Ladies and Gentlemen, the 2nd American Civil War is upon you.

Yep. Thats right.

Only this time, the battle is being fought on a new frontier. Its a frontier that has limitless possibilities, and the battle is happening right now, as I type this.

The frontier is the net. The battleground is in forums like this one. The weapons are words, emotes and propaganda. The battle is fierce as the stakes are high, and both sides of the war are vying for the hearts and minds of anyone who will listen to them.

Its a dirty business, and both sides will stoop as low as they have to to claim their territory and further their goals.

And make no mistake, war is a nasty business. There are and will be casualties - but not bodies (unless things get really out of hand) - this is a war of bruised egos and reputations, where the assasins deadliest weapons are words and rumours and scandals and where even the tiniest, smallest detail can cut like a knife, and where WMDs take the form of Blogs and Youtube videos that serve only to further divide the populous and obliterate free thought in favour of rigid partisanship and a total and utter lack of common sense.

And the sad thing is that there will be no victor in this war. There will only be stalemate and stereotype. And while the war is being fought those who propagated it, those who seek to divert and subvert, will go about their business as per usual and let the fanatics fight for them.

You've probably already picked a side. You may even have been participating in the battles. But I ask you to consider this - if the aim of either side is the common good of the USA, then aren't the best interests of the country served by a balance of viewpoints?

And if so, why are you fighting at all? Why aren't you discussing, developing and progressing, instead of being entrenched, static and stagnating like soldiers on the Flanders fields of the First World War?

You're wrong and i think you smell bad and touch children
/sarcasm


sorry had to prove your point.

absolutely right.

only thing keeping this from a full on explosion is the fact that a lot of people still dont even care what happens in "computer world".

but if everyone was linked in, then there would be big time fights.

Great points , but I feel this is going to esclate because the internet has enlightend us like you said . Because of our discussing we go to war. Im also fighting now everday by informing friends and strangers everyday of what I have learned here at ATS.

reply to post by neformore

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The problem stems from the fact that there are two camps that believe their way is the best way for the US. The Conservatives distrust any type of government oversight and fear taxes as if they were mustard gas falling from the sky, preferring to believe that an unrestrained society free of government intervention will lead to Utopia for all (all who care to work). The Liberals believe government oversight is the answer to individual protection and realize taxation comes with this oversight, and believe that since the government represents the populous (supposedly), it will inevitably act all of the population's interests with its laws and regulations.

Note that I am talking about basic human mindset of preferring the individual vs. the group, and not about the political parties. The parties are just an ill-fitting shirt for people to wear because it's better than having no shirt at all (which it isn't but that's another conversation!).

In the age of the internet and Twitter communications, blogs that the ignorant take as gospel because they're too uneducated to know the difference between journalism and opinion, 24 hour news that focuses 10 seconds to a story, and news "commentators" - that just like blogs the ignorant parade around as gospel - people have become inundated with more information than they've ever been exposed to before.

It all happened too fast for the common person to cope with. In about a decade, the internet transformed every desk into a portal to a library 1,000,000 times more vast than the Library of Congress, and in this library, everyone has their own story to tell.

Now we have the "Powers that Be" finally capitalizing off of this information ocean. They have crafted a massive media machine to utterly destroy the average attention span and make us hysterical, shrieking monkeys that believe every sensationalized issue broadcast on CNN or FOX is some call to patriotic action to keep some shadowy enemy from destroying ourselves.

My firm belief is that it all comes down to our attention span and our "thin slicing" ability. Thin slicing is the snap judgement your subconscious makes when it's presented with new information. Before your conscious mind has time to read and interpret the information, your unconscious mind has taken a polaroid of the situation, compared it the mind's previous experiences, and made a snap judgement on how to react to the situation.

The best people in Marketing, PR, and "public opinion" know this, and capitalize on it by using your mind's thin slicing combined with your stunted attention span to drop subtle cues immediately, thus captivating your attention and forming your opinion on the subject before you move on to the next issue.

Anyway, that's my contribution to our ongoing mental Civil War in America, and one of the WMDs they use to divide the people.

reply to post by neformore

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This new frontier is is also helping people unite, organize and prepare for what's coming down the pipeline.

A battle is raging in cyberspace, it is the digital battle before the real battle looming on the horizon. To me and countless others, all signs point to a conflict coming soon. Of course we don't want it but it appears to be an inevitable event to make things right and by that I mean clean the slate, expunging the corruption and wrongdoing of those that lead us.

YouTube Link

[edit on 4-9-2009 by warrenb]

If it's a second American civil war, I'm opting out...

These so called sides are nothing more than a contrivance by those on either "side" who seek power and position. I refuse to give them the satisfaction...

The only side I'm going to choose is my own.

I will think my own thoughts, and act as I feel I should...without regard to whether it suits one side or another.

In other words: To Hell With All Of Them...

S&F, good stuff dude. your right 100%

Its the war of the mind.

what happened to the internet being there solely for porn?

i liked it then.

with all the bloggers and freaks and idiots and auction sites and ......


i dont like this place anymore.


internet had 3 purposes back in the day (mid 90's)

porn gaming and chatroom

edit: when the masses arrived, the free stuff went out the door.

[edit on 9/4/2009 by mahtoosacks]

reply to post by warrenb

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I agree there will come a time when we will have to stand

up for our RIGHTS!.........and not just sit on our hands so

to speak....imo

I'm not for one side or the other, I'm against them all. Kick the right and the left out and start all over.

Two great paraphrased quotes from "The Invisibles" by Grant Morrison which speak nicely to polarization:





Both spoken by a main character who is regarded in the fiction as a sort of Buddha-Messiah figure.

Edit for: missing "to" in first sentence.

[edit on 4-9-2009 by JohnnyElohim]

reply to post by neformore

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neformore, you will like this thread where I speak on similiar areas.

Harriet Tubman, This Underground Railroad Will Carry Free Men, Trying Not To Become Slaves

I draw the correlations of how history itself is being repeated although this time it will be a very scary, dark, and ominous future indeed, very much so like you pointed out with your thread.

Flagged, starred, and D.I.G.G.'ed as well.

[edit on 4-9-2009 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

If anything like progress is made in this war,the PTB will just turn off your juice,or selectively shut down internet access....

Voila,war over,weapons neutralised.

This dreamland only serves TPTB,they know what we are all beeeyatchin about and discussing.

The internet is just a sales tool,when it stops working,it will be gone.

The major problem is that our ability to comprehend the information we receive is far below the rate that we are receiving the information. Thus, catch-phrases, jingles, euphemisms, talking points, and argumentum ad nauseam reign supreme over logic. Hopefully once people are able to saturate the information in a logical fashion this will change over time. We can only hope.

Good post S & F!

The only thing I'd disagree with you on, is that I don't think I'd class it as a second American civil war.........more a 3rd World war!

ATS is used by many nationalities, not just Americans - does that not make it a world war?

haha yeah right, you life is so important and you're engaged in a deadly battle for survival and you're part of the good guys who are definately going to win because they are good and the world will end if you don't and and and...... meh, i think i saw that film already.

It fun to pretend that our lives are really important and the games we play are vital to the world but come on be serious, these pointless little debates we have which go round and round all day long are unlikely to change the minds of those who take part let alone actually affect the world at large!

You seem not to understand why these debates rage, it's because often both points are justified - take the gun controll controversy, both sides have many valid points however it must be all or nothing, one or the other. People all live different lives thus different things affect them in different ways, this is why people have different opininions - simple hu?

To be honest rather than the people participating in open debate on issues they're interested in i would say that it's you thats the problem, you're caught up in the false right / wrong paradigm - the world is not black and white, many issues are very complex and the overall system of society is crazily complex. Pretending that all opinions which aren't your own are nothing more than phantoms created by evil overlords to destroy society is to be honest childish.

Rather than hide your head in the sand why not engage in debates by dealing with the issues, or if practical action is what you prefer, why not work on making the systems work - rather than just complain that everything is broken!

The Final Battle front is not Cyberspace But in the Mind. As a Buddhist would All things are Mind Alone. As the late William Cooper put it in Behold a Pale Horse, World War III started the day after WWII and it is for your Mind. It does not just take place in cyberspace, but television, radio, magazine,s newspapers, Billboards, Food, Medicine Water thee air you breathe. Filter everything with your mind but ask the Great Spirit to give you strength. As is the one who's mind holds up the entire material world.

Money warps our Survival Instincts and People are going to great lengths now to just to live. Man exists Physically for the sole purpose of avancing spiritually. Spiritually is knowledge.

reply to post by neformore

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It appears your avatar is appropriate for the times though an Eagle beats a Raven every time.

reply to post by NatureBoy

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I think that we've had this Ideological Civil War since TV became the main medium of propaganda.

Hey, we get into a fight

the rich get to run off with all the money,

who should one hate? Your best friend that became your archenemy after an argument or Bernanke?

Maybe Marx was right, the highest level of evolution for humans is when the proletarian can realize that they're being screwed by a handful of entities.