Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory

(07-28-2022, 07:09 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: [ -> ]I'll see you sad sacks again in the fall and see if any of you have wised up aka "pulled your head out of your BLUE asses yet".

Don't bother.

An enlightening post about an enlightened math teacher:

A post on facebook by Kent Weissinger

A friend who is a retired math teacher warns:

My work was never boring… being a math teacher for college students was always an adventure. Most of them believed that math was hard (because they had had terrible teachers before), and it was entertaining trying to show them how easy math is if you look at it the right way. It’s all just patterns. Math uses patterns to answer three very specific kinds of questions: 1) what’s going to happen next (a question about results), 2) why did this happen (a question about causes), and 3) how can I take what I have and get what I want (a question about processes and planning).

It was great fun watching what happened when students actually figured it out. It was like the lights in their mind came on and they saw things clearly for the first time. That why I became a math teacher. I believe that, when people learn to think clearly for themselves, the world will be a better place.

There are people who don’t want that to happen. I used to tell my students… “There will always be people who will volunteer to do your thinking for you if you let them. Those people seldom want to do what’s best for you. They want to do what’s best for them. They are not to be trusted and must not be allowed to make your decisions for you.” A great many of those people are leaders in government and religion.

One of the biggest problems in a “democracy” is that people elect those that think the way they do. They want to be able to understand their leaders, to have leaders that think the same way they do. In the US, it’s called being “a man of the people”. Uneducated people don’t want an educated person in office. Educated people often have “radical” ideas. Stupid people don’t elect smart people. Stupid people elect stupid people to office, because they are not threatened by them. Stupid people like to be comfortable in their stupidity, not confronted and challenged with new ideas.

That’s why Trump is still so popular in America. His supporters think that he’s just like them. He lies, cheats, womanizes, abuses people, mocks people who are different, and gets away with it. He’s intolerant and bigoted. He hates the same people his supporters hate. He resents progress and equality. He has become rich and famous, and his supporters think that they could do that, too. With him in charge, they believe that we could go back to The Good Old Days of the 1950’s, when it was okay to call black people niggers and keep them “in their place”, when women were there to serve men and never complain, when gays were ashamed and hiding in their closets, when white Christian males made the rules that everyone had to live by.

And teaching people to think for themselves, to reason, to think things through, to make decisions based on facts and evidence, could prevent all that. The current governor of the state of Florida says that math should not be used to help people think better. Math should stick to adding and subtracting and leave reasoning and social issues out of the classroom. He may very well be the next president of the US. That terrifies me… he actually much more dangerous than Trump, because he’s smarter and younger.

I guess the future is coming… we need to be ready.

Well, the FBI snooped around in Mar-a-Lago. It knows the usual hiding places for damning stuff. The worst would be damning connections.

Should the FBI be seeking something else and find something clearly criminal not enumerated in the warrant -- for a drug offender, that might include tools of such crimes as a firearm and a mask characteristic of armed robbers -- then that itself is fair game. If not drugs, something like child pornography that is itself illegal would also become fair game for an investigation.

The FBI may not be a secret police, but it is certainly secretive. It collects evidence and keeps quiet about it until giving it up for use by prosecutors -- if it can so be used. Remember -- the FBI may not be a secret police, but it is even more effective than the Gestapo or the KGB ever were. You certainly do not want it snooping around. It can get innocent people to talk. They are easy. They will talk just to avoid incrimination and might end up incriminating a likely offender who isn't so likable.

Speculation that I read in the Detroit Free Press is that the FBI was looking heavily for classified documents.

In that case, 



Theft, abuse, or misuse of classified information is a serious federal crime for which there are no excuses.

Reich-wing threatens civil war over the Trump "raid"

(08-11-2022, 01:23 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]Speculation that I read in the Detroit Free Press is that the FBI was looking heavily for classified documents.

In that case, 



Theft, abuse, or misuse of classified information is a serious federal crime for which there are no excuses.

I seem to remember that Republicans made serious hay over this, even using it to elect Trump. Let's see, was her first name, Hillary? I forget.....

This is not fun. Trumpism has killed in Ohio. People have disgraced themselves and gotten themselves killed in the name of his cause. As I write this, some people are in an armed stand-off at the Phoenix branch of the FBI, most likely angry at the legal scrutiny against the idol of the personality cult to which they adhere.

You may now disagree with LBJ's assessment of the "terrorists of North Vietnam" of the time, but otherwise this fits:





There's nothing funny or cute about terrorism or murder. If this post kills this thread, then so be it. For the good of this nation and of Western Christian Civilization this cult must disappear. The KKK was not funny when it murdered Virginia Liuzzo.

(08-14-2022, 10:51 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]This is not fun. Trumpism has killed in Ohio. People have disgraced themselves and gotten themselves killed in the name of his cause. As I write this, some people are in an armed stand-off at the Phoenix branch of the FBI, most likely angry at the legal scrutiny against the idol of the personality cult to which they adhere.

You may now disagree with LBJ's assessment of the "terrorists of North Vietnam" of the time, but otherwise this fits:





There's nothing funny or cute about terrorism or murder. If this post kills this thread, then so be it. For the good of this nation and of Western Christian Civilization this cult must disappear. The KKK was not funny when it murdered Virginia Liuzzo.

That's OK; that's fine! This thread is for bashing Trump too, and his followers and his cult, and well-deserved and intelligent bashing it is.

That's Viola Liuzzo I believe.... I remember it well, sadly, and there were many more.

I stand corrected on Viola Liuzzo.

Better suggestion: get a small tablet or reader device and log on here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/

(Project Gutenberg, a repository of free e-books mostly in the public domain -- anything in final form as of December 31, 1924... and on January 1, anything completed before December 31, 1925).  This may not apply to translations made after then. 

Start reading great literature and become less boring. 

OK, if you spend a couple months reading The Brothers Karamazov, you might begin to sound like someone whose first language is Russian due to Dostoevsky's sentence structure, but what the heck?

"Comical Sally" (allusion to the ludicrous propagandist "Comical Ali" on Iraqi media during the First Gulf War) makes an ironic entrance:



...and...



Ironic, as Trump cannot get along with dogs. I doubt that he could safely move in on a literal "bitch"  -- you know, the kind that barks and bears puppies. They protect their offspring from anyone whom they distrust, much as is so with a tigress protecting her cubs.

In honor of the late Queen:

British and dated (related to Trump's State visit to the UK)  but worthy of recall.











Corgis are about the size of domestic cats. I figure that Obama, a dog lover, got to meet them, and Trump didn't. We will likely soon find out (the late Queen was extremely secretive!) Small dogs have big teeth and claws, and they have the power with which to express their opinions of people with those teeth and claws. Take it from me: dog claws are dangerous!

The Chaplin character (Chaplin was British) is a mockery of a real dictator, unlike the wannabe that Trump was (and still is). George Orwell... well, we know the connection to Trump, don't we?

(10-05-2022, 02:15 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]

Does being referred to as deaf, dumb and blind or simply clueless seem/sound at all familiar to you? So, have you become more independent since you elected old senile Biden or are you still as reliant upon others as you've been the entire time that I've known you?