12-22-2018, 01:51 PM
(12-22-2018, 02:08 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(12-21-2018, 02:01 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I see that people have to try a lot harder to push those levels of sincerity onto world views which are seen as alien, absurd and wrong.
Anyway, you won't get me unless you accept me as an INTP who sincerely believes in human rights, democracy, equality, Keynes, and environmentalism. If you do not accept that people who disagree with you have positive views of themselves, if you try to project bad views and stereotypes on them, you will remain lost in the wilderness. I'm more Whiggish than most blues, less modern in some ways, but lean blue. Most blues have not thought through where blues came from, and demonize rival thoughts, but if you presume sincerity and truly listen to what people say about their own motivation you will go far in attributing motivation accurately.
I have no doubt that most blues have a very high opinion of themselves and their views. I don't have an issue with you viewing yourself or identifying yourself as an INTP. I'm sorry but the Whigs disappeared with Teddy Roosevelt. So, I really don't know what being Whggish means these day. Isn't there a modern political term that you can use instead or feel comfortable using around blues? I've got your back. I mean there's only two of them and I can handle both of them myself. Feel free to politically identify.
Me, I'm a solid ISTP. I took a few tests, honestly answered the questions, read the results and information about ISTP's and everything matched. I'm very intuitive but I follow my senses (instincts or follow my gut as they say) Me, I'm a Northern Yankee, A proud supporter of the party of Lincoln in a modern day sense. I'm an American born, American raised, American educated Classical Liberal like FDR, JFK/MLK, Reagan and Trump. You do realize that America has ideology of its own that no other ideology can even come close to matching or defeating.
By putting Martin Luther King and Donald Trump in one category other than being masculine, well-known, and American (and both share such with Charles Manson, who was both) you create an absurdity. I see no inherent virtue in being a Northern Yankee, born and raised in American. You have shown the inadequacy of your education, not so much in economic inadequacy but in the apparent emptiness of your life. There are "Northern Yankees" who find other cultures as vehicles of cultural traits clearly contrary to American tastes, yet so rich as to be irresistible. Is J S Bach American? Is Michelangelo? Is Shakespeare? Is Hokusai? Is Degas? Gershwin is, and he is a son of immigrants. Stravinsky became a US citizen.
What is so good about being an American is that one can pick and choose in culture and philosophical basis and still be an American. My vision of America is much like that of British-born Alaister Cooke. I know about Yankee identity as shown in David Hacker Fischer's Albion's Seed (about half of my British heritage, and ironically some of my German heritage -- Pennsylvania Dutch) comes through the Quaker settlement of southeastern Pennsylvania. The rest, so far as I can tell, is from the multi-ethnic community of the Dutch settlement (which wasn't very Dutch in its composition) of the Hudson Valley and northeastern New Jersey. The English origin that you have does not invariably result in your views.
As far as any comparison between Reagan and Trump -- Reagan was able to recognize that the Gorbachev-era Soviet Union, were it to fulfill its promises, was no longer a menace to Humanity. Donald Trump has dredged enmities that need not exist. I consider Latin-American culture now a cornerstone of Western civilization do to the large number of people living in Latin America. The center of Western civilization in the recent past -- around 1900 -- was undeniably in Europe, with America and Canada as 'suburbs' and Australia and New Zealand as outposts. Mexico and Brazil are both huge now.
America does not have an ideology of its own. Donald Trump is not America, and America is not Donald Trump. By analogy, a couple of years ago America would have been Obama, and Obama would have been America. Do you see where that is going? I consider Donald Trump an extreme aberration in American political life, something possible but lamentable. I loathe his immature tweets. I consider his bigotry abhorrent. The rest of the world trusts that America will come back to its senses and oust Trump in the 2020 elections.
"We do again what we used to do right" expresses how I would campaign against Trump were I one of the dozens seeking to be the 46th President of the United States -- or 47th should either the Grim Reaper or Robert Mueller deliver us from this horrible man.
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.