(08-28-2016, 01:13 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-28-2016, 12:04 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-27-2016, 04:28 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I'll acknowledge art as a possible way of understanding the world and achieving fulfillment.  I'll note that in the past you have objected that mysticism and religion are distinct enough to deserve to be counted as different things.  I'm glad you have come over to my way of thinking.    

I'll deny that politics isn't a framework for understanding the world (world view) as well as providing goals for how one should improve one's culture and one's role within it (values).  We spend an awful lot of time, you, me and others on this forum, comparing, contrasting and insulting various political world views and values.  Trying to further comprehend and resolve such things won't be helped if you can't step out of your personal world view far enough to see what is going on in front of your face.  Your refusal to see outside your personal framework isn't optimal.

As I have said, I understand other political views better than those who hold them. I stand by that. The fact that I am still partisan, despite this, just shows that I consider those views to be false, at least when held with the narrow rigidity that some people hold them today.

I'c consider the above attitude a possible symptom of values lock.  Conservatives commonly explain to me how all liberals think, and say that because I am a liberal it follows that they know what I am thinking.  Buzz, wrong.  It is common for those holding one set of world views and values to have stereotypes  of opposing world views and values.  It seems to me that conservatives are more blatant about this than progressives, but in part that is because I lean progressive.  Hey, I have values too.  I do the "I understand them and still disagree with them" thing too.  Well, you know that.  That's what you are complaining about, no?  That's an occupational hazard.  It's part of being human.  Just don't think you're immune, that you are doing it less than others.  There are reasons for the "Eric the Obtuse" tag.

(08-28-2016, 12:04 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-27-2016, 04:28 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: People have strong political beliefs and values.  Your inability to see and acknowledge this doesn't change it.

I can see fine that these are in the realm of philosophy.

There is a saying.  "Those that can, do.  Those that can't, teach."  Most of the good professional philosophers I have encountered, respected and learned from are in academia.  The good professional politicians aren't.  I see a clear difference in how the two professions understand and manipulate the world.  Most people can.  I shall continue to speak to most people.

(08-28-2016, 12:04 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-27-2016, 04:28 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Acknowledged.  I may be aware of how world views and values can both focus and contain an individual's thinking, but don't claim total immunity to the effects.  Scientific values are better than most at reminding practitioners that new data requires new thinking, that no paradigm should be considered sacrosanct, that anything one believes should be subject to reevaluation.  Some variations of mysticism echo a similar principle, which is why the masters pour too much tea in the student's cup.  One must empty out old beliefs to make learn for new learning.  We could both gain by pushing these aspects of our varied traditions.

I agree there.

Hey.  Wow.  It can happen!  

(08-28-2016, 12:04 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-27-2016, 04:28 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I acknowledge that you have found a path that brings you a knowledge of how the world works and a guidance on how you should act that gives you a deep satisfaction.  I have walked enough steps of that path to understand its basic nature, and to know it is not for me.  I doubt any man could or should try to walk every path he encounters to the same degree as someone who has committed a lifetime to one path alone.  My own path suggests trying to acknowledge, respect and understand many diverse paths, but I'm not going to be able to out quote the bible with JPT, discuss in detail the many and varied economic cycles with Mikebert, or critique one of your astrological charts.

Some aspects of my path are so simple that anyone can follow, if willing. The obvious does not have to be difficult to see. But the willing isn't there, without curiosity; which seems to have vanished from most people the moment the 2T ended. But when I was 16 and 17, my curiosity drove me to discover the obvious, and my path opened.

I think this too can be viewed as a universal.  People with a wide variety of ways of seeing the world will say the basics are simple, obvious to the willing, to those ready to open their eyes.  The fact that others can't see it and are unwilling to open their eyes is troubling.  You have a world view.  It isn't universally embraced.  Welcome to the human race.  Worry less about others with closed eyes.  You can do more about your own eyes.  Or can you?  Have you the insurmountable handicap of being human?

(08-28-2016, 12:04 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-27-2016, 04:28 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: But as you might push meditation and astrology, I'll be trying to push walking at least a kilometer in the other guy's shoes.  It's what I do.

So you claim. But your pronouncements about me and others refute this to a degree. You, like almost all people here (at least if they are older than about 25), and most people today, are locked into their particular views, whatever you call them, and often angrily dismiss opposing views. I don't look for this to change. I look for one political philosophy to defeat the other; that's what happens in 4Ts, every time. For the rest, revolutions and awakenings come and go, followed by long periods of stasis. That's the way of evolution, human and otherwise.

Too true for comfort.  To a great degree, in advocating our various world views and values, we're all tilting at windmills.  Again, your are stating a near universal, a broad truth that applies to you as well.  You too have been known to angrily dismiss opposing views.  They are not to be taken seriously.  They are to be swept aside by the tides of history.  Do you not recall Classic's recent post to that effect, predicting that Americans will triumph over liberals?

As I've said to Mikebert recently, we are becoming a confrontational hostile culture.  As a whole we are becoming better at screaming than listening.  I'd rather solve problems through the ballot box than on the battlefield.  I'd rather solve problems through courtesy and respect than through politics.  That's hard to do in today's culture, and part of it is the late 3T early 4T season.  Part of the problem is the culture of hostility and prevalence of closed minds itself.

At this time you and I seem near the point where we are obstinately  screaming at each other, trying to see who can deliver the same message in the most decisive way.  I'm thinking we are near a point of diminishing return.

(08-29-2016, 07:06 AM)Anthony 58 Wrote:

Quote:I'm not sure myself any more than you or Butler that Hillary will buck the system, or how far. I just have a hunch that she will to a degree, since she is an idealist and a rebel girl at heart. The people will need to push her, and I don't know now if the people are any more up for a regeneracy now than the Democratic "Establishment." As I said, real change is unlikely for the next four years. Events move in cycles, and one important cycle is the 20-year one that corresponds to Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions. People get this one mixed up with others. But a "zero year" election and the following "one" year means a change in direction in Establishment politics, one way or another. It happens every time. So Hillary may not make it into the new decade, which will be a transformative one, whereas the last 2 decades have been the stand-pat and muddle-through time.

You see hope for Republicans to buck the system, because you agree with their ideas. But I see opposition to welfare and minority rights and support for trickle down, free market economics as more in line with the Establishment, and Trump comes from that system, and claims that his knowledge of cronyism means that he alone can fix it. If you believe that an expert practitioner of the current Establishment big-money, robber-baron system is the one to "fix" it, then I've got some California real estate to sell you at bargain Detroit prices.

There is also a perihelion/opposition of Mars and the Sun in 2020 - and it is the start of a "4" decade, the last two of which - the 1930s and 1840s - played host to the two worst depressions in U.S. history, and both needed wars to end (World War II and the Mexican War).

(08-28-2016, 01:13 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I'c consider the above attitude a possible symptom of values lock.  Conservatives commonly explain to me how all liberals think, and say that because I am a liberal it follows that they know what I am thinking.  Buzz, wrong.  It is common for those holding one set of world views and values to have stereotypes  of opposing world views and values.  It seems to me that conservatives are more blatant about this than progressives, but in part that is because I lean progressive.  Hey, I have values too.  I do the "I understand them and still disagree with them" thing too.  Well, you know that.  That's what you are complaining about, no?  That's an occupational hazard.  It's part of being human.  Just don't think you're immune, that you are doing it less than others.  There are reasons for the "Eric the Obtuse" tag.

Quote:There is a saying.  "Those that can, do.  Those that can't, teach."  Most of the good professional philosophers I have encountered, respected and learned from are in academia.  The good professional politicians aren't.  I see a clear difference in how the two professions understand and manipulate the world.  Most people can.  I shall continue to speak to most people.

Quote:I think this too can be viewed as a universal.  People with a wide variety of ways of seeing the world will say the basics are simple, obvious to the willing, to those ready to open their eyes.  The fact that others can't see it and are unwilling to open their eyes is troubling.  You have a world view.  It isn't universally embraced.  Welcome to the human race.  Worry less about others with closed eyes.  You can do more about your own eyes.  Or can you?  Have you the insurmountable handicap of being human?

Quote:Too true for comfort.  To a great degree, in advocating our various world views and values, we're all tilting at windmills.  Again, your are stating a near universal, a broad truth that applies to you as well.  You too have been known to angrily dismiss opposing views.  They are not to be taken seriously.  They are to be swept aside by the tides of history.  Do you not recall Classic's recent post to that effect, predicting that Americans will triumph over liberals?

Quote:As I've said to Mikebert recently, we are becoming a confrontational hostile culture.  As a whole we are becoming better at screaming than listening.  I'd rather solve problems through the ballot box than on the battlefield.  I'd rather solve problems through courtesy and respect than through politics.  That's hard to do in today's culture, and part of it is the late 3T early 4T season.  Part of the problem is the culture of hostility and prevalence of closed minds itself.

Quote:At this time you and I seem near the point where we are obstinately screaming at each other, trying to see who can deliver the same message in the most decisive way.  I'm thinking we are near a point of diminishing return.

(08-29-2016, 09:38 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Values lock -- one cannot legitimately understand why others hold the views that they have, and probably can't legitimately express the views of others.

So how can someone be wrong?

1. Intellectual inadequacy, a/k/a stupidity or ignorance.
2. Insanity and delusion.
3. Gross inadequacy of moral standards, as with sociopaths and sadists.
4. Selling out to the highest bidder.
5. Myopic class interest.
6. Brainwashing.
7. Fear -- fear the tyrant who can do anything to one or the God that can have one burn in Hell for the slightest deviation.
8. Revenge-seeking against old enemies.

(08-29-2016, 01:17 PM)ob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-29-2016, 09:38 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Values lock -- one cannot legitimately understand why others hold the views that they have, and probably can't legitimately express the views of others.

So how can someone be wrong?

1. Intellectual inadequacy, a/k/a stupidity or ignorance.
2. Insanity and delusion.
3. Gross inadequacy of moral standards, as with sociopaths and sadists.
4. Selling out to the highest bidder.
5. Myopic class interest.
6. Brainwashing.
7. Fear -- fear the tyrant who can do anything to one or the God that can have one burn in Hell for the slightest deviation.
8. Revenge-seeking against old enemies.

I would start looking in other places, though my list contains rewords of yours.

Self Interest:  If one is living day to day, having trouble finding a good job, living on Main Street day to day, one is apt to sympathize with Demand Side economics, approve of government assisted health care and otherwise lean blue.  If one has a large stock portfolio, is secure in one's job, has a large inheritance, then tax breaks to the wealthy, reduced capitol gains taxes, and paying one's own way rather than sharing burdens through tax and spend seem like good ideas.

Cultural Difference: One inherits a lot of one's parent's beliefs.  What worked for them gets preached to the new generation.  Churches and schools are a similar sources for explanations of how things work and ought to work.  For many, it is hard to let go of one's upbringing.

Situation Difference:  If one is living in wide open spaces, self reliance and independence can be productive, prudent and wise.  There is just more travel involved to get together and play team games.  If one lives in an urban area, the opposite can be true.

These are three common, broad and bland examples, but there are a lot more reasons for sincere disagreement.  If one is in the habit of solving a given problem in a given way, and it generally works, there is going to be sincere resistance to giving up the tried and true for an untried scheme.

Now, I'm not saying the things on your list never happen.  I just prefer to assume that someone I disagree with is intelligent, sane, and acting reasonably based on the world as he sees it.  I will try to maintain a benefit of the doubt as long as reasonably possible.  Someone might come from a different environment, a different culture, and thus have different world views and values.  However, I assume that the culture evolved to suit the place he came from.  Common cultures come to exist for a reason.  Understanding said reasons is a vital part of the process of political discussion.  If one hasn't made a sincere attempt to understand where the other guy is coming from, one shouldn't knee jerk instantly assume that he is evil, stupid, insane, brainwashed, etc...

That is the biggest difference between us.  I am ready to assume sincere differences between cultures, world views and values.  You are far more apt to assume that anyone who disagrees with you has major league mental or moral problems.  I consider the assumption that any disagreement in world views and values must be due to some sort of moral or mental deficiency to be a major and most problematic symptom of values lock.  Anyone who assumes that your list of reasons for disagreement above are common reasons for political disagreement is apt to be having values lock problems.

(08-29-2016, 02:06 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-29-2016, 01:17 PM)ob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-29-2016, 09:38 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Values lock -- one cannot legitimately understand why others hold the views that they have, and probably can't legitimately express the views of others.

So how can someone be wrong?

1. Intellectual inadequacy, a/k/a stupidity or ignorance.
2. Insanity and delusion.
3. Gross inadequacy of moral standards, as with sociopaths and sadists.
4. Selling out to the highest bidder.
5. Myopic class interest.
6. Brainwashing.
7. Fear -- fear the tyrant who can do anything to one or the God that can have one burn in Hell for the slightest deviation.
8. Revenge-seeking against old enemies.

I would start looking in other places, though my list contains rewords of yours.

Self Interest:  If one is living day to day, having trouble finding a good job, living on Main Street day to day, one is apt to sympathize with Demand Side economics, approve of government assisted health care and otherwise lean blue.  If one has a large stock portfolio, is secure in one's job, has a large inheritance, then tax breaks to the wealthy, reduced capitol gains taxes, and paying one's own way rather than sharing burdens through tax and spend seem like good ideas.

Cultural Difference: One inherits a lot of one's parent's beliefs.  What worked for them gets preached to the new generation.  Churches and schools are a similar sources for explanations of how things work and ought to work.  For many, it is hard to let go of one's upbringing.

Situation Difference:  If one is living in wide open spaces, self reliance and independence can be productive, prudent and wise.  There is just more travel involved to get together and play team games.  If one lives in an urban area, the opposite can be true.

These are three common, broad and bland examples, but there are a lot more reasons for sincere disagreement.  If one is in the habit of solving a given problem in a given way, and it generally works, there is going to be sincere resistance to giving up the tried and true for an untried scheme.

Now, I'm not saying the things on your list never happen.  I just prefer to assume that someone I disagree with is intelligent, sane, and acting reasonably based on the world as he sees it.  I will try to maintain a benefit of the doubt as long as reasonably possible.  Someone might come from a different environment, a different culture, and thus have different world views and values.  However, I assume that the culture evolved to suit the place he came from.  Common cultures come to exist for a reason.  Understanding said reasons is a vital part of the process of political discussion.  If one hasn't made a sincere attempt to understand where the other guy is coming from, one shouldn't knee jerk instantly assume that he is evil, stupid, insane, brainwashed, etc...

That is the biggest difference between us.  I am ready to assume sincere differences between cultures, world views and values.  You are far more apt to assume that anyone who disagrees with you has major league mental or moral problems.  I consider the assumption that any disagreement in world views and values must be due to some sort of moral or mental deficiency to be a major and most problematic symptom of values lock.  Anyone who assumes that your list of reasons for disagreement above are common reasons for political disagreement is apt to be having values lock problems.

I was looking for some reasons for someone being absolutely wrong so that we could rule out others. Ethnicity, religion, region, and class cannot make one wrong as can idiocy, superstition, malice, perversion*, lunacy, or cowardice. Using such a technique as brainwashing to convince those on the wrong side of an ethnic, religious, regional, or class divide of some revolutionary way of thought will itself be wrong should it be tried. If one can develop some high ethical standard based on one's core beliefs then one has some justification worthy of recognition.

Someone can be terribly wrong for any of the reasons that I mentioned. Seeing the world differently because one has lived in the Ozarks all one's life and is a Protestant of Scots-Irish origin instead of mid-town Manhattan and being a Catholic of Puerto Rican origin is not wrong or right -- either way. One's environment can be a very pervasive and indelible truth. If one likes where one is, then one may have a good cause to defend the assumptions that go with the environment. We are going to accept environmental differences or we are going to have horrible strife, perhaps as in Spain in the 1930s or in the dissolution of Yugoslavia.  We will need solutions that make ethnicity, religion, region, and class irrelevant to the solution. Yes, I know how nasty history can be. History is a violent, obscene tale written to no small extent in the blood of innocent people.

Don't fool yourself: this Crisis could end in the rifting of America into multiple new entities. and not even along state lines. Such would be an ugly mess. People on the wrong side of some demarcation line because of their religion or ethnicity could be in big trouble. Getting the dubious privilege to stay where one is might depend on acquiescence in second-class citizenship (I am thinking of the large black minority in the South which could face Jim Crow policies again). Remember that in such rifting, majority rule could be the choices that a local lynch mob makes. Yes, lynch mobs  make their decisions by majority vote -- very reliably. That's why we have constitutional protections that ensure that certain decisions that majorities can impose upon a helpless minority not be made.

One could recognize the legitimacy of other people's viewpoints because of some environmental factor from ethnicity to age to the rural/urban/suburban divide.

Class differences? There could be successor polities that accept the principle that maximal inequality is the best way to get the economic growth necessary to escape post-Crisis poverty. If one is a worker in such a place, then the surest way to the improvement of one's situation will be to emigrate -- no matter how over-heated the local economy is.  Some could even adopt Karl Marx as a Founding Father. Such will fail.

I could easily see myself fitting in in some foreign countries than in some of the post-Crisis polities of America. Maybe in such a Crisis I will be fortunate to find that my polity has shown its intention to join Canada after some shaky period of independence.

We may be in such deep trouble that the United States of America as we know it may be irrelevant by the end of the Crisis. The United States will not be the first great entity to splinter as its political order becomes unsustainable. We messed up badly when a bare majority chose to realign the basis of political representation to the permanent advantage of that temporary majority. Democracy can die that way.  


*Homosexuality is OK.

(08-30-2016, 05:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-29-2016, 02:06 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-29-2016, 01:17 PM)ob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-29-2016, 09:38 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Values lock -- one cannot legitimately understand why others hold the views that they have, and probably can't legitimately express the views of others.

So how can someone be wrong?

1. Intellectual inadequacy, a/k/a stupidity or ignorance.
2. Insanity and delusion.
3. Gross inadequacy of moral standards, as with sociopaths and sadists.
4. Selling out to the highest bidder.
5. Myopic class interest.
6. Brainwashing.
7. Fear -- fear the tyrant who can do anything to one or the God that can have one burn in Hell for the slightest deviation.
8. Revenge-seeking against old enemies.

I would start looking in other places, though my list contains rewords of yours.

Self Interest:  If one is living day to day, having trouble finding a good job, living on Main Street day to day, one is apt to sympathize with Demand Side economics, approve of government assisted health care and otherwise lean blue.  If one has a large stock portfolio, is secure in one's job, has a large inheritance, then tax breaks to the wealthy, reduced capitol gains taxes, and paying one's own way rather than sharing burdens through tax and spend seem like good ideas.

Cultural Difference: One inherits a lot of one's parent's beliefs.  What worked for them gets preached to the new generation.  Churches and schools are a similar sources for explanations of how things work and ought to work.  For many, it is hard to let go of one's upbringing.

Situation Difference:  If one is living in wide open spaces, self reliance and independence can be productive, prudent and wise.  There is just more travel involved to get together and play team games.  If one lives in an urban area, the opposite can be true.

These are three common, broad and bland examples, but there are a lot more reasons for sincere disagreement.  If one is in the habit of solving a given problem in a given way, and it generally works, there is going to be sincere resistance to giving up the tried and true for an untried scheme.

Now, I'm not saying the things on your list never happen.  I just prefer to assume that someone I disagree with is intelligent, sane, and acting reasonably based on the world as he sees it.  I will try to maintain a benefit of the doubt as long as reasonably possible.  Someone might come from a different environment, a different culture, and thus have different world views and values.  However, I assume that the culture evolved to suit the place he came from.  Common cultures come to exist for a reason.  Understanding said reasons is a vital part of the process of political discussion.  If one hasn't made a sincere attempt to understand where the other guy is coming from, one shouldn't knee jerk instantly assume that he is evil, stupid, insane, brainwashed, etc...

That is the biggest difference between us.  I am ready to assume sincere differences between cultures, world views and values.  You are far more apt to assume that anyone who disagrees with you has major league mental or moral problems.  I consider the assumption that any disagreement in world views and values must be due to some sort of moral or mental deficiency to be a major and most problematic symptom of values lock.  Anyone who assumes that your list of reasons for disagreement above are common reasons for political disagreement is apt to be having values lock problems.

I was looking for some reasons for someone being absolutely wrong so that we could rule out others. Ethnicity, religion, region, and class cannot make one wrong as can idiocy, superstition, malice, perversion*, lunacy, or cowardice. Using such a technique as brainwashing to convince those on the wrong side of an ethnic, religious, regional, or class divide of some revolutionary way of thought will itself be wrong should it be tried. If one can develop some high ethical standard based on one's core beliefs then one has some justification worthy of recognition.

Someone can be terribly wrong for any of the reasons that I mentioned. Seeing the world differently because one has lived in the Ozarks all one's life and is a Protestant of Scots-Irish origin instead of mid-town Manhattan and being a Catholic of Puerto Rican origin is not wrong or right -- either way. One's environment can be a very pervasive and indelible truth. If one likes where one is, then one may have a good cause to defend the assumptions that go with the environment. We are going to accept environmental differences or we are going to have horrible strife, perhaps as in Spain in the 1930s or in the dissolution of Yugoslavia.  We will need solutions that make ethnicity, religion, region, and class irrelevant to the solution. Yes, I know how nasty history can be. History is a violent, obscene tale written to no small extent in the blood of innocent people.

Don't fool yourself: this Crisis could end in the rifting of America into multiple new entities. and not even along state lines. Such would be an ugly mess. People on the wrong side of some demarcation line because of their religion or ethnicity could be in big trouble. Getting the dubious privilege to stay where one is might depend on acquiescence in second-class citizenship (I am thinking of the large black minority in the South which could face Jim Crow policies again). Remember that in such rifting, majority rule could be the choices that a local lynch mob makes. Yes, lynch mobs  make their decisions by majority vote -- very reliably. That's why we have constitutional protections that ensure that certain decisions that majorities can impose upon a helpless minority not be made.

One could recognize the legitimacy of other people's viewpoints because of some environmental factor from ethnicity to age to the rural/urban/suburban divide.

Class differences? There could be successor polities that accept the principle that maximal inequality is the best way to get the economic growth necessary to escape post-Crisis poverty. If one is a worker in such a place, then the surest way to the improvement of one's situation will be to emigrate -- no matter how over-heated the local economy is.  Some could even adopt Karl Marx as a Founding Father. Such will fail.

I could easily see myself fitting in in some foreign countries than in some of the post-Crisis polities of America. Maybe in such a Crisis I will be fortunate to find that my polity has shown its intention to join Canada after some shaky period of independence.

We may be in such deep trouble that the United States of America as we know it may be irrelevant by the end of the Crisis. The United States will not be the first great entity to splinter as its political order becomes unsustainable. We messed up badly when a bare majority chose to realign the basis of political representation to the permanent advantage of that temporary majority. Democracy can die that way.  


*Homosexuality is OK.

I don't know.  Ethnicity as in the KKK of a century or so back, religion when a fundamentalist is examining evolutionary biology, politics effecting the understanding of global warming...  Some quite understandable culturally driven factors can make you pretty (expletive deleted) wrong.  The different and quite firm opinions on the effectiveness of large government social programs and the usefulness of supply vs demand side stimulus are of a like nature.  It is possible to see how the cultural divides came to occur, why people believe as they do, but resolving the conflict is very problematic.

I'm not so worried about enough people being brainwashed to start a revolution, nor a social upheaval led by the stupid and insane.  I worry more about the intensely sincere normal.

I do watch the spirals of violence.  I don't disregard major upheaval as impossible.  I just don't see things starting to go critical yet.  There was a bump of blacks killed followed by cops killed earlier in the summer, but the response was 'this has got to stop' not 'they got one of ours, we must get two of theirs.'  The long hot summer wasn't nearly as long or hot as the summers I recall from my youth.

We'll see.

(08-30-2016, 01:30 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-30-2016, 05:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-29-2016, 02:06 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-29-2016, 01:17 PM)ob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-29-2016, 09:38 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Values lock -- one cannot legitimately understand why others hold the views that they have, and probably can't legitimately express the views of others.

So how can someone be wrong?

1. Intellectual inadequacy, a/k/a stupidity or ignorance.
2. Insanity and delusion.
3. Gross inadequacy of moral standards, as with sociopaths and sadists.
4. Selling out to the highest bidder.
5. Myopic class interest.
6. Brainwashing.
7. Fear -- fear the tyrant who can do anything to one or the God that can have one burn in Hell for the slightest deviation.
8. Revenge-seeking against old enemies.

I would start looking in other places, though my list contains rewords of yours.

Self Interest:  If one is living day to day, having trouble finding a good job, living on Main Street day to day, one is apt to sympathize with Demand Side economics, approve of government assisted health care and otherwise lean blue.  If one has a large stock portfolio, is secure in one's job, has a large inheritance, then tax breaks to the wealthy, reduced capitol gains taxes, and paying one's own way rather than sharing burdens through tax and spend seem like good ideas.

Cultural Difference: One inherits a lot of one's parent's beliefs.  What worked for them gets preached to the new generation.  Churches and schools are a similar sources for explanations of how things work and ought to work.  For many, it is hard to let go of one's upbringing.

Situation Difference:  If one is living in wide open spaces, self reliance and independence can be productive, prudent and wise.  There is just more travel involved to get together and play team games.  If one lives in an urban area, the opposite can be true.

These are three common, broad and bland examples, but there are a lot more reasons for sincere disagreement.  If one is in the habit of solving a given problem in a given way, and it generally works, there is going to be sincere resistance to giving up the tried and true for an untried scheme.

Now, I'm not saying the things on your list never happen.  I just prefer to assume that someone I disagree with is intelligent, sane, and acting reasonably based on the world as he sees it.  I will try to maintain a benefit of the doubt as long as reasonably possible.  Someone might come from a different environment, a different culture, and thus have different world views and values.  However, I assume that the culture evolved to suit the place he came from.  Common cultures come to exist for a reason.  Understanding said reasons is a vital part of the process of political discussion.  If one hasn't made a sincere attempt to understand where the other guy is coming from, one shouldn't knee jerk instantly assume that he is evil, stupid, insane, brainwashed, etc...

That is the biggest difference between us.  I am ready to assume sincere differences between cultures, world views and values.  You are far more apt to assume that anyone who disagrees with you has major league mental or moral problems.  I consider the assumption that any disagreement in world views and values must be due to some sort of moral or mental deficiency to be a major and most problematic symptom of values lock.  Anyone who assumes that your list of reasons for disagreement above are common reasons for political disagreement is apt to be having values lock problems.

I was looking for some reasons for someone being absolutely wrong so that we could rule out others. Ethnicity, religion, region, and class cannot make one wrong as can idiocy, superstition, malice, perversion*, lunacy, or cowardice. Using such a technique as brainwashing to convince those on the wrong side of an ethnic, religious, regional, or class divide of some revolutionary way of thought will itself be wrong should it be tried. If one can develop some high ethical standard based on one's core beliefs then one has some justification worthy of recognition.

Someone can be terribly wrong for any of the reasons that I mentioned. Seeing the world differently because one has lived in the Ozarks all one's life and is a Protestant of Scots-Irish origin instead of mid-town Manhattan and being a Catholic of Puerto Rican origin is not wrong or right -- either way. One's environment can be a very pervasive and indelible truth. If one likes where one is, then one may have a good cause to defend the assumptions that go with the environment. We are going to accept environmental differences or we are going to have horrible strife, perhaps as in Spain in the 1930s or in the dissolution of Yugoslavia.  We will need solutions that make ethnicity, religion, region, and class irrelevant to the solution. Yes, I know how nasty history can be. History is a violent, obscene tale written to no small extent in the blood of innocent people.

Don't fool yourself: this Crisis could end in the rifting of America into multiple new entities. and not even along state lines. Such would be an ugly mess. People on the wrong side of some demarcation line because of their religion or ethnicity could be in big trouble. Getting the dubious privilege to stay where one is might depend on acquiescence in second-class citizenship (I am thinking of the large black minority in the South which could face Jim Crow policies again). Remember that in such rifting, majority rule could be the choices that a local lynch mob makes. Yes, lynch mobs  make their decisions by majority vote -- very reliably. That's why we have constitutional protections that ensure that certain decisions that majorities can impose upon a helpless minority not be made.

One could recognize the legitimacy of other people's viewpoints because of some environmental factor from ethnicity to age to the rural/urban/suburban divide.

Class differences? There could be successor polities that accept the principle that maximal inequality is the best way to get the economic growth necessary to escape post-Crisis poverty. If one is a worker in such a place, then the surest way to the improvement of one's situation will be to emigrate -- no matter how over-heated the local economy is.  Some could even adopt Karl Marx as a Founding Father. Such will fail.

I could easily see myself fitting in in some foreign countries than in some of the post-Crisis polities of America. Maybe in such a Crisis I will be fortunate to find that my polity has shown its intention to join Canada after some shaky period of independence.

We may be in such deep trouble that the United States of America as we know it may be irrelevant by the end of the Crisis. The United States will not be the first great entity to splinter as its political order becomes unsustainable. We messed up badly when a bare majority chose to realign the basis of political representation to the permanent advantage of that temporary majority. Democracy can die that way.  


*Homosexuality is OK.

I don't know.  Ethnicity as in the KKK of a century or so back, religion when a fundamentalist is examining evolutionary biology, politics effecting the understanding of global warming...  Some quite understandable culturally driven factors can make you pretty (expletive deleted) wrong.  The different and quite firm opinions on the effectiveness of large government social programs and the usefulness of supply vs demand side stimulus are of a like nature.  It is possible to see how the cultural divides came to occur, why people believe as they do, but resolving the conflict is very problematic.

I'm not so worried about enough people being brainwashed to start a revolution, nor a social upheaval led by the stupid and insane.  I worry more about the intensely sincere normal.

I do watch the spirals of violence.  I don't disregard major upheaval as impossible.  I just don't see things starting to go critical yet.  There was a bump of blacks killed followed by cops killed earlier in the summer, but the response was 'this has got to stop' not 'they got one of ours, we must get two of theirs.'  The long hot summer wasn't nearly as long or hot as the summers I recall from my youth.

We'll see.

One of my favorite general books on American history, Albion's Seed, suggests that patterns in American life were set early by the first British and Dutch settlers. The Dutch colony of New Netherland failed to develop a Dutch identity because it allowed the immigration of so many people not of Dutch origin. If you think New York City is cosmopolitan today, then it was cosmopolitan when it was New Amsterdam. It attracted almost anyone who fled religious persecution, especially the Huguenots who were practically identical in religion to the Dutch Reformed Church. It hired German soldiers and plenty of Scandinavian sailors who remained. It invited religious dissidents from New England. It had people with Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian surnames -- but those were Jews fleeing the Inquisition. The pattern of New York City was set when it was New Amsterdam. All that changed from New Amsterdam to New York was the flag and the language. If one lives among people of diverse origins as peers, then one had better tolerate differences of origin.

New England was settled largely by the cosmopolitan population of southeastern England, by people who had familiarity with the sea and with using it as a means of trade and a source of food (fishing). Settlers from southeastern England were largely Protestant Dissenters of the Congregational variety. English settlers of New England were largely from what passed for the middle class -- many merchants and ship-builders. New England attracted few people for the wrong reason; there were few First Peoples to exploit, there were no minerals (like gold, silver, or gemstones) to extract; the winters were too severe and the soil too rocky for plantation-style agriculture. People had to work hard and smart for modest rewards to make the hardest colony  to make profitable work for those there. New England would be a land of shopkeepers and yeoman farmers, and it would be swift to get a university -- Harvard in 1636. Massachusetts' General Court would quickly establish itself as the first freely-elected legislature in the world still in existence. New Englanders took their disputes to a court of law and not to the street. Taking a dispute to a street for a fistfight or a duel was good for being taken to a criminal court no matter how valid one's claim. New England would quickly establish a democratic heritage, something possible where few people are spectacularly rich or spectacularly poor. New England would take over New Metherland and expand west to the Pacific Coast as a cultural zone, establishing such cities as Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Seattle. It would overpower the Spanish-Mexican mission-and-garrison San Francisco de Asis and the French mission-and-garrison city Détroit. With good business practices, rational economics, respect for formal learning, little respect for traditional hierarchies in economics, and reliance upon formal law, places settled by New Englanders and their descendants could proper. Except for Mormon country, which gets liberal results with conservative government (and heavily reflects the one great world religion founded in New England and Upstate New York) and the High Plains is very liberal this region generally along and north of what is now Interstate 80 could prosper and attract immigrants who liked things as they were in New England. It is worth remembering that even if New England is no longer predominantly Protestant due to mass immigration of Roman Catholics, the Catholics (beginning with the Irish) took over New England institutions intact. Most of these areas now lean Democratic.

Southeastern Pennsylvania, literally "Penn's Wood" began as a haven for Quakers largely from the British industrial Midlands. The Quaker institutions of humaneness, support for widespread education for the masses (if little use for elite education), faith in the manual laborer and his skills, disdain for violence, and rejection of ostentation could make life seem plain -- if comfortable. The Quakers invited their closest analogues in religion -- Swiss and German Pietists and practically made Pennsylvania a German colony in all but language.  Their world expanded westward as far as about Kansas, only to peter out as the land went from verdant prairie to precarious steppe. The Quakers rejected slavery on principle even if southeastern Pennsylvania is much more like northern Virginia than like New England. This is a true swing region of America with such large cities as Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Kansas City being very Democratic.

From Baltimore southward to almost Jacksonville, the aristocratic Cavaliers from southwestern England -- often second sons of aristocratic families -- tried to impose their hierarchical ways upon the land. They wanted the peasants to come along and be peasants in the New World, but few would take the costly and dangerous sea journey for much of the same. The Cavaliers offered indentured servants a chance to come to the New World, toil under harsh exploitation, and earn  some land if they survived the term and met the terms of the agreement. Few survived. Then they brought in the slaves, perfectly fitting the aristocratic, semi-feudal ideal. White descendants of the Cavaliers are generally reactionary now; black descendants of African unfree toilers (and Cavalier descendants who raped the slave women) have just about the opposite world view on politics as their white counterparts. The Cavaliers moved their plantation world as far west as Texas, and tried to establish it Arizona and New Mexico. Their order of unconstrained freedom for themselves but none for anyone else survived Abolition.

Moving quickly to the Appalachians from Pennsylvania and Virginia (they could get along with neither the Quakers nor the Cavaliers) were the xenophobic Backwoods settlers who found their little parcels of valley bottom lands to plant a few crops and raise some livestock while getting little interference from authorities of any kind. Coming from among the lowland Scots and the Scots-Irish, they had much respect for their own traditions and little for any others. Often herdsmen, they had to be ready to use force to stop theft of their four-legged assets. They were low in learning and swift to anger. People not of them may think such stereotypes of them in Li'l Abner, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Dukes of Hazzard offensive -- but they love the characters. During the Civil War they were for the Union side because they disapproved strongly of the Cavaliers putting their slave system in their midst. It's not that they had humane attitudes toward the black slaves; they hated them. They preferred firearms to intellectual contests.

As it turns out, Puritan and Quaker settlers accepted immigrants gladly so long as they had good work ethics and a respect for law and order. The Cavaliers imported Africans as slaves but destroyed whatever African culture the slaves had. They forced themselves into areas with large Cajun and Hispanic populations from Louisiana to Arizona, and treated them as white.

The bulk of European immigration from the Irish Potato Famine to the early 20th century went to the Puritan- Dutch settlement zones and Quaker lands where the opportunities were. Such explains why a small town in the American Midwest can have significant numbers of Scandinavian, Polish, and Irish surnames.

America has had regional distinctions in culture from when it was the Thirteen seaboard Colonies.   The sections of America settled by the Puritans and their successors are at least socially, if not always politically liberal. Quaker America is a genuine swing area. Cavalier country spli9ts largely on racial lines in politics. Backwoods America (the Mountain South) for now is quite  reactionary -- just look at the voting percentages that Barack Obama got in those states in 2008 and 2012. While Obama was winning by levels that one associates with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s in 2008, he was also losing the Mountain South by margins one associates with Walter Mondale if not George McGovern. Nothing says that such will hold true in the homogenizing culture of a 1T.

(08-30-2016, 01:30 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: One of my favorite general books on American history, Albion's Seed, suggests that patterns in American life were set early by the first British and Dutch settlers.

(08-28-2016, 08:47 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Robber Barons have a tendency to get in the way of business which requires them to be removed.

Eric the Green Wrote:The 1840s were not one of the worst depressions. That would be either the 1890s or 1870s.

Peter Rousseau Wrote:The financial panic that gripped the U.S. economy in the Spring of 1837 was among the most severe in this nation’s history.  Failures and loan losses reduced the book assets of the state chartered banks by 45 percent during the five years that followed, while 194 of the 729 banks with charters in 1837 were forced to close their doors.
 
The prices of banking, railroad and industrial securities in the early stock markets plummeted. The effects on the real sector were also substantial.  For example, the growth of real investment per capita fell from an annual average of 6.6 percent in the five years preceding the panic to -1.0 percent over the next five years.  Among 19th century U.S. financial crises, only that of 1893 posted a larger decline in investment.
 
Similar calculations show the average annual growth of real per capita income falling by 1.4 percent in the decade surrounding 1837, effectively drawing one of the nation’s early growth spurts to an abrupt close. This decline is comparable to that experienced in 1873 and considerably larger than those surrounding the crises of 1857 and 1893.
 
Douglass North (1961) reports decreases of nearly 50 percent in real imports per head from their 1836 level in each year through 1843. Accounts of widespread unemployment abound in the contemporarypress.  Indeed, one must turn to the 20th century and the Great Depression, with respective decreases of 10.2 and 5.0 percent in the annual growth of per capita investment and output, to identify a more catastrophic financial shock to the U.S. economy.

(08-30-2016, 07:24 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(08-28-2016, 08:47 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Robber Barons have a tendency to get in the way of business which requires them to be removed.

How so?  Robber barons run and/or own the most successful businesses, and for all practical political purposes ARE "Business".

(08-30-2016, 08:06 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

Eric the Green Wrote:The 1840s were not one of the worst depressions. That would be either the 1890s or 1870s.

 

Peter Rousseau Wrote:The financial panic that gripped the U.S. economy in the Spring of 1837 was among the most severe in this nation’s history.  Failures and loan losses reduced the book assets of the state chartered banks by 45 percent during the five years that followed, while 194 of the 729 banks with charters in 1837 were forced to close their doors.
 
The prices of banking, railroad and industrial securities in the early stock markets plummeted. The effects on the real sector were also substantial.  For example, the growth of real investment per capita fell from an annual average of 6.6 percent in the five years preceding the panic to -1.0 percent over the next five years.  Among 19th century U.S. financial crises, only that of 1893 posted a larger decline in investment.
 
Similar calculations show the average annual growth of real per capita income falling by 1.4 percent in the decade surrounding 1837, effectively drawing one of the nation’s early growth spurts to an abrupt close. This decline is comparable to that experienced in 1873 and considerably larger than those surrounding the crises of 1857 and 1893.
 
Douglass North (1961) reports decreases of nearly 50 percent in real imports per head from their 1836 level in each year through 1843. Accounts of widespread unemployment abound in the contemporarypress.  Indeed, one must turn to the 20th century and the Great Depression, with respective decreases of 10.2 and 5.0 percent in the annual growth of per capita investment and output, to identify a more catastrophic financial shock to the U.S. economy.

 
Reference Jacksonian Monetary Policy, Specie Flows, and the Panic of 1837

(08-30-2016, 09:40 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(08-30-2016, 07:24 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(08-28-2016, 08:47 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Robber Barons have a tendency to get in the way of business which requires them to be removed.

How so?  Robber barons run and/or own the most successful businesses, and for all practical political purposes ARE "Business".

Monopolies aren't very good for business.

(08-30-2016, 09:40 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(08-30-2016, 07:24 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(08-28-2016, 08:47 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Robber Barons have a tendency to get in the way of business which requires them to be removed.

How so?  Robber barons run and/or own the most successful businesses, and for all practical political purposes ARE "Business".

Monopolies aren't very good for business.