08-05-2021, 02:12 PM
(08-04-2021, 05:46 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 04-Aug-2021 World View: Evil
(08-04-2021, 03:36 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: > Unproven!
(08-04-2021, 03:36 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: > Heavily under the prodding of Democrats, so give some credit where
> it is due.
When Trump does something great you call it racist and unproven. When
Democrats do nothing but sit on their asses, you demand that they get
credit anyway.
You're nothing but a worthless troll. You spew hatred and
divisiveness and you're proud of it.
I am not a political leader. I do not make money off my writings. I have no authority. If I were a political leader in a dangerous time I would make it a point that my thought was not the cause of people doing great things. My ideal as a great leader in a dangerous time is Sir Winston Churchill, who knew well that the farmer, the foot-soldier, the sailor, the airman, the industrial worker, the processor of information at Bletchley Park was making victory possible. He did not need recognition for greatness to achieve what he did. His thoughts were far from original; look at his speeches and you see Cato or Cicero. The war between Britain and the Third Reich had parallels in the Second Punic War.
I see Donald Trump, and I see a man with pretensions to greatness without the talent or intellectual capacity to back his contentions. Trump is too self-indulgent, lazy, hollow, and unlearned (those go together) to be an effective leader at a national scale. His recklessness and cruelty marred his Presidency. If I am to compare him to figures of antiquity, then as with Churchill I might come up with some Roman figures - but in the case of Trump those figures would be Nero, Caligula, or Commodus. Our system has checks and balances, especially meaningful elections but also institutions that prevent despotic tendencies from being realized.
I look at how foreign leaders treat him. Putin knows how to exploit his overweening vanity. Merkel simply waits him out, recognizing that he can do nothing positive to improve things.
Quote:You [the generic Democrat] support policies that cause thousands of
blacks to be shot on the streets of cities governed by Democrats. You
support letting violent criminals out of jail so that they can kill
more blacks.
I have no delusion about criminals. They are not romantic misfits. They are not simply people in which a few things went wrong and got caught for one huge mistake. Most criminals fit some model of evil personality -- borderline personality disorder, pathological narcissism, sociopathy, or psychopathy. Most criminals are evil characters, predators upon fellow people. We have prisons because some people are too untrustworthy for coping with the situations that they encounter. This said, there are plenty of fine people in the nastiest slums and barrios, people consigned to them due to their lack of skill, connections to other people who actually live there, and lack of viable alternatives. Some people keep their humanity despite that, and I have plenty of question of how many people living in Chicago's prosperous Gold Coast would fare if they were consigned to the South Side which looks like a modernized view of hard life out of a Dickens novel.
I'm going to make this observation: religion is likely a bigger part of life on Chicago's South Side than on its prosperous Gold Coast. Life is day-to-day in poverty. If you are not brought up in it you have the illusion that you can easily defer gratification and think of the long term. Maybe you can read long Russian novels and listen to symphonic works by Bruckner or Mahler because you can organize your time for such. It is hard to maintain a long-term focus when a food might run short or a criminal might see you as simply someone to rob or rape. The poverty is depressing, so perhaps one turns to a Christian sect that outsiders deride as "Holy Rollers". If you live on Chicago's Gold Coast you can organize your time and finances so that if you want to see natural wonders you can drive on a weekend to the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, or the delightful shoreline of Michigan on Lake Michigan. I see plenty of Illinois plates, typically from the Chicago metro area, in St. Joseph, South Haven, Douglas, Saugatuck, Holland, Grand Haven, and Muskegon. Those places resemble coastal California without the extreme cost of living and overt commercialism... except for having real winters that follow the gaudy spectacle of fall foliage.
I get a rap for self-righteousness on bad behavior of others. Crime? Do the time and do the crime. I am as harsh in judgment of drunks, druggies, and sexual perverts as anyone. Donald Trump really is a horrible person, someone whose business ethics and moral judgment suggest an extreme solipsist who thinks that the rest of the world revolves around him. That is fine for a vulnerable infant, but almost everyone grows out of it just to survive in a plutocratic, bureaucratized, monopolistic social order in which opportunity isn't for all. Most people learn early that their sole accepted role in life is to make someone already filthy rich even more filthy rich, to indulge the worst tendencies in human behavior because those people have the money that one lacks except for deference to such tendencies in richer and more powerful people, or enforcing the rules of the system. Toiler, barmaid, cop?
We have been living in a social order that looks much like the nightmare that the fictional George Bailey discovers that the world would be like without him in It's a Wonderful Life. George Bailey may have found that in a more collegial time that people giving a damn about the lives of others have a positive influence upon the world. Sure he doesn;t get everything that he wants, but maybe one can't get that without leaving others in despair.
Quote:You support the millions of illegal immigrants from coming in through
the border, spreading covid throughout the country, because you hope
they'll vote illegally for Democrats.
I've been inoculated. I saw nobody from INS. Illegal aliens could easily get COVID inoculations. I have my inoculation card... it says nothing about whether I am a legal resident of the USA. I'm sure that the big farmers near where I live are encouraging to get their workers inoculated, legal status or not. Should they be deported, then those people will be no danger of spreading COVID-19 back where they come from. News gets around to illegal aliens, especially of Hispanic origin. Have you ever heard of Telemundo or Univision? There's plenty of word-of-mouth communication, and in the case of illegal aliens it is much more reliable than QAnon conspiracy theories.
One of the surest ways to get caught as an illegal alien is to vote. Voting offers too much risk for the benefit.
Quote:You support the Stalinist mass censorship of conservative opinions, or
indeed of anyone who disagrees with the Democrats. You're fully on
board for the Stalinist Fascist Democrat regime, consisting of the
Democrats, the mainstream media sewer, and "Big Tech."
Conservative media have merit (think of the Wall Street Journal) when they meet the standards of fact-checking that separates mainstream journalism from junk. Most of the news that we get ultimately comes from AP wires, which are definitive for telling the original story.
Quote:You support the massive violence by antifa-blm, burning down cities at
will, with impunity.
Antifa is tiny and insignificant, if visible where it appears.
Quote:By contrast, you support the mass jailing of peaceful January 6
protesters, who have been in solitary confinement for months simply
because they're Trump supporters. By contrast, there is no punishment
for Lt. Michael L. Byrd, a black officer of the Capitol police, on the
staff of Nancy Pelosi, for shooting and killing Ashli Babbitt, for the
crime of being a young girl, peacefully protesting, and worst of all,
a hated Trump supporter.
Peaceful protesters? It sounds more like the Bolsheviks storming the Winter Palace in Petrograd in 1917 on behalf of Lenin, except that the Bolsheviks faced no resistance. Ashli Bobbit was the first to make a breach of a highly-secured area, and that made her an easy target. She was 39, so "young girl" as a depiction of her is often a patronizing act of male chauvinism.
I've seen peaceful pro-Trump protesters who still contend that Donald Trump "really won" and try to convince us of their pro-gun and anti-abortion agendas. They are free to believe that Trump was robbed in 2020 just as my side was free to believe that Al Gore was robbed in 2000.
Storming a legislative building to stop a legislative process is grossly undemocratic. Rule of law is necessary for ptevention of despotism.
Quote:Your hatred of Trump supporters is deep and profound, and is no
different than the hatred that led the Nazis to slaughter the Jews or,
indeed, the hatred that led the Democrats to slaughter the blacks a
century ago through lynchings.
Remember that the two main parties are very different from what they used to be. The overlay between electoral victories of Eisenhower and Obama say much about the political cultures of the states:
Quote:When all is said and done, I think that the Obama and Eisenhower Presidencies are going to look like good analogues. Both Presidents are chilly rationalists. Both are practically scandal-free administrations. Both started with a troublesome war that both found their way out of. Neither did much to 'grow' the strength of their Parties in either House of Congress. To compare ISIS to Fidel Castro is completely unfair to Fidel Castro, a gentleman by contrast to ISIS.
The definitive moderate Republican may have been Dwight Eisenhower, and I have heard plenty of Democrats praise the Eisenhower Presidency. He went along with Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregationist practices, stayed clear of the McCarthy bandwagon, and let McCarthy implode.
gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2012 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once
No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red.
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.ph...msg4452938
Adlai E. Stevenson may not have been particularly racist, but it looks as if Ike turned off voters in Arkansas, where Orval faubus would (or had) shut down Little Rock Central High School rather tan allow a handful of Negro (the polite word of the time) students 'soil' it by their presence; Mississippi, which had a KGB-style secret police dedicated to protecting the 'separation of the races'; Alabama, where fascist pigs would eventually bomb the Eighth Street Baptist Church with the murder of four innocent girls,: Georgia, where Lester Maddox would offer axe nandles as bludgeons to keep blacks out of his chicken restaurant; and both North and South Carolina, best described as states entering the early-industrial (sweat-shop) stage of industrial development. Ike did win Tennessee twice -- but the state has area that is strongly Republican as a leftover reality from the Civil War (the people of mountainous eastern Tennessee didn't want to be cannon fodder to defend planters in western Tennessee), and mostly farm-and-ranch states in the West that would go to McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012. Farmers and ranchers remain a strong R constituency today as they were in the 1950's except in the South, where farmers and ranchers have heavily gone from D to R.
The states' political cultures have changed little, except that blacks have the vote in the South. But whites in the South have gone from D to R. Partisan identities have changed greatly. .
If you will note something: Obama had only one victory in a Presidential election of any state that went to Stevenson even once.
I have an overlay map for 2020, but it is not so neat and clean in appearance. Similarly telling is the change from 1976 to Obama elections:
Quote: Carter 1976, Obama 2008/2012
Carter 1976, Obama twice red
Carter 1976, Obama once pink
Carter 1976, Obama never yellow
Ford 1976, Obama twice white
Ford 1976, Obama once light blue
Ford 1976, Obama never blue
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.ph...msg4452938
Jimmy Carter is the last Democratic nominee to win Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, or Texas, and second-to-last to win Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, or West Virginia. Carter was the last Democrat, and arguably the only Democrat, to put together an electoral coalition that combined poor whites and poor blacks... and won. Democrats would lose a raft of states in white that (except for Iowa) would not go to a Republican after 1976 except in Republican wins of the Presidency. Go figure.
Quote:You've become completely evil, and you have no clue.
Evil? Because I do not recognize some greatness in Donald Trump as in the likes of Abraham Lincoln or Sir Winston Churchill?
It is Donald Trump who is evil. The one shared trait that all of the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg had in common was a lack of empathy. Good people find it difficult to do bad things to others and get squeamish about trying to convince others to do bad things to others. I can say the same about drug traffickers, financial cheats, spouse-abusers, rapists, and armed robbers.
Donald Trump is a liar, a cheat, and a bigot. He sees the rest of Humanity solely as extensions of himself. He has conned people into doing things that get them into legal problems that they never thought possible. Many people in the dreary South Side of Chicago are far better than he because they have learned that they cannot get away with much and must accept the worst that capitalist plutocracy can do as the best that they can hope for in This World. Donald Trump never learned humility working for some obnoxious boss whose obligation it is to make subordinates suffer on behalf of capitalism at its worst. When nothing matters in society except the Power, Indulgence, and Gain of rapacious elites (I capitalized those words to make a fitting acronym -- PIG, as in the literal pigs of George Orwell's Animal Farm), most people suffer. Maybe I would have been better able to cope with such if I believed in pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die than in rational attempts to explain something nasty.
The nastiest people in existence demand that people praise their nastiness. Donald Trump believes, like all rapacious elites from Pharaohs to the Soviet-style nomenklatura, that the rest of Humanity has a duty to praise his nastiness as charity. At that he is no better than some slave-owning planter who insistend that people who owned neither plantations nor slaves that slavery was a good thing... for the slaves!
Good people do not lead others into acts that hurt them without some high purpose such as saving their country or a part of it from calamity bigger than themselves. You must be living in some version of alternative reality.
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.
