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| 47673 |
Re:War and Democracy don't mix very well!
Thank you, Arnaud, for your very thoughtful comments.
I find it very disturbing that the Bush administration points to free elections and says, "see, I was right!" He points to the fall of the Hussein regime, and says, "if the Democrats had been in power, Sadam Hussein would still be in power in Iraq.
The Bush administration, unfortunately is winning a tremendous amount if domestic support for its outlandish policies by pretending everything is very simple, and that's very effective, because, unfortunately, many citizens of the US are impressed by simplification. What we often overlook is that simplification of complicated situations hides important ramifications.
When Bush makes the decision to invade Iraq a matter of having or not having Sadam Hussein in power, he creates a false dilemma, he puts dissenters in the position being seen as supporters of Hussein. But the truth is, you don’t have to like Hussein in order to value the principle of due process of law, one of our most basic constitutional principles, and one which we conveniently decided to ignore when we invaded Iraq.
As Arnaud astutely points out making a country appear democratic is not the same as making it democratic. And there is nothing democratic at all about imposing the US way of government at the point of a gun.
Our problem is and has been (ever since there has been a United States of America), that we treat our values the way we treat our religion in this country. Whether we admit it out loud or not, we are convinced that our way of doing things is the only sensible way, and we think we’re doing people a favor by marching into their countries and requiring them to adopt our lifestyle.
I can’t blame other countries for finding us arrogant. We are.
Fortunately, I hope, we aren’t all.
Thanks for the topic, Cassie!
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 47620
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| 48205 |
What is a flip-flop, really? part 1 of 3
Hi Arnaud,
I'm going to stick mostly to the political stuff here, since most people on this area of the board are looking for that. Perhaps we could discuss the personal questions either in the "making friends" area or privately off-line.
When I say that citizens of the US treat our politics like our religion, I'm referring to the way we expect others to follow our political / economic views, just as we expect everyone to follow our religion. We have this arrogant view that if everyone really understood our religion, our politics, our economics, they'd all agree with us and see how superior we are.
The problem with this attitude, aside from being obnoxious and alienating the rest of the world, is that it neglects the most basic spiritual principle that underlies all of creation: diversity. There are millions of different species in the world, and even within a given species, no two individuals are exactly alike – not even identical twins. How can we possibly think that there could be a one-size-fits-all religion, political system, economoic system, social system—it's ludicrous. But that's what U.S. citicens often want to think.
Which is why we seem to love G.W. Bush as much as we do. If he has a strength (aside from his indomitable sense of focus), it's his ability to convince people that a simple answer will solve great problems. This is not terribly difficult to do here in the US, because as a nation, we like to believe that great problems can be resolved simply. It sure makes life a whole lot easier. Or at least, it seems like it should.
So it is that if GW tells us that an attack on Saddam Hussein is an attack on Al-Qaida, we want to believe that, and it's certainly a much more attractive proposition than trying to figure out why we don't have Bin Laden yet. It's a great way of looking like we're winning the war on terrorism when we're not.
So what Bush does is he simplifies everything to the point of meaninglessness. So now it's gotten really simple. If you trust George Bush, you're a patriotic "American," and if you don't you're a supporter of terrorism.
(Continued)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 48153
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| 48207 |
What is a flip-flop, really? part 2 of 3
Kerry's most famous "flip-flop" occurred around a couple of senate votes an an $87 Billion dollar funding for the war in Iraq. It's important to recall, in the background of this story, that the CIA had presented the president and congress with a report that seemed to make a compelling argument that Hussein was stockpiling WMD's, and that, for whatever reasons, the UN seeemed to be ignoring the facts of this report. At that time, Kerry had supported funding the attack on Iraq, based on the information available to him, which was pretty strong in suggesting that an attack was warranted. Later, the bill was brought up for a vote again with a rider on it – I wish I could remember what the rider was, but it was completely unrelated to the war effort in Iraq, and for Kerry, it was a real big show-stopper. Because of this rider, he had to vote agains the bill when it came up the second time. Later, he said, "I voted for the $87 Billion before I voted against it," which, without further explanation was, admittedly, a really stupid thing to say, and of course, the Bush camp just leaped on that with glee. Thus a world-famous "flip-flopper" was born.
Kerry's political enemies characterize this as a flip-flop, but in my view, it is a perfectly consistent position. Kerry said that he was willing to vote for 87 billion to fight against a rogue dictator who is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction (assuming that that is what is going on), but that he was not willing to support this bill if in order to do so, he would have to also agree that abortion will be illegal in the U.S. from now on – or whatever.
Later, when it was discovered that the CIA information was incorrect, Kerry "Flip-flopped" again by saying that we went into Iraq prematurely. Here again, I don't see how people can argue that this is a change of position. He said at the outset that his support for the war was based on the best information then available, and when more information showed that what his initial decision was based on was flawed, his response was far more consistent that George W. Bush's reaction that said, "Gee it's a shame they were wrong on the facts, but I made the right decision and I'm sticking to it." Apparently, in order to avoid the lable of flip-flopper in our country these days, you are expected to be a mindless extremist.
By the way, I don't want to give you the impression that I think we were justified in attacking Iraq when we did, regardless of what the CIA report may have said, even if all of the data were correct. Our invasion was a lawless act of agression, and it was wrong. I don't support Kerry's initial support of the attack on Iraq. I'm only saying I can't agree that he was waffling in his values simply because his conclusions changed when the information available to him changed. To me this is very consistent and shows that he appreciates the subtlety of world affairs.
(Continued)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 48153
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| 48208 |
What is a flip-flop, really? part 3 of 3
This has gone for three messages already, so I'll wrap it up for now, and address some of your other questions in a later message. We might also want to discuss some of this off-line, if you'd like to find me at Sacramento State University (CSUS), where I am registered under my first and last name with a period in between. I don't want to stop our conversations here on the MLE site, where our comments may be of interest to other members, but perhaps being able to write longer messages and discuss personal information of narrower interest may be helpful.
Briefly, in response to my background, I grew up in Southern California in a middle class family that was very aware of social/political/economic issues. We always discussed such things with great enthusiasm at the table during meals. I have an associate degree in liberal arts, a bachelor's degree in English literature, and I'm working on my Master's degree in literature now. I guess it's pretty obvious that my views tend toward the "liberal."
If you'd like some feedback on your English, perhaps you would be willing to re-post the message over in the Vocabulary/Translations area of the board. I think some people are unaware of the categories that this site has been organized into, and it sometimes makes it more difficult to find information we are looking for. I'm trying to encourage people to be a little more consistent about posting messages in the areas where other people will be looking for the kind of information they are posting. I think this will help us all to be more helpful to each other as a community.
Thank you for your very kind and thought-provoking message. I hope you will reply with information about what politics is like in France, and with more information about how you and others in your country view our public antics. I look forward to getting back to you on some of your other questions.
Au revoir,
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
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This is a reply to message # 48153
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| 48342 |
Re:Re:What is a flip-flop, really? part 3 of 3
I'm sorry about that. Please let me know if there is any way I can help. I'm afraid I don't know enough about what you didn't understand in my long message in order to try to clarify what I said.
I'm afraid there isn't really any accepted way for me to tell you how to reach me off-line (that is, by direct e-mail or other method that does not use MLE), since I am not a gold member and as far as I know, you are not either. There are some people who have resorted to clever, subtle methods of sharing contact information, and these means have sometimes been successful. But I hesitate to do such things because I think it is very important for people to continue to post regularly on My Language Exchange (MLE) and continue to attract new members who may join at the gold level.
The information you offered regarding the general feelings in France towards America and towards George Bush makes a lot of sense. We have not, as a nation, treated Europe, generally, nor France in particular with very much respect. I find that very embarrassing.
I would love to hear more about the politics within France. What are some of the important arguments for and against the European Constitution? What are some of the other internal issues that concern your country?
I look forward to hearing back from you.
Mark Springer
CSUS
Sacramento, CA, USA
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 48308
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| 48868 |
Re:French politics.
Hi Arnaud,
Nice to hear from you again. I really enjoyed your explanation of the issues around the EU constitution, unemployment, and other social issues. For all of the vast differences there are between our countries, it seems that there is also quite a bit we share in common. For example, just as your people seem to want to maintain a practical balance between national sovereignty and international cooperative unity with respect to the EU, so have we struggled to navigate the same balance in the UN. Of course, we have many here (in my opinion, a bunch of narrow-minded hotheads) who argue that for the United States to relinquish any of our own sovereign authority to any external body would be a violation of the essential principles that make our country great. I think it would be the best possible affirmation of American principles. We learned in our first 30 years that if our United States were going to be strong, the individual states would have to be willing to cede certain key powers to a central government, or we would never be able to build the unity that we now enjoy under our present constitution, the one that changed our government from a confederacy – a collective of sovereign nations sharing a single flag, to a federal republic, where governing powers are allocated carefully between the national and state governments. The people who argue that the nations of Europe will have to pull together in order to stand against the United States are making good sense. I'd really love to see the EU do that. My country obviously needs to "eat some humble pie" these days. It would be a very healthy thing for my country, and a very healthy thing for the world.
I wasn't sure I understood your comment about Turkey. Are some of your people afraid that Turkey will expand its land area, moving its territory closer to France? Why might they anticipate this?
Since this is too long for one message and the rest of this is not about current events, I hope you won't mind popping over to the opinions board for the rest of my response to your message. I'll see you over there!
Mark
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 48807
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| 49422 |
Politics in US and EU Part I of V
Hi Arnaud. It's great to hear from you again. Busy night on the MLE site. I feel like a kid in a candy shop (idiom). I can hardly figure out where to start.
Well, I start by observing how relative things always are. To you, it seems that we have no left wing politics in our country, yet most Americans will tell you that we have a very powerful left wing called the democratic party. They may seem very conservative in a country where the communist and socialist parties are active. But when I see a democrat standing next to a republican, I see a lot of huge differences.
Of course, that's my point of view. I don't know how visible it is from across the big water over there, be we do have more than two parties. We have hundreds, and that includes the Communist and Socialist parties, both in a number of different flavors. It also includes a lot of other very interesting groups, some of whom make our republicans look very left-wing. The problem here is that we don't have proportional representation here as you do in your country, and the two main parties have such a stranglehold on the system, voting for an outsider is tantamount to throwing away your vote.
For example, in the 2000 elections, I was very upset. I had to choose between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Bush was a no-brainer: He didn't have one, and I knew that he'd be poison for the country. I had some measure of respect for Gore, on the other hand, but I could never see him as "my president," the way I did with Clinton, despite a few issues on which I disagreed with the former president pretty strongly. Obviously, I had not trouble choosing between Bush and Gore.
But if I was going to vote my soul, there was a very easy choice for me. Ralph Nader, a consumer advocate has been running for president for years on our Green Party, an independent group that advocates sustainable practices with respect to the environment, equal rights for all, fair labor practices, low unemployment, and a poverty program that empowers the poor, providing meaningful support to help them care for their families and get back to work. I don't expect it is very different from your own Green party – or at least the Green party in Germany, with which I actually have at least some passing familiarity.
The problem was, Ralph Nader wasn't dealing with reality where it sat. He came to speak at my school where I was attending at the time in the San Francisco Bay area, and I asked him to explain to me how it might be that I could vote for him without voting for Bush by consequence. He recited one of his talking points back at me and went on to another question. Clearly, he was ignoring that issue, and I found that very sad.
Continued: See part II of V
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 49379
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| 49423 |
Politics in US and EU II of V
US and EU Politics: II of V
The problem was, Gore and Bush were within a few percentage points of one another in the polls. There was really no telling which way the election was going to go –as the world discovered with all that noise we had about Florida. We had no idea how crazy it would get, but it was obviously going to be a tight race. With the election as close as it was, voting for Nader would amount to a vote for Bush, because it would take a vote away from Gore. I really didn't know what I was going to do, even as I was walking into the polling site. But I finally voted for Gore, and I have never regretted the choice. I would have lost a lot of sleep over Bush's election if I'd voted for Nader.
Now I want to be very clear about what I mean by this, because there are a whole lot of sour grapes democrats in denial about the problems the party needs to deal with these days—the lack of leadership, of strength, of currency with the concerns of voters—that are the cause of the eight years of nightmare we are presently enjoying. Such democrats vilify Nader for being "'a spoiler"' by stealing "'Gore's " (or "Kerry's") votes. The brutal truth is that there is no such thing as a vote that belongs to a candidate. Votes belong to voters, not to candidates. In a free republic, citizens award their votes to the candidate who best convinces them that his political agenda will serve the needs of the country. I get a little emotional about this, because I'm really getting sick of democrats who blame Nader for Bush's electoral victories. It is not Nader's job to get out of the Democrats' way. It is the Democratic Party's job to develop a strategy for dealing with Nader. They failed to do that, and now the whole country is paying the price. People who think Nader "spoiled"' the elections need to go back to civics class get a refresher on democracy. It's not about locking out people who say thing's you don't like. It's about listening to them and taking a risk that you might learn something new and important about the country's needs.
We don't have enough of that under our two party system, and I guess I get a little crazy about hearing from people who want to make the problem even worse by trying to shout down what little diversity of discourse we still have.
As to your question of the differences between the Democrats and the Republicans, it's a pretty interesting question, and you'll see a lot of different answers from different people. Of course, the independents make a big deal about how alike the big two are. Naturally, it's to their advantage to convince us that the only meaningful change would be to bring in an independent party candidate, and it's not an empty argument.
Continued: See part III of V
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 49379
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| 49424 |
Politics in US and EU II of V
US and EU Politics: II of V
The problem was, Gore and Bush were within a few percentage points of one another in the polls. There was really no telling which way the election was going to go –as the world discovered with all that noise we had about Florida. We had no idea how crazy it would get, but it was obviously going to be a tight race. With the election as close as it was, voting for Nader would amount to a vote for Bush, because it would take a vote away from Gore. I really didn't know what I was going to do, even as I was walking into the polling site. But I finally voted for Gore, and I have never regretted the choice. I would have lost a lot of sleep over Bush's election if I'd voted for Nader.
Now I want to be very clear about what I mean by this, because there are a whole lot of sour grapes democrats in denial about the problems the party needs to deal with these days—the lack of leadership, of strength, of currency with the concerns of voters—that are the cause of the eight years of nightmare we are presently enjoying. Such democrats vilify Nader for being "'a spoiler"' by stealing "'Gore's " (or "Kerry's") votes. The brutal truth is that there is no such thing as a vote that belongs to a candidate. Votes belong to voters, not to candidates. In a free republic, citizens award their votes to the candidate who best convinces them that his political agenda will serve the needs of the country. I get a little emotional about this, because I'm really getting sick of democrats who blame Nader for Bush's electoral victories. It is not Nader's job to get out of the Democrats' way. It is the Democratic Party's job to develop a strategy for dealing with Nader. They failed to do that, and now the whole country is paying the price. People who think Nader "spoiled"' the elections need to go back to civics class get a refresher on democracy. It's not about locking out people who say thing's you don't like. It's about listening to them and taking a risk that you might learn something new and important about the country's needs.
We don't have enough of that under our two party system, and I guess I get a little crazy about hearing from people who want to make the problem even worse by trying to shout down what little diversity of discourse we still have.
As to your question of the differences between the Democrats and the Republicans, it's a pretty interesting question, and you'll see a lot of different answers from different people. Of course, the independents make a big deal about how alike the big two are. Naturally, it's to their advantage to convince us that the only meaningful change would be to bring in an independent party candidate, and it's not an empty argument.
Continued: See part III of V
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 49379
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| 49425 |
Politics in US and EU III of V
US and EU Politics: III of V
Because our country is generally polarized between a right and a left, and because any strong candidate has to win support from both sides, everyone's always trying to fight for a position that looks like the center, which will please everyone.
The Independents argue that neither party has solved the social security problem (true), neither party has dealt with the problem of corporate welfare (true) neither party is addressing our failing education system (mostly true), Neither is dealing with immigration "problems" (a really ugly can of worms, no body can agree on what the problems are or if there is a problem.) No solutions on crime (true) our prison system (true) Everyone argues that the Democrats spend way too much and get nothing done (I have a lot to say about that one), and that Republicans always cut taxes so that we don't have any money to get anything done (I can't argue with that).
I'm not convinced, however, that there is any one other party that could do a better job than the democrats do. When there are Republicans in the White house, I just want to hide in my house for four years and pray nobody notices I'm American. I have to confess, I'm pretty ardently partisan. I just have great trouble finding republicans (and on very rare occasions, I do—always at the far left edge of the Republican Party) whose thinking makes any sense to me. I don't see how we can expect single mothers, for example, to get off of welfare, when a week's child care costs more than they can ever make in a month. It just seems that a great many republicans just don't think about what the decisions they make will mean to real people whose lives are not working, or they just assume that nobody would be poor if they weren't lazy and blow it off as if it weren't their problem.
Well, like I've said, I have a lot of strong feelings about this stuff. Please excuse my lecture. My point is that in my view, the differences between republicans and Democrats are huge. I'm not going to go into details now, because that's a really big long letter by itself. But there has always been a liberal party and a conservative party in the US, even since before the revolutionary war.
They always tended to be fairly divided between the concerns of the Northern, industrial, business concerns, which tended to support a stronger federal government, and the Southern, rural, slave-owning interests. Our first parties were Whigs and Tories, spin offs from their English counterparts, with the Whigs supporting independence, and the Tories trying to find ways to make peace between King George and the Colonies.
Continued: See part IV of V
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 49379
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| 49426 |
Politics in US and EU III of V
US and EU Politics: III of V
Because our country is generally polarized between a right and a left, and because any strong candidate has to win support from both sides, everyone's always trying to fight for a position that looks like the center, which will please everyone.
The Independents argue that neither party has solved the social security problem (true), neither party has dealt with the problem of corporate welfare (true) neither party is addressing our failing education system (mostly true), Neither is dealing with immigration "problems" (a really ugly can of worms, no body can agree on what the problems are or if there is a problem.) No solutions on crime (true) our prison system (true) Everyone argues that the Democrats spend way too much and get nothing done (I have a lot to say about that one), and that Republicans always cut taxes so that we don't have any money to get anything done (I can't argue with that).
I'm not convinced, however, that there is any one other party that could do a better job than the democrats do. When there are Republicans in the White house, I just want to hide in my house for four years and pray nobody notices I'm American. I have to confess, I'm pretty ardently partisan. I just have great trouble finding republicans (and on very rare occasions, I do—always at the far left edge of the Republican Party) whose thinking makes any sense to me. I don't see how we can expect single mothers, for example, to get off of welfare, when a week's child care costs more than they can ever make in a month. It just seems that a great many republicans just don't think about what the decisions they make will mean to real people whose lives are not working, or they just assume that nobody would be poor if they weren't lazy and blow it off as if it weren't their problem.
Well, like I've said, I have a lot of strong feelings about this stuff. Please excuse my lecture. My point is that in my view, the differences between republicans and Democrats are huge. I'm not going to go into details now, because that's a really big long letter by itself. But there has always been a liberal party and a conservative party in the US, even since before the revolutionary war.
They always tended to be fairly divided between the concerns of the Northern, industrial, business concerns, which tended to support a stronger federal government, and the Southern, rural, slave-owning interests. Our first parties were Whigs and Tories, spin offs from their English counterparts, with the Whigs supporting independence, and the Tories trying to find ways to make peace between King George and the Colonies.
Continued: See part IV of V
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 49379
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| 49427 |
Politics in US and EU III of V
US and EU Politics: IV of V
Because our country is generally polarized between a right and a left, and because any strong candidate has to win support from both sides, everyone's always trying to fight for a position that looks like the center, which will please everyone.
The Independents argue that neither party has solved the social security problem (true), neither party has dealt with the problem of corporate welfare (true) neither party is addressing our failing education system (mostly true), Neither is dealing with immigration "problems" (a really ugly can of worms, no body can agree on what the problems are or if there is a problem.) No solutions on crime (true) our prison system (true) Everyone argues that the Democrats spend way too much and get nothing done (I have a lot to say about that one), and that Republicans always cut taxes so that we don't have any money to get anything done (I can't argue with that).
I'm not convinced, however, that there is any one other party that could do a better job than the democrats do. When there are Republicans in the White house, I just want to hide in my house for four years and pray nobody notices I'm American. I have to confess, I'm pretty ardently partisan. I just have great trouble finding republicans (and on very rare occasions, I do—always at the far left edge of the Republican Party) whose thinking makes any sense to me. I don't see how we can expect single mothers, for example, to get off of welfare, when a week's child care costs more than they can ever make in a month. It just seems that a great many republicans just don't think about what the decisions they make will mean to real people whose lives are not working, or they just assume that nobody would be poor if they weren't lazy and blow it off as if it weren't their problem.
Well, like I've said, I have a lot of strong feelings about this stuff. Please excuse my lecture. My point is that in my view, the differences between republicans and Democrats are huge. I'm not going to go into details now, because that's a really big long letter by itself. But there has always been a liberal party and a conservative party in the US, even since before the revolutionary war.
They always tended to be fairly divided between the concerns of the Northern, industrial, business concerns, which tended to support a stronger federal government, and the Southern, rural, slave-owning interests. Our first parties were Whigs and Tories, spin offs from their English counterparts, with the Whigs supporting independence, and the Tories trying to find ways to make peace between King George and the Colonies.
Continued: See part V of V
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 49379
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| 49428 |
Politics in US and EU IV of V
US and EU Politics: IV of V
Because our country is generally polarized between a right and a left, and because any strong candidate has to win support from both sides, everyone's always trying to fight for a position that looks like the center, which will please everyone.
The Independents argue that neither party has solved the social security problem (true), neither party has dealt with the problem of corporate welfare (true) neither party is addressing our failing education system (mostly true), Neither is dealing with immigration "problems" (a really ugly can of worms, no body can agree on what the problems are or if there is a problem.) No solutions on crime (true) our prison system (true) Everyone argues that the Democrats spend way too much and get nothing done (I have a lot to say about that one), and that Republicans always cut taxes so that we don't have any money to get anything done (I can't argue with that).
I'm not convinced, however, that there is any one other party that could do a better job than the democrats do. When there are Republicans in the White house, I just want to hide in my house for four years and pray nobody notices I'm American. I have to confess, I'm pretty ardently partisan. I just have great trouble finding republicans (and on very rare occasions, I do—always at the far left edge of the Republican Party) whose thinking makes any sense to me. I don't see how we can expect single mothers, for example, to get off of welfare, when a week's child care costs more than they can ever make in a month. It just seems that a great many republicans just don't think about what the decisions they make will mean to real people whose lives are not working, or they just assume that nobody would be poor if they weren't lazy and blow it off as if it weren't their problem.
Well, like I've said, I have a lot of strong feelings about this stuff. Please excuse my lecture. My point is that in my view, the differences between republicans and Democrats are huge. I'm not going to go into details now, because that's a really big long letter by itself. But there has always been a liberal party and a conservative party in the US, even since before the revolutionary war.
They always tended to be fairly divided between the concerns of the Northern, industrial, business concerns, which tended to support a stronger federal government, and the Southern, rural, slave-owning interests. Our first parties were Whigs and Tories, spin offs from their English counterparts, with the Whigs supporting independence, and the Tories trying to find ways to make peace between King George and the Colonies.
Continued: See part V of V
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 49379
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| 49429 |
Politics in US and EU V of V
US and EU Politics: V of V
Republicans, oppose Democrats on all of these points. They are more likely to want more freedom to own firearms, while wanting to limit the freedoms of abortion, sexual orientation. The Republican party is catching up to the Democrats, on the issue of supporting racial diversity. I have to admit that the Bush Administration has more minorities on the cabinet than any U.S. President in history. But the Republicans continue to deny that there is any gap between whites and non-whites in the face of overwhelming evidence that the work of affirmative action has hardly begun to complete it's job.
Then Republicans want to crank back spending, make government smaller, and cut back taxes. Of course, they always tend to want to increase spending on defense. It's great for big businesses that make weapons and communications systems. It helps the economy. And a nice fat military-industrial complex is always good for republicans.
Republicans have a huge core of support from fundamentalist protestant groups, and this is reflected in a lot of their positions. Anti-abortion, anti homosexual rights, pro prayer in the schools. Ironically, however, republicans (and conservative protestants) also tend to be very supportive of capital punishment, something that Democrats, despite tending to be highly in favor of abortion rights, tend to find very offensive. It's a fascinating inconsistency on both sides of "the aisle." (On congress, the left and the right are often referred to as "sides of the aisle," since the main aisle through the center of both the house of representatives and the senate tends to form a rough boundary between the republicans and democrats in congress. )
Well, I do go on and on, don't I. Sorry about that. I'm going to cut this up into pieces so that I can post it there for you. I hope you find it interesting.
Of course, I'm very interested in hearing what you have to tell me, along these lines, about your own country. I know something about your own revolution, about Marie Antoinette losing her head over an imprudent comment about cake, the barricades and all. I know something about Napoleon Bonaparte. Terms like Waterloo and Elba have some meaning to me, even if I don't know any details. I know roughly the story of Joan D'arc. I know nothing at all about your current political circumstances or about how you came to them. So I'm basically a tabula raza. Please, tell me some stories. I look forward to hearing them.
Au revoir,
Mark
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 49379
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| 49865 |
Re:La Revolucion Francesa: I sobre II, translations to English (bilingual msgs)
Hola Arnaud, Tienes toda la razón acerca de los que dejamos atrás al hablar ingles todo el tiempo. No es bien siempre hablar inglés cuando hay gente que no comprende.
Al otro lado, el problema es como hablar con la mayoría de la gente, y esto, desafortunadamente, es los que hablan inglés. A mi le parece que no debe ser un asunto de uno o el otro, pero puede ser asunto de ambos/los dos. O aun todos, los 215, tal vez.
Si has repasado los archivos aquí, puede haber notado que varias veces he apegado mensajes escritos en inglés y español, los dos, o he traducido algún mensaje desde una lengua al otra. De esta manera, puedo agregar más a los incluidos, en vez de cambiar un grupo por otro más pequeño.
También, cuando leo un mensaje que me ayuda mucho, tradúzcalo para ayudar otros que no pudo leerlo antes.
Por esta razón, si no te molestes, traduciré tu historia de Francesa al inglés para los que no comprenden el español. Ojalá que otros les gustaría traducirlo en otras lenguas, tal vez como italiano, chino, japonés, francés, alemán, y holandés, o algunos que serán de ayuda para alguien. Este trabajo será práctica muy útil por nosotros, y estará muy acogedor para los otros, ¿no crees?
Hi Arnaud,
I agree with you completely about the number of people we leave behind speaking English all the time. It's not right to always use English when there are members who don't speak English.
On the other hand, we want to be able to speak to the greatest majority of members, and these, unfortunately, are the English speakers. But to me, it doesn't seem to be a question of either/or. I'd like to consider a both/and solution. Or perhaps a solution for all 215, in our case.
If you've been through the archives, you will see that I've put up a few messages in both English and Spanish, like this one. Other times, when I've found a particularly funny joke or a very helpful message, I have translated it so that it will be accessible to more users –as I hope to do, if you don't mind, with your wonderful history of the French Revolution. In this way, I will include English speakers who don't read Spanish. I hope others will be interested in coming and translating it again, into Italian, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch-any language that might be helpful to another uses. This is helpful, not only to the translator, who gets some useful practice from the materials available here on the site, but also to the speakers of the translator's other language, who will get to read your informative report—don't you think?
Cheers!
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: Spanish; English
This is a reply to message # 49760
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| 49897 |
Quentin Reply Part I of VI
Hi Quentin!
Sorry I took so long getting back to you. I can tend to be a terribly chaotic guy. I need to find a better way to prioritize my goals, to make sure the things I want the most happen first. More often, they just get lost in a stack of papers. If they ever get done at all, it has nothing to do with how important they are to me.
Anyway, once again, I am delighted to have you in on our discussions. If you're a friend of Arnaud's, I have no doubt that you'll have many challenging questions and ideas.
I have been to France, as it happens. I was in the Air Force for some years, stationed in Wiesbaden Germany. My fiancée, Jennie, of the time had a father, Butch, who was often in Paris on business, and we met him their a couple of times. The three of us stayed in hotels off the Champs-Elysées, not far from L' arc de Triomphe. Jennie and Butch knew something of Paris—I'd never been before, so they showed me around. I got to see many of the big American tourist attractions: Le Cathédrale de Notre Dame, le musée du louver. Notre Dame was really exciting, of course, but I have never had any experience in my life like being in the Louvre. What an amazing place. I wanted to get a flat down the street and live there and study the museum for a year.
Sadly, that is all I've seen of France, except for the rail journey to Paris and back to Germany those times. I'm embarrassed, really. I could have seen much more of France, and I just didn't take advantage of the opportunity while I had it.
Likewise, I know very little about differences between Americans and French. Clearly, Europeans in general have learned how to deal with problems that Americans still deny. Until the 1960's, Americans were still enjoying the largess from all the territory we stole from the native Americans and from Mexico. We're finally running out of what used to seem like infinite room to grow, infinite resources, and we have to accept the fact that the world is only so big. In Europe you learned that long ago, because you have long since grown enough to bump into each other and get into fights over the limited space you are forced to share.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part II of VI)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 49667
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| 49898 |
Quentin Reply Part II of VI
I always feel that Europeans have more of a sense of community than we do in the U.S. We have our legends about lonely cowboys on the range making it by their own effort. This is just another form of our American Adam myth, responsible for most of our stories that you may know, like Huckleberry Finn or Thoreau's Walden. And Horatio Alger, whom I've never read, but who is so famous here, you know who he is, even if you've never seen any of the books. Even if you don't know the name, you know the story line –rags to riches. It doesn't matter where you come from, but you can be President of the U.S. or you can be Nelson Rockefeller if you just stay honest and work hard (Of course, we never mention that our presidents seem to have bought their degrees from Yale, or that Nelson Rockefeller's hard work was to figure out how to make other people's work enrich his own bank account.)
Of course, I know nothing about politics in France, but there does seem to be a huge connection between people's political values and where they get their information. I would be surprised if it were otherwise. But, too, it's hard to tell which direction the relation goes, and I'm sure that it goes different ways depending on the individual.
There are many people who get their views from the mainstream media: Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, what have you, and they tend to be fairly middle of the road. We all know that a lot of information never appears in the main stream media, and many of us listen to public radio stations, which tend to offer a more liberal presentation of events. But even public radio stations vary. I was shocked to hear a report on a public radio station from Berkeley (this was some years ago) claiming that Wall Street had written to tell then-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo that if he hoped to continue receiving financial assistance from them, he would put a stop to the unrest in Chiapas by whatever means it would take. This news report was aired some time after we heard of a terrible government massacre of men, women and children in that part of Mexico. I was aware that this particular radio station was extremely left-wing, even by my own very liberal standards, and I found myself thinking that this story sounded just a little too much like the Monday night movies to me. I figured that more information would come to light and it would turn out that someone had misunderstood something or jumped to conclusions somewhere. So you can imagine my shock and horror a month later, when I saw the story again, in the San Francisco Chronicle, a very mainstream news source. I learned to pay more attention to my public radio station from Berkeley and to have more respect for their reports.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part III of VI)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 49667
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| 49899 |
Quentin Reply Part III of VI
But as I watch the elections, I am at a loss to understand how people can think a brainless oaf like George Bush could provide us with leadership. He promised us jobs and economic recovery and national security (which, coming from a republican means jobs for the rich, tax cuts and more loopholes for the rich, lots more national security than we need, which is always really good for the rich, and of course, since we really need to find a way to pay for all of this, we'll turn back the clock on all of the critical social programs that are giving lower middle class, working class, and poor people a fair chance at "the American Dream" Also, let's go back to the days when abortion was illegal and women were being murdered by back-alley abortionists who had no accountability because their job was illegal. I'd better shut up. I could go on and on. I know that there are some sensible, well-intentioned republicans in the world, I've met them. And the Republican Party has some values I respect a great deal. But I can't find any word to describe the Republican Party de-facto as it exists in this country on the agenda that it pursues, other than evil. What they're trying to do is simply wrong, and a huge mass of the country, mostly people who stand the most to lose a great deal by their success, is happily cheering them on. I don't know if I'll ever understand this.
I don't know about the media. There are some issues now and again, but over all, I find them reasonably objective. Of course, there's no way to put the news together without making necessary filtering decisions, and these decisions are always ideologically driven. But they don't seem to me to promote one political agenda over the other overall. They do obviously favor democrat/republican candidates over any independent party candidate, and that is wrong, but it is more a problem with our political system than with the media. The media cover the candidates who are going to make an impact on our lives, and most of the time, under our present system, those are going to all be republicans and democrats.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part IV of VI)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 49667
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| 49900 |
Quentin Reply Part IV of VI
The media did get involved with Perot and with Anderson, because they were obviously big news. Even if they weren't likely to win the election, they had tremendous power to upset it, like Nader did in 2000. Whenever you have a third-party candidate who's polling higher than the difference between the two big guys, and who seems to be taking voters from the guy in front, you've got the makings of an upset. Of course, this is why you'll see a lot of anger from democrats directed towards Nader. Statistically, it's pretty clear that if Nader had dropped out of the election before Election Day, Al Gore would have one in 2000, and we wouldn't be living this eight-year nightmare we're suffering through. That's true enough, but is based on some ridiculous idea that Nader's votes somehow "belonged" to Gore and that Nader "stole"' them from him. Of course, there's been no evidence of any ballot tampering by the Nader Campaign, and if you believe in democracy, you got to believe that votes belong to voters until they are cast. So if Nader upset the Gore campaign, it has to be because Gore didn't take enough votes from Bush to cover himself with Nader. Nader has always been a third-party guy, and had no obligation of any kind to the Democrats.
Another really big impact of a significant campaign by a "third-party" candidate is that it does have a tremendous influence on the winner's agenda after the campaign, and this is where independent parties really do have some power in American politics. The core of these campaigns, certainly of Anderson's and Perot's campaigns both were about balancing the Federal budget. When ten or twenty percent of the voters are backing the guy who promises to balance the budget, it sends a pretty clear message to Washington, and the issues ends up staying on the table through the following term. OF course, this is nice and I appreciate it, but I don't see this as any substitute for a viable multiple-party system.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part V of VI)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 49667
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| 49901 |
Quentin Reply Part V of VII
Anyway, there are way too many Americans who get their ideas about the world from…I don't even know what people are watching on TV these days. Survivor, I guess, and maybe something like Jerry Springer (Not that I'd admit it if we were, but I promise. I have no relationship to Jerry. The last name is just a terrible, unfortunate coincidence. ) Like any human culture, we are still very suspicious of anything that seems strange to us. I suppose I shouldn't get so angry, when we discriminate against people who come into the country, or against homosexuals. But it really makes me crazy. It seems like the Civil War, the Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee, the Haymarket affair, none of these things get through to us. We keep finding new ways to be just as sick as we always were. It's no longer fashionable to discriminate against African-Americans or Mexican-Americans, so now we'll just discriminate against foreigners in their own countries like Iraq, or Homosexuals, who are really easy to pick on because we're a good Christian Nation and God hates gays (so we're told), or people who want to come to the United States to work or to become U.S. Citizens.
Anyway, yes, we have a lot of values that I can't understand. We are deeply involved with our TV Sets, and it makes sense that there is a significant connection there. I know that I grew up in the 60's and 70's, and in those decades, the TV's were telling us a lot about liberty, civil rights, feminism, cultural tolerance, and a society moving towards greater value of diversity. Archie Bunker from All in the Family was funny because he was so ignorant, and we couldn't believe that there were real people who thought as he did. We were getting in touch with our inner liberal.
More recently, it's shows like Married with Children or Bart Simpson. Al Bundy talks very much like Archie Bunker, but now we're laughing "out of the other side of our mouths." He says things that cross our minds and that we're ashamed of even thinking. Bundy makes it okay to be Archie Bunker. He helps us to get in touch with our inner bigot. Now there's something to be proud of.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part VI of VII)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 49667
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| 49902 |
Quentin Reply Part VI of VII
Maybe that's why it seems okay to voters in California to pass an amendment to the constitution saying we're not going to offer any more health care to the children of people who came into the country through unofficial means. We figure, "why should we give health care to people who broke the law to come into the country? Let them go home and get health care in their native country." This ignores so many important facts, of course. People are desperate to get here because they're not able to meet their families' needs in their own country. They're here, and they're going to stay. We can throw them out, and they'll come back. So we have to find a way to deal with it. We need to give health care and education to their children, who did not choose to be born in another country and did not choose to be brought here to be treated as criminals. If we don't keep them healthy, they will simply create a public health problem, and we'll have to spend the health dollars anyway, only by waiting, we'll make the problem much more expensive. Yes, it's a serious problem that "illegal aliens" as we try to call them get free health care that is not available to many citizens who can't afford health insurance and need this kind of health care, too. But the answer is not to remove the service, but to make sure it's available to everyone who needs it. We play way too many games with health care in this country. We've got to stop screwing around with this stuff and start taking care of people when their health care needs are still really inexpensive. We create such outrageous problems for ourselves.
And, by the way, why do these people come here anyway? Do the sneak across the boarder, move into an apartment somewhere and start collecting unemployment and welfare? I'm sure a lot of voters must think this is true. The fact is, these people come here because they get jobs that pay them enough money to support their families, something they're unable to do in Mexico. If that's true, then, the criminals are NOT the foreign citizens coming to earn money and feed their families. The criminals are the companies that hire undocumented workers, offering them wages that draw them across the boarder. If our companies weren't paying them good wages, they wouldn't have any reason to come. But we want to have our cake and eat it too. We want to hire workers to do our ugly jobs for us at low (by our standards) wages, but then we want the immigration service to throw these people out of the country as soon as they need some public services that might come out of our tax dollars. Sure is rough, doing business in the United States.
(Continued: See Quentin Reply Part VII of VII)
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 49667
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| 49903 |
Quentin Reply Part VII of VII
President Bush. Agh. You're going to get me started again. I think his people get to say whatever they want off the record. I think he would kick their behinds if they ever said anything "off message" publicly, but I think this is true of any President. The mission of the Whitehouse is to provide national leadership, and everyone, especially the key officers have to project a unified, perfectly disciplined image to the public. That goes with the job. I'm certain that, off the record, Bush will generally ignore anything he doesn't like or doesn't understand. And I don't think that Bush is running the country. I think Dick Cheney is. I think that, like the stereotype of a wise wife, Cheney is adept at listening carefully to what Bush wants to do, showing Bush how to get it, and in so doing, getting his own agenda on the table, having convinced the president that it was his idea in the first place.
But you're right, if you think that opposing viewpoints have no role in the Whitehouse. Bush has made that nice and clear up front. Facts don't seem to have much role in the White House.
Well, I've managed to go on forever. I'm going to go back and thin this out a little before I send it.
Thanks again for the message. I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Mark
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 49667
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| 50032 |
Media Madness Part I of II
Hi Arnaud,
I~{!/~}m certainly not saying that our media is perfect, and I don~{!/~}t deny that there have been some horrible goof-ups now and then. Certainly there are problems with our public media, and as the large networks continue to snake around and remove FCC anti-trust regulations, things are certainly not going in a positive direction.
The problem is, what would you do to fix the system? As long as the U.S. continues to be a capitalist republic, the primary motive of the media will continue to be profits and market share. This means that they will air what people want to watch, and the sad truth is that sex and violence always sells. I would love to see a whole lot more socially valuable content, but then, that~{!/~}s why we have public stations and why I use them.
There is a tremendous amount of pressure on reporters to ~{!0~}scoop~{!1~} the competition by getting their reports in quickly. But these people are professionals. They know that that is what the job consists of when they decide to take it, and their job is to excel at getting and confirming the facts quickly and keeping their own network out in front. This is the basis of free market competition, and it is true of any industry. This is the market system we have chosen to work in. So if Dan Rather (whom I~{!/~}ve always respected deeply) makes his allegations about the president without having all of his evidence in order beforehand, he lets us all down. He fails in his efforts to bring the truth to life, and he fails to behave professionally as a news reporter. It broke my heart, what happened, but I have to confess that Rather bungled his job worse than a first year rookie. I don~{!/~}t know how it happened, but there it is.
The Florida election announcement in 2000 was also a terrible blunder on the part of the media. I have no doubt that it may well have altered the outcome of the election. But that, I blame, not on the media, who are human beings with a job to do, and should be expected to make mistakes now and then, but on the Democratic party, for failing to do what it takes to get a solid message out to the voters and provide the party leadership we need in order to win the White House. It is wrong for one news station to skew the outcome of the election, but it is wrong that the Democratic party let the election get so close.
This doesn~{!/~}t justify the irresponsible behavior of the station in question. Whoever decided to make that announcement and whoever made it should both have been fired. Nonetheless, I hold the news media responsible for reporting news, and I hold the political parties responsible for getting their candidates elected. But I attribute this to incompetence of individuals, not to fundamental problems with the media.
(Continued: See Media Madness Part II of II)
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Language pair: French; English
This is a reply to message # 49949
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| 50033 |
Media Madness Part II of II
The fundamental problems with the media, I think, are that they don~{!/~}t take enough responsibility for raising the bar on national / social discourse. They pretty much give us whatever we want, and for our part, we take very little responsibility for what we want, demanding lots of sex and drugs and spectacle (In Rome, they called it bread and circuses~{!*~}nothing~{!/~}s changed, just the technology), and then we demonize the media for giving us so much trash and so little meaningful content. Meanwhile, we and the media continue pointing fingers at one another, and they keep giving us lots of trash, and we keep enjoying it as we continue to complain that it is all trash.
The continuing reduction of competition among the major media corporations, of course, is lowering the bar further, giving media companies more and more autonomy in constructing programming. And they continue providing what makes them money.
I agree that the media tend to be a lot kinder to the president than he deserves, and that puzzles me. On the other hand, I don~{!/~}t see them hiding important facts that we need to have in order to know what is going on. We know about Abu Ghraib. We know about the results of Afghanistan, we know that Iraq is still in some real chaos. I have no reason to believe that important facts that we need are being withheld by the media.
I agree that a free and productive media system is crucial to a free democracy. But we still have yet to design a good media system that is motivated primarily by the quest for the must informative, clear, accurate, and timely news, rather than by profit.
But your very last comment is the one that makes me certain that there is no media system better than ours. For all of its blunders and fumbles, the fact that our media program will stand up publicly and confess them convinces me that they are doing the right work and they are constructed effectively.
The other thing I find it important to remember when I~{!/~}m evaluating someone else~{!/~}s work, is that it is always very easy from the outside to point fingers and tell them they~{!/~}re doing this all wrong, but that~{!/~}s very different from being the one doing the work and having everyone else criticizing me. I think that, all things considered, the news media probably do more well than they foul up. I~{!/~}m not ready to fire them all yet :-).
Of course, the President is a different matter entirely. I have done my very best to put myself in his shoes, and the only thing I can come up with is that he is a willful, ignorant, fearful, dangerous man. If I had my way, we~{!/~}d have fired him a lot time ago. Of course, I~{!/~}d never have given him the job in the first place. Just his record in Texas on capital punishment alone was enough to convince me that whatever this guy uses for a conscience has nothing to do with justice.
Talk to you later.
Mark
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 49949
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| 50185 |
Re:Re:Media Madness Part II of II
It sound like we're pretty much in agreement around most of this stuff. The big difference between us that I can see is that I am focused on the full half of the glass and you seem to be looking more at the empty half.
I think, though, that the idea of "introducing"' ethics to the media –your wording suggesting that the media have never heard of ethics before—might be rather untimely. I will grant, certainly that they do not always follow them perfectly, but I can't agree that they've never heard of them before.
As to your reading of the news as uninformative—I can't speak to whatever news stories you refer to, and it's very likely we haven't seen the same ones (I don't watch CNN much). I'm not sure in specific terms what kinds of questions you are expecting the media to answer, and what kinds of information you're getting instead. Yet I feel moved to suggest the following, just on the outside chance that it might be helpful: People often want the media to give us definitive information about things. We want them to make it easy for us to decide whom to vote for. But that's not really their job. They are responsible for providing us with a conduit of information. They can hire analysts to read the facts for us and offer their opinions as to what it means, but nobody really knows, ultimately, what it all means, and it's all guessing anyway. Finally, all we can really do is take it all in and then trust our own instincts when it comes to decision making.
I'm not saying that the media always do a good job of reporting all of the facts, but I find that they do more often then they don't
It is true that we cannot know what the media choose to omit from their reports, but only up to a point. You may recall my story of hearing a report of Wall Street meddling in the affairs of Mexico in Chiapas. I know that the mainstream media chose to ignore this story for a month before they finally ran it.
Something I really appreciate about being multi-lingual is that I can browse through international news reports and learn something about events that U.S. media may choose to ignore, but which other countries find important. That can often be very interesting. And of course, I think you and I both agree that it is important to read some news sources outside the mainstream, who will also be willing to run stories that are ignored by the biggies. Obviously, there is no way to get ALL the news—and I wouldn't want to; I do have a live to live when I'm done bringing myself up to currency. I find it important to strike a balance between maintaining a healthy skepticism about the news and trusting professional news reporters to know their job. If I want to try to do their jobs for them, I'm in the wrong career.
Á bientôt,
Mark
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 50118
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| 50310 |
Re:The results of the dialogue. Part 1 of 1 (can you beleive it?)
Arnaud My own thinking 042305
Hi Arnaud,
Once again, I think we agree far more than we disagree. It is important to note that the word "Media" derives from the Latin, and is therefore a plural form for the singular, "medium," meaning a method or substance used for a given purpose. Thus, when I refer to the "media," I’m referring to all of the different technologies by which information is distributed on a mass scale, whether that be books, magazines, newspapers, television, radio, cable, Internet—anything you can name.
I agree completely that print media are far more detailed and informative than television news broadcasts, but there are other programs, such as McNeil-Lehrer, or 60 Minutes that provide more detailed reports of important issues. As I look over your reading list, I have to say that it seems you must be very well informed.
If I have led you to believe that I advocate letting somebody else tell me what to think of the facts, I have sadly misrepresented my views. What I meant to imply is that it is not practical for me to do the work of five news crews, sifting through all of the worlds events every day and deciding for myself which ones require my immediate attention. I still have to earn my own keep, complete my school work and find time to relax with my girlfriend (not to mention posting a note or two now and again at MLE). I could do none of these other things if I were selecting my own news stories from all of the events taking place in the world every day. I have to trust the professional's opinions, to some extent, with regards to what requires my attention.
I do believe in listening to news commentator's opinions as to what the fact mean, again, because they are more experienced and skilled than I in providing news analysis. It is why they are paid to do the job. That does not mean that I don't listen to them critically and take responsibility for questioning their thinking. It is their job to do the work, and like a good supervisor, it is my job to evaluate the quality of the work they have done, treat their views as "recommended interpretation," and then make up my own mind as to a final analysis.
You'll see something of my process if you read the post I will be making shortly, on the EU Constitution discussion. I will discuss what is being said by various experts on the Constitution, and what I happen to think of their views.
:-)
Talk to you soon!
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 50272
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