…and get fucked. For this:
from here
“choose to live”? Just fuck off, you ignorant cunt. Fuck right off. Wanker.
Wow. What a moron.
Hey, if things are so bad there, why don’t they just move?
Hey! I’ve been pitted! Actually, Mr. Dibble, I went on to say in a later post…
Of course, I did not mean the entirety of Africa, and apologies for offense, though I do think that if you’re not going about the business of progress, and by ignorance, fear, or bureaucracy, are kept from your rightful place in the world, that it is indeed your choice.
Perhaps my ideas can be viewed as ignorant, and maybe even too “American” for some, to expect people in a bad situation to make it better for themselves, as my ancestors did, even by leaving.
Just as here in America, there are depressed places, and peoples that indeed choose (by doing nothing) to live the way they do. Here, admittedly, there are many more opportunities, which makes the idea of choice that much more obvious.
I’ll get called all kinds of names, and be demonized for saying so, but I think as a human, you are the master of your own destiny. You are in control of what happens to you (in most cases). If you live in mud huts and hunt with spears in 2006, that’s your choice. I’m not saying there aren’t people trying to make a difference, but change, in all forms, must come from within.
Dude, seriously, put down the Ayn Rand and back slowly away. It will do you no favors in life.
If you live in mud huts and hunt with spears, it’s your choice? You’ve chosen it? All you have to do is choose something else? You believe this?
Damn.
Out of curiosity, how far are you prepared to take this? Street kids in South America, have they chosen their station in life? Rural Chinese peasants? The “mudpigs” working in mines?
I don’t think you really understand the situation over there. What “choices” do they really have? Where are they supposed to go? It’s not like there’s a Fortune 500 company down the block, and even if there was, what makes you think they’d hire a person with no education?
It’s not as simple as saying, “Hey we’ll just move to the city!” They probably don’t have a car, nor the money to set up in a new location. Are they supposed to just abandon their ancestral lands and set out walking across the desert? Where do they get business attire?
I think this phenomenon of blaming the poor for their poverty comes from the notion which was drilled into our heads as kids that you can “be whatever you want to be” and if you fail, it must be because you didn’t try hard enough. Sure, we’ve all heard the success stories of a guy who started out with only the clothes on his back and a dream, but those kinds of stories are one-in-a-million. (I dare you to tell a single parent who’s working two jobs that the reason they’re poor is that they’re not trying hard enough.)
But when all you posess in this world is the hut in which you were born and possibly a cow, it’s not likely you’ll end up rich.
Some of them do. I was in the Namibian Caprivi Strip a few weeks ago, and there were these two dudes who were handing themselves over to the park authorities. They had just walked out of the DRC, on their way to anywhere but the DRC, and had spent the night up a tree, circled by a lioness and her cubs. They were tired, hungry, and scared to death. The dudes, not the lions. It’s a pitiful sight.
Botswana has a huge problem with Zimbabweans walking across the border. South Africa has its hands full in the Kruger Park with Mozambicans becoming lion food.
Desperate times.
Oh, buttjockey’s right. I, as an American with unlimited opportunities, have chosen to be poor. Because it’s fun! Who wouldn’t want to be poor? You get to do nothing all day! When you’re not busting your ass at your shitty-paying job(s), I mean. Just like China and the entire continent of Africa are happy to live under oppression/in the Middle Ages. Why shouldn’t they? I’m sure it’s much easier for them to lounge in the sun all day than apply some effort to improve their situations. Non-white people are like that, you know. In fact, non-Christians are, too (
another overlooked pearl of wisdom from the linked OP):
Yeah, those lazy Jews! Just standing on the tracks, letting the train run them over. Thank the lord we Americans (the ones who didn’t enjoy doing nothing and living in poverty, that is) came along to save their asses and show them how to make it in this world.
Wait, fuckstick, do you think I was offended because you lumped SA along with the rest of Africa? Then you’re stupid, as well as ignorant. Again, I’m not even going to bother educating you. Do as I said, and fuck right off.
blink
/rubs eyes
blink
buttonjockey308, there are few qualities more contemptible then not knowing exactly how fucking lucky you are, and assuming that people who are less lucky are somehow lacking in character.
You should work on that.
And the most amazing thing of all is that the reason for getting so torqued up is because of the lack of respect for the lives of dogs. Not that I don’t love dogs, but…
I’m guessing, though perhaps our diminutive buttoneer will correct me, that he’s saying: the Jews learned the hard way and showed the world that you shouldn’t let yourself get pushed around (because there had never ever been massacres nor genocide before the Holocaust.) It’s an argument I’ve seen before on an NRA messageboard. “If the Jews had been armed, there would have been no Holocaust”.
Which is why the Tibetans did so well preventing the Chinese invasion.
Either that, or buttonjockey is just mindbendingly stupid.
I think you nailed it with your last sentence.
Social Darwinism lives!!
Hey, if they don’t have enough money to buy better homes, they can bloody well go to the ATM.
Duh.
No, no. Instead of building mud huts, they should dream big and be making mud castles and mud Bellagios complete with mud chandeliers and fluffy mud beds. :dubious:
Looks like we’ve got our very own Marie Antoinette.
And the Pit, our very own Place de la Révolution…
Listen, I’m not saying I’m not lucky. I’m damn lucky to live here, I’m damn lucky to have had ancestors who risked everything to get here, and sacrificed their very lives to work and provide what is here today, a mere 228 years later, the richest, most powerful nation in the free world.
We’ve got problems out the wazoo, but for most Americans, failing to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, ain’t one of them.
It’s all a matter of time in my opinion. For all I know, we may be back to hunting with spears and living in mud huts in another 1772 years, but for places like China and Africa, who have hosted the largest and most powerful societies in history to still have places where such brutality, savagery and absolute lawlessness reign, after so many thousands of years is unacceptable to me, unless of course, the people decide to leave it that way.
You can call me all the names you like, but in my mind, time and progress usually go hand in hand. If you’re doing things today the same way you did them 3,000 years ago, and those things are a detriment to your society, and you still choose to do them, it is the fault of that society to fail to post any progress.
Indeed jjimm that was my point. While it may have been true that the Jews being armed would have done something to stop the holocaust (I don’t know, and wouldn’t care to guess) do you think it’s going to happen to them again? Do you? I sure as hell don’t, and the current mess in Israel is proof.
And yes, genocide has taken place before, and in fact after the Holocaust, but the Holocaust is modern history. There are people walking around still to day who survived it. The lessons they learned, and the lessons we learned from them ought to be burned into our collective conscience, but it isn’t.
Examples like Rwanda and Bosnia prove it.
So yes, you’re fucking right to say you shouldn’t let yourself be pushed around. I would fight for my own freedom and prosperity with every fiber of my being. Guns, knives, stones, fists, whatever it takes to be free, I choose that. Of course I realize that few share my mindset, and that it’s likely only because I was born here, raised here, and realize the value of the lessons passed on to me by my ancestors. I would rather die fighting than die a victim.