Thread: If I only had a brain...

The older I get, the more obvious it becomes my brain is dimmer and dimmer. I always thought I was pretty intelligent (the only thing that could possibly back up this assumption is a pretty reasonable school, graduate and post-graduate academic history) but I'm now seriously reconsidering even this assumption. I know I'm weird, but as time goes by I am getting more and more interested in documentary type shows, movies etc. In terms of events that actually happened during my mid-late teens, the striking thing is there are so many things I either had totally misinterpreted at the time, ignored completely or even remembered totally differently.

Now I know fully well that all documentaries will be biased to some extent (either deliberately or subconsciously or both), but I was just amazed at the difference in my recollection of the events at the 1972 Munich Olympics and a show I only just finished watching called "One Day in September". It's almost as if they were talking about something else.

I do NOT want to start a political slanging match, or a flame war, and I realise there may well be some heightened sensitivities to this issue with current events in the Middle East. It is only that this documentary so starkly highlighted the gulf between from my previous "understanding" and what is likely to be "some sort of reality".

Over recent months, others of a similar vintage that have had some surprises for me have been the Watergate/Nixon/Deep-throat affair and Robert Kennedy's assassination (I was a bit too young to remember much of the JFK one).

But then again, maybe I'm just showing early signs of Alzheimer's.

Cheers
Phillip

Olympics . . . . That's something other than Football (soccer), right?

Actually I watch everything in the media with a HEAVY dose of skepticism. As a person who did more historiography than's good for a person, you know that every primary and secondary source, no matter how accurate and dispassionate it attempts to be is colored by a certain bias, which jumps out when you read it/see it/listen to it. The basic rule of historiography, which I've learned too late in my academic career is that everyone has an angle even if they don't know it. That's why a saltshaker is always useful when dealing with history lol.

I think that you are seeing things in new ways is evidence that you are not less sharp than you once were, but more so. I too had a youthful exhuberance for finding the simplest answers and being done with the questions. I know now that this was folly. To further arm yourself against the fool in the mirror, I recommend you click the Critical Thinking link in my signature. Come to think of it ... I think I'll review that stuff myself.

X

<---conspiracy theorist

Originally Posted by omniphile

I know I'm weird

My wife likes to call it eccentric .

I have to admit the older I get the more I seem to be watching the ABC with programs like 4 Corners & Late Line (think I'm turning into my Dad). You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to see some of the things that are going on in recent times, its just so blatantly obvious. Western citizens as a collective are with out a doubt... well short sighted and just plain dumb. Current government here in Australia have proved this again and again, Children overboard, AWB, raids just before the new terrorist laws were passed (what ever happened to them???), being re-elected on the promise of lower interest rates. I guarantee that they'll be re-elected!!

You don't need 30+ years inbetween events for people to forget... just give it a couple of months

And even if they're caught with their pants down, the governments just change the media spin. Here are 2 examples:
1) After they haven't found any evidence of chemical weapons being produced, stored or used in Iraq and it was proven that the intelligence reports were doctored, they started clammoring about liberating Iraqui people from Sadam. Instead of liberation, you have Iraquis killing Iraquis, Iraquis killing Americans and Americans killing Iraquis. Some liberation. And people who informed the public that those intelligence reports were doctored ended up in serious legal trouble.
2) After 6 months of searching by the same team that found mass graves left by Mexican drug-lords within days, they haven't found any mass graves in Kosovo or any other proof of a genocide. Then NATO changed it spin to liberating Yugoslavia from Slobodan Milosevic. They liberated Yugoslavia with radioactive bombs, the cancer rates skyrocketed to pandemic proportions and American companies moved in to make money on replacing the infrastructure destroyed by American bombs.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against American people. I have friends south of the border and I judge a person based on who they are and not on where they are from. I don't blame US soldiers either. They mostly join the armed forces to defend their country and the army (all armed forceS) only does what the elected government tells it to do. However, I am HIGHLY against several acts that various US governments have comitted. In many instances, they should have answered to war crime tribunals.
The point that I am trying to make is that the government can be caught in a lie and with a proper media spin, the stupid masses will just take up a new war chant.

There was plenty of evidence that they had used chemical weapons in Iraq. Mainly on the kurds. Most of that was not released to the public. Just enough to justify why they had to look.

I personally know this from first hand info. Saddam's regime unjustifiably slaughtered thousands of kurds.

I'm not making excuses for anyone or anything. I personally believe the toppling of Saddam's regime had much to do about things not spoken of, some justified the invasion, much was not a good reason. That's just my personal opinion.

Glen, I will accept that Sadam was using chemical weapons (supplied and/or with designs provided by the US) but the media spin was that he was producing and was ready to use chemical weapons at the time of invasion. No evidence to back that up had been provided and evidence to indicate a false report had been leaked out.

It was neither supplied by nor designed by the U.S. That much is fact.