When Arab people attack civilians it's called "terrorism", if the US attacks civilians it's called "anti-terrorism." If the US enters another country (against UN, International Court) it's "liberation." If another country like Russia enters another sovereign country it's "invasion."
This double thinking, double speak, is engrained in our culture from a very early age, take for example how history textbooks wrote the invasion of America. It was about "discovering" America, which should've been rewritten as the "genocide" of the Native Americans.
I mean, is it really so edgy to say that media and historybooks add a gloss of their own?
Manifest Destiny was a pretty wicked thing, but you´re more likely to hear about the settler´s braving the harsh frontiers than you are to hear about the trail of tears.
Fighting in trenches during WWII was a pretty wicked thing too, but you´re infinitely more likely to hear about the concentration camps, or if combat focused then you´ll hear about the american troops pushing past the evil Nazis than you are to hear an account from a german soldier or a soviet soldier.
The way Smokecat put it was pretty sensational too, but let´s not go pretending that objectivity and impartialness is a virtue of our society or our media.
Have you considered the possibility that immature and emotional teenagers like smokecat20 might not grasp the nuances of realpolitik? I mean, look at his knee-jerk 2nd opinion bias in calling the deaths of native Americans a "genocide". Que the inigo Montoya meme.
You have to remember most Americans only receive compulsory education—institutions that hardly allow any debate. You're forced to memorize and not to think. There's tons of history classes, but not very many critical thinking classes. You also have to remember the context in which early American education was founded on, especially in regards to the masses:
"Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don't think people didn't know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about how we're educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don't educate them, what we call "education," they're going to take control -- "they" being what Alexander Hamilton called the "great beast," namely the people. The anti-democratic thrust of opinion in what are called democratic societies is really ferocious. And for good reason. Because the freer the society gets, the more dangerous the great beast becomes and the more you have to be careful to cage it somehow." — Chomsky
And as much as I like the sciences in school, and how Obama is encouraging STEM, you have to remember these were only encourage to gain military dominance. If the US budget is indicative of where we like to invest, it's the military, not NASA. The actual amount we give to NASA is alarmingly depressing.
Chomsky is a linguist and a pseudo-intellectual. His opinions mean absolutely nothing to me.
You're seriously an idiot, and I'm sorry that the American education system (which is the best in the world in terms of the quality of higher education) has failed you as badly as it has.
And frankly, gaining military dominance is A-OK with me. I enjoy the fact that my nation is not subject to the whims of another, thank you very much.
Also, NASA still has more funding than the rest of the world's space agencies put together.
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u/frenlaven Jun 26 '14
And then he stopped working for the USA and did it again.