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

(11-12-2020, 06:21 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-12-2020, 09:53 AM)David Horn Wrote: [ -> ]John, you need to get back on your meds.  I'm serious.  If you actually believe any of this, then I'm really worried.

This is so totally bizarre, I barely know how to respond.  I thought that you might scream faux outrage over the "Fuck you" remark, even though that was a perfectly reasonable and appropriate thing for me to say, in view of the totally insulting, offensive and condescending message of yours that I was responding to.

And now you're saying that you're "really worried"?  Lol.  You really are completely full of crap, aren't you.

The point is that the rest of the paragraph that you're quoting is completely factual.  Reading through it now, I might change the phrase "when they know full well" to "when they very strongly believe," but the paragraph is completely correct.

I have been using 'Earth 1' and 'Earth 2' to indicate the two realities people can choose to live in.  To me, the main stream media have their agendas which you have to watch, but they have things more or less right.  Trump, Fox and many other organizations have it screwy.  They have no compunction about stating falsehoods as if they were true, and are after a population that wants them to be true.  They want voters or viewers or whatever, and are willing to make up anything to get them.

In abstract, you can look at things the other way around.  Thing is, in this day when any millionaire can create a propaganda media outlet, when any moderately comfortable person can open a web site, you can create an alternate worldview and present it as fact.  As I have been saying, you or any ideologue and so thoroughly immerse themselves in their perspective that it becomes real to them.  

Unfortunately, you are only going to gather folk that already share the bogus perspective.  To others, you are not only off but way off.  Get back on your meds off.

I count on this.  I understand that a lot of ideologues with extreme belief in odd political perspectives will accept what they want to believe.  I end up collecting ideologies.  That doesn't make them real.

One answer is a scientific perspective, of checking your data and theories against reality often, to be more concerned about having a correct theory of the world than advancing your ideology.  That would be a switch for you.

But I am not so concerned about holders of the old values clinging to their perspective.  Britain made colonial imperialism work long after the American Revolution.  The slave owners morphed into the KKK terrorists.  There were folks who believe the US shouldn't have regulated the economy, or contained fascist and communist autocracy from expanding.  They will just ride the old values to their deaths.  

Not everyone buys into the crisis, the changes and challenges presented.  In this case it is COVID and racial violent policing.  The red managed to ignore them, but you can't ignore the worst problems facing a culture in a crisis.  If you try, you go down.  In one way or another, the problems get solved.  Those who are not interested in solving them continue to exist.  We are not going to kill their ideologies, no matter that they are dated.  They will just fade into irrelevance.

** 12-Nov-2020 World View: Earth 2

(11-12-2020, 08:00 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]> I have been using 'Earth 1' and 'Earth 2' to indicate the two
> realities people can choose to live in.

There's no such thing as "Earth 2." It exists only in your mind.
It's like a fantasy world in a movie or a video game, where you can
make your characters do anything you want. But it doesn't really
exist. It's a hallucination that you're having. It's a delusion.

You seem to be exhibiting psychotic symptoms. You're apparently
having a psychotic break, with delusional thoughts and beliefs,
hallucinations, and paranoia about some magical "Earth 2," a world you
can use a magic Star Trek capability to beam all the prople that you
don't like, so that all the prople that you hate live in your
imaginary Earth 2, so that you don't have to live with them in what
you call "Earth 1."

That's a convenient delusion, but it's not real, and it indicates that
you're having a mental breakdown.

I'm sure that David Horn must be getting "really worried" about you.

You need to go back on your meds before you become so confused about
your Earth 2 delusion that you try to kill one of the people in Earth
2 that you hate. The people around you are in immediate danger
because of your delusion and psychotic break. Get help right away.

(11-12-2020, 08:39 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]There's no such thing as "Earth 2."  It exists only in your mind. It's like a fantasy world in a movie or a video game, where you can make your characters do anything you want.  But it doesn't really exist.  It's a hallucination that you're having.  It's a delusion.

Values. Mindsets. Perspectives. They can be scientific, political, religious. economic or other. There are many ways of looking at things. There is no doubt a basic difference in perspectives between. yourself and Dave and I. No amount of denying that that difference exists will not cause that denial to have any meaning. It only proves your perspective lacking.

Now your perspective may not include this. It does not deal with different perspectives on things. There is only your way of looking at things and straw man fake parodies of how others perceive things. There are only false motivations that are easy for you to shoot down. Really understanding what others believe and why would be too hard, beyond your capability. You don't seem to have it in you to try.

Which is a basic problem with Generational Dynamics. You don't try to understand motivations other than your own. You thus can't attract followers who don't share your own basic assumptions.

** 12-Nov-2020 World View: Perspectives

(11-12-2020, 10:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]> Values. Mindsets. Perspectives. They can be scientific, political,
> religious. economic or other. There are many ways of looking at
> things. There is no doubt a basic difference in perspectives
> between. yourself and Dave and I. No amount of denying that that
> difference exists will not cause that denial to have any
> meaning. It only proves your perspective lacking.

Screw you. My perspective is much better than yours.

I don't even know what you guys are talking about. 71 million people
voted for Trump. Are you saying that's wrong? A dozen Republican
women flipped house seats from Democrats. Are you saying that's
wrong? Trump support among blacks and latino increased substantially.
Are you saying that's wrong?

I didn't make up or hallucinate any of that. Those facts aren't Earth
2 or whatever dream world you live in. Those are HARD FACTS, not
perspectives. "It only proves that your perspectives" are completely
full of crap. Get used to it.

(11-12-2020, 10:29 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]> Which is a basic problem with Generational Dynamics. You don't try
> to understand motivations other than your own. You thus can't
> attract followers who don't share your own basic assumptions.

As usual, I'm totally astonished how much of an idiot you are.

Actually, I do have one more comment to make about this. I'm an
analyst applying a methodology to historical events, and have done so
very successfully, with a body of work of thousands of articles and
analyses all of which have turned out to be true. I'm not a
politician who says fracking is bad one day and fracking is good the
next day, depending on who I'm talking to. I don't try to attract
"followers" like politicians who lie constantly.

The fact that you can't understand that simple concept shows what an
idiot you are.

And since I deal in hard facts, like the fact that ten Republican
women flipped ten House seats away from Democrats, that's why
Generational Dynamics analyses are always right.

Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Kamala D. Harris Democratic 77,914,568 51.02% 279 51.9%
Donald J. Trump Michael R. Pence Republican 72,518,998 47.49% 217 40.3%

Donald Trump's totals did go up from 71 million, but President-Elect Joe Biden is up more than five million votes over Trump, and more importantly has clinched more than 270 electoral votes. The only way in which Trump can win is if does something so egregious as to disqualify enough votes in enough places that he could swing (and at this point I do not see how he wins Arizona or Georgia as well) 37 or more electoral votes his way.

What Trump, his associates, and his campaign have done are insults to the values that underpin our constitutional republic.

The only gains that Trump made among Hispanics that made a difference in a swing state were those in Florida, where his campaign sought (with some success) to smear Joe Biden as if he were a socialist admirer of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Nicolas Maduro. That is most likely in the Big Lie category, something that one gets away with when one uses it at the most opportune moment -- when it strikes them before they have time to think about it, which this time meant just before the election. On the other hand, Trump lost Arizona in part because of a fast-growing Mexican-American segment of the electorate. Colorado, which also has a large Mexican-American population, went from being in contention to out of range. Republicans might sweat Texas for reasons other than brutal summer heat; it took a 4% or so swing from 2016, again because of demographic change.

(11-12-2020, 10:58 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]I don't even know what you guys are talking about.  71 million people voted for Trump.  Are you saying that's wrong?  A dozen Republican women flipped house seats from Democrats.  Are you saying that's wrong?  Trump support among blacks and latino increased substantially.  Are you saying that's wrong?

71 million voted for Trump... and he lost.  The other guy got more votes. More of the popular vote, and more electoral votes.  This doesn't indicate that two large groups disagree with one another?  If I acknowledge the reality and sincerity of the Neo cons, the racists, the elites, the people who want to use the government to impose their religious values on those who don't share them, would you deny the sincerity of those who believe women should control their own bodies, that all men are created equal, that there is more to the economy than maximizing the wealth of a few?

Now I don't know that Trumpism is wrong.  However, if this is a crisis, it is sure unseasonal.  The most serious problems confronting a culture are focused on and solved.  These are COVID and systematic racism.  The folks who refuse to deal with COVID, who cling to the unravelling selfishness, who stick with racism, are...  Well, if not wrong, they aren't into the principle of turning theory.  The old values always in the past have faded and been replaced.

(11-12-2020, 10:58 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]And since I deal in hard facts, like the fact that ten Republican women flipped ten House seats away from Democrats, that's why Generational Dynamics analyses are always right.

I have it from an infallible source, a guy whose analyses are always right, that only six House seats were flipped by Republican woman.  As this guy is infallible, never makes a mistake, it must be true, right?  I can also endorse his initial statement in the paragraph that states the infallible mistake free claim.

CNBC House seats change report.

I’ve been hanging around this site, it’s predecessors, it’s variants for some time now.  In that time I’ve crossed swords with a number of infallible people, who were ever so sure their perspective on things was correct.

One was a fundamentalist.  The Bible was held to be literally true.  Now, I see the Bible as an historical document.  The Hebrews and early Christians who put together the book were wise enough, but came from different eras, representing a constantly evolving culture.  This guy would cherry pick bits and pieces of the many divergent cultures.  Behold.  The land of milk and honey.  Slay the men.  Enslave the women and children.  That was state of the art tribal thinking at the time, but hardly represents the later thoughts of Jesus.  By picking and choosing among the various Agricultural Age cultures, he came to justify a perverse world view.  God hates homosexuals.  If you would quote the parts about loving everybody, that would make him dwell more on the hate.

Eric of course is into astrology.  We had grand debates once upon a time, he pushing forward Bishop Berkley’s way of looking at the world, my pushing Newton’s.  You think I got anywhere?  Astrology was a perfectly good tool for learning objective truth.  Ugh.

So am I surprised or dismayed by bumping into Generational Dynamics?  A perfect system that produces absolute truth?  It is just another perspective among many, proposing to lead one to absolute truth.  Most people in this site have political world views.  They mostly tweak the red and blue perspectives.  The above examples include the more unique religious and spiritual ones.  

But I assume everybody develops a worldview and set of values.  Everyone has a way of looking at the world and set of goals which they strive towards.  It is too hard to go through life thinking through each problem from objective first principles.  It is better to develop a set of guidelines, shortcuts, systems which guide you to quick and easy solutions.  It is part of growing up as a human.  As people grow up in different environments, you get different results.  One problem is people who grow up in one environment trying to compel others to adapt their shortcuts on people who grew up somewhere else.

Generational Dynamics does confuse one red perspective as uniquely true.  It is hardly unique.  Xenakis declaring that other views don’t exist, his replacing other world views and values with easy to shoot down straw men and parodies isn’t either.  It is typical par for the course.  Everybody develops a worldview and values.  A culture is just a bunch of people with similar worldviews and values.  Assuming that one’s own perspective is somehow unique and special is sloppy thinking.

(11-13-2020, 06:17 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]I’ve been hanging around this site, it’s predecessors, it’s variants for some time now.  In that time I’ve crossed swords with a number of infallible people, who were ever so sure their perspective on things was correct.

One was a fundamentalist.  The Bible was held to be literally true.  Now, I see the Bible as an historical document.  The Hebrews and early Christians who put together the book were wise enough, but came from different eras, representing a constantly evolving culture.  This guy would cherry pick bits and pieces of the many divergent cultures.  Behold.  The land of milk and honey.  Slay the men.  Enslave the women and children.  That was state of the art tribal thinking at the time, but hardly represents the later thoughts of Jesus.  By picking and choosing among the various Agricultural Age cultures, he came to justify a perverse world view.  God hates homosexuals.  If you would quote the parts about loving everybody, that would make him dwell more on the hate.

Eric of course is into astrology.  We had grand debates once upon a time, he pushing forward Bishop Berkley’s way of looking at the world, my pushing Newton’s.  You think I got anywhere?  Astrology was a perfectly good tool for learning objective truth.  Ugh.

So am I surprised or dismayed by bumping into Generational Dynamics?  A perfect system that produces absolute truth?  It is just another perspective among many, proposing to lead one to absolute truth.  Most people in this site have political world views.  They mostly tweak the red and blue perspectives.  The above examples include the more unique religious and spiritual ones.  

But I assume everybody develops a worldview and set of values.  Everyone has a way of looking at the world and set of goals which they strive towards.  It is too hard to go through life thinking through each problem from objective first principles.  It is better to develop a set of guidelines, shortcuts, systems which guide you to quick and easy solutions.  It is part of growing up as a human.  As people grow up in different environments, you get different results.  One problem is people who grow up in one environment trying to compel others to adapt their shortcuts on people who grew up somewhere else.

Generational Dynamics does confuse one red perspective as uniquely true.  It is hardly unique.  Xenakis declaring that other views don’t exist, his replacing other world views and values with easy to shoot down straw men and parodies isn’t either.  It is typical par for the course.  Everybody develops a worldview and values.  A culture is just a bunch of people with similar worldviews and values.  Assuming that one’s own perspective is somehow unique and special is sloppy thinking.

I remember reading a freshman physics text in college. It stated that the inverse-square law applying to gravitation is correct to a level of certainty to roughly one in a billion for the exponent. That was in the 1970's. That was extremely convincing. Something similar was said of electrical charge and magnetism.  

Absolute truth is possible only with ideals such as geometric and physical constructs. Once one enters the real world of physical objects and especially sentient creatures, things start to diverge. 

Historical predictions are not science. People are not unthinking automata. People who know that they are being watched will change their behavior. Even a mouse does. (There was a mouse that became an unwelcome guest, and we have a cat in the house. The mouse could smell the cat and avoid it. It couldn't resist the lure of peanut butter within a mouse trap, and it died in the mouse trap. Mice are more instinctive than we are.

A couple weeks ago I was at the US Air Force Museum, and I saw some weapons (ICBM-bearing rockets) that I am glad exist -- if disarmed -- only because they weren't used. With a nuclear warhead one of these could have easily caused as much death as COVID-19 has caused in America, in seconds instead of months. Those weapons were never used. All that I could think was that it was a good thing that our leaders and Soviet leaders alike valued life more than they hated the ideology of the other. Marxism-Leninism has obvious faults to American plutocrats who have disproportionate power in American politics... but there was no sneak attack.

I saw the World War II section, but before I got there I saw a reminder of what America was fighting in Europe: the dehumanizing ideology of National Socialism and, indirectly, the Holocaust. If anyone had any question that the Army Air Corps wasn't doing the Lord's Work against a demonic cause (if you are prone at all to see things in such terms), that doubt could evaporate as fast as a blob of liquid helium in a blast furnace. To be sure, the Army Air Corps was unable to do much about the Holocaust because the range of American fighter and bomber aircraft fell just short of pre-WWII Poland. Maybe the Nazis thought that they could get away with mass murder... and they did until they were defeated. Then they became like mice in a house full of cats.

** 13-Nov-2020 World View: Trolls

(11-13-2020, 06:17 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]> I’ve been hanging around this site, it’s predecessors, it’s
> variants for some time now. In that time I’ve crossed swords with
> a number of infallible people, who were ever so sure their
> perspective on things was correct.

Whoo whee! Is that supposed to impress me? I've dealt with hundreds,
perhaps thousands of trolls, not just five or ten like you.

Have you ever written anything longer than a forum post? All your
forum posts are pretty much garbage, so I don't think you've written
anything else. In fact, I don't think you've ever written anything
but garbage. Perhaps you can prove me wrong by providing a link to
some real articles you've written. I would enjoy reading them. So: I
think everything you've ever written is garbage. Prove me wrong.

I've written on a variety of technical, financial, historical and
geopolitical subjects, and I've written several books and posted
thousands of articles, and published hundreds of newspaper and
magazine articles.

You've run into a few people in this forum, but I've run into hundreds,
perhaps even thousands of commenters and trolls.

I've learned to quickly categorize the commenters and trolls that I
run into. One group of them simply have a question about some aspect
of the article or about the Generational Dynamics methodology, so I
answer those and try to be as helpful as possible.

Another group invoke intelligent discussions, sometimes critical, of
the articles being commented on, and I've learned a lot from these
people, particularly the intelligent and insightful ones. In this
forum, Mike Alexander was incredibly obnoxious, but I'm very grateful
to him because I learned a lot from him and his criticisms of me. On
the other hand, Sean Love was incredibly obnoxious, but he posted
nothing but garbage (like you), and was a total jackass (like you).
As I've previously said, you seem to be a clone of Sean Love.

Some commenters make corrections -- pointing out perhaps a typo, or
perhaps where I've made a substantial error in analysis -- not
impossible since I write about hundreds of countries and I have to be
an expert on all of them. In this case, I fix the error and learn
from it.

Some commenters are pure trolls -- Russian, Syrian, Chinese, Iranian,
or other trolls. Their mantra is, "There's absolutely no evidence
that xxxx." These people are really stupid. For example, "There's
absolutely no evidence that the Russians shot down airliner MH17."
Well yes there is, troll -- the Dutch conducted a long investigation
that proved that the Russians shot down MH17. "There's absolutely no
evidence that Bashar al-Assad used Sarin gas." Yes there is, troll --
various groups of forensic experts have collected thousands of pieces
of evidence.

I remember one troll who set up a whole blog site to "prove" that
al-Assad hadn't used Sarin gas. I think he did it just for me because
I kept posting stories about al-Assad using Sarin gas. It must have
taken a couple of weeks to set up. He figured I would never take the
several days of time necessary to respond to all the crap on the web
site, and then I'd have to shut up. The web site author was someone
named "sasa wawa," who was not otherwise identified. It took me about
an hour to track him down to St. Petersburg, Russia. That's where
Russia's troll factory, the Internet Research Agency, is located. I
presented that information to the troll, and accused him of being sasa
wawa, and he shut up. He was such a jackass, I really enjoyed
sticking it to him. Lol! Good times!

These trolls have a standard playbook. The trolls always say that
"There's no evidence" because they're too stupid to deal with actual
facts. This is troll playbook, a specific technique that trolls use
to avoid having to deal with facts.

You're one of the worst trolls I've run into. Your "there's no
evidence" troll playbook to avoid dealing with facts is that idiotic
"Earth 2" claim. "Oh, I don't have to deal with the massive evidence
of Hunter Biden criminality -- that's Earth 2." "Oh, I don't have to
deal with the antifa-blm fascist riots burning down Democrat run
cities -- that's Earth 2." "Oh, I don't have to deal with the
evidence of massive Trump support -- that's Earth 2." I don't know
how stupid your family and friends are, but I assume that they're not
so stupid that they would fall for your "Earth 2" delusion. I doubt
that anyone is that stupid, except perhaps you.

** 13-Nov-2020 World View: Election results

Cool Breeze" Wrote:> What's your take on Trump pulling off the election (legal)
> contest? I can see that it is slowly mounting and I believe he
> will. It will be an amazing time in American history, for how a
> true patriot never stopped fighting and/or didn't allow a corrupt,
> co-opted pol try to ruin the country (even more). Of course, much
> pain will come with it too as there are millions of people who are
> pawns of the media and technocracy.

The probability of reversing the election results is pretty much zero.

The Democrats committed numerous criminal activities in a number of
states, and usually didn't even try to hide it, but there's no
provable evidence that these activities affected enough votes to
determine the winner.

Trump is doing the nation a big favor by pursuing these court cases.
The purpose is not to reverse the election results. The purpose is to
make sure that the Democrats don't commit the same criminal activities
in future elections. The result of these court cases should be (we
hope) that a firm set of rules will be devised and enforced in this
new world of massive unsolicited ballots for how future elections
should be run, so that these controversies won't arise.

These court cases are a big benefit to Biden, because they'll help
convince people that he won legitimately. I predict that after it's
all over, he'll be grateful and gloat about it.

Trump is enduring the usual piles of crap from the Democrats and
media, but we all owe him a debt of gratitude for enduring it, and
doing what's best for the country.

** 13-Nov-2020 World View: Automata

(11-13-2020, 03:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]> I remember reading a freshman physics text in college. It stated
> that the inverse-square law applying to gravitation is correct to
> a level of certainty to roughly one in a billion for the
> exponent. That was in the 1970's. That was extremely
> convincing. Something similar was said of electrical charge and
> magnetism.

Really? Einstein might disagree.

(11-13-2020, 03:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]> Absolute truth is possible only with ideals such as geometric and
> physical constructs. Once one enters the real world of physical
> objects and especially sentient creatures, things start to
> diverge.

Really? What's the sum of the interior angles of a triangle? You'd
say 180 degrees, and might think that's "absolute truth", but some
people would disagree with you.

Does 1+1 = 10?

Is every statement either true or false? There are whole branches of
philosophy that deny the Law of the Excluded Middle.

In mathematics, is every true statement provable? Is every provable
statement true. I don't think so. Absolute truth doesn't exist
anywhere, even in mathematics.

(11-13-2020, 03:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]> Historical predictions are not science. People are not unthinking
> automata. People who know that they are being watched will change
> their behavior. Even a mouse does. (There was a mouse that became
> an unwelcome guest, and we have a cat in the house. The mouse
> could smell the cat and avoid it. It couldn't resist the lure of
> peanut butter within a mouse trap, and it died in the mouse
> trap. Mice are more instinctive than we are.

I disagree that mice are more instinctive than humans. I disagree that
people who are being watched will necessarily change their behavior.
The entire Greek Tragedy paradigm is that the march to catastrophe
cannot be prevented, even by people who foresee the catastrophe,
even when the protagonists are being watched.

Let me give an interesting analogy.

Suppose you throw a rock into a pond, and you see the waves form.
That MUST happen. The wave MUST form according to a certain
mathematical formula. It's physics.

Now dive into one of the waves and look around you. You're surrounded
by individual water molecules. Think of the water molecules as your
friends or, if you prefer, think of yourself as one of the water
molecules. Each molecule is an individual that has free will, and can
go wherever it wants, and drift left or right or zip around, whatever
its little water molecule heart desires.

Each individual water molecule can do what it wants, but the water
pond as a whole MUST act in a specified way, according to a
mathematical formula. The water molecules can do what they want
individually, but as a group they act in a specific way according to
the laws of physics.

As you say, each individual in a society is not an unthinking
automaton. He has free will to do what he wants. But the society as
a whole must act in the way specified by generational theory. That's
why I keep saying that major events are not determined by politicians,
who are just individuals with free will. Major events are determined
by entire populations, entire generations, that must act according to
the generational waves specified by generational theory.

Tsk tsk. As usual, I'm the only person in this generational theory
forum who actually considers generational theory to be valid.

(11-12-2020, 06:29 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]** 12-Nov-2020 World View: Hamstringing Biden

(11-11-2020, 09:08 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]>   Hamstringing the incoming Administration is a horrible idea. An
>   administration getting help from a foreign power in achieving its
>   domestic ends out of its own design is unconscionable. An
>   administration requiring its successor to seek non-government
>   assistance from special interests or, worse, from foreign powers,
>   is unthinkable.

"Hamstringing"?  Don't you mean that it's racist, sexist and
homophobic?  This is the usual crap that Democrats to use to
intimidate tea partiers and Trump supporters from asserting their
rights, in this case the investigation of the growing instances of
voting irregularities during the election.

Did I say anything about racism or homophobia except to illustrate things once true about America that are no longer so prevalent, and that I do not miss. I also mentioned bad roads, lower standards of formal education as things about the past that weren't so great.

Quote:However, what I'm telling you is that I've heard one analyst after another make it clear that
there is a groundswell of furious activism growing among the 71
million tea partiers and Trump supporters, and your cheap intimidation
tricks aren't going to work nearly as well.

Joe Biden won fair and square this time, as did Donald Trump in accordance with the rules of the electoral 'game' in 2016. Your side did little to win over people who voted against Trump the last time, except to smear Joe Biden and Kamala Harris with questionable connections to Fidel and Raul Castro (obvious banes to Cuban-Americans) and to Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro (banes to Venezuelan-Americans). "Biden y Harris son Chavecistas" sounds like a Big Lie done before it could be refuted. It seems to have been used only in Florida and to have worked only in Florida. 

Quote:As a proud American, you should be applauding the investigations,
because they'll establish the validity of America's voting system, and
prove that they we aren't just Stalinists.  You should be thrilled
that the investigations provide the opportunity to prove to everyone
that Biden's election was legitimate.  I'm sure you'll agree that
stopping the investigations is a "horrible idea."  If it's stopped
early, then the 71 million tea partiers and Trump supporters will be
absolutely convinced once and for all that it was rigged.  That would
be terrible for Biden.  What you call "hamstringing" is the best thing
for Biden.  Once it's over, he can brag about it every day.

Such has never been done in any American election. Even in 2000, Democrats accepted the judicial finding as definitive. 

Quote:But still, your post is nonsensical on several additional levels
requiring a response.

First off, we now know that, along with Hunter, Joe Biden is
completely compromised with the governments of China, Russia and
Ukraine.  This is going to be problematical in all intelligence
briefings, since it may be a security breach to reveal top secret
information to Biden.

Uhhhh... it is Trump who has friends in really-high places (meaning the Kremlin) in Russia.  

Quote:The second problem is that CIA intelligence briefings won't do Biden
officials any good, if they don't have the solid information background
that lets them understand what they hearing, and I've seen no
evidence that anyone in the Democratic party has a clue what's going
on in the world.

Not a problem when Obama was President and Biden was Vice-President. Obama had a cozy relationship with America's Intelligence services because he didn't abuse intelligence information. Such explains the 'ventilation' of Osama bin Laden by Seal Team 6. The CIA found where Osama bin Laden was, and Seal Team 6 did the hit with the approval of Obama. 

Quote:It's not just Democrats.  I learned in 2007 that the "experts" in
Washington are unbelievably stupid about the Mideast.

** Guess what? British politicians and journalists are just as ignorant as Americans
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...m#e070114b


What I learned was that I knew more about the Mideast than the
Washington "experts."  Now, 13 years later, having written thousands
of articles and several books, I'm pretty sure that I know more about
what's going on in the entire world better than any of the Washington
"experts."  This becomes obvious to me almost any time I see one on
tv.

No fooling. Wishful thinking is commonplace and worthless. 

Quote:When Obama came into office, he knew absolutely nothing, and did one
stupid thing after another.  His entire foreign policy was based on
only one rule -- do the opposite of what Bush did.  Over the next
eight years, it was obvious that he learned nothing, as his former
defense secretary Robert Gates suggested in his memoir.

He knew enough to ask who were reliable sources of objective information and acted upon what he had.

Quote:I'm still completely appalled that Obama chose John Kerry as Secretary
of State.  Not only is Kerry incredibly stupid, he also hates the
military and has repeatedly said so, he thinks that soldiers are
stupid (even though they're a lot smarter than he is), and his
selection was a big thumb in the eye of every American soldier and
veteran.  But this is what we expect from Obama, and Democrats in
general.

OK -- John Kerry was an awful Secretary of State. 

Quote:I'm reminded of an article I wrote last year about Chris Murphy:

*** 23-Oct-2019 World View: The stupidest person in Congress - Chris Murphy
http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5168&p=48065#p48065

I wrote that after watching a speech by Murphy broadcast on
al-Jazeera.  Murphy is the leading Democratic foreign policy "expert"
in Congress, and his ignorance and stupidity were breathtaking, at AOC
levels.  Al-Jazeera simply broadcast the speech with no comment,
presumably because they wanted to show their Arab audiences how stupid
the Americans are.

Which does not disguise that Trump is cruel, reckless, bigoted, and impulsive. 

Quote:So maybe there was someone in the Obama administration (after Gates)
who had some clue what was going on in the world, but I never saw it,
and the choice of the idiot Kerry indicates to me that none exists.

Kerry was Obama's mistake. Such happens.

Quote:When Trump began running, I was extremely contemptuous of Trump's
foreign policy knowledge, and I mocked him by suggesting that he knew
nothing except the locations of his golf courses.  But then he did
something completely unexpected -- he hired Steve Bannon, one of the
country's leading and most knowledgeable military historian, and also
an expert on Generational Dynamics.  By the time Trump took office, he
had been educated by Bannon, and he was already extremely
knowledgeable about foreign policy, and was able to hit the ground
running.  But that wasn't because of some worthless transitioning
briefing from Obama, but instead was because he had already been doing
the hard work attending briefings by Bannon and others for over a
year.

...and someone who proved dumb enough to operate a scam fund-raising scheme that would draw the attention of the Postal Inspectors for mail fraud, wire fraud, and bank fraud which lie within the purview of the Postal Inspectors. I would guess that a huge portion of white-collar offenders in Federal prisons are there for mail fraud, wire fraud, or bank fraud because practically all scams involve mail fraud, wire fraud, or bank fraud for promoting the scam or collecting the funds. Steve "Caught on a Yacht" Bannon could do significant federal time.  

Quote:It was this deep knowledge that made it possible for Trump to
impressively manage the situations in North Korea, China and the
Mideast, and mediate three peace agreements in the Mideast, as well as
one in the Balkans.  In the case of China, Trump was able to reverse
three decades of appeasement for all kinds of things, including
intellectual property theft.  Responding to your statement, what's
"unconscionable" is that Biden's relationship with China is completely
compromised, and he may simply let China get away with everything
again.

North Korea? What did Trump get out of it except some "beautiful letters"? As for China... I see a parallel to what is going on in Hong Kong in the Commie coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948, and it does not look good. It is happening while Donald Trump is still President.  

Quote:It's worth repeating that Trump hit the ground running, but not
because of a couple of days of Obama intelligence briefings.  It was
because of over a year of hard work and serious study with Bannon, not
a year hiding in his basement.

COVID-19 wasn't killing people in 2016 and 2017.

Quote:During Trump's 2016 campaign, he was out campaigning and attending all
sorts of briefings, learning everything he needed to know to be an
effective president.

During Biden's 2020 campaign, he hid out in his basement all year,
learning nothing, part of a Democrat party that purposely censors
any news that the Democrats don't like.  Biden is abysmally incompetent
and unprepared for the presidency.  A couple of days of briefings
won't change that.  Biden is simply a dolt.  Missing the briefings
won't be "hamstringing" Biden.  Biden is already hamstrung.

It is customary for the outgoing Administration to make available such classified information as the Intelligence services are willing to share, at the least on a need-to-know basis. The point is to not leave the incoming administration with ugly surprises from unforced errors.

Quote:We may see one consequence if the Pfizer rollout succeeds.  Democrats
are desperately looking for a way to stop that, since it will make
Biden look like a pathetic idiot, who has no plan except "masks and
lockdowns."  Pfizer is not likely to agree to any slowdown.  I know
someone at Pfizer, and he's told me that the company has shut down
almost every other project, in order to invest all resources on the
virus vaccine.  In other words, they've bet the entire company on the
vaccine, and they're not about to stop now, just as they're
approaching their big payday.

Credit will go to the pharmaceutical firm that develops the vaccine. Pfizer has a huge collection of expiring and obsolete patents, and.. well, if COVID-19, the Trump Plague, weren't killing so many people then the research would instead be on such things as cancer and Lowy-body diseases instead. Resources expended  on finding a vaccine for COVID-19 will require the deferral of research on other diseases. 

I look at the numbers and they are ugly. 150,000 new cases in one day? Something is going very, very wrong. We went too slack too early.

Quote:So this brings us back to these transition briefings.  Biden
administration officials are, as far as I can tell, completely
ignorant about the world and foreign policy, so the briefings would be
harmless, but probably otherwise useless, since they wouldn't even
understand them.  Since they'd be harmless, it probably would be a
good idea for the Trump administration to provide them.

You have little faith in Joe Biden because you think him a radical, un-American figure. I had little faith in Donald Trump because he was so depraved that that would trivialize any objectionability that I saw in him for his ideology. I regret to say that Trump fell well short of my low expectations, and the only good I can say of him is that his incompetence ensured that he could never achieve his agenda. I suppose that that is a silver lining to the very dark cloud.

Quote:If Biden REALLY wants to use this time intelligently so he won't be
hamstrung, he could start right now by hiring someone with the stature
of Steve Bannon to educate him.  Or he could arrange for himself and
his staff to attend zoom briefings put on by foreign policy experts at
various think tanks and universities.  The only problem with that is
that he would select only people presenting left wing nonsense, but
it's better than nothing, and nothing is what he currently knows,
after he's hidden in his basement for a year.

Steve "Caught on a Yacht" Bannon? Maybe he could ask Bernie Madoff about finances or Jeffrey Skilling about commerce!

Quote:Another option is that he could take is to hire me to give a zoom
briefing.  Since I know more about what's going on in countries around
the world than the "experts" in Washington, I could provide more
intelligent and accurate information than the left-wing stuff his
advisors will give him.  I could also ask "Navigator," a military
history expert in my forum, to help out with the briefing.  That would
be one of the best choices that Biden would make.  I'll look forward
to hearing from him.

(11-12-2020, 04:57 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]>   John, we have never had a sleazier administration than the Trump
>   administration.

You're a complete idiot.  Biden is already sleazier.

‘Plausible deniability’: Tony Bobulinski says Joe Biden knew about
Hunter Biden’s China deal pursuits
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/...l-pursuits

Donald Trump is a horrible person. Need I go into details?

(11-13-2020, 08:26 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]Whoo whee!  Is that supposed to impress me?  I've dealt with hundreds, perhaps thousands of trolls, not just five or ten like you.

Not a troll.  Neither was the fundamentalist Bible believer a troll in my eyes.  He sincerely believed that God is homophobic, and wished to share his worldview.  Neither is Eric.  He is not motivated by getting a rise out of people invested in their worldview, but sincerely believes in astrology and a variation of the blue pattern.  While I have not met your Russian, at a guess he wasn’t a troll either.  He was a believer in the Russian system.  In order to promote that belief system he had to deny the facts.  It is not surprising that to promote a belief system, one just ignores or denies the facts that would invalidate the system.

Anyway, I have the INTP mind set.  One looks for as succinct and accurate way of modeling things.  It is a Thinker’s pattern under Myers Briggs classification.  A troll would be a Feeler’s pattern, getting a kick out of causing another emotional difficulties.  As usual in Generational Dynamics, a total miss on understanding the other guy.

Let me run through a few motivations.  A member of the KKK or Neo Nazis is often a racist, a believer in the superiority of people who are of a certain subculture and pigmentation.

Antifa doesn’t like such fascists.  As such fascists are often ready to use violence, be it building gas chambers, lynching, or shooting up a place of worship, it is a good idea to be ready to answer with violence.

The Boogaloo Bois believe the system of red vs blue is totally broken.  The only way to fix things is through violence, through destroying the system.

The looters associated with the recent violence are more in it for themselves than any larger political motivation.  They see themselves as poor, value the law poorly, and are willing to acquire stuff.

Black Lives Matter thinks racist violence policing and other aspects of systematic racism has gone on too long, and that through legal protest they can move the system.

Some bad cops believe racist violent policing and systematic racism is neat.

Now all of these if not being mindsets and values can be important parts of them.  They count as a good part of how the individuals see the world and value certain things.  In that they are each the equivalent of Generational Dynamics.  They reflect how the individual sees the world, and what goals should be striven for.

By confusing and persistently misattributing motivations, Generational Dynamics defends itself.  It might be comparable to the Russian who has to find a way to believe that a Russian wouldn’t shoot down an airline, or a fundamentalist believing God doesn’t love homosexuals.  There can be a self serving rejection of truth.  It is much easier for most people to edit out truth than to question the validity of one’s mindset and values.

Antifa, the Boogaloo Bois, the looters, Black Lives Matter, the bad caps, Generational Dynamics and many many others are ways to look at the world and identify goals which should be striven towards.  If you can’t or don’t shift to understand these many and varied motivations, you own way of looking at the world is absurdly lacking.

By lumping some of these motivations together, by deliberately not understanding the motivations involved, you don’t have to acknowledge the Black Lives Matter motivations.  It is just a defense mechanism.  Your worldview is lacking and you are finding a way through deliberate misunderstanding to ignore the obvious.

And you are hardly alone.  Many have come to use the label Earth 2 for such a denial of reality.  Many sharing the red mindset and values do it, enough that it is worth having a phase to label it quickly.  You can deny it exists all you like, or ignore it, or not include it in your understanding of the world, but many find the label useful.  Propose another label for the delusion if you like.  That one is accurate enough to have just stuck.

And no, it isn’t stupidity.  That is a cheap out, a way of not taking another perspective seriously.  If you throw the word stupid around, it just shows you have a bad mindset.  You can do tons of research and analysis and still have an absurdly biased, inaccurate or immoral mindset.  Look in the mirror for an example.

(11-12-2020, 06:29 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]** 12-Nov-2020 World View: Hamstringing Biden

(11-11-2020, 09:08 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]>   Hamstringing the incoming Administration is a horrible idea. An
>   administration getting help from a foreign power in achieving its
>   domestic ends out of its own design is unconscionable. An
>   administration requiring its successor to seek non-government
>   assistance from special interests or, worse, from foreign powers,
>   is unthinkable.

"Hamstringing"?  Don't you mean that it's racist, sexist and
homophobic?  This is the usual crap that Democrats to use to
intimidate tea partiers and Trump supporters from asserting their
rights, in this case the investigation of the growing instances of
voting irregularities during the election.  

Did I say anything about racism, sexism, or homophobia in that post?  Did I say that such colored the decision? 

Quote:However, what I'm telling
you is that I've heard one analyst after another make it clear that
there is a groundswell of furious activism growing among the 71
million tea partiers and Trump supporters, and your cheap intimidation
tricks aren't going to work nearly as well.

If I were to tell you that there were a groundswell of militant activism among America's neo-Nazis (or Commies, but Commies seem largely in hiatus or at least irrelevant in American political life), would you speak well of such?

Joe Biden won 51% of the popular vote and officially so far 290 electoral votes (which will almost certainly become 306 when Biden's lead in Georgia passes the recount). 270 clinches the Presidency this year as it has in every Presidential election since 1964. Joe Biden won in 2020 just as Trump did in 2016; the popular vote does not count and the majority of electoral votes do. 

Democratic elections are decided by the number of the votes, and not the intensity of the feelings of those who voted. If you are talking about Tea Party types who are now Trump supporters, then I have no way of determining whether their intense support of Donald Trump is stronger than the intense contempt that many of us on the Left side of the political spectrum have for Trump. I can say this: I could never have said about John McCain or Mitt Romney what I said of Donald Judas Trump.
   

Quote:As a proud American, you should be applauding the investigations,
because they'll establish the validity of America's voting system, and
prove that they we aren't just Stalinists.  You should be thrilled
that the investigations provide the opportunity to prove to everyone
that Biden's election was legitimate.  I'm sure you'll agree that
stopping the investigations is a "horrible idea."  If it's stopped
early, then the 71 million tea partiers and Trump supporters will be
absolutely convinced once and for all that it was rigged.  That would
be terrible for Biden.  What you call "hamstringing" is the best thing
for Biden.  Once it's over, he can brag about it every day.

We have never had an investigation after an election. We have generally accepted the results of all Presidential elections in our history, including 2000 when there actually was some hanky-panky. The one time in which many Americans decided to not accept the result of a Presidential election was in 1860, and we all know how that went. 

Quote:But still, your post is nonsensical on several additional levels
requiring a response.

First off, we now know that, along with Hunter, Joe Biden is
completely compromised with the governments of China, Russia and
Ukraine.  This is going to be problematical in all intelligence
briefings, since it may be a security breach to reveal top secret
information to Biden.

Donald Trump was in Putin's pocket. Xi knows how to play either side in American politics. Trump put the lawfully-elected government of Ukraine in jeopardy for the sake of discrediting a potential rival. 

Quote:The second problem is that CIA intelligence briefings won't do Biden
officials any good, if they don't have the solid information background
that lets them understand what they hearing, and I've seen no
evidence that anyone in the Democratic party has a clue what's going
on in the world.

Obama did well enough, fostering a cozy relationship with the intelligence services. That was how he could order the underworld-style hit on Osama bin Laden: the CIA found where he was, and Seal Team 6 could whack him. I expect Biden, who was in on the plot to rub the world's most infamous terrorist out, to have learned how to deal with the CIA. The CIA can be useful; just don't step on its toes or use it as a political football. If I use language characteristic of Chicago gangsters to describe how Obama could eliminate Osama bin Laden, then that is because such was how it had to be done. 

Quote:It's not just Democrats.  I learned in 2007 that the "experts" in
Washington are unbelievably stupid about the Mideast.

** Guess what? British politicians and journalists are just as ignorant as Americans
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/x...m#e070114b


What I learned was that I knew more about the Mideast than the
Washington "experts."  Now, 13 years later, having written thousands
of articles and several books, I'm pretty sure that I know more about
what's going on in the entire world better than any of the Washington
"experts."  This becomes obvious to me almost any time I see one on
tv.

Like you, I recognize that the talking heads on television on the whole know about as much about the Middle East as they do about (picking a profession at random) veterinary medicine -- or their 'knowledge' is corrupted by their underlying assumptions. . 

Quote:When Obama came into office, he knew absolutely nothing, and did one
stupid thing after another.  His entire foreign policy was based on
only one rule -- do the opposite of what Bush did.  Over the next
eight years, it was obvious that he learned nothing, as his former
defense secretary Robert Gates suggested in his memoir.

Obama is a trained attorney. Attorneys need know nothing other than law and the mandated preparation for studying law and (if they practice law in a courtroom) some theatrics. What Obama can do if something is outside his current knowledge is to find a reliable source of valid knowledge as needed and apply that. He need not be a physician to make solid medical policy or be an engineer to set good people on the task. He certainly did not have to be an intelligence officer or a soldier to arrange the elimination of Osama bin Laden.  

Quote:I'm still completely appalled that Obama chose John Kerry as Secretary
of State.  Not only is Kerry incredibly stupid, he also hates the
military and has repeatedly said so, he thinks that soldiers are
stupid (even though they're a lot smarter than he is), and his
selection was a big thumb in the eye of every American soldier and
veteran.  But this is what we expect from Obama, and Democrats in
general.

Everybody makes mistakes, and Obama made a mistake with Kerry.
 

Quote:I'm reminded of an article I wrote last year about Chris Murphy:

*** 23-Oct-2019 World View: The stupidest person in Congress - Chris Murphy
http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5168&p=48065#p48065

I wrote that after watching a speech by Murphy broadcast on
al-Jazeera.  Murphy is the leading Democratic foreign policy "expert"
in Congress, and his ignorance and stupidity were breathtaking, at AOC
levels.  Al-Jazeera simply broadcast the speech with no comment,
presumably because they wanted to show their Arab audiences how stupid
the Americans are.

So maybe there was someone in the Obama administration (after Gates)
who had some clue what was going on in the world, but I never saw it,
and the choice of the idiot Kerry indicates to me that none exists.

I was amazed to discover that John Kerry is an intellectual mediocrity dumber than Dubya. Kerry does a good talk; that's for sure.

Quote:When Trump began running, I was extremely contemptuous of Trump's
foreign policy knowledge, and I mocked him by suggesting that he knew
nothing except the locations of his golf courses.  But then he did
something completely unexpected -- he hired Steve Bannon, one of the
country's leading and most knowledgeable military historian, and also
an expert on Generational Dynamics.  By the time Trump took office, he
had been educated by Bannon, and he was already extremely
knowledgeable about foreign policy, and was able to hit the ground
running.  But that wasn't because of some worthless transitioning
briefing from Obama, but instead was because he had already been doing
the hard work attending briefings by Bannon and others for over a
year.

Yes... Steve "Caught on a Yacht" Bannon, unwise enough to pull a scam that violated laws against mail fraud, wire fraud, and bank fraud that got him under the custody of the Postal Inspection Service, which has authority over most fraud schemes that involve solicitation of funds by mail or other communications (wire fraud includes broadcasting by radio, TV, and the internet as well as telegraph and telephone), transfer of funds to himself by the mails and wire transfers (the usual means of sending bank deposits), and of course withdrawing funds expected to be used for some other purpose for individual use. If I were to guess what offenses are most likely to put a white-collar offender in a federal prison, it would be mail-wire-bank fraud to a greater extent even than tax fraud. (The IRS can get the cash if it is there, and that takes away the prison term, and gets a prison term only if it has some other offense involved, like intimidation of others into violating the law or some nasty conspiracy).If you are thinking of securities fraud, then such (including insider dealings and pump-and-dump schemes) often are prosecuted for mail fraud, wire fraud, or bank fraud. Solicit or grab the money through dishonest means and you are guilty of fraud. Turn the money over to yourself for a self-indulgent behavior instead of the purpose that you promise, and you commit mail fraud, wire fraud, or bank fraud.

Trump's foreign policy is a disaster except for cutting a deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (who share a common enemy in Iran). Big deal!       

Quote:It was this deep knowledge that made it possible for Trump to
impressively manage the situations in North Korea, China and the
Mideast, and mediate three peace agreements in the Mideast, as well as
one in the Balkans.  In the case of China, Trump was able to reverse
three decades of appeasement for all kinds of things, including
intellectual property theft.  Responding to your statement, what's
"unconscionable" is that Biden's relationship with China is completely
compromised, and he may simply let China get away with everything
again.

If you believe that Donald Trump has gotten anything more out of North Korea than some 'beautiful letters", then I have a bridge to sell you connecting Muskegon and Milwaukee. 

Quote:It's worth repeating that Trump hit the ground running, but not
because of a couple of days of Obama intelligence briefings.  It was
because of over a year of hard work and serious study with Bannon, not
a year hiding in his basement.

Biden was hiding from COVID-19, the plague that Trump has bungled into nearly 250,000 deaths in America... and counting. 

Quote:During Trump's 2016 campaign, he was out campaigning and attending all
sorts of briefings, learning everything he needed to know to be an
effective president.

Trump broke the rules. A genius can break the rules (strange harmonies in Bach, establishing new forms like Haydn, exploiting but making parodies of the banal Alberti bass in Mozart, blending Gypsy music into classical forms as did Brahms or east-Asian musical patterns into opera as did Puccini, and I say this only in music) but gets away with it because he knows what he is doing and suppresses his failures. A fool breaks the rules for the sake of breaking the rules or out of some sick compulsion or (at worst) getting what he wants illegally. Check the website for the Darwin Awards for people who mostly got killed for doing something creatively stupid or the police blotters for those who break the rules to make illicit income, take what isn't theirs, or do even worse.

Francisco Goya and Albert Einstein are geniuses for breaking the rules and convincing people after the fact that they were right and the rules were wrong. Criminals, hardly a cerebral lot, are more likely to lament something like "I broke the law/ and the law won".

Quote:During Biden's 2020 campaign, he hid out in his basement all year,
learning nothing, part of a Democrat party that purposely censors
any news that the Democrats don't like.  Biden is abysmally incompetent
and unprepared for the presidency.  A couple of days of briefings
won't change that.  Biden is simply a dolt.  Missing the briefings
won't be "hamstringing" Biden.  Biden is already hamstrung.

Uh... no. SARS-2 was not stalking people in 2016 as it was during the 2020 campaign. Trump went out campaigning in Castro-style mass rallies that have since proved super-spreader events. Biden did not do that. Trump's rallies have killed people, mostly Trump supporters. How many?

Margins in the five states that made the difference between 2016 and 2020

AZ 10 016
GA 14 198
MI 146 121
PA 37 192
WI 19 540

Nowhere that many Trump supporters died in Michigan and not quite enough died in Pennsylvania of COVID-19 to make that big a difference, but that many could have in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. That is not definitive proof,  but any margin is significant.   
 

Quote:We may see one consequence if the Pfizer rollout succeeds.  Democrats
are desperately looking for a way to stop that, since it will make
Biden look like a pathetic idiot, who has no plan except "masks and
lockdowns."  Pfizer is not likely to agree to any slowdown.  I know
someone at Pfizer, and he's told me that the company has shut down
almost every other project, in order to invest all resources on the
virus vaccine.  In other words, they've bet the entire company on the
vaccine, and they're not about to stop now, just as they're
approaching their big payday.

People must wear masks to prevent the spread of the virus and to protect their mouths so that they can be alive to receive the vaccine! That is one of the easiest things that I can do. I associate wearing a mask with the ability to visit bookstores and libraries, the places that I most missed during the lockdown in Michigan.  

Quote:So this brings us back to these transition briefings.  Biden
administration officials are, as far as I can tell, completely
ignorant about the world and foreign policy, so the briefings would be
harmless, but probably otherwise useless, since they wouldn't even
understand them.  Since they'd be harmless, it probably would be a
good idea for the Trump administration to provide them.

Have you considered the other side -- that the Trump Administration is either incredibly ignorant of foreign policy or that even its foreign policy is so hideously corrupt (like everything else involving that horrible person) that the Trump Administration has something to hide?  
 

Quote:If Biden REALLY wants to use this time intelligently so he won't be
hamstrung, he could start right now by hiring someone with the stature
of Steve Bannon to educate him.  Or he could arrange for himself and
his staff to attend zoom briefings put on by foreign policy experts at
various think tanks and universities.  The only problem with that is
that he would select only people presenting left wing nonsense, but
it's better than nothing, and nothing is what he currently knows,
after he's hidden in his basement for a year.

Yeah, sure. And he might consult Bernard Madoff on monetary policy and Jeffrey Skilling on solid principles of commerce. [/snark] 

Quote:Another option is that he could take is to hire me to give a zoom
briefing.  Since I know more about what's going on in countries around
the world than the "experts" in Washington, I could provide more
intelligent and accurate information than the left-wing stuff his
advisors will give him.  I could also ask "Navigator," a military
history expert in my forum, to help out with the briefing.  That would
be one of the best choices that Biden would make.  I'll look forward
to hearing from him.

(11-12-2020, 04:57 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]>   John, we have never had a sleazier administration than the Trump
>   administration.

You're a complete idiot.  Biden is already sleazier.

‘Plausible deniability’: Tony Bobulinski says Joe Biden knew about
Hunter Biden’s China deal pursuits
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/...l-pursuits

What expertise do you have that people in the CIA and DIA do not already have? Trump has criminal behavior to conceal.

(11-13-2020, 08:33 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]** 13-Nov-2020 World View: Automata

(11-13-2020, 03:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]>   I remember reading a freshman physics text in college. It stated
>   that the inverse-square law applying to gravitation is correct to
>   a level of certainty to roughly one in a billion for the
>   exponent. That was in the 1970's. That was extremely
>   convincing. Something similar was said of electrical charge and
>   magnetism.

Really? Einstein might disagree.

As a practical matter, as for engineers. Under relativistic conditions, such things as gravitation, magnetism, and electrical charge might operate differently from expectations in classical models. 

Quote:

(11-13-2020, 03:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]>   Absolute truth is possible only with ideals such as geometric and
>   physical constructs. Once one enters the real world of physical
>   objects and especially sentient creatures, things start to
>   diverge.

Really? What's the sum of the interior angles of a triangle?  You'd
say 180 degrees, and might think that's "absolute truth", but some
people would disagree with you.

On a plane, and not on a curved surface. Depending on the sort of curvature,  a triangle inscribed upon that surface might have a sum of internal angles more or less than 180.  

Quote:Does 1+1 = 10?

Sure. In binary.

In hexadecimal, 7 + 9 = 10

Note that we usually use decimal arithmetic, and someone using something other than base-10 so identifies this.   

Quote:Is every statement either true or false?  There are whole branches of
philosophy that deny the Law of the Excluded Middle.

Answers that depend upon the choice of someone who controls their truth cannot be said to be true or false before the person who controls the result completes the exercise. So suppose that I hold a bird in my hand (it's an origami 'bird' made out of paper, so you need feel no guilt about the exercise). I ask you whether the 'bird' is intact or crushed, and I want you to be wrong. If you say that the "bird" is crushed, then I open my hand to reveal an intact "bird". If you say that the "bird" is intact, then I tighten my hand to crush the "bird" and then open my hand to show a crushed "bird". 

Then there are word games. 

All (living) cats purr.

Morris does not purr.

Therefore Morris is not a cat. 

(OK, this suggests that Morris is a dead cat or perhaps a dog). But can a 'living' cat not purr? Sure -- if it is a catfish, as in "channel cats"  as sold for dinner in swampy parts of Arkansas, or if it is a person, as in "hep cat"). Or it could be this fellow:

   

(Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher, when he was a Detroit Tiger. Whoops... tigers are cats... sort of). 

Speaking of tigers I have a joke involving a simile and a metaphor. 

Do you know the difference between the late Gunther Gebel-Williams and a burglar?

Gunther Gebel-Williams could make a tiger act like a dog in his circus act.
A burglar... makes a tiger out of a dog!

...Dogs can act much like one or another cat. If it is going to act like a cat, it had better act like a house cat, or else you are in big trouble.   

Quote:In mathematics, is every true statement provable?  Is every provable
statement true.  I don't think so.  Absolute truth doesn't exist
anywhere, even in mathematics.

In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation a^n + b^n = c^n for any integer value of n greater than 2. The cases n = 1 and n = 2 have been known since antiquity to have infinitely many solutions.

It was unproved from 1637 to 1994. It is now proved, with mathematical knowledge not available in Fermat's time. It was not provable until the 1950's at the earliest, at least with extant number theory applied to the proof of the conjecture of the theorem. Perhaps it can be proved with simpler means; perhaps it can't. Who knows? Maybe Pierre Fermat really did have a valid proof that was lost. 

Quote:

(11-13-2020, 03:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]>   Historical predictions are not science. People are not unthinking
>   automata. People who know that they are being watched will change
>   their behavior. Even a mouse does. (There was a mouse that became
>   an unwelcome guest, and we have a cat in the house. The mouse
>   could smell the cat and avoid it. It couldn't resist the lure of
>   peanut butter within a mouse trap, and it died in the mouse
>   trap). Mice are more instinctive than we are.

I disagree that mice are more instinctive than humans. I disagree that
people who are being watched will necessarily change their behavior.
The entire Greek Tragedy paradigm is that the march to catastrophe
cannot be prevented, even by people who foresee the catastrophe,
even when the protagonists are being watched.

The mouse smells the cat and makes sure to go where the cat is not or stays in a place in the house whence he can make an easy escape should the cat come snooping around. I put the mouse trap in a place that offered an easy escape for the mouse if the cat came by. Mice know what a cat smells like and that a cat is death. That is instinct. Mice never developed the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch, which is not instinct. An easy meal is just too tempting to resist.   

For people who never learned that there is no such thing as a free lunch, the cops sometimes had a trick for catching them.  The cops left an unlocked car in plain sight with something valuable in it. Soon enough some crook would look around to see if there were no cops watching and then would take the object.  

Quote:Let me give an interesting analogy.

Suppose you throw a rock into a pond, and you see the waves form.
That MUST happen.  The wave MUST form according to a certain
mathematical formula.  It's physics.

OK. Particles of water will act under the influence of a mechanical shock that operates as a wave.  

Quote:Now dive into one of the waves and look around you.  You're surrounded
by individual water molecules.  Think of the water molecules as your
friends or, if you prefer, think of yourself as one of the water
molecules.  Each molecule is an individual that has free will, and can
go wherever it wants, and drift left or right or zip around, whatever
its little water molecule heart desires.

Unlike a water molecule I can change my direction and position within a pool. Water molecules do not have any choice. They cannot remain with me or pass through my cell boundaries. Water molecules will move away from me as I move into their position, and some will fillwhat would otherwise be a vacuum as I open a path for them.   

Quote:Each individual water molecule can do what it wants, but the water
pond as a whole MUST act in a specified way, according to a
mathematical formula.  The water molecules can do what they want
individually, but as a group they act in a specific way according to
the laws of physics.

Human behavior in mass can be highly predictable (for example, umbrella sales rise during a rainstorm but recede in good weather; people drink more beer and less hot chocolate in hot weather but do the opposite in cold weather). This said, human behavior over time is not so much that of automatons. People are more automaton-like if they are grossly unlearned (such as being stupid enough to filch something from an unlocked car) or if they live under a totalitarian regime, in which any unconventional behavior is defined into a violation of a criminal code. Thus an 'Aryan' having a sexual relationship with a 'non-Aryan')  would be a violation of the Nuremberg Laws of the Third Reich. 

much human behavior is learned. Most of us learn rather early that taking something that is not ours to take is a very bad idea. It is called theft. I have taken things inadvertently... and returned them. Such keeps me from being a thief. If we lived entirely on instinct we would shoplift whatever we wanted. We are obliged to find other ways to survive.

Quote:As you say, each individual in a society is not an unthinking
automaton.  He has free will to do what he wants.  But the society as
a whole must act in the way specified by generational theory.  That's
why I keep saying that major events are not determined by politicians,
who are just individuals with free will.  Major events are determined
by entire populations, entire generations, that must act according to
the generational waves specified by generational theory.

Tsk tsk.  As usual, I'm the only person in this generational theory
forum who actually considers generational theory to be valid.

I am reminded of a statement of a British historian who debunked the myth of Nazi efficiency. The only thing at which the nazis were better at was mass murder, and only because the British didn't do it. 

I am satisfied that the British would have done mass murder very well during World War II had they tried. But they didn't. (There was a famine in Bengal, but because the usual source of much of its rice -- Burma -- was cut off, and I am not going to call the British air raids on the Third Reich murder). So how does Generational Dynamics explain why the Nazis herded people into shooting pits and gas chambers and the British and Americans didn't?   

There is a better explanation: authoritarian and especially totalitarian regimes are prone to killing people because they can promote hatred without ethical constraints and can keep their dirtiest deeds (such as genocide and persecution) secret.  They can render anyone who puts his ethical values above the dictates of a despot or tyrant completely helpless -- and what could be more helpless than "dead"?

(11-14-2020, 01:54 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-13-2020, 08:33 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]Does 1+1 = 10?

Sure. In binary.

In hexadecimal, 7 + 9 = 10

Note that we usually use decimal arithmetic, and someone using something other than base-10 so identifies this. 

Your binary and hexadecimal examples remind me of an old software engineer’s story.  In those days, many such programed in assembly language, and depending on the mini computer manufacturer dealt absurdly commonly with arithmetic in either base 8 or hexadecimal.  An engineer often came to see that these bases unusual to most people were the only possible natural bases.

One such engineer got into a loud and deeply felt argument with a bank teller.  His monthly bank statement had an obvious mistake.  I mean, it is painfully obvious that 7 + 5 = 14, not 12, right?  How could the bank want to stick with such an obvious mistake?

The difference between myself and Xenakis is similar.  He commonly deals with minor power where tribal thinking is still common, and the older Agricultural or Industrial Age tribal thinking is still dominant.  If in the Information Age has had to deal with nukes and proxy wars, and the major powers have had to find other ways to change, the many minor powers have not yet run into nukes and proxy wars.  They are still using tribal thinking, have not had to switch to the WEIRD.  Insisting that the old tribal thinking is the way to go, that he does not have to incorporate WEIRD thinking into his understanding of the world, is very compatible to using base 8 math in a world where base 10 has become the assumed default.

My sister the retired first grade teacher used to have occasional bussed students from the Boston inner city environment to her rich suburban school system.  She spoke of a ghetto mind set.  If you are going to succeed, you have to become a sports star, a drug pusher, or a mother.  Intimidation, violence in attitude were an important part of gaining status.  The law was optional, something to be bypassed when possible.  Being a part of a gang, incorporating the gang mannerisms, was important if one is to gain status in the neighborhood.

The looters in the recent unrest might often share the ghetto mind set.

Is it really comparable to Generational Dynamics?

The ghetto mind set is a way of adapting to a particular inner city environment.  It is a way of understanding the world.  I lists a bunch of goals to which one should strive.  If one is living in the inner city and has a certain skin pigmentation, are you better off pursuing the ghetto mind set or Generational Dynamics?  World views and values reflect the environment in which people grow up.  If you grew up in the inner city, what good is Generational Dynamics?

Now I grew up in the suburbs.  I bought into the blue mindset.  The ghetto pattern is abhorrent to me.  Adapting the ghetto way of thinking in a reasonably well to do suburb would soon make me a social outcast and get me into trouble.  That doesn’t mean if you don’t make a sincere attempt to understand it, you can have a good understanding of the urban problems.

But if your computer works in base 8, you learn and default to base 8.  Just remember that the bank teller will not understand.  If you use the wrong tool for the environment, you are going to have a mess.

(11-14-2020, 07:52 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-14-2020, 01:54 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-13-2020, 08:33 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]Does 1+1 = 10?

Sure. In binary.

In hexadecimal, 7 + 9 = 10

Note that we usually use decimal arithmetic, and someone using something other than base-10 so identifies this. 

Your binary and hexadecimal examples remind me of an old software engineer’s story.  In those days, many such programed in assembly language, and depending on the mini computer manufacturer dealt absurdly commonly with arithmetic in either base 8 or hexadecimal.  An engineer often came to see that these bases unusual to most people were the only possible natural bases.

One such engineer got into a loud and deeply felt argument with a bank teller.  His monthly bank statement had an obvious mistake.  I mean, it is painfully obvious that 7 + 5 = 14, not 12, right?  How could the bank want to stick with such an obvious mistake?

The difference between myself and Xenakis is similar.  He commonly deals with minor power where tribal thinking is still common, and the older Agricultural or Industrial Age tribal thinking is still dominant.  If in the Information Age has had to deal with nukes and proxy wars, and the major powers have had to find other ways to change, the many minor powers have not yet run into nukes and proxy wars.  They are still using tribal thinking, have not had to switch to the WEIRD.  Insisting that the old tribal thinking is the way to go, that he does not have to incorporate WEIRD thinking into his understanding of the world, is very compatible to using base 8 math in a world where base 10 has become the assumed default.

Tribal thinking is more archaic and, in view of increasing levels of technology both in know-how and productive capacity, less relevant and reliable. I see Humanity going into a post-industrial order in which production and possession of more stuff per person will be much less reliable for creating human happiness and any perception of prosperity.  As I understand it, hoarders are not happy people. 

We will still need to literally consume food and fuel, but I doubt that we will buy other things except to replace obsolete, lost, or broken stuff. We will be going to more of an experience economy. It is a general assumption of conventional economics that more expenditure means that one has better. Paying more for the same thing (let us say property rent) does not suggest greater prosperity except to the person who extracts more out of the deal. 

Quote:My sister the retired first grade teacher used to have occasional bussed students from the Boston inner city environment to her rich suburban school system.  She spoke of a ghetto mind set.  If you are going to succeed, you have to become a sports star, a drug pusher, or a mother.  Intimidation, violence in attitude were an important part of gaining status.  The law was optional, something to be bypassed when possible.  Being a part of a gang, incorporating the gang mannerisms, was important if one is to gain status in the neighborhood.

The looters in the recent unrest might often share the ghetto mind set.

That expression of the "ghetto mindset" is already obsolete. It implies a greater disparity of winners and losers. The welfare mother with her beloved cash-cow children (I know a white woman like this in rural Michigan, and her children are white) will be a loser once she no longer has the children. Dope-dealing is a loser way of life, as it is only a matter of time before one gets killed by a rival dealer or ends up in prison. 'Sports star' and 'entertainer' are potentially lucrative, but they are at best lottery tickets. 

I have taught as a substitute, and I once suggested to someone clearly of the ghetto mindset as he leafed through a sporting goods and sportswear catalogue during a junior-high math class that many people make a solid living in the sporting goods and sportswear industries. Such includes designers, wholesale sellers, and retail store managers. But they need to be good in English so that they can communicate with people and good in math so that they can keep up with what they are doing. Does that sound like good advice?

He responded "I can make more money dealing drugs!"

I did not expect that response, and  I considered it an insult to everyone in the classroom. I chose to cower behind the teacher's desk... and no0 K-12 teacher can teach effectively from a teacher's desk. 

Had I had the recklessness to lecture against what he said, I would have said something like this:

Everyone needs an honest line of work, and that may be at the minimum wage. If you do such work as a fast-food worker or a farm laborer you at least can develop good work habits. Sure, life will be rough on poverty pay, but poverty is better than prison. You may have to live six to a room, but you might find ways in which to get better pay as you make clear that you are doing a better job. One good thing is that you can talk about what you do for a living. So you go to four in one room. 

You can attend a junior college and learn a marketable skill that will give you a near-average income... and with that comes a good life. You can own a car and some nice clothes. You can buy some electronic goodies. You can occasionally go to the movies and go out to eat. You have some money for an interesting date. 

The drug dealer may make more money earlier, but he knows that one slip up puts him in jail. Or just bad luck. And when he gets caught, what happens when he leaves jail? Not many employers want him. Nobody wants an ex-jailbird operating a cash register or receiving merchandise. There goes your chance to be a retail cashier, which is a stepping stone to better... or a warehouseman. You end up with jobs other people do not want, and drug-dealing isn't exactly a transferrable skill.

American capitalism is a cruel, merciless system. If you aren't born into the right family, you have to live on your wits just to survive. But what else can you hope for?        

(I waited until the next class had started before writing him up. I thought he would figure out what I was doing).

Quote:Is it really comparable to Generational Dynamics?

I see Generational Dynamics more suited to a Malthusian world in which food per person fails to keep up with population, and when people start to get hungry they get angry... government offers them victuals as a soldier which are slightly more than are available to a farm laborer or store clerk... and the government sends off its soldiers as cannon fodder until it runs out of cannon fodder or expands its territory enough to solve the food shortage.   

Quote:The ghetto mind set is a way of adapting to a particular inner city environment.  It is a way of understanding the world.  I lists a bunch of goals to which one should strive.  If one is living in the inner city and has a certain skin pigmentation, are you better off pursuing the ghetto mind set or Generational Dynamics?  World views and values reflect the environment in which people grow up.  If you grew up in the inner city, what good is Generational Dynamics?

Beyond any doubt the recruiters of cannon fodder will look first in the ghetto. Give a boy a uniform, send him on a mysterious trip to a place with which he is unfamiliar, have him do some marching and calisthenics to prepare him for soldiering, give him a mock AR-15 or AK-47 for training to kill the Enemy, and when the preparation is complete, give him a real AR-15 or AK-47 and direct him to point it at the Enemy.

My impression is that Generational Dynamics will kill off plenty of 'expendable' people on both sides of a war.  

Quote:Now I grew up in the suburbs.  I bought into the blue mindset.  The ghetto pattern is abhorrent to me.  Adapting the ghetto way of thinking in a reasonably well to do suburb would soon make me a social outcast and get me into trouble.  That doesn’t mean if you don’t make a sincere attempt to understand it, you can have a good understanding of the urban problems.

How many of us could adjust to ghetto life? Poverty is one thing. One cuts back, cuts back more, and starts making compromises... driving on bald tires, getting slower in meeting bills, putting off maintenance, buying cheaper and less-nutritious food... make it do or do without until the electricity is cut off, at which time your old CD's and DVD's are useless. I've gone from middle-class to poor, and it is not enjoyable.  

Quote:But if your computer works in base 8, you learn and default to base 8.  Just remember that the bank teller will not understand.  If you use the wrong tool for the environment, you are going to have a mess.

We all adjust, don't we? Some adjustments are just too complicated. I'm not good at watching my back, and I don't like getting in trouble with the police.

** 14-Nov-2020 World View: Expertise

(11-14-2020, 12:36 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]> What expertise do you have that people in the CIA and DIA do not
> already have?

All I can tell you is my observations, beginning with the 2007
Congressional Quarterly article that revealed that long-time experts
in Washington on the Mideast knew almost nothing about the Mideast.

Let's take Iran as an example. Someone in the CIA would be an expert
on Iran. He would be able to enumerate all the politicians, tell you
the locations of the country's army bases and missile sites, and all kinds
of other information that I wouldn't have a clue about.

But the chances are that he wouldn't understand the significance of
things like the Occultation in Shia theology, or the significance of
historical events like the Tobacco Revolt and the Constitutional
Revolutions, and their importance to Iran's policy today.

On December 31, 2015, there was a BBC World Service special show with
an hour of the top BBC reporters and analysts predicting what would
happen in 2016. Lyse Doucet has been a BBC reporter for almost 40
years, and is considered an expert on the Mideast. But she predicted
that in 2016, Saudi Arabia and Iran would get together to start peace
talks, and would settle many of their differences by the end of the
year.

As in the case of the Congressional Quarterly article, I almost
couldn't believe my ears. This wasn't a simple mistake like
forgetting the name of the Iran's president. This was massive
ignorance and stupidity about the Mideast in general and Iran in
particular, by someone who was supposed to be an expert.

Then there's Chris Murphy, who has been in Congress since 2007, and is
considered a leading Democrat expert on foreign policy. He gave a
speech that I mentioned in my last message. He said that the Saudi
blockade of Qatar was Trump's fault because of something or other that
I forget, and that Trump could have resolved it in two weeks. Once
again, we're not talking about simple misstatement, but a profoundly
ignorant "expert" who has no clue what's going on, and makes America
look like idiots. And according to reports, Biden is considering him
for Secretary of State.

Obama's Secretary of State was the abysmal idiot John Kerry, who stumbled
from one disaster to another. It's not enough to say that, well, hiring
Kerry was just a mistake, and it won't happen again. Trump would have
fired someone like Kerry within three months, but Obama kept him on for
years. I can only think that Obama wanted someone around who was even
stupider than he was.

Obama never did anything that even made sense to me. The epitome was
when al-Assad used chemical weapons, and Obama took a 15 minute walk
around the Rose Garden and, based on his 15-minute walk, decided to
reverse several years of his "red line" policy. Obama looked like a
complete fool in the Mideast. In fact, everything that he and Kerry
did made them look like complete fools, especially in the Mideast.

During the last four years, I've written about a dozen articles
explaining the complexities of Trump's policies, whether about North
Korea, China, Afghanistan, or the Mideast. I didn't always agree, but
at least his policies made sense. Obama's policies never made sense.

Biden has been hiding in his basement for a year, and appears to be a
total dolt. Kamala is a pretty little girl who giggles a lot, but is
not worth much in a crisis. Suppose there's a military confrontation
with China in March. There will be the initial nonsense blaming the
crisis on Trump, but that will pass as the crisis deepens. Will
either of them be able to handle it?

I doubt that anyone believes so. Hopefully, there's an army general
who knows what's going on in the world who can take over as de
facto president, and lead the country through the crisis. The
country's survival may depend on it.

[P.S.: I heard a reporter on tv yesterday say that the reason that the
jihadists were able to attack on 9/11/2001 was because Clinton had not
provided intelligence briefings to Bush. I have to say, after
listening to people like AOC and Chris Murphy, that every time I think
that the people in Washington can't be any stupider, they find a way
to reach ever greater and greater heights of ignorance and stupidity.]

(11-14-2020, 12:36 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: [ -> ]What expertise do you have that people in the CIA and DIA do not already have?

From a high level, Xenakis is a tribal thinker.  In areas of the world where tribal thinking is still dominant, he can likely provide an interesting analysis.  Many others have WIERD or blue perspectives.  Many will guess a tribal population or leader will do what seems to be rational by western standards, and totally miss the more local tribal thought patterns.  At the same time, will Xenakis be able to best analyze WIERD or blue people?  As far as I can see, he doesn't even try.  He attributes modern thought to being stupid, and projects parody or straw man motivations.

It truly is a matter of using the correct tool for the job.

(11-13-2020, 08:33 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: [ -> ]Tsk tsk.  As usual, I'm the only person in this generational theory forum who actually considers generational theory to be valid.

If you mean the original insights of Strauss and Howe, you may have some such claim.  I consider turning theory to have merit, but point out that S&H took most observations from the Industrial Age and did not account fully for the age transition.  Like any theory, you often have to tweak to keep the theory valid.  In the case of Einstein tweaking Newton, it can be quite a tweak, but a tweak for physicists more than engineers.  For most people and most environments, Newton is good enough.  

Anyway, a failure to adopt to new data doesn't make devotion to a dated theory a good thing.