Thread: Friends And Enemies.

Originally Posted by Rav1

Look for example on the most powerful leaders. Bush is loved by half of the world, and is hated by the other half. Is it a kind of balance?
I've experienced in my life an old saying that "One who has a lot of friends, has the equal or similar number of enemies." Have you noticed that in your private life?
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And which half of the world love Bush? The UK and the rest of Europe have little respect for the man and his policies!

Originally Posted by loveapple

And which half of the world love Bush? The UK and the rest of Europe have little respect for the man and his policies!
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Well, the opinons are splitted between people. Some people do trust him, some don't. Bush was only an example of how much the perceiving of our world varies considering the universal media that supplies us with the news.
And why do you think that the rest of Europe have a little respect for him? I come and live in Europe and I know that there is a big disagreement on the matter.

I have to disagree with you there. First off everyone hates bush. You would be lucky to find 20% of the people in the US that like him. Put up with him sure, like him, I highly doubt it. Secondly I never seen anyone who had the same amount of friends as enemies. I would say on average, a person has 10 friends per "enemy" or something like that. A nice person probably 30-40 friends per enemy. A very annoying person might have half an half but thats it. I hate to say it, but if you have as many enemies as friends your probably a jerk.

Originally Posted by Alric

I have to disagree with you there. First off everyone hates bush. You would be lucky to find 20% of the people in the US that like him. Put up with him sure, like him, I highly doubt it. Secondly I never seen anyone who had the same amount of friends as enemies. I would say on average, a person has 10 friends per "enemy" or something like that. A nice person probably 30-40 friends per enemy. A very annoying person might have half an half but thats it. I hate to say it, but if you have as many enemies as friends your probably a jerk.
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I wasn't talking about me, I got in mind the people who have a lot of influence in the world. You can like them or dislike but mind that our daily life depends on their decisions.

Originally Posted by Rav1

You can like them or dislike but mind that our daily life depends on their decisions.
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Exactly why so many people hate them. Just as an example, if you were a total jerk, I could just ignore you and there would be no problem. We wouldn't be enemies because I wouldn't waste my time. Now lets say your a jerk but instead I can't ignore you, because your always in my face trying to boss me around and stuff. Then we would be enemies. Thats probably why bosses who are jerks have a lot of enemies.

If you have a lot of influance you will have some enemies no matter what, just because you know a lot of people. But its really a small number. Unless your a jerk, then the number raises. If half the people are your enemy your doing something seriously wrong.

More power you have more enemies you will get because you had to screw someone to get it I bet there is a lot of people with more enemies then friends.

Originally Posted by Rav1

Look for example on the most powerful leaders. Bush is loved by half of the world, and is hated by the other half. Is it a kind of balance?
I've experienced in my life an old saying that "One who has a lot of friends, has the equal or similar number of enemies." Have you noticed that in your private life?
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I have mass friends.
and a lot of people hate me too!
(not as many as I have friends tho&#33

this is b/c when I am nice to everyone, people who have difficulties with others get mad at me b/c I like people they personally dont like.
so
this is true.
but I hate bush, btw

Whoever made that saying popular probably had a lot of enemies and wanted to make him/herself look like less of an asshole. I certainly haven't noticed such a "balance" in my life or the lives of my friends. However, some individuals with very strong personalities can certainly polarize the people they meet - you either 'click' with them or they forever 'rub you the wrong way.' That's not the case with the majority of people, however, at least not in my experience.

And when Bush has an approval rating of <40% in his own country, you can be pretty damn sure that that approval rating is lower elsewhere. And no matter what funky mathematical tricks you pull, you can&#39;t average numbers under 50% and come up w/ something larger.

Originally Posted by Peregrinus

However, some individuals with very strong personalities can certainly polarize the people they meet - you either &#39;click&#39; with them or they forever &#39;rub you the wrong way.&#39; That&#39;s not the case with the majority of people, however, at least not in my experience.
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Ehhhh... I have a tendency to this. Not exactly something I&#39;m proud of. Being able to "click" with people on a pretty deep level, in a short space of time is a good thing. But, the other spin-off effect ain&#39;t that fantastic. Creating enemies is something I try to avoid, as it simply isn&#39;t in my best interests. But, it inevitably happens and there&#39;s often NOTHING I can do to stop it.

However, I usually find that as far as the "polarisation" goes, I can "click" with MOST people, and the people I "anti-click" with are the minority. It&#39;s usually other strong personalities who I "anti-click" with.

EDIT: Whoa. Too many quote-marks in tha&#39; tharr pararaph, methinks...

Bush is doing things that are unpopular now because most people don&#39;t understand why he is doing them. They only look at the present and don&#39;t see how it will affect the rest of history. I disagree with him majorly on certain issues, but I greatly respect how he does what he really believes is the right thing for history and ignores the immense unpopularity that results. That is a true leader. Bill Clinton was the complete opposite of that, and I think he is a really sorry person. People who are decades ahead of their times often have a lot of enemies. But they are loved in the long run. Mark my words on this... Bush will end up being a hero among the Iraqi people of the future. He will always be known as the leader who destroyed the horrific system Iraq lived under for so long and would have otherwise lived under for so much longer, maybe even for the rest of the time humans live on Earth. Think about that.

The more a person affects the world, even for the better, the more enemies he or she has. With power comes opposition. Having a lot of friends in high school is not the level of power I am talking about. However, even in high school, the people who really have social power, not merely the ones who have a lot of friends, but the ones whose names everybody in town knows well, usually have a lot of enemies. That is because it takes a certain degree of being a jerk to have that level of social power, even in a high school situation. Those people are not well liked. They are just well respected. It is very primitive, but it is how things work.

Originally Posted by Rav1

Look for example on the most powerful leaders. Bush is loved by half of the world, and is hated by the other half. Is it a kind of balance?
I&#39;ve experienced in my life an old saying that "One who has a lot of friends, has the equal or similar number of enemies." Have you noticed that in your private life?
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I beg to differ. Bush is loved by:

-About 30-40% of the americans.
-A few high rich politicans and bussiness people around the world.

Bush is hated by:

-The other 5.5 billion.

Originally Posted by Neruo

I beg to differ. Bush is loved by:

-About 30-40% of the americans.
-A few high rich politicans and bussiness people around the world.

Bush is hated by:

-The other 5.5 billion.
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Who is the leader of the Netherlands? I have never heard of him. Has he ever been on T.V.?

Originally Posted by Universal

With power comes opposition. Having a lot of friends in high school is not the level of power I am talking about. However, even in high school, the people who really have social power, not merely the ones who have a lot of friends, but the ones whose names everybody in town knows well, usually have a lot of enemies. That is because it takes a certain degree of being a jerk to have that level of social power, even in a high school situation. Those people are not well liked. They are just well respected. It is very primitive, but it is how things work.
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Maybe I should have used a word "followers" instead of "friends" in the heading.

The English word "friend" is so unprecise and ambiguous. It is over-exploited by those who call every person they hardly know a "friend". The best example is on MySpace whew some of the teens are boasting of having accumualted 500 or 1000 friends.
I say, you don&#39;t seize the meaning of that word. Who do you call a friend? A classmate you exchange an everyday empty "Hello" for several years? A neighbour you meet in a street once a week? A co-worker you work with in your factory?

Originally Posted by Universal

I greatly respect how he does what he really believes is the right thing for history and ignores the immense unpopularity that results. That is a true leader. [/b]

Not in a democracy, it isn&#39;t. Bush lacks both the intelligence and experience (esp. in international politics) to make decisions on his own without the analysis and support of objective experts and agents outside of his own little delusional fantasy bubble-world. If he were making such great strides of progress, the vast majority of his fellow US citizens wouldn&#39;t want him out of office, 500,000+ Iraqis wouldn&#39;t be dead because of military and sectarian violence, and almost every other nation on the planet wouldn&#39;t daily lament the crooked results of the 2000 and 2004 US elections. You think that history will bear him out as a hero? Well, he thinks so too. He also thought that we&#39;d be greeted as heros and welcomed into the homes and hearts of &#39;formerly&#39; oppressed Iraqis after we invaded. Perhaps he&#39;d better give that Magic8 Ball a little tune-up, because it hasn&#39;t been working too well thus far.

Doing things with which the majority of the people you&#39;re supposed to be serving disagree is not the sign of a great leader. Being hated and opposed does not mean that one&#39;s correct any more than being beloved and supported does. There is this one tiny consideration, however: when 90%+ of the world&#39;s population believes that a leader is destroying the very foundation of global social and economic progress, that huge plurality of opinions almost certainly expresses an analysis closer to reality than the opinion one man and his small flock of greedy, mercenary followers.

I don&#39;t think a statement like this, the number of friends and enemies is almost equal, can be as easy as that. If you are extroverted you have a good chance of meeting a load of people, when introverted you probably won&#39;t get into as much contact.
If you ask me - it&#39;s way more probable to have, if extroverted, more enemies than friends, since the majority of the people will not know you like they should to be able to judge. Therefore it&#39;s not far, that they will misjudge and dislike you. I mean they could even like you because of that, when they actually wouldn&#39;t ... but altogether people tend to talk about ones negative properties easier ....
When being introverted you probably sometimes feel like you have more enemies than you actually have .. but in the end, could you really tell who is truly a friend or enemy of yours? I mean, there are people living lies ..

Originally Posted by Slight

.. but in the end, could you really tell who is truly a friend or enemy of yours? I mean, there are people living lies ..
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You&#39;re right. It&#39;s not so easy to distinguish with certainty between a friend and an enemy. That is why lots of readers can feel irritated by my question.
Therefore I&#39;m not surprised by someone&#39;s contradicting me claiming "I surely have more friends than enemies... "
So I tell them "Maybe you&#39;re correct and I wish you were. But are you pretty sure that it is not only an illusion or wishful thinking?"

I have friends, and people who i consider as friends, but i&#39;m sure that if they would have to make a list of their friends, i wouldn&#39;t be included... ... and then there are people who aren&#39;t REALLY my friend, but who respect me enough that they could be... i have you guys...

and those were my friends... (ps in the middle of my post: damn you, slight... now i can&#39;t trust you anymore...)



i don&#39;t know about the people who hate me though... maybe one... but that&#39;s probably because i hate him...

i don&#39;t think there&#39;s anyone who hates me... unless, that is, if you guys are keeping i secret i don&#39;t know about...


so i don&#39;t know where the balance lies with me...






ps: just an un-funny comment to the post above:

the matrix has you O_O&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;

No Rav god dammit as redundant as this is going to sound half the world does not love Bush. Haqlf the world does not love Bush, and I apologize for the ad hominem but do some fucking research before making a retarded claim like that.

Not even half of THIS country likes Bush. Not even half of this country would touch Bush with a ten foot pole unless it had a sharp end.

At this point, there is no one in my life I would consider to be an enemy. There are people I dislike without speaking it out loud, and some people from previous quarells may pose a potential threat to me.

I consider myself to have eight friends, counting from childhood to the present. As for enemies I have had, but no longer have, it would count to approximately 6, of which one now is a friend (I was messing around with him for a year when we were about 8-9 years old, but we became best friends after it). A few years later I became best friend with another person a few days after punching him in the face (we had nothing against each other, but I felt like getting into a fight).

Originally Posted by Ellen3

this is b/c when I am nice to everyone, people who have difficulties with others get mad at me b/c I like people they personally dont like.
so
this is true.
but I hate bush, btw
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yea

Originally Posted by Peregrinus

Not in a democracy, it isn&#39;t. Bush lacks both the intelligence and experience (esp. in international politics) to make decisions on his own without the analysis and support of objective experts and agents outside of his own little delusional fantasy bubble-world. If he were making such great strides of progress, the vast majority of his fellow US citizens wouldn&#39;t want him out of office, 500,000+ Iraqis wouldn&#39;t be dead because of military and sectarian violence, and almost every other nation on the planet wouldn&#39;t daily lament the crooked results of the 2000 and 2004 US elections. You think that history will bear him out as a hero? Well, he thinks so too. He also thought that we&#39;d be greeted as heros and welcomed into the homes and hearts of &#39;formerly&#39; oppressed Iraqis after we invaded. Perhaps he&#39;d better give that Magic8 Ball a little tune-up, because it hasn&#39;t been working too well thus far.

Doing things with which the majority of the people you&#39;re supposed to be serving disagree is not the sign of a great leader. Being hated and opposed does not mean that one&#39;s correct any more than being beloved and supported does. There is this one tiny consideration, however: when 90%+ of the world&#39;s population believes that a leader is destroying the very foundation of global social and economic progress, that huge plurality of opinions almost certainly expresses an analysis closer to reality than the opinion one man and his small flock of greedy, mercenary followers.
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The United States is not a total democracy. It is a democratic republic. In a total democracy, a leader would act like Bill Clinton at every turn and say, "The people get to decide every single thing. What can I do to make people like me today?" In a republic, leaders are elected to make decisions, even decisions that everybody disagrees with. They are entrusted to do what is needed. That is what Bush has been doing in the Middle East. He does have a lot of advisors, so he is not coming to conclusions all on his own. He is just the person who makes the final decisions. And what the majority of the world thinks is not a reliable reflection of what makes sense. The whole world used to think the world is flat. The whole world used to think Earth is the center of the universe. The people who put Earth&#39;s place into the proper perspective were despised as heretics. But they were right.

The history of the world is going to be way better off with freedom in the Middle East. It is partly because suicide bomber minded dictators with nuclear weapons is completely out of the question. It is the unthinkable, and it absolutely cannot happen. It CANNOT happen&#33; For this reason and others, including the well being of the people of the Middle East for the REST OF HISTORY, the world will be a far better world than otherwise with a free Middle East. I am totally sure of that. So is Bush. His conviction and determination regarding that in the face of so much hateful opposition will make him one of history&#39;s great legends.

Originally Posted by Universal

The United States is not a total democracy. It is a democratic republic.[/b]

The US is a republic (i.e. has an electoral college which elects the President rather than a majority of the popular vote) because in the 18th century when this country was founded, education was neither ubiquitous nor homogenous, and the founders of the nation felt that the populous could not be trusted to make decisions in their best interest. Electors were therefore chosen to protect and promote the interests of the citizens in their district and to represent their collective will when voting for the next leader of the country. The US is a republic in practice, a democracy in its ideals. To be honest, the electoral college republic is an outdated, outmoded form of government, and if it weren&#39;t such an entrenched tradition, it would have been done away with long ago. In this modern age of free public education and advanced transportation and technology, it is no longer a needed nor advantageous aspect of our government.

In a total democracy, a leader would act like Bill Clinton at every turn and say, "The people get to decide every single thing. What can I do to make people like me today?" In a republic, leaders are elected to make decisions, even decisions that everybody disagrees with. They are entrusted to do what is needed. That is what Bush has been doing in the Middle East.[/b]

Making decisions with which everybody disagrees? Well, it seems we have consensus on at least one point.

He does have a lot of advisors, so he is not coming to conclusions all on his own.[/b]

Quite right. He appoints people to tell him what he wants to hear (i.e. advisors who are not objective and certainly not experts), and when a dissenting position is raised, he ignores it. When that dissenting position turns out later to be correct (please see “WMDs in Iraq" for a convenient example), he, with absolute confidence and conviction, simply changes the facts. Changes his justification. Changes what is being reported from the ground. Changes truth into ‘truthiness’ and hopes no one notices.

And what the majority of the world thinks is not a reliable reflection of what makes sense. The whole world used to think the world is flat. The whole world used to think Earth is the center of the universe. The people who put Earth&#39;s place into the proper perspective were despised as heretics. But they were right.[/b]

You confuse scientific discoveries with political action. Luckily for the progress of the human species, these two are not the same. People used to think that the Earth was the center of the universe because they lacked the technology necessary to make a thorough study of planetary behavior. Early astronomers were incorrect because they lacked sufficient information to formulate an accurate theory. Bush did not lack for information when he made his unpopular decisions - e.g. to invade Iraq when national intelligence agencies were screaming that there was no evidence to support his claim of WMDs which posed an immediate threat to the safety of this country, to appoint to the head of FEMA a man whose previous leadership experience consisted of being a Commissioner of the Arabian Horse Association, to commit fewer troops to Iraq than the vast majority of his military advisors were recommending, to rack up hundreds of billions of dollars in debt to fight an unjustified war which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis while granting tax cuts to the wealthiest 5% of Americans while the earnings of the middle class slip further and further behind the rate of inflation, etc. He did not lack the information necessary to make good, correct decisions. He simply ignored it and did what would benefit not the majority of American citizens, but rather those few to whom he is most politically and economically indebted.

The history of the world is going to be way better off with freedom in the Middle East. It is partly because suicide bomber minded dictators with nuclear weapons is completely out of the question. It is the unthinkable, and it absolutely cannot happen. It CANNOT happen&#33; For this reason and others, including the well being of the people of the Middle East for the REST OF HISTORY, the world will be a far better world than otherwise with a free Middle East. [/b]

Right. Because clearly a dictator in the middle east with no weapons of mass destruction poses a greater danger to this nation than a dictator in Asia with nukes. El Presidente refused to pursue diplomatic channels with Saddam and his dusty, disassembled, no-longer-functional stock of chemical weapons, because he was such an immediate danger that we just had to &#39;Shock &#39;n Awe&#39; his ass into submission. But Kim Jong Il with his proven nuclear capability? Welllll, we&#39;ll just have to wait and see on that one, be patient, pursue all diplomatic channels. No military action. Maybe some sanctions. But nice ones, not too harsh. We wouldn&#39;t want to be hasty, after all. Wouldn&#39;t want to get involved in something we might regret and which might in fact, make the situation more dangerous.

Let me make something abundantly clear: Bush did not attack Iraq to assure the security of this nation. He did it to secure military bases and access to oil reserves with a plan that was developed by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz et al. in the late 1980&#39;s and which Bush Sr. had the sense foresight to recognize as fundamentally flawed. If W had actually been going after terrorists and security threats, he&#39;d have gone after Saudi Arabia, from which hailed 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers, or Iran with its leader who believes that Israel and all of its supporters should be wiped off of the face of the planet and who is currently developing a nuclear capability, or North Korea with its rather insane dictator who already has nuclear weapons, fired a missile capable of reaching Alaska on our Independence Day and recently tested (or claims to have tested) a nuclear bomb. Bush&#39;s ill-conceived actions have made the US - and indeed the world - a more dangerous place, not a safer one. He has destabilized the Middle East, not brought it freedom and peace. History will not record him as a hero, but as a man whose greed and ego and folly cost hundreds of thousands of lives, endangered millions more, and threw vast regions of the world into turmoil.

Our country is not a republic just because we use an electoral college system. It is a republic and not a pure democracy because the people don&#39;t vote on every single government action. We elect leaders to have the knowledge and judgment to make such decisions.

Bush&#39;s advisors are experts. He didn&#39;t hire plumbers to be his national security advisors. He meets with expert advisors, Condoleeza Rice, Vice President Cheney, and lots of other people, and they all discuss ideas.

Bush received the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq from the governments of Britain, Israel, China, Russia, and France as well as our CIA, Senate, and Clinton Administration. Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry ALL spoke out in favor of an invasion of Iraq on the WMD grounds long before Bush did. It is not the case that he made it up himself and then ignored an entire world of people saying it wasn&#39;t true. It would have been irresponsible of him not to act on that kind of intelligence. An enemy terrorist government with WMD&#39;s, one that has used them for terrorist purposes, is completely out of the question under the Bush Doctrine which formed as a response to 9/11. The Hussein government had also violated our ceasefire for 12 years, the stated consequence of which was overthrow. On top of that, Iraq gets to be a free country for the rest of history.

I am not sure where you get the stuff about the oil conspiracy. It sounds interesting, but there is not enough evidence for such a conclusion. There is not even a preponderance of evidence, much less evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. I could just as easily say that it is all about sand for beach resorts in Republican controlled Mississippi and Florida. Did you know that Mississippi&#39;s Biloxi beach has the largest shipped in sand beach in the world? And George W. Bush&#39;s brother is the governor of Florida. My point is that the fact that there are dots does not automatically mean they are connected.

I don&#39;t know where people get these numbers in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths. It is as if some people want to believe those statistics. You said 500 thousand, Neruo said 600 thousand, and somebody on another site said 12 million. Where are you folks getting these numbers. The number has not even reached 50 thousand. Besides, how many of those "civilians" were insurgents? Every innocent civilian death is very tragic. I hate the Hussein regime for making us have to fight this war. Here is report from an anti-war site...

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:2CIpV...t=clnk&cd=1

How is that for credibility?

Iraq is in a transition period now. That is of course going to be really screwed up. But this conflict is about the rest of history, not the first few years after the necessary overthrow. North Korea might be next. Maybe Iran. The world is changing, for the better.

The world is certainly changing, but not for the better.

Areas with previously stable (albeit oppressive) governments, such as the middle east, are being thrown into turmoil because of American intervention, Israeli agression, and the attempted importation of western ideals into an eastern culture.

The very areas which NEED intervention, such as African states, are instead left ignored, and are turning into chaos, where the majority of people are left in squalid poverty to starve, and the governments, if they can be called governments, are instable and rise and fall like the tides, leaving bloody murder and violence in their wake.

Many of the so-called charitable "aid" organisations which are supposed to be helping poorer countries, are instead nothing but thinly-disguised missionary organisations, and are step by step extinguishing native culture and replacing it with culturally inappropriate western Christianity.

The two largest powers in the world, China and America, continue to grown in economic might, and have nearly, if not already, past the point where some check or balance can be put in place to stop unforseeable chaos that may result from the existence two immensely powerful, but ideologically opposed, superpowers.