Quote:
Originally Posted by Neal Stevens
Well, no one put a gun to your head and said you had to live here. 
At least, now we know that stereotypes are always true.
I don't try to convince that Texas is a good place to live for anyone, except myself. |
I'm sorry, Mookie. I was thinking about my remarks today while at work, I didn't mean to come off so rude. Please stay in Texas, we need people to counterbalance guys like this nutty judge.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CCIP
Yep, and in some sense the US is blessed to be as stable as it has been. There is very little living memory of uncertainty and social collapse in the US, and while most people know it can happen, it's not an immediate reality for most people living there. So that does give many a somewhat naive perspective, and I don't mean that as an insult - just as a suggestion that for most, something like a revolution is so surreal that they can't even picture it as anything other than a bad movie plot. Then compare this to, for example, people from Eastern Europe. There's some massive changes in their recent memory. For me, having lived through the collapse of the communist system is really a bit of an eye-opener. Things can and do change violently, for better or/and worse. The good news is that even massive changes aren't all people cut them out to be. In these cycles of social and political change, people who have little personal experience of them tend to see something apocalyptic. In reality, stuff happens, life goes on. Instead of panicking and stocking guns, I think people need to be more open-minded and proactive about changes they see happening around them, especially if they live in a society where it's their right (and even obligation) to do something about their own civic circumstances.
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I think that's true in large parts. Social stabilty is hard to gauge. I'm sure the States weren't really expect the Civil War to be what it ended up being, when they were pulling the country apart over slavery in the decades before 1861. Same with WWI: until armies began mobilizing, I bet most people just did not think a war on that scale was possible. Just look at 9/11: how many of us really paid any attention to Al Quiada? It only takes a spark to set off dynamite.