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[Graknorke]

I really don't care if someone's a paedophile

Clearly you're an enemy of freedom. It's a well-known fact that paedophiles supplied a good chunk of Al Qaeda's funding.

Is this a reference to something?
I don't get it.

[Zaerosz]

I really don't care if someone's a paedophile

Clearly you're an enemy of freedom. It's a well-known fact that paedophiles supplied a good chunk of Al Qaeda's funding.

Is this a reference to something?
I don't get it.

Blind, stereotypical USA patriotism and the War On Terror..

[DrPoo]

I really don't care if someone's a paedophile

Clearly you're an enemy of freedom. It's a well-known fact that paedophiles supplied a good chunk of Al Qaeda's funding.

Is this a reference to something?
I don't get it.

Blind, stereotypical USA patriotism and the War On Terror..

Theres also some people who want to original concept of America restored, without the archeic misogynism, slavery etc. If you get what i mean.

[kaijyuu]

So, a nostalgia induced fantasy? Leave it to Beaver is but a tiny fraction of the time and culture it's depicting, for example. You can't just cherry pick the "good parts" from the past and add to the "good parts" of today either, since much is incompatible.

[Josephus]

To be fair, the myth of a better time is an incredibly powerful narrative. It's no wonder that it manages to capture peoples' imagination so easily.

[SalmonGod]

I don't understand what part of American history is worthy of being idealized...

[kaijyuu]

Depends what you deem to be "worthy" I suppose. No point in human history has been sparkling wholesome awesomeness without fault.


Or perhaps idealization is inherently a bad thing, since it's not indicative of reality.

[A Spoony Bard]

Just realized this as I booted it up. How many Steam and Desura users that legitimately buy their games and install them through it are going to get hit with false claims by their ISPs? Are they going to find a way to tear down Steam and Desura with this as a BS tactic? And what about other legitimately free games that use torrents as their primary means of download/installation (a fair number exist like Command and Conquer and Mechwarrior); of course with the consent of torrenting by their creators?

I hope this happens. If it does, it will open the door to anti-trust and racketeering charges, that would be pushed by groups that have the money and power to sustain them.

I know this is a rather old post, but Diablo 3 uses P2P, so if false claims are made against any P2P actions the MAFIAA will probably get screwed over by companies that legally use P2P to update and distribute their games a files, not to mention provoking a financial goliath like Blizzard.

Also, does anyone have the list of the ISPs that will be monitoring downloads, or are all ISPs monitoring downloads?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't understand what part of American history is worthy of being idealized...

There was the part where we broke off of a powerful empire and formed a sovereign secular republic guaranteeing the rights of its citizens on the coastline of a mostly unexplored continent. And indirectly contributed to the start of the French Revolution by bankrupting the monarchy as they funded our rebellion to antagonize Britain.

Then again, there was slavery and killing off 90+% of the Native American population while pushing the survivors onto reservations.

Then there was the part where we put down a rebellion of our own people, partly because of said slavery, and in only two decades passed two amendments that took black Americans from slaves to voters.

On the other hand, the Civil War wasn't about ending slavery, and many black Americans weren't in a position to vote for nearly a hundred years after that, amendments notwithstanding.

There was the part where the New Deal vastly increased the lot of average Americans....

...and the part where federal agents and corporate lackeys gunned down unionizers in broad daylight.

The part where we fought three hyper-expansionist Fascist states at once for the survival of the free world....

...and imprisoned some of our own people for resembling them, followed by nuking two of the enemy's cities to try and end the war as painlessly as possible.

The part where we took up the position of the world's democratic superpower to hold off the spread of Communist dictatorships....

...but believed in Senator McCarthy and came close to ending human civilization in a rain of nuclear fire.


We don't really need to be idealizing anything, but that doesn't mean that there is not plenty of good to be found in American history, just as there as plenty of bad.

[Frumple]

I don't understand what part of American history is worthy of being idealized...

Innit a lot of it not so much idealization as being invented whole cloth, though? Actual myth instead of nostalgia or idealized history. The one that crosses my mind most often is the "christian founders" silliness or certain groups raging hardon for the puritans in defiance of actual history, but that's far from the only ones...

Re: MSH: Better put, in a lot of ways. My issue is more with the stuff that's just blatantly wrong and being pulled out of someone's hat to support some kind of agenda, yah. Shit gets annoying.

Or perhaps idealization is inherently a bad thing, since it's not indicative of reality.

Honestly, it depends on what's being idealized and what you're trying to accomplish by doing so -- idealization is almost necessarily a thing done as a means of social engineering -- and it's a hell of a tightrope to walk.

We idealize rationality and generally consider that a good thing, ferex, but most of the defensibility of that idealization comes from practical considerations (getting the best results out of doing so) rather than any particularly close connection to reality. Aristotle still has one of the better one-line descriptions for humans, and "rational" isn't involved

I guess you could say that it's no more an inherently bad than what is existent in reality inherently a good thing. Our reaction on a social and personal level and the extent either methodological tool is beneficial depends entirely on the goal, and even then may shift in importance based on which step toward the goal you're currently addressing.

[SalmonGod]

You summed it up beautifully, MSH.  Various people will hold any of those positives you listed up on a pedestal and claim we're so great for it, but every supposed great moment or period in American history is usually nothing more than a positive spin or lucky side-effect of what was otherwise a bunch of very negative stuff... that's my own interpretation, anyway...

You even went a lot softer on it than I would have.  For instance, I would have mentioned how we didn't just hold off the spread of Communist dictatorships, but violently destabilized many peaceful nations just for choosing to elect a socialist leader, arguably causing more and longer lasting damage than any of the fascist states we'd just contributed to defeating.

But yeah, I agree that idealization in general is just unrealistic.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The argument I am making is not the argument you think I am making. There is genuine good and genuine bad all throughout American history.

I cannot think of a specific example of us violently destabilizing a nation that democratically elected socialists to power, though.

[SalmonGod]

The argument I am making is not the argument you think I am making. There is genuine good and genuine bad all throughout American history.

I cannot think of a specific example of us violently destabilizing a nation that democratically elected socialists to power, though.

The "Dirty War" in South America during the Cold War, which involved hundreds of thousands of disappearances, intense oppression, and a general destabilization that some areas have still not recovered from.

[Sheb]

Yeah, or the removal of Mossadegh in Iran and the establishment of the Shah's dictatorship.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

i'm generally the level headed guy that stands up in defense of the usa and the "democratic world" in my circle of pinko-commie friends. then sometimes stuff comes up that reminds me of iran's case and the bright future it could would have had and the "free world" destroyed