The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(01-31-2020, 03:05 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-31-2020, 10:42 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Yes, words that have strong emotive content have clear meanings, or language is worthless. If you think a handicap unpleasant, then think of how emotionally-crippling it would be to live in a nightmare such as the Oceania of Nineteen Eighty-Four  in which something so basic as expressive language loses all subtlety and something so much a cornerstone of life as romantic love becomes impossible. The sex drive remains but it has no humanity to keep it from becoming an animal lust. Maybe I overuse synonyms to avoid boring people with my prose (and I recognize that I can be a numbing bore at times). A totalitarian or even harshly-authoritarian regime invariably debases life. It is telling that a study of where people were happiest showed that the happiest people were the people in societies with entrenched democracy (let us say France) and the least-happy people were living under repressive regimes (Saudi Arabia). This also distinguishes India from China. 

I loathe Donald Trump because he does much that I associate with someone who debases democratic life, in part by degrading the language so that words become lies in themselves, trivializes the intellectual processes that make life interesting, and short-circuiting established traditions for his own gratification. Maybe the next Presidency will repudiate Trump more convincingly than Trump pretends to repudiate Obama, and maybe the next effective conservative President will have a personal life and the integrity of Obama and prove an even more complete repudiation of Trump.  Then again, I have compared Obama to Eisenhower by temperament and conduct, so that may be no stretch of the imagination. 

There are basic rules of decency, and Trump violates those. I find it appalling that someone in a position of commercial, cultural, or political responsibility mocks the handicapped. (OK, drunks and addicts are fair game... but I quit hearing Helen Keller jokes from my peers before I was a teenager). I do not mock personal tragedy unless the mockery is a lesson. OK, I did nominate someone for a Darwin Award:



      

I don't mock personal tragedy or use it to my advantage or support those who take advantage of it and use it a political weapon either. As far as Trump, I'm sorry he mocked one you to send a strong message to those who are exploiting people and using people consumed by personal tragedy or represent personal tragedy the wrong way for the wrong reasons these days. What would be cool, find one them and bring them so you can see what's going to eventually happen to them here.

So why do you not mock handicaps and personal tragedy, but Donald Trump does? Because you are better than he is, at least at that!

Emotional IQ is parallel to intellectual IQ in that people develop more mature attitudes as they grow up. People ideally learn that principles are safer than immediate self interest, that empathy works better than egoism, that boundaries exist, that impulses are far from reliable... infants think only of themselves and get away with it, but adults who think only of themselves are monsters. Because maturity involves increases in physical strength, verbal skill, and cunning, one had better develop emotionally. Those who act at immature levels of moral development are often criminals, if not other losers (including addicts, sex fiends, sadists, and the pathologically lazy). With small size one can be a sociopath (a cat is a prime example), but there's not much difference in behavior between a house cat and a tiger.