01-15-2022, 05:12 PM
(01-15-2022, 04:15 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: [quote pid='80146' dateline='1642129886']
We all fall short of God's desires, says any Christian clergyman of whom I know. I have big problems with some tendencies within Christianity, including the treatment of all flawed behavior a "sin". I'm not going to confuse overeating with perpetration of the Holocaust.
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Quote:I mean, what won't I do PB? What aren't I free to do? Is there anything a Rotten won't do PB? Are you in with the Rotten that we see or the Perfect who are Rotten that we see? You ain't Perfect. You've proven beyond all doubt many times. You ain't Rotten to the core like most of your politicians and billionaires and donor class/aristocracy these days. I mean, you got to be Rotten to do business with the Devil and they're all Rotten PB. So, (where) do you and the others prefer to be dropped off and left to die in PB? Right now, you have choices that you won't have for much longer. Like I've said, you better pull your head out/wise up and start showing me/us something other than (what) you've been showing me/us for over a decade now.
You seem to be a fervent supporter of Donald Trump, a man of pervasive depravity. I need say no more. I have no respect for any admirer of gangsters, serial and mass murderers, shysters or scammers, or terrorists. Anyone who admires such people has a huge moral gap in need of rectification.
I liked him more than the mindless piece of shit that you and the others elected.
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Mercifully, as bad a person as Trump is he did far less harm than I dreaded. He was too incompetent and full of himself to achieve much as President. This said, he nominated three hacks to the US Supreme Court, three who will be laughing stocks in the annals of the US Supreme Court He has also coarsened the rhetoric of politics through vile rhetoric and behavior.
I'm not going to praise the fellow who plans a bank robbery and is stopped from doing the horrible crime because he runs out of gasoline along the way.
Quote:Trump may have been an asshole but he wasn't a complete fuck up.
But he could make life miserable for people who deserved no such misery.
A review of one treatment:
Quote:ASSHOLES: A THEORY (John Walker). 81 minutes. Opens Friday (November 29). See listing. Rating: NNN
Pick up a paper, turn on the news or just check Twitter, and it won’t be long before you hear a story about someone behaving badly. That’s partially because bad behaviour gets people’s attention, whether for the schadenfreude or because it’s genuinely newsworthy, but also because there are a lot more assholes around.
Some of them are in charge of entire countries some are running provinces, in the hopes of failing further upward. Others are just ordinary assholes, abusing what social standing or authority is available to them. The term has become so normalized that it’s going up on theatre marquees this week, as John Walker’s new documentary Assholes: A Theory opens.
Using Aaron James’s 2012 book as a jumping-off point, Walker (Quebec: My Country, Mon Pays, Arctic Defenders, A Drummer’s Dream) builds a mostly serious look at the preponderance of privileged, entitled jerks – almost always male, almost always white – who bully their way into positions of dominance in Western society.
The filmmaker interviews dozens of people from all walks of life, all of whom have stared arrogance and aggression in the face. John Cleese speaks of his beloved London becoming a playground for indifferent finance bros. Italian activist Vladimir Luxuria discusses the vainglorious dickishness of Silvio Berlusconi. And former Mountie Sherry Lee Benson-Podolchuk speaks to a more dangerous sort of entitlement, discussing the misogynistic culture she experienced within the RCMP, which led her to write her 2007 memoir, Women Not Wanted.
It’s a thoughtful accounting of society’s most noxious people, balancing hard psychology with anecdotal shit-talking, with special loathing reserved for financial-sector hustlers, blustering faux-populist politicians and surfers who cut into other surfers’ waves – which was what inspired James to write his book in the first place.
It’s maybe not as funny as Walker wants it to be – a burbly jazz score tries very hard to force some lightness into the material – but it’ll leave you thinking about the assholes in your life, and whether you’re being one right now.
@normwilner
A hint: blustering faux-populist politicians is a reference to Donald Trump and others. .
Quote:I'm sorry about your disdain for fowl language I couldn't think of anything nicer to say about him.
Fowl language? Sorry; I have never been able to figure what hens say in a coop. With respect to foul language... it is usually easy to replace with something less troublesome.
Quote:PB, you're not talking to Hitler. You're talking to an American who could have destroyed Nazi Germany and forced Hitler to off himself in a bunker.
Strictly speaking it was the Soviet Army that approached the Bunker in which Hitler blew his brains out. Once the Soviet Union had Berlin in its grasp the US military stated that it had no desire to enter Berlin in combat.
Quote:You haven't figure out that it's moved to Us vs Them. Weren't you listening to Biden and weren't you listening to his divisive language the other day?
President Biden's speech was far more measured than the usual Trump fare. He chose the time at which to make the speech and denounce the continuing myth of a stolen election. He all but named names, probably because he saw a list of people to be indicted for plotting the Capitol Putsch and some extreme charges. Naming names would tip off some people who might take interstate flight to avoid arrest here in the USA.
Quote:Guess what, Biden is turning out to be a bigger asshole than than Trump.
How would you know?
Tell me one good result of the Capitol Putsch. I double-dog dare you. Show me objective evidence that significant cheating occurred that made the difference between an honest Trump win and a fraudulent Biden win. Your dislike for the electoral result is as irrelevant relating to the 2020 Presidential election as my dislike of the result of the 2016 Presidential election.
Quote: Do you prefer to be Us or Them PB? I'm going to refer to you and the others as Them since a lot of Democratic supporters are referring to you and the others as Them these days.
I am sorry that you feel as you do. Your idea of what constitutes America is severely limited and damned to severe limitation. What you fail to recognize that America has multiple traditions that think themselves equally valid to the once-dominant WASP community. For me, "Us" can be people who look little like me, have a very different set of r4eligious values, have sex in ways that I do not, and have different educational or vocational qualities. Different as we are we may share some important values that make cooperation possible.
We Democrats believe, unlike you, in "One Big Us" that recognizes the shared values of people who actually have a chance to do real good for Humanity. It recognizes some differences as benign and inevitable. Many different forms of "Them", mutually hostile because people see ethnic or religious differences as signs of evil? Absolutely not. Your view of differences is tribal, and that is good for at best shaky cohesion based upon hierarchies and division of the graft while most people get cheated. That's how things were in Yugoslavia, and that did not turn out well. Eventually the common people recognize that they get nothing while leaders unaccountable to them while defined as "theirs" aren't getting enough to spread to them.
"One Big Us" means that nobody is condemned to victimhood due to ethnicity, creed, or gender preference. A permanent underclass, which you tolerate because it lets you do some things on the cheap, is grossly unjust. It ensures failure and resentments. Maybe you miss the cheap restaurant meals and cheap food of the Neoliberal era that began with Ronald Reagan. Fair pay for the work that one does is a good thing, as it strengthens families and communities. America was a better place in which to live when people of limited education (college education is still for people of at least above-average intelligence. It does little good for dullards and intellectually-lazy people) could make a good living in a factory in a small town. Cheap imports that one can't afford because one is obliged to toil for less than a living do one no good.
One of ny favorite expressions of what it means to be an American is Dearborn, Michigan. It's a suburb of what may be the sleaziest city in America: Detroit. It has a large and influential Muslim minority, and that minority seems to have some wholesome family values that it expects support for in public life. Michigan Avenue in western Detroit exemplifies the worst in secular American life: lots of liquor stores and sexually-related businesses. It has drunks, addicts, whores, and pimps (many of the pimps and whores are also alcoholics or addicts -- no surprise!) You do not want your precious children to go there, but they might if they are scared off or practically abandoned. The Muslims of Dearborn vote for politicians who insist on tough policing. That rot ends at the Detroit-Dearborn city limits, and there is a Dearborn police car stationed just at the city limits. Wander over under a chemical haze or wearing a prostitute's get-up or pimp style and you will be busted. In return, Dearborn residents get a safe community that can be normal.
I need not be a Muslim to like that. I prefer not having people wandering about drunk or on drugs or prostitutes offering themselves in plain sight. Crime rates are low in a not-particularly-rich suburb; that is worth some minor sacrifices, like not being able to get rowdy in a bar. Oh, you can get a couple of drinks in a bar, but patrons are well-behaved. Islam precludes alcohol, but apparently it tolerates a little for non-Muslims. Just don't get drunk in plain sight. So I will never see a place that offers "Sophisticated Adult Entertainment" on a marquee with an allusion to a scantily-clad young woman. I have my idea of what sophisticated adult entertainment is. Bright kids might enjoy it because they are grown up in every way but sexuality. Great art, drama, and music? I'm glad to welcome teenagers to that.
"One Big Us" includes religious faiths to which I have no chance of converting. In case you think that Dearborn is a Muslim slum -- plenty of Christians, Jews, and secularists like things that way, too.
"One Big Us" means that people share common concepts of human decency and dignity, the hope that their efforts will pay off in a good living, that kids actually learn something in school. That well describes people as disparate as the Black Bourgeoisie and just about every Asian-American community. Maybe we can indulge a bit in each other's culture where attractive. Cuisine? Music? Art? That's fine with me. The culture into which I was born is remarkably empty. When my parents moved from rural Michigan to the San Francisco Bay Area I got to discover some very different ways of life. East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) aesthetics had something to offer. Because I shared the same ethical standards with people with surnames similar to mine I ended up with plenty of Jewish friends. Blacks and Latinos were not predictably downtrodden. I had some fear of being seen as a hayseed among people far less sophisticated than I. I had trouble with gangs who were full of resentment and who thought anyone not part of their gangs as prey. Gangs are not part of "One Big Us". They really are "Them". F--- the Bloods, Crips, MS-13, and the Aryan Brotherhood. By the way -- the scariest gangs that I encountered were the white ones. Some of those thought swastikas, Death's Heads, and SS-runes attractive. Yuck!
The different ethnic groups all had people who valued learning, sought economic success through work or enterprise, and held criminality in contempt. I could relate to such people. If I had stayed there after college I might have ended up with a wife who might not look like me except for skin color (if it is skin color, plenty of East Asians are indistinguishable from white people) or I might have married some Nice Jewish Girl and converted to Judaism (which is a good match for my values).
"One Big Us" is forming in America. It has nothing to do with ethnicity of religious doctrine. We want to do good and do well. We insist upon fair play. We recognize that if cultures are different, ethical values can transcend ethnicity and culture because those make life tolerable and rewarding. It recognizes the validity of differences. You stand for a "smaller Us" -- one far narrower in origin. Think of the shameful inter-ethnic squabbles that have resulted in mass death, as in Rwanda. I'll stick with my idea of "One Big Us".
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.