Dammit, it's way too early/late. Oh well, here I go.
The Man In Black wrote:
And Abunai, you have an unhealthy lack of respect for the "common man." I'll tell you strait out, the "common man" is a lot better than you make him out to be. You also misrepresent EVERYTHING THAT FUCKING HAPPENED. I also hate this condescending attitude- "the common person sucks, only someone of MY caliber can see through the OBVIOUS lies of TEH ADMINISTRATION!!!1111111ONE."
How many Germans were responsible for 12-7? Different circumstances, you say? I really don't think you can say so after looking at available data.
Let me rephrase every mention of the public I've ever said as "the voting public." Significantly cuts down on the number of people I'm insulting, you see.
Many that vote are often easily led around by the charismatic politicians or spokemen for causes that have a vested interest in seeing certain things happen. In fact, it's often only this person that gets the person off their butt to do what little they can for such-and-such a cause or whatever (including voting). Thus the seemingly stupid things the public does as a whole.
Those that know what's going on tend to be some of the more cynical people in my experience. The informed and realistic people often aren't in denial about how little their individual vote counts.
Basically, stupid/uninformed/easily led people tend to do what they're told, and that includes voting.
Those that are in denial aren't the only ones that vote, but I'd say it's a big enough percentage to matter.
Teh OBVIOUS lies of TEH ADMINISTRATION!!! : I'm going to try to clarify my position a bit. Most would understand it quite easily. And then understand something else just as easily. Critical thinking is lacking, pretty much. I honestly don't know whether TEH ADMINISTRATION1!!1! believed such things could be true or not, but I bet they thought were possibilities (justified or not, again I don't know). But so many of their points turned into so much shit that they just tried to ignore and move on, instead of saying, "Oh right, we were a bit hasty saying this, apparently, or something." It's stupid to be pissed off about this, yeah, but I am anyways. Maybe I'll get tired enough by this shit that I'll just ignore it all in the future.
With the 9/11 thing I was referring to the poll about how many people could correctly answer the question. The results were sad, and somewhat justifying of cyncisism.
And yes, I'll freely admit I have somewhat of a superiority complex. It's pretty much only been reinforced until I came here to the boards. I've been working on it, though, and I've gotten a lot better in recent years. No longer in an ivory tower, I'm now just in a little ivory bungalow. Still pisses me off to the extreme whenever I'm wrong, or didn't think of something important, though. Like all the times I've been fooled by the media, the administration, or even just people in general.
I'll also freely admit I can't think of what 12-7 you are talking about. Go me.
Heh. With every passing rant, you remind me of my friend Nathaniel (the one who said if it was old testament days, he'd have to kill me). And I mean that in a good way.
So sorry if I offended you somehow.