And now my reply to Dan’s “Obama is a radical Muslim destroying America” junk email and his counter:

From: Corey Gouker
Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2009 2:21 PM
To: JACKIE/DAN ROBINSON
Cc: John Gouker
Subject: RE: FW: PHOTO TO THINK ABOUT

Well since you sent this directly to me, and since it went to my Inbox instead of the Junk E-Mail folder, I guess you want a response. So…

Have you even read the book?

If so, please tell me why you think it’s a problem that the President is reading this? Or are you just basing everything on the caption below the image?

Since I’m almost positive you jumped to conclusions and assumed the most paranoid thing possible here’s the description:

“This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else.” So begins Fareed Zakaria’s important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the “rise of the rest”—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.”

Having actually read this book I can say it makes me happy that:
1. The President can actually read.
2. The President is actually reading something of substance.

You probably haven’t watched the movie IOUSA, you should. Had you either read this book or watched this movie you’d understand just how relevant both are to the current situation in the United States.

The problem isn’t just government, it’s the people too:

1. Americans don’t save nearly enough anymore.
2. Americans don’t sell enough domestic goods to counter the foreign purchases.
3. Americans take too many risks without thinking about future consequences.

Foreign countries own nearly 45% of the debt in the United States. In publicly traded companies there’s something called “controlling interest”, in the simplest form it means that the controlling parties have a 50% + 1 stake. Thus they can control the outcome of the company.

With foreign countries owning so much of your debt they can basically control your outcome. That’s what this book is about – that and the climate change. Since at this point solving the energy problems and fiscal responsibility are the two ways for America to actually survive.

So please, wake up, there’s very little threat from foreign radicalism, the threat is clearly at home. If you can’t understand that then you should ask your God for some insight and pray that everything will magically work itself out.

Next, the book itself, it’s a best seller, written by an Indian man who went to Yale and Harvard. Are you telling me because he’s Muslim that makes it bad? Are you really that much of a paranoid racist? According to Wikipedia, he supported Ronald Reagan in the 1980′s, I guess that meant Reagan had radical ideas and intent for the country too? Even the Snopes article talks about the authors secular upbringing.

Maybe the problem for you isn’t really the fact Obama is reading this book. Maybe your real problem is that you rely on headlines without depth, faith without fact, paranoid delusions without rational thought. You’re too busy thinking Obama is the non-American anti-Christ, who is going to kill your Grandma on a death panel while turning her corpse into biofuel for his hippy-mobile.

I honestly wish I could actually understand the way you think. In my view, it’s your actually your inability to think and understand basic Scientific premises that has me dumbfounded. What’s stupid is that we probably actually agree on many many things, it’s unfortunate that we simply take different approaches in thinking about them.

You probably believe in God, thus you probably believe the Earth is 6000 years old and that God created Earth and Man in 6 days. So somehow you throw away all fact because it scares you or you don’t quite understand. You’re too scared that you “don’t know” so you take comfort in your faith. It’s such a big part of your core that it takes over everywhere in your life. Someone sends you an email that the Government is going to kill your gran instead of treat her and you believe it.

The sad thing is you and I couldn’t even have a real debate. You simply wouldn’t even take the time to actually read, become informed, do some research. You’ll just shut down your brain and throw out some more bullshit that relies on faith and no fact. Instead of sending out dozens these really fucking stupid emails every day, why don’t you actually take the time to read or listen to one good discussion about this stuff? Something with a little substance.

Since that’s obviously not going to be the case, since you’re probably just going to get out of your chair, scratch your ass then grab a Bud Lite from the fridge, do us both a favor. Stop sending me any of this lame email, it all goes to my junk folder anyway. If you do have something constructive and want a debate, by all means, but quit sending me this crap that’s full of right winged-paranoid-red necked-Christian views. It’s not informative because it lacks anything of substance.

Well, tell you what, here’s something in return for you to review. Consider it an example of what I’m talking about. It ties into the book and the movie as well. It’s another bit of the puzzle for the recession of American dominance and the rise of proper globalization. So here’s the TED talks from Hans Rosling (he’s Swedish just so you know):

Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset
Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen

In some ways what’s happening around the world is the great equalization of wealth and power. Some would say it’s Socialism, suppose so in a way. It’s probably got something to do with the corrupt rich that are in power trying to keep their wealth and power instead of reallocating it to the lower-middle class of America. With so much of America owned by other countries and with America stumbling to correct the problems, others are bound to catch up. In many ways it’s a very exciting time to be alive and to witness a radical shift. With so much on the line,  no matter what the outcome is, it’ll likely be drastically different from the way things are now.

-Corey
P.S. To share the discussion I’ll be posting this over to my website for others to chime in if they wish.

Dan’s reply:

From: JACKIE/DAN ROBINSON
Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2009 7:33 PM
To: Corey Gouker
Subject: Re: FW: PHOTO TO THINK ABOUT

Let’s do this young man let’s wait 2 years and we will see just what happens to our nation. Have you ever used or know someone whom has been in a gov run health system ?? Check out how OUR gov treats the people on the res ?? If you get hurt or sick after 6 or 7 months into the year see what you get. And I’m not as dumb as you may think by the way what branch of the military have you served in and ever fight for OUR country ?? The reason EVERYTHING is made outside of our borders is all the folks that whined about the air quality due to steel mills than “acid rain” remember that? Then it was the coal fired power plants, now it’s we can fix EVERYTHING in a few months with out reading any of the bills and tax the crap out of EVERYONE (yes you also) if “cap & trade” gets passed ,everything will go up, you don’t think for a second the power company’s will let the profit drop do you? If you read HISTORY you should all ready know how this will turn out.
You sound just like my thirty year old son that has never experienced much in life,other than school . We had a saying at KHE SANH  ” you have NEVER lived until you almost die. For those who fight for it,Life has a flavor the PROTECTED will Never know.
You never know what the “advisers, Caz’s” what ever name you want to hang on the people with obams ear think unless you study them have you ? I have and most of them SUCK ! But Everyone that has been in power for the 65 years has had a lot of faults but this administration sure seams to have more than the normal what ever that is. Hope this will give you something to think about, And your probably right we could sit down and agree on alot of things but I’m most likely more than 45 years older than yourself and I remember how much better life was here in the 1950′ than today no crack,car jacking etc. in fact we never even had to lock our houses or cars can’t do that any more here how about there ?? And no I not a racists just a concerned citizen ! You just don’t have enough time in to know what is happening to this nation. Good Luck  kid

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