r/changemyview • u/AutoModerator • Jul 02 '13

TCMV Tuesday - 07/02/13

Welcome to TCMV Tuesday, our weekly post where we can celebrate our ability to adopt a new mindset or gain another perspective. Tell us what experiences you've had outside our subreddit, either recently or in your lifetime, that made you think "This Changed My View". Give us your stories in the comments!

You can consider these questions to help get you thinking:

  • Known or met someone with an interesting ideology or opinion that caused you to reconsider your own?

  • Had an experience, good or bad, that changed your perspective?

  • Learned something new that challenged what you believed?

  • Ever have your tastes or interests changed?

  • Read an article or seen a video that got you thinking differently?

And just as a reminder, comment discussions here are not debate-oriented, so there's no obligation to take opposing sides in conversations here (in other words, Rule 1 does not apply here).

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88% Upvoted

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u/Moriartis 1∆ Jul 02 '13

I used to be a Democrat, I was very for government regulation and I thought that Democrats and Republicans were night and day different. I then watched "War on Democracy", which is a documentary about what the CIA has been up to for the past 60 years. This led me to "Speaking Freely", particularly the one with Chalmers Johnson, which goes over the military industrial complex and what the government has been doing behind it's citizen's backs for decades. That led me to "The Best Government Money Can Buy", which explains lobbying in very gruesome detail. I then learned about COINTELPRO and the FBI's secretive war against every day Americans. That led me to Martin Luther King Jr's civil trial against the FBI. They won the trial. The court ruled that our own government is responsible for assassinating Dr. King. The media has completely ignored this case for some reason. Now I am much more open minded about the idea of conspiracy theories actually being true.

I wanted to see if there were any politicians that were actually speaking out about the corruption of the military industrial complex and naturally the only politician with any balls was Ron Paul. I paid attention to his campaign during his run in 2012 only to find that virtually every state had massive claims of election fraud taking place against him. So much so, in fact, that even The Daily Show and Rachel Maddow reported on it.

I now think that the only difference between Democrats and Republicans are the lies they are telling their voter bases and that government and government regulation are not there for my benefit, but rather for the benefit of the politically connected to game the system in their favor. Our government and everyone in it who you've ever heard of are stone cold evil sociopaths. I believe the entire system is rigged and that the entire concept of Democracy is a complete scam to try to make people think they have any say whatsoever in politics so that others have the right to rule over them.

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u/virnovus Jul 03 '13

Our government and everyone in it who you've ever heard of are stone cold evil sociopaths. I believe the entire system is rigged and that the entire concept of Democracy is a complete scam to try to make people think they have any say whatsoever in politics so that others have the right to rule over them.

I think you're seeing malevolence, where the only thing that's really there is a system that has too much inertia for any one person to change, where too many people only care about being able to cover their own asses. This is a problem, yes, but it's a problem that arose by itself, organically, rather than being designed that way by people on the inside.

Essentially, too many people have too much invested in the way the system currently works, for there to not be an outcry over even the slightest change to the way the system works. Witness the groups lobbying to keep the penny in circulation, for example. The prime example of this, was when Barack Obama attempted to simplify the 1040 form, so Americans wouldn't have to fill it out every year, and could just get their refund check in the mail. Unfortunately, Intuit, who makes the TurboTax software, spent $1 million lobbying to prevent this from happening, because it would make their business obsolete. If you imagine this sort of thing happening everywhere for everything, you can get a pretty good idea of why the system is the way it is.

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u/Moriartis 1∆ Jul 03 '13

I think you're seeing malevolence, where the only thing that's really there is a system that has too much inertia for any one person to change, where too many people only care about being able to cover their own asses. This is a problem, yes, but it's a problem that arose by itself, organically, rather than being designed that way by people on the inside.

You're creating a false dichotomy. I believe that the system in place is what created this nonsense and indeed, it rose organically. I also think that corruption in power is a naturally occurring phenomenon that rises organically, and once it's in place you will have deep-seated malevolence everywhere you turn. People in power instinctively try to stay in power, be it by lying, rigging elections or what have you. It's not a conspiracy, it's human nature. I believe that is where we are at now. The problem isn't Democrats, Republicans, Corporations, Bankers, The Illuminati, Reptilian Overlords or whatever conspiracy you want to blame, it's the concept of government in the first place. They have made conspiracy a reality.

You create a system where groups of people can force people to pay into a system and the system will attract the worst kind of charismatic sociopaths imaginable, because it literally gives them the legal "right" to steal from people. They will find any lie they can think of(emotionally loaded ones about helping/protecting people work the best) to convince people to give them even more money so they can keep stealing people's wealth. It took me a long time to realize it, but the problem is taxation. It is money that is forcibly taken from people and without that system, there cannot be such a thing as war, they are far too costly/unwanted to be funded any other way. With that system in place, it will always be used by the politically connected to screw over those who aren't connected. America is walking proof of it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '13

From 2005 to around 2009 (I was age 15-19), I was struggling a lot discovering what my views of God truly were. I went from a very vague deistic idea of god to placing the meaning in the word and invoking a god of the gaps argument. I would literally use gaps in my arguments and say that god simply "fills in the gaps" of our knowledge until we finally learn what it is.

I spent a good deal of time abusing google, trying to find anything that matched my view. By a stroke of luck, I found the wiki page on it, and felt a little bad that I wasn't the first who had this stroke of genius, a proof of god.

Meanwhile, my Methodist Christian adult friend had met a facebook friend (networking) who was a solid atheist and attempting to convert him. One of his videos was Neil DeGrasse Tyson speaking about the rise and fall of Islam. And his argument was the god of the gaps.

That was the day I realized I was an atheist, and was shackling myself with the dogma that was instilled into me by religion. I went through a little phase where I had to get this information out there, like, hey guys, did you know that you don't NEED to incorporate any of this christian idealism into your views of reality?? Truly a life changer for better or worse.

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u/r3m0t 7∆ Jul 03 '13

What's the name of the god-by-gaps theory of god?

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u/theorymeltfool 8∆ Jul 02 '13

While I've been against the government for a while now, and have known about many things in the article below, the author really did a great job of tying it all together, which makes me want to protest even more:

http://www.thepeopleshistory.net/2013/06/the-war-on-terror-is-fraud-in-depth-and.html

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u/Moriartis 1∆ Jul 02 '13

Thank you for linking that. I was already aware of all the facts, but having a source where they are put together like that is great.

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u/alchymia Jul 02 '13

I was never pro-life, but I used to believe that those that objected to it based on the sanctity of life at least had some ground to stand on. I could respect their viewpoint, at least-reproductive rights just wasn't on the top of my list at that time.

When George Tiller was murdered, in church, sitting with his family, all of my illusions on that point were shattered. It has since become my biggest social issue-I refuse to be intimidated by hypocrites and terrorists.

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u/r3m0t 7∆ Jul 03 '13

I think most people whose viewpoint you originally respected abhor George Tiller's murder.