Conserve-Ative: Yeah, in countries where they suck at agriculture i.e. Africa. and the dictators that take all the supply.
me: America would have been corrupted by Europe with or without Columbus getting lost. That is what the western culture does; it takes over, destroys, and calls anyone crazy that doesn’t adopt their ways of thinking. Western culture REFUSES to see that other cultures often work JUST FINE if not better than the western one
Conserve-Ative: Do they work just fine? Was Iraq working great?
me: Does our system?
Conserve-Ative: No system is perfect, but ours works the best.
me: I think western culture is evil. Not just the governments, but the culture that spawned them: the greedy consumerist culture that refuses to even MENTION the fact that horrible things are happening we instead choose to ignore it. We are taught from a young age to turn a blind eye: genocide, starvation, how our food is really grown/harvested, how our clothes are made, how our meat is slaughtered…
Conserve-Ative: We defend/attack what benefits us, really? Bovine rights? Come on. They’re freakin’ cows.
me: I am not talking about rights AT ALL. I am talking about the fact that the average American has NO IDEA what a meat plant is like. AND THAT IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICE BURG. Animals are typically tortured there, but the media doesn’t cover it, doesn’t cover genocide or anything grotesque or bad. It is something that should be worried about, because a society that doesn’t flinch about torturing an animal to death is one that calls accidentally bombing a school collateral damage.
Conserve-Ative: No correlation you can’t say that we don’t care about other people because we don’t care about animals.
me: I can definitely say that, we don’t consider most humans people (not non western people).Western culture is in a constant struggle to eradicate any other culture. They do what they need to do and kill who they need to kill in order to do that. Many soldiers have said that when they kill other people in combat they cannot think of them as human, because if they do–they can’t handle it (they have to think of it as an objective).
me: Do you think that as many people would eat beef if they had to shock the cattle on the head, hook them up to chains while they are screaming in pain and then slit their throats?
Conserve-Ative: Probably not no, but again, that’s the beauty of the system: we can disconnect from it
me: Right, we disconnect ourselves from animals.We think of them as beings with no feelings all the while being disgusted when other cultures eat cats. There are no news reports on things that make us uncomfortable.
Conserve-Ative: But you think non-western cultures aren’t biased either?
me: I think that many cultures had a lot of things right…mostly ones that don’t exist anymore. For instance a tribe in British Columbia when discovered, had no word or concept for rape, or child abuse. They had no idea what people were talking about because it didn’t exist in their culture.
Conserve-Ative: b.s.
me: It is convenient how people reject facts that don’t line up with the way they think, they just pretend they are not real or it will throw their established worlds into turmoil. Consumerism and greed are evil things and our country thinks they are its life blood. People in this damn country are so bombarded by advertisements that they worry more about a new freaking iphone than the fact that their own soldiers are dying or the fact that children made the clothes they are wearing in sweat shops.
Conserve-Ative: you miss the beauty of it. WE GET to think like that.
Me: I’d rather not be brainwashed, thanks.
Conserve-Ative: see, i disagree, it’s the whole Matrix argument.
me: The Matrix argument is much older than the Matrix. Plato wrote of it, it’s called The Allegory of the Cave and I’d leave the cave… Hell I already am halfway out. I guess that is the difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives are content watching the shadows in the cave, and liberals see the opening to the actual world, and want to go explore it.
~Amelie~
A few discrepancies with Amelie’s post…
- I don’t support drilling in ANWR. While the amount of land that would actually be used for drilling is the equivilant to land the size of a stamp in a football field, I hesitate to disturb Alaska’s untouched land at this point.
- McCain does support Nuclear Energy…as does Obama. However both candidates believe we need to invest in and implement wind, tide, solar, and natural gas. While McCain has been more forthcoming with his Nuclear Plan, Obama also acknowledges it’s necessity.
Obama’s Energy Plan States: “It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear energy.”
Side note: An advantage to building nuclear plants is the number of jobs that will be created as a result.
- We currently import our oil, which in result costs over 300 Billion, some of which ends up in the hands of terrorists. Regardless of who wins this election, the United States is not ready to stop utilizing oil, which means that we need an oil source NOW. Liberals like to use the argument that drilling now will not affect gas prices at this point, but as seen in previous situations, when future traders believe that the suppliers of oil will increase and the cost per barrel will go down, it will curb speculation of the market, therefore providing some relief from the constant up and down of gas prices. (www.ontheissues.org)
- I agree, drilling is not a solution, however I think that taking every possible action to solve the energy crisis will help us in the long run. We should be developing alternative energy sources, and at the same time establishing off shore drilling to ease the current price of gasoline or at the very least stablize it.
- McCain is against drilling in ANWR, and his voting record proves that.
- While off shore drilling still has it’s dangers, the developement of new technologies have dramatically reduced the number of oil spills.
- While I’m not necessarily thrilled with the idea of offshore drilling, (nor am I thrilled with Palin’s support of aerial killings of wolves) I believe that in politics you have to pick and choose your battles. In my opinion, Obama’s stand on partial birth abortion is much scarier and damaging to human life than McCain’s energy plan. I also believe that sometimes unappealing actions, such as offshore drilling or going to war, are necessary in order to to achieve the solution.
- I think Obama’s energy plan is unrealistic. While McCain wants to promote all sources of energy and ease our country off of dependence of oil, Obama believes we can end it… just like that. This editorial from the Wall Street Journal explains my feelings exactly regarding Obama’s Energy Plan http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121797838304214973.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
A Highlight from the article “Currently, alternative sources — wind, solar, biomass, hydroelectric and geothermal — provide less than 7% of yearly domestic consumption. Throw out hydro and geothermal, and it’s only 4%. For the foreseeable future, renewables simply cannot provide the scale and volume of energy needed to meet growing U.S. demand, which is expected to increase by 20% over the next two decades. Even with colossal taxpayer subsidies, renewables probably can’t even slow the rate of growth of carbon-based fuel consumption, much less replace it.”
*Aisling*
A little something I whipped up
I am just down right fed up with the blind eye that Palin and McCain (I listed them in that order on purpose) are giving to the environment. I am not saying that Obama is much better on his environmental stance, but I am saying that if Palin and McCain take office, all hell will break loose-literally. When a campaign thinks that destroying ecosystems is a worthy cost for human comfort (that’s right, not need, COMFORT) something is horribly amiss.
By now everyone has heard about Palin’s apparent disregard for the well being of struggling polar bears, but have you heard that she has the same disregard for disappearing beluga whales? Have you heard about her supposed attempt to promote the killing of predators in Alaska (wolves, bears, etc.) in order to ensure that there are enough herbivores for visiting hunters to shoot? Messing with natural animal interactions is a fine line, and when it ends with airplanes and bullets chasing defenseless animals I feel it has been crossed twofold.
Aisling will tell you that drilling in ANWAR and offshore is the answer, and that it will hold us over while we investigate alternative fuel sources. What she won’t tell you is that McCain’s main plan for alternative energy is nuclear power and that nuclear power takes ten years to get up and running (that is per plant).
Aisling and her homie Palin will also tell you that offshore drilling is safe, effectively ignoring the fact that even so-called “safe drilling” kills everything that is in the water for a long distance when the drilling occurs. “Drill baby drill” is nothing more than a death threat for many struggling ocean species. I have an idea though:
If offshore drilling is as safe as Palin makes it out to be, I want her to dive down to the drill site and just hang out there for a few hours while the original drilling commences. While she is at it I want her to jump into a tub of oil (the male population of the country would sure appreciate that) and then try to get it off of herself without any human help.
Drilling for more oil to poison our earth is not the answer. By digging it up to make ourselves more comfortable we will destroy some of the last remaining wildernesses on the planet. Alternative energies of the solar and wind variety are the best options right now. People need to realize that since the industrial revolution we have been living in an artificial haven created by destruction.
To this post Aisling will likely reply saying I am a crazy hippie. Perhaps this is true, but when the research is examined it doesn’t change the fact that I’m right.
~Amelie Lillith~
Welcome to the blog cleverly titled, ”We Can’t Agree on a Title – Go Figure.” In all reality, we spent approximately 45 minutes trying to think of a clever name for our blog that would explain that how different we are from each other. After a few moronic suggestions from Amelie, including “Left Loosie and Righty Tighty” and some quite intelligent suggestions from myself, it was clear we wouldn’t see eye to eye. Instead of spending the next 10 years debating the title of our blog, we settled for this title. Ironically, there really is no better title than the one we chose…
Now for introductions… My name is Aisling Cullen – I am a far-right conservative, I believe in the right to bear arms, I support the war in Iraq, I have a BA in Journalism with no intention of using it unless the media stops being a liberal whore, I voted for Bush, I’m a huge McCain/Palin supporter, I don’t believe in killing babies, otherwise known as abortion, however I split with my party when it comes to gay marriage rights which I support, I believe in working hard for what you have and I do not believe in giving others a “piece of my pie” because they don’t have a work ethic, I believe in God, bi-partisianship, and that chocolate is good for your health. Oh, and I despise Barack Obama and am 99.9% convinced that he will destory our country if he wins this election.
Amelie and I are extreme opposites when it comes to politics and life in general. However, we do agree that chocolate and alcohol makes people happy, that our cats are our children, and that pizza is always an acceptable meal. For instance, I’ve been in a long term relationship for 4 years..while Amelie’s longest term relationship at the moment is the Rocky’s Pizza she’s had in her fridge for a week. I’ve grounded Amelie from dating (more on that later) until she can sucessfully stop breaking the hearts of poor guys and she has (unsuccessfully) grounded me from shopping. We both work mindless, entry-level jobs.. and spend most of our days sending each other numerous articles from CNN.com and debating politics. Amelie thinks I hate polar bears, I think she eats babies. This blog is a place for us to show the rest of the world the humor they are missing out on when they avoid their political and/or moral counterparts.
*Aisling*
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A little bit about me:
I am a recent college graduate with an English-Writing BA and a minor in philosophy. I have been questioning the way things are run in society since I was twelve, holed up in a library reading Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I am a strong supporter of the environmental movement and feel that being conscious of our planet is the only way that humans will survive on it for an extended period of time. I live in a liberal city and have liberal friends. I vote democrat when it is necessary and green when it will actually effect something. I am single and tend to inadvertently play men more than I actually fall for them. I plan on returning to school for my M.F.A. in Creative Writing in the fall of 2009. I will then become a professor.
Aisling and I met while we were both enrolled in the same undergraduate institution. We are polar opposites when it comes to voting, values, and men. We bonded because of our pets and our love of knowledge (and alcohol). At the small university we went to there was not much intellectualism around, so even though our viewpoints were different, our intelligence brought us together. We united on a front against the ill-advised and poorly written newspaper that was published on our campus. She has a degree in journalism (a sellout English major) and we both cannot stand grammatical errors. Although we are totally different, we both hate ignorance in any form. Aisling is wrong most of the time, but at least she isn’t ignorant.
I hope you enjoy our blog.
~Amelie~
