DUmmy Mythsaje, having spurned coach's outreached hand and the warm sanctuary of his walnut-panelled study, is once again huddled in a corner of his cold hovel, surrounded by unopened cartons full of unread and unreadable dragon tales. In desperation, he's resuming his quest to reach the promised land of the DUmp "greatest" page, where thousands of people with obscene amounts of disposable income will read his stupid post and think, "I really need to buy some pamphlets with stories about dragons and knights with magical powers."
At least he isn't whining about the hated "unrec" feature.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6100680Mythsaje (1000+ posts) Sun Jul-19-09 05:28 AM
Original message
A different notion of Democracy
I once heard/read a story about the first contact between Americans and Hopi people where democracy was discussed, as practiced by the Americans, and as practiced by the Hopi. Upon hearing of the American way, the Hopi asked "but what about the minority views? What do they get from society for participating? Would not a functioning democracy need to hear and take into consideration all points of view so that no one is left out of the decision-making process?"
You know, that sounds like exactly what a Hopi would say. This guy really knows dialogue!
Blah, blah, socialists are so smart, blah
We can embrace ideas different than our own, take them into us and try to figure out if they have any merit, and, if not, we reject them. This is not a weakness. We can see things from the perspective of other people. This is also not a weakness.
If we have a weakness, it's too much of a tendency to give people like them the benefit of the doubt. We like to see the best in things, but ignore the patterns of behavior that suggest trouble to come. We may give a few too many chances.
Blah, blah, revolution, blah.
The irony is that a revolt on the left would involve our best and brightest, for they would be the ones that best understood the necessity. On the right, however, it would involve their worst and dimmest, for only they would be stupid enough to kill in a war against people who set out to save them.
It's been posted her many times how a Conservative's brain chemistry is so different than ours. Maybe we should stop treating them as though we believe our arguments will do any good. The only thing they're capable of understanding is force and the threat of force. That's their language.
You can always learn. Until I read this, I never suspected they had either a best, or a brightest. They must keep those guys hidden somewhere.
Blah, blah.
And they can convince enough of our representatives to give us a great deal of grief in the process. They're fighting a war--we're just trying to make the country work.
How's that for a failure to communicate?
I don't know about you, but when I finished reading that childish essay, I had a strong desire to buy a dragon tale.