02-17-2021, 08:21 AM
(02-17-2021, 12:28 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:[/quote](02-16-2021, 04:43 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: By now Democrats are becoming the Party of civic peace, rule of law, rationality, ethnic inclusion, and the promotion of skill and learning.
So, who indoctrinated you and how long did it take? You must not be paying attention to the unsavory politicians and corporations that currently have your fate in their hands. You seem to think the Democrats that we get to see on a regular basis are bunch of decent/trustworthy/caring human beings aka saintly, can do no wrong who are worth saving these days. I doubt Jesus has an interest in the life of a self serving (word hostile to women) from San Francisco who downplayed and went along with the use violence for several months.
The only indoctrination that I got was learning to detect deceit and incompetence. It may not always be possible to distinguish the two because incompetent people are often extremely deceptive about their abilities and diligence, deceitful people often are themselves gullible enough to believe their own lies, and incompetent and deceitful people are easy to manipulate by telling them exactly what they want to believe.
I have met enough incompetent and dishonest people in my lifetime to be able to pick up the clues. Incompetent people in positions of responsibility make things look harder than they are. They are more show than substance. They put more emphasis on self-image than on developing a system that makes things look easy. Most obviously, liars eventually contradict themselves and then go into all sorts of contortions to cover one lie with another. Incompetence and deceit go together. Incompetent people ultimately must deceive themselves into believing how wonderful they are. Honest, competent people know their limitations and the boundary conditions of a system. They don't need ego boosts because they well know that they are replaceable. Everyone is.
I'll spare some doubt on whether the Democratic Party consists solely of honest, competent people. Republican voters and the GOP establishment united behind Donald Trump, someone that I have known to be "all hat and no cattle" since he first entered the public scene. First of all, successful businesspeople do what they can to avoid the limelight unless it is to push their creative efforts or market their contributions to GDP. They sell something... well, that was valid with Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse with their inventions, Henry Ford with a mass-produced automobile with his name on the plate, Walt Disney with his entertainment business, or (while he was alive) Sam Walton with his discount stores. Donald Trump would love to be associated with something glorious or world-changing as was so with Edison, Westinghouse, Siemens, Ford, Disney, Walton, Morita ("Mister Sony" in Japan) or (still) Gates. Trump never offered me anything that wasn't cheaper and better somewhere else. Yes, one can undercut at the cost of quality, and one can do better by making something slightly more expensive. With Trump what one gets is overpriced and substandard.
...Donald Trump compares to the traditional Five Greatest Presidents in American history (as one fellow put it, "Mount Rushmore and FDR")... as an antithesis. George Washington knew that there were people smarter and more skilled than he, and knew enough to defer to them on much. Jefferson had one of the broadest bases of curiosity that anyone ever had in his time. Lincoln intended to be a restorer but became a revolutionary as he came to the conclusion that slavery was incompatible with freedom. Theodore Roosevelt humanized capitalism without overthrowing it. FDR with his good buddy Churchill saved Western Christian Civilization. Trump has no humility, no curiosity, no imagination, no humane streak, and no talent for pushing humane change. Trump is Ronald Reagan without the geniality, caution, or verbal coherence of Ronald Reagan. Oh, he is charming? Well, that is a commonplace characteristic of the sociopath, a person who must find ways to get people to lower their guard against being cheated out their assets... or worse. Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy were charming blokes. Good people don't need to turn on the charm.
Let me remind you that there are plenty of people who don't need Jesus, and they can be quite moral. The most obvious ones, as Jesus and His apostles are all that separates them from Christianity, are Jews. I've seen the Jewish explanation of how people get to the glorious abode of the Saved, and it is the most promising one. Be just in This World, and you will get ready admission in the Next World. You will be saved, but of course you will convert to Judaism irrespective of what you were in This World. It is not the fault of a gentile that he was raised in a culture that denied him a reasonable chance to become Jewish, but it is the fault of a gentile (as is so for a Jew) for choosing wickedness as a course of life. Evil souls are out of sight and out of mind in the Jewish conception of Heaven. Devout Jews on the whole impress me for morality. Jews never persecuted my Huguenot, Quaker, Mennonite, and possibly Hussite ancestors. Among non-blacks, Jews were far out of proportion in the struggle for civil rights for Southern blacks. Let us remember that most of the Nazis were at least nominal Christians, and that they fell far short of the moral command to not commit the Holocaust. The only difference that I see between Jews and Christians is that Christians are more likely to display prudery, which is not particularly moral. I can only assume what some of my seventh-cousins once or twice removed or so did in the Greater Germany Reich and occupied countries: the Holocaust. I've told a few Nazis on the Web that if I had to choose between being a Jew and a Nazi I would be a Jew because such would require no compromises of my morals and culture. Many of the Jews that Hitler murdered were my cultural and moral kin.
(I have my idea of a possible torment of Hell. A puritan view of Hell was that the Saved had the delight of watching the suffering of the Damned. I think that the telescope or closed-circuit TV would be turned the other way, showing the delights that the Saved get to enjoy that the Damned are denied eternally).
Get her name right. It's Nancy Pelosi. You are one of the most extreme male chauvinists of whom I have ever heard, unless you are discussing rapists who use sex as a way to demean and humiliate women. I have always assumed that any woman who got tangled with me would become a feminist if she weren't one to begin with. I look at some of the strongest female leaders of all time, and they are as chilly rationalists as men can be. Sure, there are tyrants' molls like Lady Macbeth to Magda Goebbels, Chiang Ching, and Imelda Marcos. I doubt that you want to get into an intellectual match with Angela Merkel.
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.