The Coronavirus

[pbrower2a]

(08-22-2020, 02:58 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(08-21-2020, 07:13 PM)TnT Wrote: One model:  There is "DE-scription, there is PRE-scription and there is PRO-scription.  I think folks generate their own personal belief system with various mixtures of the three.

Description shows how good we are as individuals at perceiving, interpreting and defining objective reality.  Of course, that's the primary problem in the branch of philosophy called epistemology.  The study of this is not trivial.  However, often we can gather a group of people of good faith and come up with a decent picture of "reality."  A shared set of facts, figures and interpretations that can roughly describe some piece of reality of interest.

PREscription is more abstract.  This is the part of our belief system where we decide how things SHOULD be.  Sometimes, pieces of our reality are as they SHOULD in our opinion.  Sometimes little or nothing is.  Then, of course, we go around ranting about how things need to change to be as they SHOULD be.  So ... there SHOULD be peace.  There SHOULD be kindness and generosity.  There SHOULD be safety, jobs, food, shelter, healthcare, etc.

PROscription is also abstract, but perhaps resides more in the present reality.  These are our beliefs of how things should NOT be.  Thus, there should NOT be war, violence, injustice, racism, etc.

Some folks I know tend to be mostly Proscriptionists.  Others, mostly Prescriptionists.  What makes politics difficult is that some PROscriptionists think there should NOT be government, or regulations, etc.  Runs headlong into the PREscriptionists on the other side who might want a benevolent regulated socialism.

What I find mostly missing is an adequate DEscription of our civilization/society, AND an articulate PRE and PRO scription of the desired outcome, AND a change management plan to get from point A to point B.

Take the issue of racism.  One side PROscribes its existence, while DEscribing its existence with much evidence.  The other side covertly PREscribes its existence, while denying that it even exists, thereby dodging the DEscription part.  

So we can't even come up with a shared picture of the description of the issue.  How in the world, then, can the issue be negotiated and a change management plan designed and executed.

Back to a point made in a previous post, intelligence only deals with how much facility we have at sorting and rearranging our information, interpreting it and deciding whether we like or don't like our reality, then running it through our belief system, which has little to do with our intelligence, and coming up with our own desired outcome.

What's your evidence of racism today? I already saw a black President. I see minorities on the Supreme Court. I see minorities in Congress mainly on the Democratic side (the side with the bulk of minority support) these days. So, how big is the issue today? How racist is the country today compared to the 60's? I haven't seen a sign on a door of a public restaurant prohibiting minorities from entering my entire life. So, how bout you, have you seen any blacks or Hispanics or whatever being refused service strictly on the basis of their race?

Obama is so extreme in his talents for speaking, administration, and understanding of the legal system that his race does not matter. 

Quote:Sooner or later, the Democratic side is going to have to let go of race because the bulk of the issues are more related to class, parenting  and proper child rearing than race today. You want to be dumb and go along with the Obama's and the liberal activists who make their  livings off racism and perceived matters relating to race or gender and politically advancement related to race or gender which most American people are aware of today and ignore the real problems that's fine. I've seen some personal altercations with minorities that turned into accusations of racism and threats of lawsuits and so forth. Kamala Harris isn't going to be able to hide from her peers on the other side of the spectrum that don't give a shit her looks or her skin tone or her being a Democratic Senator from a state where Democrats running against Democrats for Senate seats is common these day.

Black people still hurt from a tradition of racism if their heritage is from slave ancestors. Slavery may be gone, but some people still feel the effects of Jim Crow practice. Add to this there is a very low-brow culture that has impressed itself upon blacks and stunted the intellectual growth of many. Obviously white people have often endured much the same.  It appalls me that the only music available in most mass-market places for selling sound equipment to customers is country (generally lacking in intellectual content... and it sounds alike on just about anything) and rap... rap music is an oxymoron. Three hundred channels, mostly of bilge, on cable TV hardly enriches life.   

Quote:Just so you understand, we are not on the side with all the minority problems with all the minorities elected by minorities to solve minority related problems. We are not on the side that racial bias and gender bias determine political positions, Vice Presidential running mates, corporate positions, whether or not a person keeps their job and so forth. That's where you're old party is at today.

White people, especially in the Mountain and Deep South, have their problems... and nobody seems to look out for making their lives better. Maybe anesthetizing them with country music, televised sports, Kitsch from dollar stores and Wal*Mart, and evangelical Christianity can keep them placid, but none of those improves them -- let alone their lives. Doing better in America depends heavily on being better as people --   being more learned, having unions to protect them from executives and shareholders who see workers as nothing more than machines of meat, being involved in formal organizations, and seeing themselves as something other than atomized individuals. To think is to subvert a nasty social order, which explains why totalitarian movements try to get people to an elementary level of learning whether from illiteracy or from high literacy and sticking people there. On the other hand, thinking is one way to make oneself invulnerable to crude propaganda from totalitarian ideologies. The level of thought appropriate for making people immune to crude propaganda as from Nazis, Ba'athists, and Stalinists requires that people be able to read between the lines -- and that level of thought is well suited to the complexity of thought necessary for accountants, physicians, attorneys, engineers, and research scientists -- and the best of creative people. Worth noting is that the KKK (arguably a fascistic, totalitarian cause) recruited most effectively from white people of slight formal education in the Jim Crow South. Klan membership didn't then well reflect upon formal learning.    

So how does one counter crude propaganda that appeals to the superficial mind that totalitarian causes need? With something better -- wittier and subtler, capable of showing how superficial the appeal is from the Other Side and how fraudulent the object is. This is from the Winter War between the Stalinist Bear and the wily Finns. Any objective observer would have expected the Finns to crumple before the overpowering might of the Soviet Union. Finland had an originally-Marxist Left, but by the late 1930's the Finns knew well what a fraud the Soviet Union was.  The Finns got no help from elsewhere other than from 'hopes and prayers' from people such as the British who had their own big problem facing another Evil Empire (you know, the First Galactic Empire in the Star Wars series is modeled after the demonic Third Reich).



 


[color=var(--yt-spec-text-primary)]Lyrics:

Kremlissänsä unta näki isä stalini,
et joka Suomalaisen nimi oli Vasili,
Kaalimaata hoitelivat balalaikkaa
soittelivat lauloivat a'vot kaikki on
harasoo!

Molotoffi sanoi kyllä tappelu nyt tyssää
kun tanssiit ripaskoo ja puhuu estää ryssää
paratiisi onpi tää, ken ei usko poikki pää,
järjestys se olla pitää vot harasoo!

Stalinilla lipussaan on sirppi vasara
ja molemmilla niillä onkin oma tietonsa
sirppi katkoo kauloja, vasaralla nauloja
lyödään musikoitten arkkuun vot harasoo

Kukoistaapi rauha sekä hyvinvointi
kun ei muuta työtä oo kuin likvidointi
paratiisi onpi tää ken ei usko poikki pää
järjestys se olla pitää vot harasoo

Mutta kremlin unet kaikki sauhuun katoaa
ja herätessään isä josef saa sen huomata
Suomen poika niin kuin hullu rajan yli on jo tullu
uhkaa viedä karjalan

Minne tässä hädissään nyt päänsä pistää
on kuin rotta loukussa ei apua näy missään
paras ehkä olla vois itsensä jos likvidois
järjestys se olla pitää vot harasoo


English Lyrics:

In the Kremlin was dreaming papa-Stalin
That every Finn's name was Vasili
Working on the cabbages, playing the balalaika
Singing that everything is good!

Molotov said the fight will end now
When everyone will dance polka and speak russian
This is a paradise, who doesn't believe off their heads!
Order there must be good!

Stalin has in his flag the sickle, hammer
And they both have their own ways
The sickle cuts heads, the hammer nails
Nails to the coffins of the musicians, vot harasoo!

Peace and wellbeing are prospering
When there's no other jobs other than liquidation
This is a paradise, who doesn't believe off their heads!
Order there must be good!

But the dreams of the Kremlin go out as smoke in the air
And when papa-Stalin wakes up he will this find out
The Finn like a crazed man has already over the border ran
And is threatening to take Karelia

Where shall he put his head now?
Like a caged rat there's no help anywhere
It'd be best if he just liquidated himself
Order there must be good![/color]


The sonic quality isn't very good, but it is contemporary Big Band music in the USA.  A few little points:

"Vassily" is a common given name among Russians.

The peoples of the Soviet Union were obliged to praise the system as the best of all possible worlds -- or else. "Liquidation" is a euphemism for execution for being an 'enemy of the people'. 

I would suppose that the Finns knew the Russians well from Tsarist times, and that there might have been some Russians still living in Finland... there might be nothing wrong with speaking Russian, naming one's son Vassily, playing a balaika, or dancing a polka... it's just not Finnish. One would have no choice other than obliterating one's Finnish heritage in a victorious Soviet Union. The problem isn't Russia -- it is the Soviet way of terror and death. 

Karelia is a region that has been under Russian or Soviet rule, except during a relatively-gentle Finnish occupation during World War II (Finland somehow got pulled onto the Axis side, but it was the only one of the Axis Powers that had any decency), with a people culturally related to the Finns. Karelians and Finns have a similar language, and aside from that one of the biggest differences is that the Finns are largely Protestant (Lutheran) and the Karelians are largely Eastern Orthodox like the Russians. 

The final verse suggests in a roundabout way that Stalin can go to Hell, which is much like his reality in the Soviet Union and what he wants for Finland.
To protect themselves from Soviet subversion, the Finns needed high-quality education that allowed people to question what they heard.  The Finns steered clear of both Stalin and Hitler. They got Karl Mannerheim instead... their equivalent of Churchill or FDR, and they certainly needed a Grey Champion.  It is unfortunate, in view of World War I  
.............................

If you remember my thread Is Connecticut the Best Place to Live? , I linked to statistical studies of America, and although black and Hispanic people had disadvantages in contrast to white people, Asian people did better than white people in most measures.  In measures of health, educational achievement, and life expectancy, white people in West Virginia did worse than black people in Maryland. OK. what Booker T. Washington called the Talented Tenth is very much alive, and it has expanded faster than the African-American population. It lives well enough that many white people could envy it. Much of the Talented Tenth (expanded to at least a Talented Fifth or Fourth) is in government employment in Maryland, but government employment relies heavily upon having a high-quality formal education. West Virginia is toward the bottom in educational attainment in America, which is what one could expect in a state in which the economy depended heavily upon mining and logging. If one has a high-quality education one knows that such work is just too dangerous for one's taste from either sudden death from accident or mass calamity or from crippling injuries that bring a sudden end to a job with at best mediocre pay. West Virginia could long get away with sub-standard education, bad roads, and poor public health because Democratic politicians could long depend upon the powerful United Mine Workers (UMW) to provide the votes for a low-tax, low-service state. As the mines were worked out, the once-small Republican Party aligned with the mine owners could take over. They inherit a bad educational system, bad roads, and bad public health. The hospital treatment of people who do not have good insurance from the UMW is awful.

I also related some side statistics. One is smoking, a practice now largely relegated to poor, ill-educated people. (Is there any question that smokers are schmucks?) Income measures could be deceiving, as one could live very well on $40 K a year in Mississippi but not so well in New York City or any other high-cost urban area on the coasts or perhaps Chicago -- so I gave an average credit rating. People don't have bad credit ratings because they splurge on consumer goodies and vacations that they can't afford; they get into trouble because  of some economic disaster such as a medical emergency or a layoff... and they get into unsolvable debt due to taxes, utilities, and medical debts. These people are often smokers, and smoking is economic distress in its own right as well as medical ruin. It may be more costly to live in Minnesota than in Mississippi because one needs more insulation in one's dwelling, at least three seasonal wardrobes, and big heating costs in the winter. On the other hand, Minnesota has a far-better educational system and a far more generous safety net than does Mississippi. 

So let us suppose that one graduates from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois and has a choice between a contract to teach in a small town in Mississippi and in a small town in Minnesota. Minnesota  (as if you did not need to be told) has high taxes and brutal winters. In Mississippi one has comparatively mild winters and low taxes. But think of why Mississippi has such low taxes. It can't collect them easily from very poor people who earn little income to tax. 

Distance? Carbondale, Illinois is very far south. It is much closer to northern Mississippi than to southern Minnesota. But which school district is more likely to pass a millage to upgrade the schools' libraries or vocational "shop"?  Minnesota has far more people like you, Classic X'er who earn a solid income and, I presume, want your kids to at least be as successful in your blue-collar milieu.  Mississippians are more likely to burn up big chunks of their meager incomes in the cancerette habit than Minnesotans, which may be reflected in the difference in the average statewide credit score. 

But one needs be a schmuck to have faith in Stalin, to smoke, to drop out of high school, to espouse racism or religious bigotry, or to be a Trump supporter. Poverty is harder to evade in a plutocratic order run by people who can inflict their narcissistic dreams of tycoons and executives. Maybe at the conclusion of this 4T their dreams will go up in smoke, just like Stalin's dream of a Stalinist Finland.