As a non-american I fall under the umbrella of American influence as the world’s busybody. I accept that. Please don’t let that busybody continue to have a republican at the controls.
I have a horrible feeling that the absolute assuredness that seems to be floating about that the dems are a shoe-in will be the very thing that stops that from happening!
Don’t not vote because you are sure you don’t need to! Don’t give the world another GWB!
I’m fine with allowing some politics-related threads in MPSIMS, but I don’t think this is within the bounds of the forum. Moved to the BBQ Pit.
Yeah, that’s going to swing it. A badly spelled, mildly insulting post by a foreigner. Ever thought of a career in the diplomatic service?
Come on, one mis-typed (not mispelled due to lack of knowledge of the correct spelling) word is hardly ‘badly spelled’.
I don’t think I pitted anyone or anything. I think you moved it here so as to allow it to become a flame fest at my expense. Am I close?
Fuck off Lobbers you cunt. 
Anyway, do you think it is a productive thing to write posts about US elections? After all the US election threads by US posters are hardly in short supply.
You couldn’t be less close. I decided it was too political for MPSIMS and not enough of a debate for GD. You said the main motivation for your post was preventing another GWB from coming to power, so you can let loose on him more fully here.
I admit, probably not productive in the extreme. I just don’t want another Republican to win. I don’t want the confidence that one won’t to backfire.
And American politics does have an indirect effect on the rest of the world.
Oh Ok. I stand corrected 
While you’re in safe company on the Dope, this sort of appeal would have the exact opposite effect you intend for the vast majority of Americans. Remember the Guardian’s effort to get its readers to write to undecided voters in Ohio and urge them to support Kerry in 2004? The article I saw regarding the responses from Ohio voters was headlined, “Dear Limey Assholes”.
I remember that. (Too late)
I agree with your sentiment Lobsang, but I know how pissed off I’d be if an American decided to stick their nose into a UK election in this way.
Anyone who did I would call arrogant and egocentric. Hardly rare accusations to be levelled on Americans; though mercifully less common on the Dope.
We don’t try to tell you who to elect to be king.
It’s not the same thing though… The King hasn’t taken your country into a doomed and unpopular war.
if we took things back a couple of hundred years, to when an English King might be in a position to take his country and a close aly into an unpopular war, I for one would fully understand if a vote-less citizen of that same aly pleaded with me to elect a different King.
Yes, yes. We dragged you kicking and screaming into it, didn’t we. :rolleyes:
See, one of the reasons we left your country to begin with was that you tended to stick your nose in matters that shouldn’t have concerned you. This is another example. This country was founded because we didn’t want to be told how to worship or live or lives, that’s why we came over here and killed the Indians in the first place.
Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for Tony Blair either.
“Shoe-in”, also. You might think I’m nitpicking. But if it were my thread, I would have bothered to check the spelling. Otherwise it looks like you just dashed it off on the spur of the moment.
[Monty Python]You don’t VOTE for kings…[/mp]
As a citizen of the US, I don’t think we pay enough attention to foreign opinions. Nitpicking about spelling here is noted…okay, so what about the original post?
For years the rest of the world has come to our door because we had the wealth, the goods, all that. They might have grumbled but it was the golden rule…the one with all the gold makes all the rules. And that’s a “low road” answer.
The high road answer is that we pride ourselves on being the good guys, not letting dictators make all the decisions, having a free press, holding officials accountable, and so on. Because of that, we’re not supposed to end up in wars like these.
When you look at events post 9/11, we have managed to squander a boatload of sympathy and turned an awful lot of people against us. We have always had the best friends money can buy, but even that has gone sour. If the Muslims in the Middle East ever stop arguing among themselves and turn a united front against us, we could be really screwed in many ways.
Euthaniast posted:
See, one of the reasons we left your country to begin with was that you tended to stick your nose in matters that shouldn’t have concerned you. This is another example. This country was founded because we didn’t want to be told how to worship or live or lives, that’s why we came over here and killed the Indians in the first place.
Much of that, I think, is what bothers the rest of the world about our actions in the Middle East. We don’t have a legitimate moral claim to bomb the living hell out of a bunch of innocents or tell them who their leaders should be. WMD? Where? And look, for example, at how wonderfully our boy Fidel Castro has done.
We haven’t been welcomed as the conquering heroes. Before we even went into Afghanistan people noted that that was “the Russian Viet Nam.” And contrast the duration in the M.E. to our involvement in WW fucking II, fought over a huge territory against entire governments.
Overall I think we have to admit that our government hasn’t done wonderfully by us these last few years. I vehemently disagree with the Patriot Act bullshit that implies dissent is unpatriotic. On the contrary, the right to dissent is the single greatest thing about this country. If it takes a foreigner to remind us of the ripples our actions make around the world, I say it’s better than to congratulate each other while wrapped warmly in a cocoon of ignorance.
JMO, YMMV.
Then how’d he get elected?