Generational Dynamics World View - Printable Version +- Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory (http://generational-theory.com/forum) +-- Forum: Fourth Turning Forums (http://generational-theory.com/forum/forum-1.html) +--- Forum: Theories Of History (http://generational-theory.com/forum/forum-7.html) +--- Thread: Generational Dynamics World View (/thread-51.html) Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
|
RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 11-28-2020 ** 28-Nov-2020 World View: Israel and Iran Cool Breeze" Wrote:> John, where do you see Israel as a player or agitator in the next The basics haven't changed since I began writing about them almost 20 years ago: There will be a war between Jews and Palestinians, refighting the 1948-49 war between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine, creating the state of Israel. However, the Arab world is far from monolithic, as illustrated by the Yemen war, the Syria war, and the four-year-old Saudi blockade of Qatar. Turkey will try again to revive the Ottoman empire, and the ancient war between Sunnis and Shias will be fought again. There are some political changes in the last 20 years that are worthy of note. Iran is basically a pro-Western country that was split into two separate countries by the 1979 civil war (Great Islamic Revolution). The war survivors are the increasingly ancient geezers who form the hardline government of Iran. They are dying off, and are being replaced by younger generations that are pro-American, pro-Western, and have no desire to see Israel pushed into the sea. They are deeply angered by the corruption, greed, brutality and incompetence of the hardliners, as the general population suffers. The fact that a top scientist was assassinated yesterday is just seen as more proof of the government's corruption and incompetence. It is inevitable that there will at some point be a "regime change," an Awakening climax where the younger generations take control. Iran will still be at war with the Saudis, and possibly aligned with Qatar and Turkey (as far as I can tell). As for Israel, the most surprising political change occurred 15 years ago when Israel completely reversed its foreign policy: ** 6-Feb-20 World View -- Israeli diplomat reveals Israel's startling new 'pragmatic' foreign policy ** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/xct.gd.e200206.htm#e200206 In the new "pragmatic" foreign policy, adopted around 2004, Israel no longer considers itself to be a Mideast country, so much as a European country. It no longer pretends to try to integrate itself into the Mideast. Instead, the Arabs and Israelis continue to hate each other, but Israel would use money and trade incentives to "buy" peace with its Arab neighbors. The recent Trump-mediated peace agreements with UAE, Bahrain and Sudan appear to be the implementation of this pragmatic strategy. Still, there are over 300 million Arabs living in the Mideast, and Israel's population is around 9 million. Israel has existed for only 74 years, making it a tiny blip in Mideast history. It's likely that some kind of Jewish community will survive the next war, but there is absolutely no guarantee that Israel will survive the next war. The following is a brief summary that I've used many times during the last 15 years: Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Japan, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Although the exact scenario can't be predicted, the war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 11-28-2020 (11-28-2020, 08:27 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: The basics haven't changed since I began writing about them almost 20 years ago: There will be a war between Jews and Palestinians, refighting the 1948-49 war between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine, creating the state of Israel. However, the Bumped into the opposite spin. CNN has everyone in the region wanting to boost tensions, but not have it spill into all out war. If the regions is indeed locked in tribal thinking, the tribal analysis would be correct. With no one winning in an all out conflict, CNN may be correct. As is, reality seems to be willing to walk a tightrope about which way it will go. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 11-29-2020 ** 29-Nov-2020 World View: Scandal TV, vote rigging and Dominion Software From e-mail: Quote:> Was thinking of you as I hear reports of voting I haven't read the filings, but based on televised reports that I've seen, the Dominion Software has holes, and it would have been possible within the Dominion Software system for the Democrats to change votes from one candidate to another, if they wanted to. In fact, I saw an interview on tv with the president of Dominion Software where he was asked whether the software could be used to change votes, and he gave a weasel-worded answer. So if I needed convincing, that convinced me. So I'm certain that the Democrats could have used the Dominion software to rig the election, if they had chosen to do so. And since the Democrats and mainstream media have committed fraud every day since Trump took office, there's no doubt in my mind that they did choose to do so, and that Democrats did use Dominion software to change votes. Whether that was enough to flip the election is unknown, but that information may come out in investigations over the next few months. It's almost certainly too late to change the election outcome, but as I understand it, Trump's legal strategy now is to continue bringing court cases, in order to get the Dominion situation into a court over the next few months, so that the rigged election can reach some kind of court verdict, at least to make sure that the Democrats won't be able to rig the 2022 election as well. In one scenario, Dominion Software sues Trump to protect its brand, and that will force all the evidence to be presented in course. It's true that the charges seem fantastic. But think that a year ago it would have been thought fantastic that Twitter, Facebook and Google had become Gods that could control everything we read, everything we say, and everything we think, and that's come true too. Misusing vote counting software to rig an election is not nearly as fantastic as some other things that I've seen as a senior software engineer for the last few decades. In fact, my guess is that the Dominion Software vote count would be trivial to change by a knowledgeable systems software engineer who knows more about software development than just how to put up a web page. *** *** Scandal TV series and Defiance Ohio vote rigging *** Starting in the 1990s, I began recording prime time tv shows that I didn't have time to watch, so I could watch them later. This has turned into something of a monster, as I'm now over four years behind on watching them. But I enjoy watching them, as opposed to subscribing to Netflix or something. So anyway, yesterday I started watching Scandal episode S06E10 (The Decision), recorded on April 13, 2017, and I was extremely startled by the fact that it was about presidential election vote rigging. How timely! How fortuitous! This episode refers back to an earlier episode, S02E07 (Defiance), which was broadcast on November 28, 2012. In that episode, it was revealed that the reason that Fitz Grant won the presidential election was because Olivia Pope had authorized the rigging of voting machines in Defiance County, Ohio. Ohio was a swing state, so rigging the voting machines gave Fitz the victory in 2012. The April 13, 2017, episode was broadcast several months into the Trump administration. At that time, there had been a great deal of publicity about how the cast of Scandal had been traumatized by Trump's victory. They had gathered on election day to celebrate Hillary's victory, and when Trump won, they were all bawling and in tears, and they were extremely depressed for weeks afterward, as I recall the news stories at the time. The April 13, 2017, episode was a bizarre "what if" episode which portrayed what would have happened if Olivia had said "No" to rigging the Defiance Ohio voting machines in 2012, so Fitz lost. Things turn out badly in the "what if" scenario, and the episode sends a very strong message. At the most dramatic moment in the episode, Fitz says to Olivia, in essence: "You made a mistake. You should have authorized the vote rigging. You should have rigged the election. At least then I would have been president." So, in my opinion, this episode was a call to arms to the Democrats to find a way to rig the 2020 election. At that time, the Democrats were already using bribery, extortion, and lying to courts to try to get Trump removed, leading to the Russian, Ukraine and impeachment hoaxes. The Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic was a godsend to the Democrats, since they used it to flood the country with unsolicited ballots, and they were able to use that in conjunction with the Dominion Software. At least, that's what Trump's legal team is expecting to prove. ---- Sources: -- Sidney Powell's Legal Defense Fund https://defendingtherepublic.org/ (DefendingTheRepublic) -- Defiance Ruined Everything: Scandal Episode 207 Recap https://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2012/11/defiance-scandal-episode-7-recap.html (AwesomelyLuvvie, 30-Nov-2012) -- Scandal Season 6, Episode 10 Recap: "The Decision" https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2017/04/148350/scandal-recap-season-6-episode-10 (Refinery29, 14-Apr-2017) -- 5 More Ways Joe Biden Magically Outperformed Election Norms https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-magically-outperformed-election-norms/ (Federalist, 23-Nov-2020) -- Majority Of Republicans Say Trump ‘Rightfully Won,’ Election Was Rigged: Poll https://dailycaller.com/2020/11/18/majority-republicans-trump-won-election-rigged-reuters-poll/ (DailyCaller, 18-Nov-2020) RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 11-29-2020 I have a rule of thumb that the bigger the conspiracy, the more likely it is to leak. Thus, you see stuff like the Wolverine Watchman conspiracy getting to the police before anything happened. Loading the vote would have required too large a conspiracy. With Republicans watching for anything and hoping to make noise, it would have been silly to try. If you believe you have the majority, you play it squeaky clean. If you doubt your majority, you slow the mails, file lawsuits you can’t prove and lie up a storm. If you wonder who played which role, you are a biased red. The voter suppression and voting fraud have all gone one way. The evidence of who was doing what shows all the conspiracies leaking in one direction. Of course, Trump has governed by lies and is going down in a flurry of lies. His fanatics are still somehow willing to buy into them. I’m disappointed that you are among them. Still, it is par for the course. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 11-29-2020 In browsing the web for fun, I stumbled upon the story of the town Barwick Upon Tweed. Way back the town’s position on the border between Scotland and England made it the crux of many border wars. I guess it switched hands at least 13 times. This ended when Elizabeth I died, yielding to James the IV of Scotland, who became James the I of Britain. As he was Barwick’s king either way, it became rather moot. Step in pride and tribal thinking. Neither country could admit defeat. Thus, Barwick became neither fish nor foul, becoming a semi sovereign entity which was possibly not part of either country. For a time it was deemed proper to include Barwick Upon Tweed in any law passed by parliament to officially include them too. This became pertinent once, sort of, almost. When at the start of the Crimean War, England and a bunch of other power declared war on Russia, they specifically included the town of Berwick as one of the mighty forces that were part of their alliance. Alas, they neglected to mention the town in the peace treaty that ended the conflict officially. Thus… Berwick Upon Tweed remained officially at war with Russia for over a century. Russia trembles. Does the current incarnation of Russia even think that they are obligated by stuff that old? Can anyone see Berwick sending an expeditionary force to Belorussia? Now the ambiguous state seems to be running into Brexit. Does the town get to hold a referendum for whether they get to go with England or Scotland? The world has changed since folks thought it an issue properly settled by armies. Still, it has to be settled. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - pbrower2a - 11-29-2020 (11-29-2020, 10:55 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 29-Nov-2020 World View: Scandal TV, vote rigging and Dominion Software Highly unlikely. Misrepresentation of the vote is most likely to result from a machine error and not a design. Most states have mandated controls that would detect a loss of votes (for example, a number of voters comprising all who came to vote and all ballots accepted is counted, and if there is some significant difference, then something has gone very wrong. This makes stuffing the ballot box (or its current equivalent) or losing votes unlikely without detection even if it is strictly a machine error. If 5000 people voted and there are 4000 or 6000 votes, then something is terribly amiss. Add to this, electoral fraud by administrators is very bad for one's career. Voter fraud is rare because it cannot materially affect the results of an election and it can result in serious prison time. Electoral fraud by local government employees means a police investigation and felony charges if substance appears. Employees of local government have good, well-paying jobs protected from partisan pressures. The scariest situation that I can imagine is inversion of the results. Suppose that a precinct (name changed to protect the innocent), "Klan Hollow, Arkansas"* gets results of 122 for Biden and 7 for Trump, which is the opposite of what one would expect. Quote:It's true that the charges seem fantastic. But think that a year ago I recognize no authority in "Facebook", "Twitter", or "Google" as a source of news. Quote:*** Unlike you, I have been in Defiance, Ohio, and I can assure you that it is not the sort of community in which the local political figures would have rigged the Presidential election on behalf of Barack Obama. Although machines can malfunction, they are tested frequently. Government officials who generally have some of the best jobs in many small towns (like Defiance, Ohio) would risk losing those good jobs and get prison terms instead to give aid to the Presidential nominee of their choosing. Some scriptwriter who knows little about Ohio politics liked the sound of the town's name and chose its name as a location. Having some camera crews from a TV production company come to town to take location shots for the set might have been attractive to a town that would have loved to have such people dine in the diners and perhaps pick something up at an antique store. I would have more likely expected "Akron", "Cincinnati", "Cleveland", "Columbus", "Dayton", or "Toledo" as the sort of place where electoral hanky-panky might have helped Obama win... except that the Republican pols who dominate statewide government would have thwar5ted such before it could happen. Defiance County, Ohio altogether had 18,349 voters in the Presidential election, and it went nearly 64-29 for Trump in 2016. My source: Leip's Election Atlas. Quote:The April 13, 2017, episode was broadcast several months into the Ohio was decided by 8.07% of the popular vote, and 446 thousand popular votes, which is larger than the population of all but two of Ohio's cities. There were stories of dirty tricks that caused Trump to win Michigan (hackers cracked the Democratic Party's voter-outreach program and ensured that Democrats who went out canvassing found themselves approaching Trump supporters instead), but that is not so much electoral fraud as a dirty trick -- possibly done in Moscow... and I don't mean Moscow, Idaho. In any event, Hollywood screenwriters are an erudite lot, and the one thing that most of us can say about Donald Trump is that he did a splendid job of reaching out to the "low-information" white voters particularly gullible. Yes, an ignoramus' vote counts as much as that of a PhD in astrophysics, and there are far more people who clerk at convenience stores than who teach Plato at the University. Still, I can't understand why so many Americans could vote for someone who disparaged formal learning and well-documented science, someone who is more grossly ignorant than many high-school students headed for the University, someone dripping with bigotry, a serial adulterer whose business acumen is best described as chiseling suppliers and contractors. Enough Americans knew the consequences in 2020 to vote against him, and that is what matters now. Very wise people recognized Donald Trump as the disaster that he would be, but couldn't quite be the disaster that he would be. Now enough of us know and can offset his cult. Quote:So, in my opinion, this episode was a call to arms to the Democrats to Uhhh... no. Highly-educated people watch little broadcast television, and most of what they do watch is either news or PBS. Television has never been a patrician media, and a character like the bus driver 'Ralph Kramden' likely bought a TV set before the engineer 'Ward Cleaver' did. Of TV antennas appeared in high-income areas rather early they were for the domestic staff on breaks. Well-educated people generally have better things to do with their time than to watch TV. Poor people with little education, funds, and imagination watch huge amounts of television. Quote:---- (questionable -- PB) Sources: *Such a community exists, and I am not saying more except that it is full of Klan members. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 11-29-2020 ** 29-Nov-2020 World View: Stalinist control Butler and Brower: You two aren't even qualified to make a comment. You have no idea what's going on because you're Democrats, and you're under the control of the Democrat Stalinist censorship, which tells you what you're allowed to read, what you're allowed to say, and what you're allowed to think. Your Stalinist masters tell you to say "conspiracy theory," and so you obey your masters and say "conspiracy theory." You knew nothing about the antifa-blm rioting, burning and looting, you knew nothing about the Hunter Biden investigations, and you certainly know nothing about the election rigging investigations. During a phone interview on Fox this morning, Trump spent half an hour reviewing a bit of the voluminous evidence of voter fraud. The mainstream media summary of the phone call was, "Trump once again refused to concede, and he claimed voter fraud without any evidence whatsoever." That's all. That's what your Democrat Stalinist masters want you to know, so that's all you know. So any comment you make is out of total ignorance. By the way, in the Scandal tv series, the fictional president Grant is a Republican. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 11-29-2020 ** 29-Nov-2020 World View: Ignoramuses (11-29-2020, 03:35 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > In any event, Hollywood screenwriters are an erudite lot, and the Really? Trump voters are ignoramuses? You're a complete jackass. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 11-29-2020 (11-29-2020, 06:17 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Butler and Brower: Stalinist I take it would be someone who likes autocracy and one man rule? If any US politician is fond of Stalinists it would be Trump, a wannabe Stalinist himself? Conspiracy theories is a Republican thing. Depending on lies and conspiracy theories is what you have to do if you decide to not react to COVID or reject the people on police violence and systematic racism. If you ignore two of the big issues of the crisis so far, and have ignored the on deck third issue in global warming, you expect to win? On a busted economy? If Trump has any real evidence of voter fraud, why is it taking this long to present it in court? Perhaps there are negatives to presenting false information in court under oath, but none for lying to the base? He is being rejected a lot in court, including by judges he appointed himself… for lack of evidence. You have this repetitive lack of understanding motive. Antifa is anti fascist. The Boogaloo Bois, looters, secret police, Proud Boys, Wolverine Watchmen and other significant organizations have motive enough to provoke and engage in rioting and other mayhem. Your repeating ad nausium this confusion of motivation is not going to win the argument. It is just going to show how biased and lacking in understanding of the situation you are. You have to show some indication that you get it. I watched enough of the impeachment hearings to tell the integrity of the deep state, the lack of ethics of the Republican traitors, and the partisanship of the Republican senators. What more do I need to know? Again, intelligence is less a problem than loyalty to one’s mind set and values. Once a human has committed himself to a worldview and values, he will disregard any and all facts that might put the world view and values in question. I care more about people understanding that than the Democratic perspective. Thank you, you have demonstrated this by example far more than most people on this site have. The rest of it is everyone has a worldview and values, and everyone does it. Building a perspective that includes the best from each perspective is an obvious improvement on closing your mind to everything that conflicts with what you want to believe. And I don’t care much about fiction. I don’t need to base anything on fiction. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - pbrower2a - 11-29-2020 (11-29-2020, 06:17 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 29-Nov-2020 World View: Stalinist control Right-wing media have been around for some time, and if they began as breaths of fresh air they have become increasingly stale and putrid. Media that manipulate a mood to create a predictable response are suspect in the extreme. It's clear that the Wall Street Journal is the go-to source for economic news related to the climate of business activity for the simple reason that the bulk of the America economy is the for-profit private sector. I might not trust its editorial page, but the economic news is highly reliable. This said, there is a huge difference between the Wall Street Journal and the worthless, even damaging InfoWars of Alex Jones. Toward the bottom right and bottom left the material becomes increasingly manipulative, cranky, and reckless. Toward the bottom and center one has non-news such as what appears in the tabloids that "the maid reads". As for conspiracy theories... competent people do not do things with conspiracy. They have other ways to do things, like funding "institutes" and disseminating their ideas as "public relations"... or simply doing things directly and lawfully. "Conspiracy theories" assert that people capable of doing things above board seek to hide their sordid agenda with illegal behavior. Conspiracies usually imply losers such as people who try to perpetrate insurance and inheritance frauds. As Bob Butler puts it, the broader the conspiracy the more can go wrong due to the human factor. Someone might break down under pressure that he misinterprets. Something about the story might not fit the reality. Do you want to invest an inheritance before your father croaks? Then pawn the promise to the Rothschild banking house (well, at one time) and if the Rotschild banking house sees it as a good idea they will lend the funds. That is the arguable start of modern capitalism, and it is far less troublesome from the standpoint of either guilty feelings or legal consequences than arsenic. Quote:You knew nothing about the antifa-blm rioting, burning and looting, Black Lives Matters is not about the promotion of criminal behavior. It is far better that black people not be so defensive about the police if they have done nothing wrong. Brutal policing does nothing to foster law and order, but it does make people more likely to attack the police. I can't say what sort of cop I would be, but I would probably be very much at the aggressive end in handcuffing people stopped for reason, irrespective of ethnicity. I would also have form letters ready to send as apologies to people whom I cleared. The consensus of many across the political spectrum is "do the crime and do the time". That has nothing to do with trigger-happy police or with those who might apply deadly force such as suffocation. Bad cops must go. The Hunter Biden investigations have gone nowhere. If anything the Trump Administration botched any investigation if there were one by insisting that the Ukrainian government make clear that there is one. Good police work lets offenders keep doing things that further incriminate themselves unless the offenses threaten to become dangerous crimes or if the offender becomes an obvious flight risk, that economic damage or harm to others is likely (as in child abuse) or that further investigation is fruitless and that an arrest might as well proceed. As for rigging the 2020 elections -- many Democrats suspect electoral shenanigans in 2016, but couldn't figure out whether those had evidence behind them or were material enough to merit a challenge. We liberals generally accepted that Donald Trump got elected fair-and-square even if possible dirty tricks were involved. Controls for the validity of an electoral count are made in much the same way as accounting controls at giant, well-run corporations. Trump loses under the same assumptions applicable to his 2016 win. Quote:During a phone interview on Fox this morning, Trump spent half an hour 1. Repetition of discredited claims. Repeating the same nonsense (the Earth is flat, 2 + 2 = 5, Noah's Ark was real, aliens created the pyramids and supplied ancient esoteric knowledge that in part will solve some of the Great Questions of human existence such as eternal life, slavery in the New World was an uncompromised boons to Africans, the Holocaust didn't happen, pi is rational) makes it no more true. 2. Democrats did less well than they expected, especially in Senatorial elections. 3. Donald Trump really is a horrible person, and over 270 thousand deaths (which is between the 77th-largest city in America, Fort Wayne, Indiana and Toledo, Ohio, the 76th .... irony of ironies, Defiance, Ohio is on the most direct route, US 24, between those two cities) indict him for extreme incompetence in dealing with COVID-19. Donald Trump has used unjustifiable force to get his way, force of a sort that no prior President has ever used in domestic politics. Tear-gassing peaceful protesters so that he could be shown holding a Bible that he does not reed or heed at a church (it is the wrong denomination, as he is not an Episcopalian) that he does not attend? This Presidency can end none too soon, Mr. X. By the way... Stalin is accused at a minimum of ten million deaths (the count was higher, but some of that was double-counting, with "enemies of the people", "kulaks", and "bourgeois nationalists" being the same person... like most liberals I despise Stalin for his perversion of Lenin's failed dream into something even less, his debasement of all public life, his murders, his destruction of all moral independence of all his subjects, his brutal means of getting his way, and his sordid failure as a wartime leader. He beat Hitler only because he had three times as many soldiers against a genocidal regime... and considering how badly he did against Finland, which did not have a genocidal regime I am not impressed in the least. The British and Americans took much German-occupied and eventually German terrain itself with far smaller numbers of troops. It is far easier to win a war if the opposing side is left with nothing to fight for. Spoof of Mussolini's party anthem Giovinezza: Cannon fodder! Cannon fodder! Sent into a pointless slaughter! Brits and Yanks will fight in honor/ And respect your wife and daughter! Isn't that the point? Quote:By the way, in the Scandal tv series, the fictional president Grant is I never watched the TV show. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - pbrower2a - 11-30-2020 (11-29-2020, 06:30 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 29-Nov-2020 World View: Ignoramuses This time and last time ignoramuses were more likely to vote for Trump because he did a far better job pandering to them than did Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. The solution is to make people less likely to become ignoramuses, for which I have a solution. Change the norm of educational expectation from K-12 to K-14, with '13' and '14' being to a large extent the coursework typical of an old-fashioned liberal-arts education with courses in philosophy (much emphasis on formal logic and tests of truth... and some start on asking the question of what the meaning of life is), economics (so that people learn the lesson that there is no such thing as a free lunch), psychology (to become less vulnerable to exploitative manipulation), comparative political systems (so that people know what fascism and Marxism are when they encounter the numbing bromides of propagandists), and some literature, music appreciation, and art appreciation so that they will have some idea of something to do in their spare time other than to watch the idiot screen for for schlock programming for lack of anything else to do. Nobody says that the educated are reliably more right than the simpletons. Some incredibly stupid ideas have come from brilliant people who in their arrogance thought that their pronouncements are so self-evidently true that they need no tests. This said, people can learn much by reading selectively. I have known people with eighth-grade educations far wiser than some college grads today. Of course those people with eighth-grade educations would now be past a hundred years in age today... and we have some surprisingly-dull people getting BA degrees now at "Kegger State". RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 11-30-2020 ** 30-Nov-2020 World View: Australia demands apology from China for 'truly repugnant' photoshopped tweet
As I've been writing, relations between China and Australia have been deteriorating sharply, and a new Chinese attack on Australia indicates that the Chinese would like the deterioration to continue or even accelerate. China's official Foreign Ministry spokesman Lijian Zhao on Sunday posted a photoshopped image depicting an Australian soldier cutting the throat of an Afghan child holding a sheep. It also shows a large Australian flag behind the soldier covering what appears to be a number of body shapes. The image in the tweet accompanies the following text: Quote: "Shocked by murder of Afghan civilians & prisoners by Considering the state-authorized atrocities that the Chinese Communist government commits on a daily base, the word "shocked" can only be described as humor. Australia's prime minister Scott Morrison called the Chinese official's post "truly repugnant," and said, Quote: "It is utterly outrageous and cannot be justified on China's barrage of attacks on Australia began in April, when Australian officials called for a joint international investigation of the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, provoking the usual hysterical demands by the Communists to shut up. Australia has also criticized China's arrest and enslavement of millions of Uighurs, and has also criticized China's brutal actions in Hong Kong, as well as other human rights violations. The new photoshopped image is the latest action by the Chinese Communists to retaliate against the Australians. The image was based on the "Brereton Report," a recent report documenting murders by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. Thirteen special forces soldiers face dismissal, based on the report. The Communists are suggesting that the murders by the 13 soldiers are equivalent to China's human rights violations. This incident follows the recent blunt attack by Chinese Communists on Australia's government with a list of 14 complaints, and an escalating program of trade sanctions. ** 28-Nov-20 World View -- Australia-China relations become more toxic through boycotts and accusations ** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/xct.gd.e201128.htm#e201128 As I always point out, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does one really stupid thing after another, always making each situation worse. It appears that China is intentionally trying to be as offensive as possible, to provoke maximum outrage. When China has used these tactics of bribery and extortion against smaller nations, the tactics are often successful, and the nation does as China demands. But there's no possibility that Australia will back down in the same way. It's possible that the Communists are just making one more stupid mistake, assuming that Australia will back down, and will shut up and do as the Communists demand. Since there's no apparent endgame to these escalating attacks by the Chinese Communists, it seems that the CCP is trying to provoke some kind of response that goes beyond mere outrage. John Xenakis is author of: "World View: War Between China and Japan: Why America Must Be Prepared" (Generational Theory Book Series, Book 2), June 2019 Paperback: 331 pages, over 200 source references, $13.99 https://www.amazon.com/World-View-Between-Prepared-Generational/dp/1732738637/ *** *** Sources: *** -- Australia demands apology from China after fake image posted on social media https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/world/australia-demands-apology-from-china-after-fake-image-posted-on-social-media-177969 (Reuters, 30-Nov-2020) -- 'Repugnant': Scott Morrison demands apology from China over Australian soldier tweet – video https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2020/nov/30/politics-canberra-news-live-scott-morrison-parliament-question-time-coronavirus-covid-emissions-2020?page=with:block-5fc4576c8f082dcb6f2c7dd0 (Guardian, 30-Nov-2020) -- [Original China tweet] https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1333214766806888448 (Twitter, 30-Nov-2020) -- Brereton report / Afghanistan war crimes report released by Defence Chief Angus Campbell includes evidence of 39 murders by special forces https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-19/afghanistan-war-crimes-report-igadf-paul-brereton-released/12896234 (ABC-au, 19-Nov-2020) RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 11-30-2020 CNN provides a quick version of why there is a big difference between what Trump and company present to Fox and thus the public and why the legal team has not tried to present it to a judge in court. CNN Wrote:Donald Trump desperately wants you to believe the only reason Joe Biden won the 2020 election by so many votes was because it was the "most fraudulent election in history." Trump served up his latest variation of this fallacy on Fox Business on Sunday morning, saying "we have so much evidence" to support his claims but the judges "won't allow us" to submit it. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - pbrower2a - 11-30-2020 (11-30-2020, 01:48 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN provides a quick version of why there is a big difference between what Trump and company present to Fox and thus the public and why the legal team has not tried to present it to a judge in court. The only way in which this election could be fraudulent is an assumption that practically anyone not voting for Donald Trump, the Great and Infallible Leader (in his... whatever) voted fraudulently. Cull enough votes in the right places, and Trump wins -- even winning the greatest landslide of all time as even the District of Columbia votes for him because votes for Joe Biden are disqualified. The argument that I saw was that if the only votes that mattered were those made on Election Day were valid, then Trump would win. In effect, absentee and early votes (necessary for accommodating the unusual circumstance of a pandemic so that people could vote safely) would not be valid. It has been the norm to accept that all valid votes are equal, and that the only non-valid votes are those that prove to be duplicates (a provisional vote that someone might make if not certain that he had voted before or that his mail-in vote would not arrive in time to be counted should the other ballot reach the polling place in time) or might be disqualified, as after the death of a voter before the election. A vote means just the same irrespective of age, race, gender, religion, gender orientation, income, where one is registered to vote, or even something so silly as being a cat owner or dog owner. A vote means just the same whether cast in person on Election Day or absentee. It counts just the same whether it is counted properly at 8:21 PM EST in Bad Axe, Michigan or at 3:15 PM in Detroit on the next day. All states have strong controls for preventing electoral fraud. One can register as many times as one wants just in case, but one gets only one vote. If you register to vote in Traverse City and then decide that because you want to vote in Ann Arbor while living at or near the University of Michigan, then your registration in Ann Arbor disqualifies your previous registration in Traverse City. The count of votes made and the count of actual ballots must be damn close, or there will be an investigation. The old trick of stuffing a ballot box or fabricating votes on a machine -- or on the other hand, causing votes to disappear -- is no longer easy. The sorts of controls that apply to cash balances of a Fortune 500 corporation have been adapted to our elections so that they be free and fair... and I wouldn't have it any other way. Donald Trump thinks that he is so wonderful that hardly anyone could vote against him. That's how things are in North Korea... and how it was for a time for the likes of Enver Hoxha, Idi Amin, Nicolae Ceausescu, and Saddam Hussein. I don't know whether he got the idea from the fellow who sent such beautiful letters to him from North Korea... that he ought to get 100% of eligible people voting for him; after all, in his mind he is so great that he deserves such. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 11-30-2020 (11-30-2020, 10:20 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The only way in which this election could be fraudulent is an assumption that practically anyone not voting for Donald Trump, the Great and Infallible Leader (in his... whatever) voted fraudulently. Cull enough votes in the right places, and Trump wins -- even winning the greatest landslide of all time as even the District of Columbia votes for him because votes for Joe Biden are disqualified... I'm with you. The above CNN snippet was more for Xenakis, who seems to want to believe what is being fed to Fox. If your worldview and values are threatened by facts, disregard the facts? RE: Generational Dynamics World View - pbrower2a - 12-01-2020 Correction: I did find AFP on the chart, and of course Financial Times is British. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - pbrower2a - 12-01-2020 Here's a more up-to-date version (July 2020), and this one has some quantitative assessments of bias and quality (reliability). More media items are included than in the last one, and media sources can be shown for political bias. I would guess that Vanessa Otero of Ad Fontes Media uses a political scale analogous to Charles Cook's Partisan Voting Index, which can assess a state or Congressional district on how it would vote in an even election. The 2020 Presidential election split 51-47, roughly, and Ms. Otero splits the political spectrum from "Most Extreme Left" (-27.5 to -38.5) "Hyper-Partisan Left" (-16.5 to -27.5) "Skews Left" (-5.5 to -16.5) "Neutral" (-5.5 to +5.5) "Skews Right" (+5.5 to +16.5) "Hyper-Partisan Right" (+16.5 to +27.5) "Most Extreme Right" (+27.5 to +38.5) with what I would assess as characteristic states for positions on this spectrum based on the 2020 vote. Take away 2% from the Democratic edge for a state that voted for Biden or add 2% to the edge for a state that voted for Trump, and... well, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan are very close to the center. As a personal measure, "neutral" is about where one would not ordinarily know the political position of a person due to ambiguity. These days if you see someone like that, congratulate yourself for finding a genuine silver coin in your change. I am showing a range by how the states voted: -38.5 District of Columbia -27.5 (would have gone about 75-25 for Biden) -16.5 Massachusetts -5.5 New Mexico or Virginia 0 Michigan or Nevada +5.5 Ohio +16.5 Idaho +27.5 (would have gone about 75-25 for Trump) +38.5 (would have gone about 90-10 for Trump) Original news reporting is generally not suitable for bias. Figuring that reporters for the AP wires are told to tell the story and not put any opinion into it, an AP wire about a fire at an animal shelter isn't going to have the reporter lamenting the horrible deaths of unfortunate puppy-dogs and kitty-cats. Someone else will do that, and do it well. Journalists getting original news, and the more in the raw as possible, don't get to show much bias. Straight reporting of the news can include trying to flesh out a story (ABC, CBS, NBC). You will notice perhaps to your surprise that the Denver Post and the Houston Chronicle are closer to pure news than the New York Times -- let alone the Washington Post. Here is a video of her methodology: The green rectangle is for news generally purer than opinion. There might be some editorial bias due to the constituency, so the Wall Street Journal is more likely to skew right because its clientele is heavily investors. The Guardian is more likely to have a left bias... but neither with much compromise of the value of the news. Below news comes analysis, which can be in depth, which might dovetail with issues of public policy. Note well: the people who watch MSNBC do not watch FoX News; they live in very different universes. MSNBC viewers are more like the majority of people living in Massachusetts and FoX News viewers act more as if they live in Oklahoma. The American electorate is highly polarized, so as media get away from pure reporting, news media and news quasi-media get increasingly biased and unreliable. The orange rectangle contains the upper zone of unreliable sources and manipulative propaganda. So, cite Breitbart or Daily Kos... and expect people who know what they are doing to say "offer a different source". The red zone is.... awful. Either what was in the lower left zone in 2017 has become even more unhinged and disappeared into some zone of suspect survival. On the lower right is InfoWars, infamously biased and highly likely to offer a conspiracy story instead of any usable news. It's usually difficult to place the ideology of supermarket tabloids, but anyone who reads them seems to get dumber with every story. ...Maybe the distribution will change in America by 2022 as Donald Trump becomes increasingly irrelevant in American life. .... not that it is any surprise, Alex Jones of Info Wars hates this assessment. He has his own chart, which may be good for some unintended laughter: Yeah, right. RT and Sputnik News may be state run (by a government that Freedom House considers "Not Free"), and is about as lacking in journalistic independence as the BBC, and conspiracy-theory promoters InfoWars and Prison Planet are models of journalistic integrity and independence. NPR and ABC News are tyranny? RE: Generational Dynamics World View - Bob Butler 54 - 12-01-2020 (12-01-2020, 04:15 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: .... not that it is any surprise, Alex Jones of Info Wars hates this assessment. He has his own chart, which may be good for some unintended laughter: Odd that the horizontal axis is labeled tyranny vs freedom. I consider it pro worker and minority on the left, racist and elitist on the right. It depends on what you are obsessed with? I note Fox is missing. I didn't think they were irrelevant yet. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - pbrower2a - 12-01-2020 (12-01-2020, 06:19 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(12-01-2020, 04:15 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: .... not that it is any surprise, Alex Jones of Info Wars hates this assessment. He has his own chart, which may be good for some unintended laughter:Odd that the horizontal axis is labeled tyranny vs freedom. I consider it pro worker and minority on the left, racist and elitist on the right. It depends on what you are obsessed with? Also missing: CBS News, the Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. I wonder where Iranian and North Korean media fit in. RE: Generational Dynamics World View - John J. Xenakis - 12-06-2020 ** 06-Dec-2020 World View: What is Trump trying to achieve? richard5za Wrote:> I don't live in USA and I am very curious: Has anyone any idea of Navigator Wrote:> The actual selection of the president in the USA has not yet Thank you for this detailed explanation. There is more to be said, however. The amount of evidence of cheating and fraud is growing every day, though it may or may not be enough to affect the results. Trump is not planning anything as ridiculous as declaring martial law, but he is starting a new political movement, based on the enormous anger and fury held by most of the 74 million people who voted for Trump, and who believe that the Democrats cheated and stole the election. This morning I watched George Stephanolopous's news program. The thing that stuck out in my mind was the several occasions when Stephanolopous angrily yelled that the election was settled. I consider those angry outbursts to be admissions of guilt. Stephanolopous and the others claimed that Trump was endangering American democracy, and was making America look foolish in the eyes of the world. Stephanolopous and other Democrats, led by shithead Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, have been relentless assholes (RAs) for four years. The RAs never acknowledged Trump's legitimacy, they brought one ridiculous charge after another, knowing that they were false charges to try to get him out of office. The RAs were completely humiliated by the farcical impeachment trial, but that didn't stop them. They say and believe that Trump supporters are ignoramuses and evil bigots. And in the last four years, these relentless assholes never once worried about endangering American democracy, or making America look foolish in the eyes of the world. So now when the RAs accuse the Republicans of "endangering democracy," the response to the Democrats is likely to be "Fuck you, asshole." It's important to remember that this actually has nothing to do with Trump, as I've been writing for over ten years. During the Obama administration, when they still loved Trump because he was a TV star, the Democrats had a vitriolic hatred of the "Tea Partiers," whom they described in highly abusive terms, highlighted by the word "teabaggers," which is as bad an insult as the n-word. Hillary referred to them later as "basket of deplorables -- racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it." For the past four years, the RA Democrats have constantly described all Trump supporters as "white supremacists." But this is not because of Trump. This is because of the innate hatred in the minds of the Democrats. There's something in Democrat world view that always leads to this kind of hatred. Remember that it was the Republicans who freed the slaves, and it was the Democrats who bitterly opposed it. After the Democrats lost the Civil War, they formed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and the Democrats spent the next century lynching, beating, torturing and raping any black person they could. If you had been a Democrat a century ago, you probably would have been a member of the KKK, and you would have cheered every time a black was lynched or beaten. Today, Democrats have exactly the same mindset and hatred, but it's directed at the 74 million Tea Partiers and Trump supporters. As I've developed Generational Dynamics, I've seen plenty of historical analogies to this kind of hatred. It's identical to the Nazi hatred of the Jews, or the Hutu hatred of the Tutsis, or the Serb hatred of the Bosnians. This past summer, when the antifa-blm gangs were rioting and looting and burning down small businesses, this was the same as the Nazi's Kristallnacht. As it says in Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun. So if you ask what Trump is trying to do -- yes, he'll try overturn the election if he can. But there's a lot more. By continuing to gather evidence of massive fraud by the Democrats, he'll galvanize his new movement, based on the 74 million Trump supporters. He'll probably say that he's running for president in 2024, and on that basis he'll continue to hold rallies, from which he will continue to attack the Biden administration. How will all this end? I've also been writing about this for over 15 years. It will end in an existential threat to the United States that will unify the country behind whoever is president. That existential threat is most likely going to be war with China. |