I am exhausted today....but I did it to myself. I am too old to stay up until 2 a.m. debating....when I need every precious second of beauty sleep I can grab. That being said....I had a ball debating last night....until the person I was debating took their toys, their posts, and apparently a bad attitude and went to bed. All that debate and when it was all said and done....it looked as if I was debating myself.
A funny story about me and debating. When I was in high school....I took forensics which covered among other things....debate. I sucked at it. No...actually
"sucking" would have been too kind of an adjective! Week after week I stood up and made a royal fool out of myself and lived in humiliation that whole year. Why you ask did I put myself through such torture....especially when forensics was an elective? Lets just say....there was this boy....cute, dark, and much more talented at forensics than I. Cute as he was though....another year of forensics was not in the cards for me. The details are foggy....so I can't remember if I was simply asked NOT to join again....or if my self inflicted humiliation finally got the better of me.
Then many years and many life experiences later, I found debating again. It was in the form of a politically conservative web site.(Yeah...big shock that I am a conservative!!! Get over it....I'm still funny!) Once I learned my way around debate and the etiquette (yes....there actually is a right and wrong way to do it).....then I was off. Many an evening I stayed up way past my bed time debating everything from religion, to politics, to one time I even spent hours debating dog vs. cat.
I learned early on that everyone has an opinion....but in order to debate....you better be able to back your opinion up. Also....it is
NOT personal. If someone doesn't agree with you....that is okay. Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree.
Debate is one of the greatest learning tools we have and through
respectful debate....even if you don't change someones mind on a subject, you might just get them to thinking. Notice too...that I said
respectful debate! All too often, I have seen grown men and women resort to behaviors that would even be frowned on...on a playground. Someone starts taking the debate personally and then out comes the name calling, the offensive remarks, and finally the complete and total breakdown of anything remotely constructive. I often wonder if this is really how these people act when someone disagrees with them or if they are merely acting this way because they have the anonymity of the internet to hide behind. At any rate....it has always been my belief that when someone starts the insults and name calling....it is a pretty safe bet that they have run out of anything else intelligent to say.
So as I was saying....last night was kind of a treat for me because I really have tried to avoid debate for awhile now. I just wasn't up for having to explain myself fifty times while being called a terrorist, racist or some other "ist" word. But last night two topics caught my eye and just could not go undebated. The first one was a religious topic where a picture of a baptist church in GA had a sign out front that said:
Catholicism will take you to hell! There was no way
THAT was going undebated. This little Roman Catholic girl attacked that like St. Michael attacking the devil. It actually was great though and the people who joined in....for the most part, used the debate as a tool for learning and trying to get to know more about the way other religions practice their worship of God. I was very pleased.
The other debate though....didn't turn out quite so well. The topic was abortion...and I landed on that with both feet. It is a hot button with me and a subject I have debated often. About two posts in.....he began calling me a "fascist" and as you can imagine....it went down hill from there. Before I knew it....he had removed all his posts and "virtually" stomped off in a huff. Apparently it was something I said!
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Just when you think you have seen and heard it all.......along comes Kamau Kambon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh1YOIxtAz4
As I listened to this man speak, I had to wonder how someone can be filled with such complete hate for another human being...let alone......an entire race.
Kambon spoke such atrocious lies about how the white man wants the black man dead and that we are trying to enslave them yet again (or maybe still), that it almost left me speechless. He feels that the black man must rise up against the white man and figure out a way to rid the world of us. RID THE WORLD OF US???? Who thinks like that???
His speech was on CSPAN...but he spoke of "educating" the young 15, 16, 17 year old black youth about the evils of the white man and the need to eradicate them (my word...not his.) The scary thing is....apparently this man is an educator and this is what he is filling young black peoples minds with. Does this man not see what he is doing to these impressionable minds??? He is teaching them to hate and to kill and if he thinks this is going to be directed only at the white man....he is nuts. Hating and killing don't see skin color or race....and once fueled can become an enormous and unstoppable monster which will wipe out everything in its path. The outcome of such thinking will only bring disaster for not only white men but ALL men for when hate takes hold, destruction is never far behind.
Again I ask....how can someone hate his fellow human beings so much????
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And finally in news too ridiculous to believe......a cop shoots himself in the head while.....wait for it....wait for it..........scratching his nose with his gun!!!!
http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/crimes/113311-policeman-0/
Apparently in Russia...teaching gun safety to aspiring policemen does not include a lesson in how NOT to use your weapon as a nose scratcher. And to think....this man was hired to protect and serve.
Well folks....this is what is going on in Lisaland and beyond on this beautiful, sunny day in the heart of North America! Here's hoping that you have a wonderful weekend and that your next itch...doesn't end with a boom (yes I went there!)
