On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 6:46 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 11/14/2013 3:30 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 4:19 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Good one, Chris.
>>>
>>> But you can tell from the posts here that what drives the Deniers is fear
>>> of
>>> government.  In the U.S. since the Viet Nam war there has developed a
>>> widespread distrust of government as incompetent, corrupt, and
>>> oppressive.
>>
>> Well, it also doesn't help that almost everything that comes out of
>> the government's mouth turns out to be a lie. They lied about WMDs in
>> Iraq, they lied about closing down Guantanamo, they lied about
>> repealing the patriot act (and in fact extended its scope through the
>> NDAA), they lie about drugs, they lied about the scope of drone use,
>> they lied about not spying on everybody and they lied about protecting
>> whisteblowers. Just to name a few. These are all indisputable, direct
>> lies about very serious matters.
>
>
> They are not indisputable.  For example, Obama promised to close Guantanomo
> but he was blocked by Congress.

Something was promised and then didn't happen. It doesn't really
matter by which mechanism the system avoided doing what the people
wanted it to do. Of course Obama's innocence here is very hard to buy.
Surely he could prevent forced-feeding is he were such a champion of
human rights. Given is many powers he could surely find some way
around the House blocking certain routes. This never seems to be a
problem when it comes to doing other things that go against the
constitution, like surveilling people without a court order or killing
citizens without a trial.

> One's failure after best effort, to do what
> is not possible is not exactly a lie.

Still a lie. If I promise to do something that I'm not sure I will be
able to do am I not lying?

Also he promised "not to use Justice Department resources to try to
circumvent state laws" and then he did.

>  Many things said about recreational
> drugs, e.g. that heroin is addictive, are certainly true;

Sure, and many others are lies. Big ones. The biggest being the claim
that the war on drugs has a positive impact in society.

> and those were
> probably enough to convince the electorate that they should be banned.
> After all the nation even approved banning alcohol at one time - it's not
> just that people are misled about consequenses; the people like to impose
> their ideas of morality on others.  It's one of the problems of democracy
> and the reason for having constitutional rights.

It's an unsolved problem because the constitutional rights are then
reinterpreted to allow the government to do whatever it wants anyway.

> I don't remember the government ever saying what the scope of drone use is.
> There are obvious tactical and diplomatic reasons for being vague about it.

Obama promised to defend the constitution and then personally ordered
drone strikes on american citizens without a trial. Also there's the
crossing the rubicon moment of deploying military drones inside the
US. Doesn't any of this worry you a little bit?

> But I certainly take your point that there is a reason the government is not
> trusted.  However, it is not the government that is warning us about global
> warming.  It is in the scientific research literature.  You didn't find lies
> about drones or drugs or the Patriout act in Physical Review or even in
> arXiv.

No, but then they come up with this plan that the way to solve the
problem is to give more power to the above-mentioned government. Any
proposed solution that does not involve further government intrusion
in our lives is rejected.

>> As for oppression we have the humiliation rituals enforced by the TSA,
>> the militarisation of the police forces, the ongoing attempts at
>> censoring the Internet, total surveillance, free-speech zones, the
>> persecution of brilliant benevolent kids like Aaron Schwartz, who
>> committed suicide because we was going to be thrown into jail for
>> downloading scientific papers. I am very sad that he had to go through
>> that, but also happy that the bandits couldn't get their hands on him.
>>
>> Probably you're going to reply with some apologies for your favourite
>> team, and claim that it's the other team's fault. I don't care about
>> any of that. I care about the end result: lies. The Democrats vs.
>> Republicans reality show is a clever way to explore our tribal
>> instincts.
>
>
> You illustrate my point again.  You don't address the science behind global
> warming predictions or what to do about it.

I'm commenting on why it's reasonable to not trust the government, a
topic you introduced. We've discussed these other things already. Too
many models, too many parameters. Medieval warming period. Incomplete
knowledge about a complex system. The human cost of CO2 emission
reduction. The current inefficiency of renewable sources. The
environmentalists' opposition to nuclear power and geo-engineering.
All of these previous points did not disappear just because I'm
arguing that not trusting the government is a good idea.

> You make a non-sequitur from
> "The government lies" to "Global warming isn't real." even though the source
> of global warming predictions is not a government.

No, I made no such argument. This is a dishonest claim on your part.

> I can only infer that
> you are really concerned that if global warming is real, we will have to
> rely on government level action.

No, I am concerned that the global warming scare can be exploited to
convince the people to relinquish more of its freedoms to the
government.

Telmo.

>
> Brent
>
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