The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(02-01-2020, 01:10 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-31-2020, 11:16 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(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.

I understand the nature of those oppose to him, they are monsters as you say. I should know them, I've already faced them and defeated most of them. Only monsters (albeit cowardly monsters) would be willing convince two heart stricken/broken parents who lost their son in Iraq that Trump was a racist, hates them and all other immigrants and doesn't want anymore immigrant people like them entering this country ever and then use them as means to deliver cheap shots and spread their lies about him, his policies and his motives to a national which makes them look foolish or horrible to us for doing it and supporting them (the cowardly monsters). What kind of people would do that to good people like them other than despicable people like those you describe to me in your post. Like all wars/major disputes, innocent people get caught in the cross fire so to speak So, who is left on the Democratic side who has the balls to reverse the flow of information/orders that obviously flow from above?

Regrettably you don't. Donald Trump convinced the Muslim parents of a son who died in Iraq in an attempt to establish a democratic order to replace a regime that was antithetical to democracy and hostile to a large part of its Muslim population... of his hostility to Islam. No, hostility to Islam is not racist in the sense that Nazi-style antisemitism is racist above all else. Bosnian Muslims do not look like Indonesian Muslims who do not look like Nigerian Muslims. Trump is not so much a racist as a religious bigot.

Let us recall what George Washington said in his letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island in 1787:

Quote:  

Quote:The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.

Washington’s concluding paragraph perfectly expresses the ideal relationship among the government, its individual citizens and religious groups:

Quote:May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.

Washington closed with an invocation: “May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.”

The letter, a foundation stone of American religious liberty and the principle of separation between church and state, is signed, simply, “G. Washington.” Each year, Newport’s Congregation Kahal Kadosh Yeshuat Israel, now known as the Touro Synagogue, re-reads Washington’s letter in a public ceremony. The words deserve repetition.

Muslims claim a similar link to Abraham through his son Ishmael. It is as legitimate as the Jewish claim to a connection more directly through Abraham. Those who admire our Founding Fathers (and I could make the case that Martin Luther King is the last of those Founding Fathers) . Religious bigotry of any kind is a menace to us all. I once told a Nazi that as a German-American with no Jewish ancestry and no family ties to Judaism that if I had to choose between being a Nazi and a Jew I would be a Jew -- and it would be easy because there is no cultural or moral difference between Judaism and me, but that Nazism is an affront to my culture (after all, many of the Jews that Hitler killed might have as well been Germans) and would destroy much of my culture (of course, German-Americans are the gentiles most similar to the Ashkenazim in culture). Too bad about pork and shellfish if I had to go Orthodox... but far better would it be giving up pork and shellfish than becoming a murderer in spirit. 

I am going further: if I had to choose between tyranny that adopts American garb and starts setting up torture chambers or shooting pits for dissidents and pariahs and Islam... I would choose Islam, whose culture is very different from mine and which, unlike Reform Judaism, precludes pork, shellfish, beer, and wine -- all of which I enjoy. Morality means more than culture... 

When the time comes to incarcerate Donald Trump for his offenses against the Constitution and against the federal and state criminal codes, I have my idea of how to treat him. I would inflict upon him classical music and literary classics. I would compel him to read the Bible, the Quran, and Buddhist sutras, as well as secular philosophy. (My idea of how to run a male reformatory is to make sissies out of those tough macho types and make them fully human. I would compel them to wear pink uniforms as signals of their bad choices in life). Donald Trump is about as shallow as the typical criminal in the penal system. That is the problem: he gets away with it. Unlike the usual pimp or pusher he has been able to find people in awe of him.  

...Trump has said horrible things of Islam. It is fair to judge Muslims by the ethical standards of Islam, which explains how we could allow Muslims to judge Saddam Hussein. Murder, plunder, and persecution of Muslims are violations of Islamic law. They are also un-Christian. The ethical standards of Islam are far higher than the standards that Donald Trump has for himself. 

Quote:Where are the X'er's who don't follow orders like Tulsi? There are plenty of them on the other side men and women alike  but where are the ones on the  Democratic side?

I am satisfied with those X'ers who believe that Donald Trump is contrary with their rational self-interest as is so with me. Trump exuded warning signs in 2016, and more people have come to recognize those throu8gh his actions. .