One of the greatest fears our rulers have is that people, fed with so

[KlatooBNikto]

much pablum over the years, will come to see, through the TV media and the Internet, that all people throughout the world are the same and all the demonization of the "other" will suddenly stop working.To keep their fragile hold on power, they will have to keep inventing more and more fantastic threats.Ultimately, what they fear most, as Ceaucescu did in Romania, is that people will see that the evildoers are right here at home.

[billbuckhead]

1. I hope you are right, the whole 9-11 myth is built on this

"They want to kill Americans because they hate our freedom."

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Their resistance to the 911 comission, their ambivalence towards the

911 families, their blacking out of 28 pages of the report, their spinning of intelligence after 911, all of it points to their incompetence and total lack of leadership qualities that this country needs, deserves and should have back as soon as possible.

[seaj11]

3. As my anti-RW Anthro professor said,

"Nobody hates freedom!"

[neebob]

4. I think they can rest easy for quite a while yet

because a substantial portion of the population - I don't believe half, but maybe a third - is completely brainwashed and incapable of seeing, in my opinion, considering some of the things they believe. Plus I think that in order to really understand that other people are not so different and scary, you have to get out and meet and interact with them. Most of the people whose beliefs cause the problem never get that opportunity.

Take my mother, for example. Last night I was complaining to my her that my ex-husband had written a racial slur in my work email, which the network admin is not shy about reading. We were going back and forth about my adding our 15-year-old son and a vehicle his dad is planning to give him to my insurance. My ex mentioned that he still had this policy that I'd bought in 1980-whenever from an Allstate agent named Nguyen, and then felt compelled to remind me that's "the gooky guy" I bought the policy from. He is so uncool.

Well, you'd think I'd have learned by now, but my mom and I have been managing pleasant conversations for like a whole month and I was just keeping it going. She played dumb, forcing me to explain why this is problem when I'm convinced she knows. It's a tactic that she uses to insert opinions for which she expects disapproval. Then she can claim she doesn't understand my position and play the victim if it starts an argument.

"Oh, are you trying to be correct?" she said. "Politically correct?" Then she set about defending my ex because it's a generational thing and - get this - he was born during the Korean war. Yeah, he was born in 1952. Then she went on to say that my dad had called all the Southeast Asians who came to America after the Vietnam war the Viet Cong.

Well, all righty then.

My mom's never going to change her mind.

Oh, and she's tired of being politically correct. Somehow I managed to resist the urge to ask her when she had tried it.