The cancer infecting the political Left
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The cancer infecting the political Left
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07-29-2020, 03:11 PM
(07-29-2020, 01:33 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Trump's not a mad man. A questionable assumption. Very questionable. Well see what the general opinion is after 98 more days.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
07-29-2020, 05:14 PM
(07-29-2020, 09:19 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: 1.. Einzige -- orthodox Marxism-Leninism is dead. It has no viable derivative in the United States. A. I'm not a Marxist-Leninist. B. Communism is a response to objective conditions which will exist, not an ideology to be implemented. Quote:It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is visibly and irrevocably foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organization of bourgeois society today. - Marx, The Holy Family Quote:Government ownership of productive capacity is even becoming irrelevant as much of the value created in America is intellectual property, the result not so much of material creation as of imagination and staging. Communism is not "government ownership of the means of production". Read Engels' Socialism: Utopian & Scientific, Chapter III. Quote:But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict.
07-29-2020, 07:49 PM
(07-29-2020, 08:03 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Scientists create systems of ideas like relativity, Marxism or S&H turning theory. Engineers create things that put these ideas into practical use. Being an engineer, I sort of think it a two way street. I tended to take an idea and make it reality. That idea was entirely contingent upon the social structure on which it was developed, and its execution requires methods of production which are also contingent. (07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: If you are not involving yourself with the two ideal systems involved in the latest crisis, you are a poor student of turning theory. Marxism was last a viable set of values when the New Deal was a new deal. As the result of Marxist theory as it practically gets put in practice became clear, it became a non starter. Not a factor.Again, Marxism is not a set of ideas to be put into practice. It is a mode of analysis and a method of criticism. Communism is independent of it. (07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: An impressive foresight of how computers would evolve from a time well before computers. Give Marx a brownie point or two.It puts to bed the notion that Marxist critique is only applicable to a society of factory floor physical laborers. Marx called computers in 1857. Quote:However, nukes, insurgent conflict and computers have changed the basic pattern of civilization. Notably, violent triggers are rare to nonexistent in major democracies. No revolutions. This kind of changes how cultures improve and was not anticipated by Marx. It renders his whole system obsolete.Yes; as we've seen with the lasting, enduring legacy of Obamacare, legislative change is all we need. Quote:Not a Bronze Age thinker. The Bronze Age was back in the Agricultural Age, and Marx was definitely an Industrial Age thinker. Who, as I demonstrated with "Fragment on Machines", anticipated the Information Age. It's still all capitalism, though. (07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Again, blue is the newer of the two value systems at odds in the current crisis. That statement show you are hopelessly ignorant of the S&H turning approach to viewing history. Is it really newer than modern conservatism? The concepts behind welfare capitalism predate Keynes. Gladstone was practicing something like it in 1880s Britain. Meanwhile, modern American conservatism is quite distinct from its paleo conservative predecessors and can be localized to the mid-20th century. (07-28-2020, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: It seems he did not anticipate how it would effect the changes in values. Absurdly rare triggers. None observed. No revolutions. This lack of anticipation is not surprising given his time, but renders his whole system obsolete. Eh? Marx anticipated radical changes in values. From the Manifesto: Quote:The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
07-29-2020, 09:41 PM
(07-29-2020, 11:29 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(07-29-2020, 09:19 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: 1. Einzige -- orthodox Marxism-Leninism is dead. It has no viable derivative in the United States. Even fascism of the neo-Nazi and KKK types (the two are merging) has more mass support in America. Those are sick people, the leaders of fascist cliques typically sociopaths and the followers hard to find unless as duplicates. I'm not familiar with that part of Star Wars... but in the evil of the Empire I see the pathological conformity that one associates with Nazis and Ku Kluxers. By duplicates I can imagine people who seek to be members of similar fascist cliques that offer much the same... two or more organizations at once. These people go from one such group to another as the leaders lose enthusiasm because they have bills to pay and must do legitimate work, family members take offense, or in rare cases come to recognize that what they are doing is unconscionable. There is no single unified Klan and has not been one since the Feds shut down what remained of the Second Klan of 1915-1942 due to tax violations. That America was at war with a political entity (you know which one!) remarkably similar to the Klan in ideology, style, and symbolism mattered far more than the collection of back taxes on a for-profit movement. The Second Klan, fading in attractiveness since the late 1920's, did not get to pay its back taxes to keep itself alive. Until a couple of decades ago, Klan groups often had WWII veterans who wanted nothing to do with the Nazi stuff because Nazis were German and thus exotic and alien. I have seen Klan leaders appear on stage (on TV) with Nazi swastikas. Meld two of the vilest causes in history, and one usually gets the worst of both. Klan groups and Nazis are similarly antisemitic and are involved in such shared concerns as Holocaust denial and opposition to 'race mixing'.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
07-29-2020, 10:36 PM
(07-29-2020, 09:41 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(07-29-2020, 11:29 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(07-29-2020, 09:19 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: 1. Einzige -- orthodox Marxism-Leninism is dead. It has no viable derivative in the United States. Even fascism of the neo-Nazi and KKK types (the two are merging) has more mass support in America. Those are sick people, the leaders of fascist cliques typically sociopaths and the followers hard to find unless as duplicates. Supposedly in the Clone Wars, the predecessors of the Storm Troopers were all cloned from one suburb soldier, and therefore would all look alike. Mixing that idea with a Neo Nazi or Klan rally is just a bad image.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
07-29-2020, 11:52 PM
(07-29-2020, 05:14 PM)Einzige Wrote:(07-29-2020, 09:19 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: 1.. Einzige -- orthodox Marxism-Leninism is dead. It has no viable derivative in the United States. It can certainly be confusing.The clarification is appreciated. I have been in heated arguments with a Stalinist. Quote:B. Communism is a response to objective conditions which will exist, not an ideology to be implemented. OK. I recognize the difference in two very different meanings of the word Communism. One is of officially Marxist-Leninist regimes (such as those of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hoxha, Ho Chi Minh, Tito, the Kim dynasty-in-all-but-name, Castro, and Pol Pot or of causes related to an attempt to establish some Marxist-Leninist ideology as a ruling clique, as with Trotskyites or the Shining Path (Peru). This is the official contrast to the official position of the United States on 'rightful' government that recognizes property rights. The second is of an end stage in human development in which (if I read Marx correctly) in which all human needs are met so easily that ownership of the means of production and the enforcement of economic relationships through the State become largely irrelevant. Is this achievable? Maybe... but technologies of production will need to overtake population growth and of course the menace of anthropogenic global warming. I have a few things to say about Donald Trump with respect to this, but that will require an analysis which requires different thinkers.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
07-30-2020, 01:47 AM
(07-29-2020, 01:33 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(07-29-2020, 04:17 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:(07-29-2020, 01:22 AM)Einzige Wrote: Eh? The vast majority of Democratic voters, even of Democratic activists, are basically nonideological, like the overwhelming majority of Americans. 1. I see Donald Trump forcing an ideological realignment in American politics, one that redefines recent ideological divides and perhaps establishes some Crisis-Era version of a political Big Tent. Liberals and some conservatives have begun to coalesce in the recognition that checks and balances and the rule of law are essential to preventing the imposition of a self-styled despotism, even if that despotism has no coherent ideology because its leader has none. We are finding some conservatives coming out of the political version of the closet and recognizing that the mainstream of the Democratic Party has beaten them in the race to determine that Donald Trump is a menace to 230 years of Constitutional government. Are those conservatives trustworthy? We shall see. I assume that they still want tax cuts, regulatory relief, and further evisceration of labor unions. For now, Trump is the menace, and the old saying "a drowning man grasps at a viper" applies. 2. President Trump's idea of "making America great again" depends heavily upon America taking on the characteristics of a pioneer society in which people get much while sacrificing little. If living with 1950-style costs of housing and the opportunity to make a solid living as an industrial worker is what people consider great, then such is beyond recovery. Twice the population that we had in 1950 ensures that more people will be competing for the same housing space. Housing costs in coastal California were incredibly low back then, and even such places as San Mateo, Hayward, and San Jose were still within rural areas. If ten million people want to live in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the mild climate they are going to have to live in housing characteristic of of Seoul, Tokyo, or Hong Kong, complete with the rental costs. The great views? It will be easier to find a place with a view, if an awful one, in a place like central Illinois, a thoroughly un-scenic area, or at least what one sees from 294, 80, 55, 57, or 70. Trump sells an absurd myth that nobody can achieve unless by culling the population. On the other hand, central Illinois has a delightful climate -- if you like "Minnesota Lite" in the winter and "Texas Lite" in the summer. Beware contradictions and absurdities as public policy; they never work. 2. "Neoliberal" and "neoconservative" seem built indelibly into our public life. Divesting ourselves of such will take some inordinate disaster. It may be too late for that, not that I want any nukes flying around. 3. One observation that I must make: much of American life is made for morons. I hate to cite the Evil One, but he well expressed the idea that political discourse is most wisely designed to appeal to the stupidest person in the audience that one wants as a supporter. I can say this also about mass culture, advertising, religious hectoring, and job classifications. Most jobs readily available are made for people on the borderline of mental retardation. OK, it takes considerable learning to realize that a work for three string instruments that takes nearly fifty minutes to perform called "Divertimento, E 563 in E-flat for string trio by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" is worth dedicating forty-minutes of time. Yes, it is that good: It is extremely difficult to market except to an audience that knows about this masterpiece. It is easier for people to listen to Top 40 pap and find something superficially attractive yet utterly empty because such is easy. The connection between the expense of a purchase and the intellect necessary for having the skill with which to afford it is weak. Semi-literate pimps and pushers love the same sorts of expensive cars that attorneys and physicians can afford. Just think of the low quality of "gospel of wealth" preachers who tell people that they can be successful in life if only they "sow the seed" -- right into the televangelist's bank account. Could it get lower? Sure -- people handling snakes as tests of faith. We have seen a highly-refined art of offering thirty-second ads for political campaigns, typically defaming anyone who would challenge the precepts of pure plutocracy. "My opponent will..." raise your taxes put Social Security and Medicare at risk "pal with terrorists" (OK, Sarah Palin went too far on this one, as pal is not a verb) take away your guns promote homosexuality make it easy for criminals to do violent crime and get away with it Finding meaning in life isn't easy -- but it must not be impossible. 4. Sure, Marxism attracts sociopaths. Sure, fascism attracts sociopaths. But so does our political system. Some people really believe that on their behalf, no human suffering can ever be in excess if that suffering turns them a profit, allows them to indulge themselves extravagantly, or enforces their power. That is exactly what I would expect of a medieval aristocrat, a slave-owning planter, the most rapacious plutocrats of the early-industrial era and the purveyors of the most irresponsible products ever known (elixirs said to cure everything but might kill you instead), the war merchants who sold weapons to both sides in wars that they promoted through proxies, and drug kingpins. Are our economic elites any better? Maybe not, but they have the money to support the most reactionary toadies as political pets. Character is everything, and people with great prerogatives had better have souls worthy of their power lest tragedy ensue. Now, on to Trump: Quote:Trump's not a mad man. He's to stoic, to cunning and to calculated to be a mad man. So, you go ahead and vote for the zombie and get used to the idea of fighting for a loaf of bread or paying twice as much for a loaf that can't be manufactured as much or get to your grocery store until its disinfected and cleansed or sold until its disinfected and cleansed and so on. Dude, the guy has 83 million followers on twitter that the dude who owns Facebook bans and doesn't worry about losing as customers. You better wake up and stop thinking like a Democrat and start thinking like an American who knows they're dealing with a crisis right vs sitting in the bleachers watching one right now. Do what Rani did if you can't accept voting for a Republican, vote Libertarian instead of voting for a zombie and find yourself being stuck with a two bit liberal candidate who doesn't deserve to be president that the country doesn't recognize as being legit. 5. Donald Trump is the result of an educational system that let him advance without developing as a person. He is one of the early-wave Boomers who went through an MBA program that taught no ethical values. If one has no ethical values then one naturally gravitates to moral and cultural emptiness and little empathy. Life is more than "sex&drugs&rock-n-roll", bureaucratic power, material comfort, economic ease, and ordering people about as if those others were slaves. Figure that the Armed Services have academies that inculcate character through drills that are as important as the academics... life isn't easy for a junior military officer, but if a junior (let alone senior) officer fails due to a lack of character, soldiers can die in large numbers who might not need to. Maybe mass poverty isn't quite as severe an ethical consequence as tens of soldiers dying under some colonel because that colonel wants a Medal of Honor for inducing such a sacrifice. This said, poverty is unpleasant, and nobody seeks it except as a way of experiencing religious bliss. Nobody wins elective office by promising potential voters that his policies will reduce the quality of their lives so that a tiny elite will get to live like sultans. But that, all too often, is what we get. OK, so he isn't a mad man? By that criterion I would make a fine President (on the other hand I have gaps in my personality that would make me unsuited to running for high office). Stoic? Do you think Trump knows what that word means? He is calculating and cunning -- just like a typical mobster or (more catastrophically) someone who uses an elaborate conspiracy to do murder-for-hire for the proceeds of an insurance policy. One can calculate badly, and one's cunning is all too obvious. "Cunning" is exactly what we expect of the most bloodthirsty killers in the animal world. They have a limited range of vocal expressions, and much of that range is "Meow!" I think that I have said enough about dividing people in America between "Americans" based on their cultural and ideological identity and people not-so-American. Democrats no longer have the strongest arguments against Trump; conservatives now do! Democrats made the case against the Trump Presidency in the impeachment... and conservatives have gladly supplied good reasons for seeing Democrats as useful and necessary allies this time. 83 million followers on Facebook... are those the only people that you consider "Americans"? Yes, we are aware of the actuarial risks of electing someone whose Presidential term will end when he is 82. Trump is an even greater risk.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
07-30-2020, 08:04 AM
(07-25-2020, 04:38 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Correction. The Republicans went after the Southern middle class of the new South which is mainly non union. Racism is still popular on the Democratic side. Correction to the correction. The current position has the Democrats riding the Black Lives Matter position on violent racist policing while the Republicans are resisting their efforts. While the Democratic position could be attributed to trying to pick up votes in an obviously popular movement, so could the Republican position with a their racist position. At any rate, trying to reverse the definition of racism is a one extremist show.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
07-30-2020, 08:33 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-31-2020, 05:17 AM by Bob Butler 54.)
Einaige
I generally work with a system that puts turnings, ages, civilizations and behavioral psychology together. Of these, ages and civilizations are fairly common partitions in the academic study of history. This site is generally centered on S&H turning theory, so I usually don’t have problems with people taking this seriously. Behavioral psychology isn’t as popular as it once was, but generally if you talk about hunter gatherer behavior or the behavior of other hunter packs people follow along without too much of a quibble. If you just quote the biblical line about behold the land of milk and honey, slay the men, enslave the women and children, that is all you need to remind people of what mankind evolved to be. My major possibly new thought in combining these perspectives is if you cross a border in turnings, ages or civilizations, that which you thought you learned by examining reality is not to be trusted. This mostly manifests in that which you learned in the Industrial Age is not to be absolutely trusted in the Information Age until the pattern observed has been seen to reproduce in the Information Age. For example awakenings in the Industrial Age generally took the form of religious revivals. In the Information Age, the one example we have was much more to protest politically. I expect the next awakening to more closely resemble the 1960s than the older religious awakenings. More or less where I am coming from. Now once in a while I wind up debating a Marxist or a fundamentalist who believes in the absolute Truth of everything in the writings of Marx or the Bible. These are remarkably similar mindsets. What I have found is that I am never as good with the other guy’s preferred Book as the other guy. I did my Saturday classes with the Catholic nuns, was a regular with the Christian Fellowship at Northeastern, took philosophy courses that covered Marx as well as a Russian history course. I'm no slouch, but not a match for someone who has made one of these Books the core of his world view. The debater keeps pulling everything back into his Book which he believes in with absolute certainty. On the other hand I see the Bible as a historical document which shows how one culture evolved and changed over many years. You can see how that conflicts with someone who believes that it is a unified book with no conflicts or corrections, but deletes in his mind the phrases which cause contradictions. As the book goes from an eye for an eye to turning the other cheek, you can see the problem. The Jews of the Bible are evolving and transforming their culture into the Christian view. And Marxism? A pretty good understanding of the division of wealth problem for the time of its writing. A pretty bad solution to the problem. They have not and I believe can not put the solution into practice. Every time one starts to walk down that path, you wind up in the valley full of milk and honey, killing the men, and enslaving the women and children. It is damn hard not to wind up in that valley. We have spent ages in that valley before slowly learning to climb out. So pardon if I do not worship your holy words. To me they are not so sacred. They are an obsolete error not worth repeating. If you find something in all that garbage that seems to resemble wisdom, show it to me manifest in the real word. That it came out of the old books is more a handicap than a sacred blessing of holiness. Back to my synthesis… In the recent 3T, it was the red and blue values that were debated. Always before the newer values came to overwhelm the old when the crisis heart arrives. With both the virus and the Black Lives protest favoring the blue values, history is seeming to repeat. Marxism was last an almost pertinent value set in the 1930s, and is not a modern contender. By almost pertinent I mean Hoover represented the old Gilded Age perspective, and FDR the new. It resolved in FDR's favor. There was a significant minority who believed that the combination of capitalism and democracy had failed, and took on a Marxist perspective, but they never became dominant and the New Deal perspective won out. While Marx may have been good in predicting automation and computers, he did not predict the Information Age lack of crisis war triggers and thus revolutions. Just not there. Stop pretending it is.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
07-30-2020, 01:17 PM
(07-30-2020, 08:33 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I generally work with a system that puts turnings, ages, civilizations and behavioral psychology together. Of these, ages and civilizations are fairly common partitions in the academic study of history. This site is generally centered on S&H turning theory, so I usually don’t have problems with people taking this seriously. Behavioral psychology isn’t as popular as it once was, but generally if you talk about hunter gatherer behavior or the behavior of other hunter packs people follow along without too much of a quibble. If you just quote the biblical line about behold the land of milk and honey, slay the men, enslave the women and children, that is all you need to remind people of what mankind evolved to be. Excellent point. Obviously, Howe and Strauss theory cannot explain everything, but it does explain much. Several cycles and long-term trends operate, too, as does Prabhat Sarkar's cyclical theory of a succession of social elites based upon economic roles parallel to castes in India (warrior-kings, then intellectuals, then merchants and industrialists (the Acquisitors), and then the proletariat. The United States does not have a caste system, strictly speaking, as sons and daughters of one of these groups can go into the other or adopt their style. Sarkar's cycle suggests that the era of merchants, bankers, industrialists, and landlords is approaching an end due to the depravity within those elites. Toward the end of the run of the Acquisitors, the acquisitive elite has plenty of sources of easy money through exploitation instead of investment and innovation. They seem largely to be sitting on passive investments while they grind others into poverty, and they promote stupidity and destructive hedonism as a means of controlling others. At that stage, virtue is rare and vulgarity is the norm. Scams such as insider trading, 419 frauds, Ponzi schemes, and pump-and-dump become commonplace. Government under the thumb of Acquisitive elites becomes complicit. Unlike the earlier stage of the Aquisitor Age, people are interested in getting money ad indulging themselves more than they are with creating it for themselves, their progeny, and their community. Inequality of income reaches unprecedented levels, and few in power act responsibly. At the extreme we have the late Jeffrey Epstein, a financier who operated his "Lolita Express" with willing accomplices and clients. The rot is self-evident. But are the proles to be trusted? Not if they lack the ability to sacrifice of the warrior-kings who reorganize society, the cleverness of the intellectuals, or the early acumen of the Acquisitors in the early and best stage. Some proles break the mold -- but to put it this way, one is no longer a prole if one leads an army, builds a palisade, writes epic poetry or contemplates physical law, or starts a successful business. Quote:My major possibly new thought in combining these perspectives is if you cross a border in turnings, ages or civilizations, that which you thought you learned by examining reality is not to be trusted. This mostly manifests in that which you learned in the Industrial Age is not to be absolutely trusted in the Information Age until the pattern observed has been seen to reproduce in the Information Age. It is never onward and upward without decay of the tendency to rise. Thermodynamics is a good model for economics, and it may surprise many that some of the greatest contributions to economics come from chemists who developed models that added equilibrium to economics and made the study a near-science. To say that economics is chemistry without the reagents is not much of an exaggeration. Le Chatelier's principle in chemistry is a good analogy for diminishing returns. Ways that used to induce productivity become less effective that they are used, and more stuff does not lead to the same extent as it did when the stuff was rare and special. Quote:For example awakenings in the Industrial Age generally took the form of religious revivals. In the Information Age, the one example we have was much more to protest politically. I expect the next awakening to more closely resemble the 1960s than the older religious awakenings. One of the effects of the Enlightenment is the weakening of religion as a source of knowledge. Fanaticism, as one atheist slogan says "Science built jetliners and skyscrapers, and (referring to 9/11) religion flew jetliners into skyscrapers". Religion as an anodyne for economic distress that an economic elite imposes becomes increasingly suspect the more that people know. Religion may have some value in teaching people right from wrong; the mass culture is not particularly reliable at that, economic motivations are inadequate, and a state system of brutal punishments for misconduct may be too destructive of freedom (People's Republic of China as an example). This said, I doubt that we can get much moral learning from any Gospel of Wealth preaching or speaking in tongues, let alone snake-handling. This said, our MBA students could use some learning of ethical values that sustain a workable society so that life isn't all personal gain without responsibility to subordinates. Quote:Now once in a while I wind up debating a Marxist or a fundamentalist who believes in the absolute Truth of everything in the writings of Marx or the Bible. These are remarkably similar mindsets. What I have found is that I am never as good with the other guy’s preferred Book as the other guy. I did my Saturday classes with the Catholic nuns, was a regular with the Christian Fellowship at Northeastern, took philosophy courses that covered Marx as well as a Russian history course. I'm no slouch, but not a match for someone who has made one of these Books the core of his world view. The debater keeps pulling everything back into his Book which he believes in with absolute certainty. From what I have met, the Jews seem to do well without the need for Jesus unless they are complete rogues, and with someone like Jeffrey Epstein, Jesus would have done him no good. One can have a solid moral compass based on Islam, Buddhism, or the syncretic mixtures of non-Christian Chinese, Koreans, Thais, and Japanese. Whether Hinduism in India took on subtle effects of Christian moral teachings under British rule or did not makes little difference. This said, one can get a very ethical culture without the need of any God. The only benefit of religion in enforcing morality, so far as I can see, is the fear of Hell for egregious sinners who at the time of Judgment get separated from the innocent who enjoy eternal bliss. If anything I would have the Puritan idea of the Righteous having prime seats for watching the torment of the Damned turned on its head: I would have Holocaust perpetrators condemned forever to see the delights that their victims enjoy in Heaven while the evil-doers are ripped apart by the vicious dogs of the concentration camps under the guidance of kapos. Quote:On the other hand I see the Bible as a historical document which shows how one culture evolved and changed over many years. You can see how that conflicts with someone who believes that it is a unified book with no conflicts or corrections, but deletes in his mind the phrases which cause contradictions. As the book goes from an eye for an eye to turning the other cheek, you can see the problem. The Jews of the Bible are evolving and transforming their culture into the Christian view. Some day I may have to ask how much of the Gospel is really a plagiarism of contemporary Jewish thought. Hillel, perhaps? Quote:And Marxism? A pretty good understanding of the division of wealth problem for the time of its writing. A pretty bad solution to the problem. They have not and I believe can not put the solution into practice. Every time one starts to walk down that path, you wind up in the valley full of milk and honey, killing the men, and enslaving the women and children. It is damn hard not to wind up in that valley. We have spent ages in that valley before slowly learning to climb out. Someone once accused me of being a Marxist for not believing in capitalism at its worst. I fault both, whether the killing fields of the Congo or the killing fields of Cambodia for the same reason: the body count. Human nature is far from perfect and likely never will be. That is why we have police, courts, jails, and even (at times) the gallows. Those are checks and balances upon the worst of human behavior. This said, we must at times break the rules of tradition and old assumptions if we are to achieve something truly worthy. Some of those rule-breakers are the great innovators, reformers, and creative people who make the world richer for their discoveries and improvements. Quote:In the recent 3T, it was the red and blue values that were debated. Always before the newer values came to overwhelm the old when the crisis heart arrives. With both the virus and the Black Lives protest favoring the blue values, history is seeming to repeat. The "red" side attempted to achieve its logical conclusion of economic hierarchy and a monolithic culture, non-participants in that culture to be consigned to failure and suffering. That side disgraced itself by going along with a man who praised that monolithic culture yet has displayed no trace of a moral compass (you know who). The rest of us tried to find what we could share, and it was loyalty to such things as checks and balances, separation of power, and a commitment to the idea that a wholesome society works for all people of good will. That is what a Hasidic Jew in New York can have in common with a Mexican-American in Far South Texas who is a devout Catholic... Quote:Marxism was last an almost pertinent value set in the 1930s, and is not a modern contender. The body count. See also fascism. If anyone thinks that the American KKK and Alt-Right will be any better than commies and fascists of the early-middle part of the twentieth century, then I wish to give them the image of the gates of a worldly Hell that greet people with an Anglo-Saxon version of Nazi Newspeak "Arbeit Macht Frei"... and images of the prisoner docks at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials at which people will be judged for the suffering that they created. Quote:While Marx may have been good in predicting automation and computers, he did not predict the Information Age lack of crisis war triggers and thus revolutions. Just not there. Stop pretending it is. Marx' call for revolution was most likely to succeed in the harsh era of early industrialization in places with pathological government capable of enforcing human sacrifices to Lord Mammon without offering much improvement, and then in times when the system broke down as the result of a military or civil calamity. Marx did seem to suggest that a super-prosperous world would lead to a glorious new era in which human need and economic insecurity would vanish. Commodity fetishes would become obsolete. That transition, if such is what we are in, will not be as easy as it might have seemed even forty years ago.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
07-30-2020, 06:18 PM
(07-29-2020, 01:33 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(07-29-2020, 04:17 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:Trump's not a mad man. He's to stoic, to cunning and to calculated to be a mad man. So, you go ahead and vote for the zombie and get used to the idea of fighting for a loaf of bread or paying twice as much for a loaf that can't be manufactured as much or get to your grocery store until its disinfected and cleansed or sold until its disinfected and cleansed and so on. Dude, the guy has 83 million followers on twitter that the dude who owns Facebook bans and doesn't worry about losing as customers. You better wake up and stop thinking like a Democrat and start thinking like an American who knows they're dealing with a crisis right vs sitting in the bleachers watching one right now. Do what Rani did if you can't accept voting for a Republican, vote Libertarian instead of voting for a zombie and find yourself being stuck with a two bit liberal candidate who doesn't deserve to be president that the country doesn't recognize as being legit.(07-29-2020, 01:22 AM)Einzige Wrote:(07-29-2020, 12:32 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(07-28-2020, 11:35 PM)Einzige Wrote: <snip>We figured that out a while ago. The Democratic party can't win without a relatively cheap army Marxist believers and followers doing the bulk of the work and scaring people into agreeing and voting for them. I'm sorry but the Democratic party is a regime and it has always functioned like a regime but it's time is coming to end. 1. He's a mad man , just look at his tweetstorms. 2. Stoic? Really. "Synonyms: Adjective Antonyms: Adjective Here's the opposite of stoic. Russian Ambassador Lavrov. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Lavrov There, that shows folks what I think of "Russia,Russia, Russia" stuff. There's a lot of bipartisan gas lighting going on here. I choose to ignore it because I don't give a flying fuck what Russia is doing. Of course they interfere in our stuff, just like we interfere in there stuff. That's normal interstate competition. So feel free to do a compare and contrast of Lavrov vs. Pompeo. Fighting for loaves of bread. Guess what? That's already happening. PS. The stuff going on is nothing new. I've been there before. Like, I got the Hong Kong Flu. Covid is way worse than that. Same song, different verse. I grew up with this stuff, man ,,, in Oklahoma.  Fighting for bread. That's going on right now. It's obvious the Republicans offer nothing, except find some non existent job. https://www.npr.org/2020/04/17/837141457...s-hit-hard Here's the deal. 40 years of Republican tinkle down economics is all wet. Doing the same thing over and over again is a definition of insanity. Remember when Reagan said , "are you better off now than 4 years ago? I have a newer update. "Are you better off now than you were 40 years ago? I answer in the negative. What is the definition of "American" ? Anyone that's a citizen is an American to me. Regardless of socioeconomic class, color, creed, etc. It's none of my business if someone is homosexual, trans, different color, liberal , conservative, etc. I have too many other problems to fuss over stuff like that. I'm thinking like a Democrat because for one thing, the utter lack of a public healthcare system left the US wide open to what's going on right now wrt Corona virus. That is why the US is a banana republic. The US is right up there with Latin America with chaos. When I was a kid, and the US had a public healthcare system, I remember getting in line for shots at school, which were provided by the county health department. This can't happen with coordination at the national level. The economy sucked in the 70's , but the safety net and other public services were working well. Now, everything's shit, shit, nothing works, all is corrupt, because of legal bribery sanctioned by Citizen's United. The before Republican policy and after Republican policy leaves no doubt. I'm done, done with Republicans. They have failed, utterly. I have nothing else to say. Fuck Republicans and the horse they rode in on. You said "there is a crises".. You got that right. The evil axis of Neoliberalism/Neoconservatism is the author of this mess. Republicans are all in on that axis. The Democrats, especially the younger ones, not so much. Like AOC nailed. "It's all about the Benjamins". That ought to be our national motto, man.
---Value Added
07-30-2020, 06:27 PM
(07-29-2020, 03:11 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(07-29-2020, 01:33 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Trump's not a mad man. Counting down the days, and hoping that disapproval rating stays up! I hope the American People don't get fooled again! Yeeeaaah!
07-30-2020, 06:35 PM
(07-30-2020, 06:18 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: Here's the deal. 40 years of Republican tinkle down economics is all wet. Doing the same thing over and over again is a definition of insanity. Remember when Reagan said , "are you better off now than 4 years ago? I have a newer update. "Are you better off now than you were 40 years ago? I answer in the negative. Hit it on the nose; thanks dude. I'd post Won't Get Fooled Again again, but I just posted it! (07-30-2020, 06:35 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(07-30-2020, 06:18 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: Here's the deal. 40 years of Republican tinkle down economics is all wet. Doing the same thing over and over again is a definition of insanity. Remember when Reagan said , "are you better off now than 4 years ago? I have a newer update. "Are you better off now than you were 40 years ago? I answer in the negative. Totally agree too. This neoliberal establishment political platform controlled by lobbying has to go for the new more sustainable order to be established. I personally think that the establishment democrats are not much different to the republicans in that they support the current plutocratic system. My hope, like you, lies in the younger democrats like AOC, who support more green policies. If only this country had a voting system that allows a more diverse political spectrum to be represented, these people might belong to a more vibrant Green Party, separate from the establishment of the democrats.
07-30-2020, 09:34 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-30-2020, 10:25 PM by Classic-Xer.)
(07-30-2020, 06:18 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: 1. He's a mad man , just look at his tweetstorms.I know that's already happening and its only going to get worse with a zombie President, the Democrats stalling recovery and waiting for COVID19 to go away. You're right, the densely populated blues states were completely unprepared to face a deadly pandemic. I don't judge Trump by his tweets and I hardly pay any attention to his tweets these days. If you view Neo Liberalism/ Neo Conservatism as the axis of evil today then why would you vote for the politician/zombie who has gotten rich by being in bed/ double dealing with both of them. I remember getting shots back in school too. I remember getting my polio and swine flue shots at school. In today's American way of thinking, does it matter where we get our kids their shots today. Today, our kids get their shots outside of school vs in school like the old days. We might see that happen again with COVID19 since it's new and all. I think the polio vaccinations ended with our group. I suppose we could thank science and FDR for pretty much ending that particular disease over the coarse of a few generation. I'm not invested in China, the European Union, the globalist economy or the United Nations. I'm pretty much invested in the American economy or American private sector. I thought Omar said something about "It's all about the Benjamin's". She's right, It's all about the Benjamin's to her, her supporters, to me, to everyone on the American right and most on the American left these days.
07-30-2020, 10:35 PM
(07-29-2020, 01:19 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The Nazis excoriated modern art and music as degenerate -- breaking from conventional molds easy for the Common Man to accept. Of course, art that devolves to popular taste at its lowest level, convention with some unimaginative use of symbols, is Kitsch, "art" intended to soothe and charm an audience that prefers to do little thinking when it encounters images.The Nazi's burned some junk art but mainly kept the best and most valuable for themselves so to speak.
07-30-2020, 10:45 PM
(07-30-2020, 09:34 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(07-30-2020, 06:18 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: 1. He's a mad man , just look at his tweetstorms.I know that's already happening and its only going to get worse with a zombie President, the Democrats stalling recovery and waiting for COVID19 to go away. You're right, the densely populated blues states were completely unprepared to face a deadly pandemic. I don't judge Trump by his tweets and I hardly pay any attention to his tweets these days. If you view Neo Liberalism/ Neo Conservatism as the axis of evil today then why would you vote for the politician/zombie who has gotten rich by being in bed/ double dealing with both of them. I remember getting shots back in school too. I remember getting my polio and swine flue shots at school. In today's American way of thinking, does it matter where we get our kids their shots today. Today, our kids get their shots outside of school vs in school like the old days. We might see that happen again with COVID19 since it's new and all. I think the polio vaccinations ended with our group. I suppose we could thank science and FDR for pretty much ending that particular disease over the coarse of a few generation. I'm not invested in China, the European Union, the globalist economy or the United Nations. I'm pretty much invested in the American economy or American private sector. I thought Omar said something about "It's all about the Benjamin's". She's right, It's all about the Benjamin's to her, her supporters, to me, to everyone on the American right and most on the American left these days. Things got this way after 40 years of "lower my taxes, get rid of regulation" Republican policies. Here's the deal, I'm going with the Zombie because Trump wants to take away my Social Security/Medicare , worker safety, etc. No more shrddeding the remaining safety nets by Republicans. They've destroyed enough enough already. That's a red line for me. Since the Republicans are still at this project , I'll vote for even a yellow dog, over Trump and any Republican down ticket. As for shots, "like the old days".. I have a problem with that also. Every civilized country in the world has publicly funded shots, except for the US. As for the Covid shot, it's not going to be free either. This is stupid. Healthcare should never be a privately supplied service. People over profits! The American Right fat cats are the ones who are the most about the benjamins. That's the problem. As for China, I don't care about that issue either. If anyone has a problem with China, it's the American fatcats who made China what is today. If China wants to take stuff away from "American" companies, fine. Let those fuckers pay for the mistake they made , chasing cheap labor. Fuck 'em. "American" companies can eat shit and die. It's all about the benjamins for me, just enough to not be on the streets or starving. If AOC want's poor people to have more, more power to here. Yes, I know damn well Biden bad, but the Republicans have done jumped the shark. At least there's a chance the youngins and Bernie can light a fire under some butts who want to to be Neoliberals/Neocons.
---Value Added
07-30-2020, 10:55 PM
(07-30-2020, 08:04 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:The Democrats are riding a Marxist lead grass roots movement of sorts associated the inner city. Who actually runs the inner city, who are their enemy and what's going on in those areas today with their enemy at bay? Like I said, you better wise up because times are getting more serious.(07-25-2020, 04:38 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Correction. The Republicans went after the Southern middle class of the new South which is mainly non union. Racism is still popular on the Democratic side.
07-30-2020, 10:57 PM
(07-29-2020, 11:48 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(07-29-2020, 09:19 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: To both of you: Abraham Lincoln said as the Civil War started to the effect that we should be concerned not with getting God on our side as whether we are on God's Side. If God is just, then if we too are just then we should reasonably expect His Aid in war. The Confederacy had some virtues in contrast to the Axis Powers, but they still fought to defend the abomination that is chattel slavery. We ultimately won in World War II because we left the Other Side nothing for which to fight. Consider that there was no underground resistance to the British and Americans in Italy. We did not plunder. We did not destroy the rich legacy of Italian history and culture. The Nazis had their Werewolf cells, but these either decided to avoid trouble or were smashed easily because they had no local support. I have seen images of the American advances into Rome and Munich; Americans were seen as liberators. Japan? We had no resistance. Defeat isn't sweet, but the totalitarian regimes that had just wilted were far worse. As for the collapse of Communism -- no troops needed to move so much as an inch, except in Romania (where the Army turned against a dictator and his brutal secret police when those sought to preserve hard-line rule). ...Donald Trump is a thoroughly vile person, and it is now clear that defeat looms for him. He deserves it for his support of dictators and now his bungling of COVID-19. 150 thousand people have died in America, and some communities are veritable concentration camps due to the disease. You don't get out enough, and that is not a change from when COVID-19 was not yet on the scene. You may like to believe that you are representative of America, which is an arrogant position. Your delusion of such is comparatively harmless because you cannot really hurt people. Trump's delusion that he is America and people unlike him are not America even if you lionize him will prove either true or false in November. Disapproval approaching 60% is difficult to cut down.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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