Hey Folks, I am a newbie here at the "old" American Century. I wanted to make an introduction and jump right into dialogue, so I thought I would start a few threads. This one I posted on another forum so excuse the built in context references.


Hello All who may wander in here….

I wanted to let out a personal rant before I address the thread.

Ever since I began ranting at the RR I have been constantly ill at ease with the practice of being engaged in this forum. I have been frequently inspired to withdraw, reinvent a better approach and return. By ranting I eventually always reach a plateau that feels stale, sometimes unhealthy and unlike myself.

I far and away prefer just lurking and reading to being involved in the debate. I feel more intact, more healthy and more like myself when I merely lurk.

But I also am captivated by what happens here. The politicization of my soul, your soul, our collective soul.

I watch the conversations here and pay much attention to the debates that draw people in most effectively. People love the charged particles of current events that are sensational, divisive, and politically potent.

Like war, Downing street memos, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, the Palestinian Israeli conflict, Iranian nuclear ambitions.

But present a topic that is hundreds of times more important, like the never ending standoff between nuclear powers, and hardly a soul will bite.

Or introduce a topic like challenging the practicality of war as anything more than the greatest threat to the survival of our species that we will ever have control over, and hardly a ranter will venture an opinion.

I feel like ranting political issues distracts me deeply from my own beliefs and entangles me in webs of artificial conflict.

When this happens I always retreat from the rant to rediscover my own soul.


Has anybody here ever considered that politics is more or less designed to steal your soul?

I don’t know if I can make a strong case with my language skills, but maybe a bit of imagination and insight on your part might bridge the gap.

Politics is an activity designed to serve the collective process of society in self governance. At least in theory.

But in practice politics is often the manipulation of ideas, the polarization of camps, the saturation of debate with artificial paradigms. Occasionally it is the disclosure of and creation of information designed to serve preset agendas. Other times politics is the concealment of the truth for similar purposes.

Politics can be a win at all costs enterprise, it can foster wars, geopolitical alliances, it can require assassinations.

Politics is the competition for power and conquest. It is the struggle for freedoms and liberties, it is a battle waged in the collective minds, and the individual minds of those who are on the playing field of power in the world.

We are the pons in a game that seeks control of the world. Not a conspiracy, but a game shared by millions to influence and glean benefits from the world at large via political means, each for ones own, and for ones own party.

And in the battles of ideas and ideologies that politics generates to meet its needs our own minds become absorbed and consumed by issues perspectives and polarizations that are not of our own individual making.

Politics seeks to trap, and detain our sensibilities and to control the focus of our field of view into sets of organized issues that are about anything except our actual and real lives, nation and well being.

I suggest politics today is on a mission to steal our souls as ranters, as free citizens and as individual men and women. Whilst our eyes are guided by the smooth moves of the magicians, our wallets are cleaned, our mind is trained and our beliefs are formed for us, with invisible hands.

You've come to the right place, loosecannon. I haven't been here very long myself, but it is a great relief after being on boards where group think was preferred to individual thought.

Ah yes, those "preset agendas." I know them well.

And one's own board, or one's party's board as the case may be.

The purpose of some boards is to carry out that nefarious mission. Just as misguided loyalty to an artificially formed and artificially bonded group often leads our young service personnel to their deaths, the same type of misguided loyalty to an artificially formed and bonded group on a web board can lead us to the results you cite. And then we go forth in all our misguided loyalty to help train the beliefs and cleanse the wallets of others. It happened to me, and I know others who were similarly duped.

OAC/WRS is different. I had trouble believing it at first, as I ran into some of the typical "lesser evilism" and appeals to my nonexistent loyalty here that I'd run into on other boards, but for once I was permitted to articulate my thoughts and while there were a few of the usual and inevitable talking points and personal attacks, they soon receded into rational arguments, which then receded either into agreement, agreement to think things out and discuss them without rancor, respect for my right to have my own position, or silence. I was so shocked you could have knocked me over with a feather.

OAC/WRS is political in the sense that a lot of political stuff gets discussed here. But it is not political in the sense of attempting to shape our loyalties, cleanse our minds, or even cleanse our wallets. It takes money to run the board, but not a dime of it is wasted on paid political party consultants, paid political party dirty tricks operatives, or paid political party fundraisers.

I don't drink myself, but if you want to have a party, political or otherwise, I'm sure somebody will chip in for some brewskis.

Thanks Folkie, Yes I get a feeling for the board here, a kinda mello, unusually quiet kind of discussion.

It is refreshing and somehow, quiet.

There is a sort of tranquility here, must be the blue background......

Well, I could be all wrong, of course. There are quite a few folks here who seem to want to draw people into what my more radical acquaintances usually refer to scornfully as electoral politics. They keep dreamteaming tickets like it was a commercial sport, which it is.

But at least they'll stop short of calling you a traitor and banning you from the board if you don't get sucked in.

That's funny Folkie,

I get totally burnt periodically on current politics.

I tend to think that very little of it means much anyway and reach overload.

Any industry that churns 24/365 generating info spew specifically to keep my head space used up, whether it is Michael Jackson or Michael Moore,.....

Well I am sceptical.

Besides there is ALWAYS a bigger picture.


AND anymore the dream team candidates are increasing interchangable.

"As I looked from elephant to mule and back to elephant again, pretty soon I could not tell who was who and which was which."