Are there any UK forum Free Republic visitors?

[Taxloss]

or UK forum visitors-to-the-other-place?

You don't have to be a Brit to answer.

What I was wondering is: do Brits post on there as well? Are there FR (and other) Muriels and Vladimirs and Taxlosses?

I don't visit the other sites (life's too short and their more entertaining excesses are reported here anyway) but I would guess the answer is "no". We on the left have always been more international in outlook, and I can imagine the Brit style getting banned almost immediately in the rah-rah-rah cheerleading elsewhere.

Anyway, that's my guess - yours?

[Zuni]

1. There are British members of Free Republic

I have seen them. Most are pretty dim bulbs. There are alot of canadian ones that are more US nationalists than most American citizens :crazy:

[Taxloss]

2. Hey Zuni

Nice to see you.

Edit: Thanks for the answer!

[Zuni]

3. Hay Taxloss!

Great to see you too.

I actally consider myself somewhat of a freeperologist.:silly: If you ever have questions about FR, I will be happy to answer them.

:hi:

[Taxloss]

5. Thanks, I'll bear that in mind.

I don't envy you, though. Why anyone would want to spend time there is beyond me. It must be like studying a particularly loathsome form of insect; but it's clear that the flat contradictions "certainty" breeds are fascinating to examine.

[Zuni]

11. I find it to be like anthropology

and there are certain freepers that are so far gone that they are amusing, even to the point of making me LOL :rofl:.

During the whole Schiavo thing, these folks were pouring out of the wood work. There was one guy who posted an asinine poem about Terry on about 300 different threads, often several times on each thread. There were paintings of Jesus holding Terri's hand, pictures of the American Eagle rescuing Terry, all kinds of pweudo-religious, political and judicial rantings. There were threads calling Judge Greer a full blown nazi mass killer--etc. It was pure madness. Since the Schiavo controversy I haven't been there much---it is too anti-climatic. The nuts put on their best show for that one.

I guess I am fascinated by mental illness

[tenshi816]

15. Doesn't it give you nightmares?

On the rare occasions I've ventured over there, I've left the site feeling anxious and always sleep badly afterwards - seriously, all that vitriol must penetrate my unconscious and it comes out in my dreams.

I didn't know about FR until after I discovered DU, and I was shocked at the level of ignorance and hate there. Since last year I have discovered how naive I can sometimes be about human nature.

[Vladimir]

4. Canadian US nationalists?

man, you really learn something new every day.

[Taxloss]

6. Presumably, these are morons

of the same cut as those in this country who say "screw Europe! 51st state!"

[Vladimir]

7. Those exist?

I need to get out more, evidently. Or maybe its for the best that I don't...

[Taxloss]

8. Scratch a Tory arguing for North Atlantic Free Trade ...

... find a Tory yearning to throw our sovereignty at the USA. And it's been like that since 1975 at least. If not since the second Churchill government.

[non sociopath skin]

13. But they are soooo quiet about it ...

... although, with their usual lack of finesse, UKIP aka The Baggy Trousered Misanthropists, seem to have given the game away. "We don't want to give up our National Sovereignty to the Europeans! We want to give it up to the Americans!"

BTW, visited Free Republic a couple of times but couldn't stand the smell. Try to restrict myself to two showers a day. Also, it's one of the physically ugliest and least well-organised websites I've ever come across.

The Skin

[Zuni]

9. Canadians who basically believe what the right wing of the US

Republican party believes. They are Bush bots from a different country---it is weird. It would be like a Ukrainian who is a Russian nationalist, but weirder

google Adam yoshida. He is a Canadian Freeper and more RW and nationalist about US politics than most Americans :crazy:

[Vladimir]

10. Ah! "Curbstomp" Yoshida!

yes, I remeber him and his column after the US elections... madman.

[mr blur]

12. To this Brit it's like peering over a fence

into some perverted disneyland, where reality hardly ever intrudes. (Mind you, I thought that about the real disneyland, which I thought was a very creepy place). Or maybe like staring, fascinated, into some giant zoo full of bizarre, dangerous creatures, glad that there's a strong fence between them and me. But of course for you folks in the US there isn't, they get to mingle quite freely with real people.

My worry is that these lunatics are too often what the rest of the world identifies with the US. They have no idea how insane they appear to the average European and, of course, they don't give a fuck anyway. If the US becomes the great theocracy that they seem to want, they'll be absolutely ecstatic and if the rest of the world shuns that theocracy they'll be perfectly satisfied - after all, we're just dumb foreigners who don't even have any guns in their homes and don't worship Dubya, so there's no hope for us anyway. It says so in their bible.

It's alarming to see a whole culture of people who seem to think it's their right to rule the world but have no interest in that world beyond wanting to make it look as much like a giant strip mall as possible just so they'll feel comfortable if they're ever unlucky enough to have to leave the US and visit part of it.

I know the folks at DU represent the REAL America but the idiots seem to have the power.

[CottonBear]

17. Wow. Excellent analysis of the current state of the union of the USA.

This statement hits the nail right on the head:

"It's alarming to see a whole culture of people who seem to think it's their right to rule the world but have no interest in that world beyond wanting to make it look as much like a giant strip mall as possible just so they'll feel comfortable if they're ever unlucky enough to have to leave the US and visit part of it."

Unfortunately, I live among the bizarre, dangerous creatures known as Republicans. Some of them are even my relatives. :(
My sister-in-law went on on trip to Hawaii and was "surprised that there were so many Asians there." :eyes:
(I tried to explain that the Polynesians were the original inhabitants of the islands.)

I live in a "blue" city surrounded by "red" counties. However, the Republicans are attempting to engineer a takeover of my blue oasis. I am working to thwart their efforts. :grr:

Please let your fellow countrymen know that we are not all rapid, Bush-loving theocrats.

[T_i_B]

14. Here's an old favourite

It's the Sterling Times message board. I think this evolved out of the old Free Britannia, which was the UK equivalent of FR. That was one funny site though. Most of the posters on there were Americans oddly enough.

There are one or two UK DUer's more familiar with Sterling Times then I am though.

http://forums.sterlingtimes.org/tool/mb/sterlingtimes

[non sociopath skin]

18. I used to arm-wrestle on ST but gave it up as a bad job some time ago.

It wasn't even funny anymore. Fairly evenly divided between out-and-out Send 'Em Back or Gas 'Em Neo-Nazis and weirdo Fundie Neocons. Main purpose of the site seemed to be to persuade Far Right Brits that they'd be better off as Grade Three Americans.

Surprised it's still there, to be honest.

The Skin

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Oh God - that's the 'Anglosphere' lot, isn't it?

With the Canadians being excluded, on the grounds that they weren't right wing enough, if I remember. Plus, of course, any Caribbean countries, on the (unspoken) grounds that their skins are too dark for the Sterling Times crowd.

I can follow some boards that have views I disagree with (eg libertarians - while a few are nutcases, most of them give the impression that in real life they are quite bearable), but Sterling Times, like Free Republic, just gives the impression of being people you'd run screaming from, rather than spend five minutes in a room with them.

[T_i_B]

20. Indeed it is the Anglosphere crowd

That is one creepy concept is it not?

Mind you, I think it best to put up Sterling Time's own explanation of where Canada is in relation to this lot.

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/sterlingtimes/vpost?id=212501&highlight=democratic+underground

"Of course I regard Canada as a member of the Anglosphere. It's current slide into liberalism is unfortunate, but Canadians cannot be blamed for that any more than British conservatives can be blamed for Tony Blair."

[Taxloss]

21. For a Conservative board, the Sterling Times displays a liberal use of

apostrophes, I see.

[non sociopath skin]

22. Perhaps it reflects the preponderance of anti-metric greengrocers ....

... in the British Loony Right.

The Skin

[Kipling]

23. *Blink*

Bastards. Coming over here, stealing our jobs, clogging up the internet, ruining our society, voting for anyone who'll give them a tenner - it sickens me. I say, send 'em back to where they belong: the fourteenth century.

[Taxloss]

24. Don'tknock the 14th century.

The first real social mobility begins in England in the 14th century; the latter half of the 14th century looks a lot like the latter half of the 20th century.

[D-Notice]

25. Was that due to the Black Death?

I'm pretty sure that it occurred around that time...

[Taxloss]

28. Yes, a direct result.

England was miserably overpopulated in the early 14th century - poor harvests and cattle murrain caused widespread famine in 1311 and 1312, not helped by the incompetence of Edward II and the depredations of the Despensers. Also, Thanks to EII and Piers Gaveston's lousy handling and chronic under-resourcing, we were being walloped by the Scots on a regular basis - they pillaged as far south as York.

The Black Death in 1348 was a blessing in disguise. It killed between one third and one half of the population and transformed the economy. The value of labour shot up, the size of farms increased massively, pay levels skyrocketed (despite government attempts to regulate them and stop people moving about - the first ever nationwide social legislation), the amount of meat and dairy in the national diet goes from almost none to healthy level as land can be turned to pasture, people seem generally taller, healthier and better fed, beer production (and consumption) leaps, industrial relations improve (sometimes bloodily, as in County Durham), and for the first time since the Romans the majority gets to experience something revolutionary: leisure. Football becomes the national sport at about this time. Prototypes of cricket and tennis appear. Public drunkenness goes from being almost unheard of to being commonplace.

Meanwhile, the state is forced to reform itself urgently to deal with a rapidly evolving situation - the civil service appears, and is housed in a place called Whitehall. The grip of the church loosens (the psychology behind that shift is a 10,000-word essay on its own). Feudalism begins its long, slow death. Modern Britain is quite literally born in 1349.

[Guy_Montag]

26. So what happened in the early 15th C?

[Taxloss]

27. Relentless war and domestic trouble.

Henry IV usurped Richard II in 1398, and then struggled to keep hold of power as the coalition he created fell apart and the hundred years war dragged on (hence the name). When he died after less than two decades on the throne, he was succeeded by Henry V who was rather more capable (agincourt and so on), but HV got dysentery and died (a common problem on medieval campaigns - disease claimed more soldiers than combat until after the Crimea). HV was succeeded by Henry VI, who was less than a year old - the regency in England was a disaster, and Bedford's running of the war in France was even worse. Then, when HVI matured, he turned out to be incompetent to the point of insanity (possibly congenital syphillis). And so it goes on. You don't get a vaguely competent monarch until Henry VII - with Richard III among the highlights in the interim!

[SweetLeftFoot]

16. There's a few amusing Brits

at the utter fucking nuthouse that is www.libertyforum.org