That's cuz Charlie Don't Surf

Ouch. The Thatcher and Reagan era of hopelessness and despair.

I totally love Meryl Streep, she is a phenomenal master artist, and I would love to see her work in this film. Thanks for your eloquent review.

But, honestly, from my perspective as a lifetime progressive activist, I already know that I will not be able to stomach revisiting the awful nightmare of the hopelessness and despair of that era. It was like some insidious propaganda kicked in all at once, and numbed the hearts and minds of most of the western world.

Conservatives took it upon themselves to use wealth, deceit, and corruption to make a concerted sociopathic effort to retard collective human kindness and compassion, evolution and progress, environmental sanity, and basically every endeavor rooted in sincere human decency.

They succeeded. We would be light years ahead of where we are now in terms of truly human progress if it were not for conservatives taking love and squeezing it until it bled in their greedy fascist fists.

Just thinking about it makes me sad, and actually slightly nauseous. I hope the film does not glorify this era in any way.

In 1980, humanity came to a fork in the road, and chose the path to a dead end.


We are just now, 30+ years later, beginning to find the way home again.

Occupy.

I believe that he may possibly be doing the best he can within the boundaries of what he is

permitted to do under the authority of the 1%.

Blind faith in religion takes the ambiguity out of life/existence for conservatives.

Since they cannot tolerate gray areas, and basically everything has to be black and white in order to be tolerable for them, blind faith in religious book/religious leaders saves them from having to think. It's basically a matter of comfort and convenience for them.

"Why do I exist? Because the Grand Wazoo in the sky, or whatever the deity du jour is, made me, and sent me this book, or golden tablets, or a magical duck, whatever, to tell me what is true, so I don't really need to think about it anymore. So don't stress me out with all those disturbing questions about life, existence, truth, or the validity of authority. All my answers are right here in this book, and this book trumps all reason and logic, because the Grand Wazoo in the sky told us so, because it says so right here in this book. All scripture comes from the Grand Wazoo. And things really do go better with Coca-Cola."

I'm not saying that there is not a Creator, Love, Light, Life, Universe, what have you, I'm just saying few or no conservatives can really grasp this concept because a being of this nature would be basically too unknowable and scary to think about for a conservative, and therefore would create ambiguity. So they would prefer to believe in a book, because all they ever need is right there, down in black and white. That's why there is so much bible and koran , etc, worship going around.

Belief in and worship of a book helps quell the overwhelming, crippling, devastating fear of the unknown that exists in the consciousness of every RW conservative fundy. Consequently, the PTB preys on and perpetuates the fear in the conservative so that they will never break free and use their imagination to try to discern truth. Again, because they already have the "truth". All they ever really need to know is what is in their book. And it's questionable if they can even understand the real meaning of their own book, when the words in the book are processed through the darkened glass of their fear.

Conservatives are scared shitless of everything that is different, everything that they can't understand or control. Everything they do arises from fear. Rational, logical thinking by nature leads to using imagination to explore what is not known. So conservatives just don't go there. They don't need to. Everything has already been thought out for them. It says so right there in the book, and the book is the ultimate unquestionable truth. Amen.

I totally agree, stillwaiting. The PTB knows this, and uses religion as a mass opiate for controlling conservatives, and subsequently, uses their enslaved conservatives to control us. The non-logic, non-reason of the regressive conservative counters the logic and and reason of the progressive liberal. The PTB knows how to use this ancient formula to gain, maintain, and create a status quo of their power and control over others. It's how democracies are consistently prevented from existing and evolving. It's how they convince people that claim to believe in a peace preaching Jesus to mindlessly go to war for them in order to make them wealthier and more powerful. It's the philosophy of Caesar's, Machiavelli's, Leo Strauss's, etc. They all have the smug sense of privilege, righteousness of their greed, and belief in their superiority over others, that only an insatiable overinflated ego stoked by conscienceless sociopathy can bestow.

This is where the spontaneous arisal of Occupy and Anonymous comes in. The ancient struggle of the progressive/liberal to overcome the authoritarian PTB and create a wide sense of human community has evolved in mass consciousness as a way to overcome the control of the PTB. The ideas of a growing and evolving collective will and consciousness cannot be controlled or destroyed by the aggressions of the PTB and their flying monkeys, and this consciousness is at this moment in process of removing them from all relevance as a block on human evolution and the spread of reason, kindness, compassion, and love.

Religious conservatism and political conservatism naturally go hand in hand. The same boundary and motivator that regulates the thoughts and actions of the political conservative also regulates the thoughts and actions of the religious conservative.

Overwhelming, paralyzing fear.

Anti-Same Sex Marriage Amendments are State Sponsored Bullying.

The Republican RW fundamentalist schoolyard bullies are at work once again, insisting that their self-selected religious beliefs allow them to trample the rights of others, and that these beliefs justify the action of denying others their natural equal human rights.

These State House bullies deny and/or attempt to deny and/or limit the equality and human rights of others through hate legislation that has the collateral effect of perpetuating the falsehood that LGBT persons are not equal or acceptable. This in turns leads to continued repeated bullying of, and assaults on, lgbt persons, lgbt child and adult depression, and schoolyard bullying that sometimes even causes children to take their own lives in despair.

The egos of these hateful State House Bullies are so swollen with self-righteousness that they would legislate their misguided, religion inspired beliefs into law, despite the fact that they cause widespread unwarranted harm and misery to a multitude of innocent people.

They put a whole new meaning on the term "Bully Pulpit".

Maybe a better term would be "Hate Pulpit".

My thoughts? Yeh, some people act like ignorant jerks sometimes.

It's totally not gender dependent. Women are not any better than men. We are not sugar and spice and everything nice.

We're only human, just like men.

I believe that men and women have differences that often make communication between genders difficult at times.

It's probable that these apparent differences are related to chromosomal/physical differences and/or growing up in very different societal/cultural environments and "roles".

In modern times, it seems that we are slowly learning how to bridge these apparent differences.

Yelling at each other will not further the progress of productive communication and subsequent understanding between genders whatsoever.

This thread is primarily intended as a catalyst for the consideration of why women historically, and presently as well, have not been viewed by men, and very often not viewed by women themselves, as being human beings with the equal standing, rights, and privileges as men.

I have learned a great deal of new information from the diverse and valuable input from the posters on this thread, and I believe that it is already helping me understand better how I might possibly communicate more effectively with men, and women as well.

(It can also be related to the current struggle for LGBT equality as well. One thing that history consistently shows us is that those who prevent/try to prevent others from manifesting their natural rights and equality are totally on the wrong side of history).

I don't have the answers; I don't dislike men because of this phenomenon, that would be pointless. It is what it is. I believe that the more we understand about how and why this phenomenon exists, the easier it will become for men and women to effectively and productively communicate with each other, and, as a result, live together equally and more harmoniously.

It is very difficult for us to get a real grasp on the present if we don't know the circumstances and events that got us here. Not knowing anything about the past is like a person waking up after being in a coma for 40 years. A person like this knows little about the past. Their concept of the present will have very little context. They will have no past experience from which to negotiate existence, make decisions, and communicate with others.

Maybe, if men and women both better understand where we came from, and how we got here, we will be able to communicate more productively and compassionately with each other now and in the future.

BTW, I also love horses and dogs.

But I love people, too.

peace

Hmmm. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."- Wm. Shakespeare,

Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 222–230

Whatever.

Cute outfit, interesting accessories...maybe a bit over the top.



Doesn't it seem hypocritical, and isn't it puzzling, how the leader of the organization that once brought us the Inquisition, the Crusades, and all the other very unsavory things they did throughout their history can so confidently assert that same sex marriage threatens human dignity and the future of mankind itself? Go figure.

But then again, I think I get it.

Everyone makes mistakes. But to continue to make the same mistakes, in this case by once again so arrogantly assuming knowledge of absolute truth and unquestionable correctness of action leading to doing great harm to large numbers of innocent people once again, is inexcusable.

More innocent blood will be spilled, more lives will be destroyed, more children will suffer, as these unfounded, unwarranted, illogical, and unreasonable beliefs about lgbt persons are perpetuated by ultra-conservative RW religious fanatics claiming absolute knowledge of the will of the Creator, and then actively harming others on the basis of this untruth, an untruth that they claim as their divine knowledge and hegemonic right.

I imagine it's still just a question of genuine core values.


People can believe what they want to believe. That's fine. When people start taking away other's rights and causing unwarranted harm to others because of their beliefs, that is not fine. This is why separation of church and state is so absolutely critical to human freedom and liberty.