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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6115272" data-attributes="member: 2067">Yeah, given the frequent and persistent occurrences of wingnuttery in old and recent history, I'ma hafta differ on that point. Genocide is a thing. A thing that has happened in living memory of people that are not even very old. Any argument that wingnuttery doesn't dictate policy is, for me, going to have to overcome some counter-examples that I feel are TREMENDOUSLY problematic to write off as just outliers. I don't think I'm being overly cynical, either. I don't imagine we'd be at interplanatery war or anything (that would assume a planetary government, which...hahahahaha). Just that in this hypothetical, a journey to the other planet isn't out of the realm of possibility for wingnuts, and said wingnuts are likely to try something violent sooner or later, 'cuz they're nutty. If the aliens aren't psychologically hegemonic (which, given natural selection, it is unlikely that they would be), they'll probably have some wingnuts, too, who do very similar stuff. Give it at most a year or two before someone is on a popular news network advocating for the destruction of all alien life (for one reason or another) and politicians talking about securing the &quot;xenophobe&quot; vote in 2016 while people are showing up at rallies with signs like &quot;THEY HAVE NUKES, TOO!&quot; and &quot;BLAST THEM OUT OF THE SKY!&quot; and &quot;IF HUMANS ARE MADE BY GOD, WHAT MADE THEM?!&quot;(Xenotheology/Exotheology would be an interesting subject, I think!)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 6115272, member: 2067"] Yeah, given the frequent and persistent occurrences of wingnuttery in old and recent history, I'ma hafta differ on that point. Genocide is a thing. A thing that has happened in living memory of people that are not even very old. Any argument that wingnuttery doesn't dictate policy is, for me, going to have to overcome some counter-examples that I feel are TREMENDOUSLY problematic to write off as just outliers. I don't think I'm being overly cynical, either. I don't imagine we'd be at interplanatery war or anything (that would assume a planetary government, which...hahahahaha). Just that in this hypothetical, a journey to the other planet isn't out of the realm of possibility for wingnuts, and said wingnuts are likely to try something violent sooner or later, 'cuz they're nutty. If the aliens aren't psychologically hegemonic (which, given natural selection, it is unlikely that they would be), they'll probably have some wingnuts, too, who do very similar stuff. Give it at most a year or two before someone is on a popular news network advocating for the destruction of all alien life (for one reason or another) and politicians talking about securing the "xenophobe" vote in 2016 while people are showing up at rallies with signs like "THEY HAVE NUKES, TOO!" and "BLAST THEM OUT OF THE SKY!" and "IF HUMANS ARE MADE BY GOD, WHAT MADE THEM?!" (Xenotheology/Exotheology would be an interesting subject, I think!) [/QUOTE]

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