The Maelstrom of Violence

[pbrower2a]

(09-18-2017, 12:24 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(09-17-2017, 09:32 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(09-17-2017, 12:45 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(09-17-2017, 01:06 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: It seems like you, as well as the Nazi and Confederates, are embracing harm.

Implying that Kinser is basically a Nazi, as you just did, looks like hate speech to me.  But hey, it's always been clear that you're fine with hate speech when you're the one speaking.

He is simply Eric Hoffer's True Believer, attracted to extremist, ruthless causes. He was recently a Stalinist and is now a Trump supporter. I can see him becoming a fanatical Muslim once he finds President Trump irrelevant or discredited.

What makes you personally not a true believer?  I’m not picking on you.  Really wondering.  

We all believe in our own perspective and advocate them.  I’ve tried to isolate mine, and come up with the self-evident paragraph and the Bill of Rights.  To that, maybe I’d add cautiously the S&H cycles.  In a true crisis, one works together for the common good, while in an unravelling one can tend to be selfish.  There are some who want to make the cyclical selfishness permanent.

Have you thought through your anchors?  Are there things that must be changed?  How desperately?  What makes one a true believer?

While this is addressed to Pbrower, anyone might feel free to answer.

Good points. My political ideology is basically what it was about forty years ago when I was in college (I went from conservative to liberal). Changing my stubborn mind requires a well-honed argument, and not simply promises of glory, a great afterlife, or corrupt indulgence. I prefer science as an arbiter of fact.

Have I changed? Sure. Homosexual rights, which I find necessary for the sake of law and order. After I was threatened with gay-bashing I came to the realization that the problem was not that I had a swift and decisive defense of my 'straightness' but instead that there are people who believe that it is acceptable to beat and rob gay men. That attitude is incompatible with the safety of anyone, straight or gay. Whatever causes homosexuals to get more respect for their humanity makes life safer for us all. I came to accept a conservative critique of the idea that criminal behavior resulted from oppression and economic deprivation once I came to the recognition that (1) there are plenty of good people in even the worst places in which to live (prisons possibly excepted) who do not do crime, (2) that many criminals have never experienced 'oppression', (3) because poverty is heavily concentrated in certain ethnic groups an assumption that poverty is linked to oppression and thus crime is thus racist or classist, and (4) that sociopathy better predicts crime than anything else. I read about an embezzler and I think "I could never do that" and find that the crook had advantages that I never had. I have never been in the political avant-garde because I have known of too many risks.

I consider radicalism of any kind dangerous, and any call to violence suspect. I have read enough history, not all of it American, to recognize the potential horror of any revolution. I also recognize that entrenched power, economic or political, can become both corrupt and cruel. It's up to us to grasp virtue as a blessing in its own right and recognize vice as a fraud.

I recognize that the essence of democracy is not so much in having free, fair, and competitive elections -- but as significantly, the willingness to lose those elections. Anyone who wants electoral politics to ratify how wonderful he is must recognize that in most places one has a 50-50 chance of losing an election.

But I have no obligation to accept the political wind of the day as wonderful. I think of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who lamented every 'Presidentiad' (Emerson coined the word) from Andrew Jackson to James Buchanan, only to become enthusiastic about Abraham Lincoln. I am not Ralph Waldo Emerson, but just imagine how excited I will be about the next Lincoln-like President.  If Jimmy Carter is the new John Quincy Adams and Ronald Reagan is the new Andrew Jackson, then we are about due.