Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Bill the Piper]

(02-01-2019, 02:49 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-31-2019, 08:25 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-31-2019, 12:21 PM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Putin is absolutely not a Marxist. He is a Russian nationalist and a supporter of Christian values which for him mean being against Chechen "terrorists", feminists and gays. I like to call it "locker room Christianity" (I saw such people on personality cafe), according to these types having gay sex once takes you to hell, but sleeping with 508 women a year just means you are a real man and Jesus is proud of you . Putin even praised the former Israeli PM for raping a woman! If I had to name Putin's political orientation, I'd call him a neoreactionary, or if you want to be more precise in his case that means Stalinism without the class struggle. Stalin's methods of control and views on culture and ethnicity are retained, but the economic system is not. There also is a "techno-libertarian" variety of neoreaction, focused more on worshipping the free market and condemning the majority of our species for not wanting it. They also like Putin for his tough stance on cultural leftists and Muslims.

I agree, I don't see Putin as a communist. He's a typical military dictator like Musharraf or the old Pakistani dictator.

If you examine the Communist system under Brezhnev, for instance, you'll b hard pressed to see any remnants of the class struggle there either.  It was a slightly less capitalistic version of a one-party state than the Chinese have today.  They also claim to be communists.

Putin has bashed Marxism more than once:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1mERkuxTfg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ6AUoNkt70

He doesn't call himself a communist, why do you want to prove he is one?

[Bill the Piper]

(02-02-2019, 09:54 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-01-2019, 06:59 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: On the existing two-axis and two-quadrant Nolan grid, that would be the vertical axis for anarchy (or libertarian) at the top vs. totalitarian, (or statist) at the bottom, upper right vs. lower left for economics, and upper left vs. lower right for individual rights vs. social conservatism (group power/hive mentality); normally called the cultural or social axis. I think those are adequate. Religious conservatism in politics is just another hive mentality or group power type. Examples of these conservative groups are nations, races, and religions. In many cases they are all fused, as in fascist Italy. Hitler was an extreme example of all three group types as part of their ideology, and the religious aspect was uppermost, consisting of the final solution to the Jewish "problem." Donald Trump is another example of this fusion, although not always explicitly stated; but Trump can lie and obfuscate by changing his statements at a moment's notice.

On the European political compass, the axes are exactly the same, but they are placed at different locations around the wheel. In that chart, the cultural/social axis or individualism/civil rights vs. group power is the vertical axis. Economics is the left vs. right axis, and the anarchy vs. totalitarian axis falls at lower right vs. upper left. No revision is needed to these wheels in my opinion.

I highlighted the religion comment as an example of why two axes don't get the job done.  Religion is neither conservative nor liberal, communal nor individual.  Your beliefs in astrology fall fully within the religious sphere, and you are anything but conservative.  I would put you more in the communal than individual class too, but others can feel otherwise.  After all, there are monks who go off to live isolated and pure lives, and they are certainly driven by their religious beliefs.  On that axis, strength of belief or non-belief is the measure, not affiliation with other beliefs.  Other axes can also be assigned, but only if they are uncorrelated with the axes already defined.  I've never had much luck with more than 4.

I started with the classical 4 Nolanist sectors:

• leftist individualists (counterculture)
  
• right-wing individualists (libertarians)
  
• leftist collectivists (communists)
  
• right-wing collectivist (nationalists)
  

But I felt something is missing. I added one for regimes devoted to religious transcendence, and got my 5-sector diagram. Seems to work.

Some people want to have an autocracy-democracy axis. I had another idea. The distance from the centre of the circle measures the readiness to use violence or "extremism". Tyrants and violent anarchist revolutionaries are both on the periphery. Autocratic power is just a tool. Violent revolutionaries dislike it, when it's used by their opponents (the Bolshies hated the tzar), but they have to qualms about seizing autocratic power when it becomes available.

[Eric the Green]

(02-02-2019, 09:54 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-01-2019, 06:59 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: On the existing two-axis and two-quadrant Nolan grid, that would be the vertical axis for anarchy (or libertarian) at the top vs. totalitarian, (or statist) at the bottom, upper right vs. lower left for economics, and upper left vs. lower right for individual rights vs. social conservatism (group power/hive mentality); normally called the cultural or social axis. I think those are adequate. Religious conservatism in politics is just another hive mentality or group power type. Examples of these conservative groups are nations, races, and religions. In many cases they are all fused, as in fascist Italy. Hitler was an extreme example of all three group types as part of their ideology, and the religious aspect was uppermost, consisting of the final solution to the Jewish "problem." Donald Trump is another example of this fusion, although not always explicitly stated; but Trump can lie and obfuscate by changing his statements at a moment's notice.

On the European political compass, the axes are exactly the same, but they are placed at different locations around the wheel. In that chart, the cultural/social axis or individualism/civil rights vs. group power is the vertical axis. Economics is the left vs. right axis, and the anarchy vs. totalitarian axis falls at lower right vs. upper left. No revision is needed to these wheels in my opinion.

I highlighted the religion comment as an example of why two axes don't get the job done.  Religion is neither conservative nor liberal, communal nor individual.  Your beliefs in astrology fall fully within the religious sphere, and you are anything but conservative.  I would put you more in the communal than individual class too, but others can feel otherwise.  After all, there are monks who go off to live isolated and pure lives, and they are certainly driven by their religious beliefs.  On that axis, strength of belief or non-belief is the measure, not affiliation with other beliefs.  Other axes can also be assigned, but only if they are uncorrelated with the axes already defined.  I've never had much luck with more than 4.

As I see it, religion is indeed neither liberal nor conservative. It is only the religious right and other fundamentalist religion in politics opinions (like Muslim fanaticism) that are conservative. It is only identification with, and promotion of state power for, a particular religious group, that makes religion in politics conservative. Religion itself does not need to have any connection with the religious right; there is also a religious left. The religious right and similar opinions say: "the state should impose our religion on people, because it is the only correct religion. The moral principles of our religion should be the law of the land." Sharia Law is a perfect example; so is the drive to post the 10 Commandments on public buildings, teach creationism in public schools, outlaw abortion and homosexuality/gay marriage as against religious doctrine, etc.

In this sense, it is exactly the same political stance as right-wing nationalism. This kind of nationalism is identification with the nation, and promotion of your nation's power over others, or to exclude others. Racism is the same, but having to do with race instead of nation. A little reflection is all that is needed to see the logic in this. It's all the lower right corner of the Nolan Grid, and the top of the political compass. Social conservatism is the generic name for this view, and it's also called the right-wing on the cultural axis. Traditional group authority should rule over us, and changes to the traditional authority and doctrines from the nation, race or religion of your identity should be opposed. My country, race and religion uber alles. As I mentioned, the three are frequently fused together, as in Mussolini, Hitler and Donald Trump.

The Religious Left says quite the opposite, and belongs partly in the opposite quadrant. The religious left promotes tolerance of all religions, civil rights, and religious freedom. It upholds religious principles as a basis for practicing love and respect for all in politics. These principles include peace in the world, religious liberty for all, social justice for all races and peoples, and treating others as we wish to be treated. Religious Left people are mostly strongly leftist on the Nolan Grid, and lower left on the political compass (what we call liberal in the USA), because they frequently advocate for social welfare programs, and sometimes the environment, and they often see the connections between all these issues. The Religious Left sees that the essence of religion is the experience of spirit, not church authority. Religious Left people seek to lessen the power of church authority and make their religion more democratic, which is the opposite of the Religious Right. I am part of the Religious Left. Martin Luther King Jr. is a fine example of a Religious Leftist.

Strength of belief has no relevance to this issue. It is about whether you identify with and seek political power for your traditional power group over others or not. The "strength" involved is how strong you hold to this desire or opinion, and how much power you seek over others to obtain this goal of theocratic rule of the one true religion, even to the point of elimination of the others, as per Hitler or the Islamic State.

Identity politics works along this axis. Social and cultural conservatives identify with the group they see as endowed with the right and duty to rule over others and other groups. That is right-wing identity politics. Left-wing identity politics seeks freedom and justice for the oppressed group you identify with. When it is concerned with this one issue, Left Identity politics can be too narrowly focused. Such holders of left identity politics views may be more centrist on the scale if their views are only leftist regarding the oppression of their own group, but have no views on other issues and don't see the connections to them. If they don't see this connection, if they gain power they could end up oppressing other groups in turn, and move to the religious right and social conservatism. Nationalism can also be left-wing in the same way, and those who seek or promote liberation for their nation can end up as defending their nation uber alles, and thus become right-wing nationalists.

Keep in mind that a political chart is a chart of political views. That means it is about who has state power and how much. Religion is a different issue and needs a different chart. People can hold different religious views and still be at exactly the same point on the political compass.

Astrology definitely has a spiritual aspect, but it is not a religion. It is a science of an ancient and medieval type, or "traditional science" of the kind historically preceding those that have gained dominance since the 18th Century Enlightenment. But it has also been updated to reflect its use in depth psychology. I have found it especially powerful as a predictive tool for world events and cultural and political trends. The new astrology uses to major effect the cycles of the planets only discovered in modern times. Pre-Enlightenment and New Age sciences do not make the mistake of separating spiritual experience from knowledge of the perceived world. The creators of modern physics in the 16th and 17th centuries were astrologers; there was no separation from astronomy.

My knowledge of astrology is based on my experiences and research, not religious belief, and those who think that astrology can't be true because of their post-enlightenment point of view or because they hold to the modernist scientific paradigm and its emphasis on efficient causation, are too limited in their views, as I see it. The evidence I have posted over the last 22 years of the correspondence of the turnings to astrological cycles should be convincing enough to any open mind that astrology contains at least a grain of truth. The political compass scores acceptance or belief in astrology as culturally on the left, and I agree. But we have a thread on astrology now if anyone wants to discuss this further. Making fun of or bashing Trump is not part of a discussion on astrology, or vice-versa!

[Eric the Green]

How fanatic or even violent a person is in promoting their views does not always equate to the views themselves. Centrists can be quite fanatical if their views are a mixture of left and right and they want to impose their views violently. But in general, violence used to obtain power is statist, and at or toward the bottom of the Nolan scale. Politics is war, without violence-- until it become violent. Those who use violence tend to end up there, toward the statist pole, whatever they say about their other views. Even anarchists who use violence only to tear down power, create a world where violence rules, and thus they recreate the state. The new boss becomes the same as the old boss, they decide and the shotgun sings the song.

[Eric the Green]

Another point on this interesting topic, is that those who seek to add axes to the political chart, need to integrate them inside the circle, or else it is just a set of axes that have no relation to each other. That is an alternative route to go, but not one I agree with, because I am holistic minded and I like circles that integrate all the people and all the views. We are all a part of each other, and so all axes in my opinion are axes within the wheel and show an inherent gradation between each other. Ultimately, the ancient principle of the cross within the circle rules. It is metaphysically paramount and fundamental.

There's a reason people speak of the four directions and the four elements, build theories like Generations Theory on them, and place them on a cross within a circle. It is based on astronomy/astrology, ultimately. It is the very planet we live on and its movements and seasons. Ancient people could see the stars everyday and watch the seasonal movements of the sun, moon and earth/sky. They built monuments and made drawings in stone to indicate when the solstices and equinoxes would happen. The cross within a circle is inherent in our reality, and we embody it physically as well. It is the prime symbol of life.

[David Horn]

(02-02-2019, 11:16 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: I started with the classical 4 Nolanist sectors:

• leftist individualists (counterculture)
  
• right-wing individualists (libertarians)
  
• leftist collectivists (communists)
  
• right-wing collectivist (nationalists)
  

But I felt something is missing. I added one for regimes devoted to religious transcendence, and got my 5-sector diagram. Seems to work.

Some people want to have an autocracy-democracy axis. I had another idea. The distance from the centre of the circle measures the readiness to use violence or "extremism". Tyrants and violent anarchist revolutionaries are both on the periphery. Autocratic power is just a tool. Violent revolutionaries dislike it, when it's used by their opponents (the Bolshies hated the tzar), but they have to qualms about seizing autocratic power when it becomes available.

Having many axes does not affect the ability to define extremism by distance from the mean.  We already understand that the distance from the center is merely the square root of the sum of the squares of the distances from each axis center.  A bit messy, but accurate nonetheless.  It's the basis of vector analysis.

[Eric the Green]

(02-02-2019, 11:16 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(02-02-2019, 09:54 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-01-2019, 06:59 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: On the existing two-axis and two-quadrant Nolan grid, that would be the vertical axis for anarchy (or libertarian) at the top vs. totalitarian, (or statist) at the bottom, upper right vs. lower left for economics, and upper left vs. lower right for individual rights vs. social conservatism (group power/hive mentality); normally called the cultural or social axis. I think those are adequate. Religious conservatism in politics is just another hive mentality or group power type. Examples of these conservative groups are nations, races, and religions. In many cases they are all fused, as in fascist Italy. Hitler was an extreme example of all three group types as part of their ideology, and the religious aspect was uppermost, consisting of the final solution to the Jewish "problem." Donald Trump is another example of this fusion, although not always explicitly stated; but Trump can lie and obfuscate by changing his statements at a moment's notice.

On the European political compass, the axes are exactly the same, but they are placed at different locations around the wheel. In that chart, the cultural/social axis or individualism/civil rights vs. group power is the vertical axis. Economics is the left vs. right axis, and the anarchy vs. totalitarian axis falls at lower right vs. upper left. No revision is needed to these wheels in my opinion.

I highlighted the religion comment as an example of why two axes don't get the job done.  Religion is neither conservative nor liberal, communal nor individual.  Your beliefs in astrology fall fully within the religious sphere, and you are anything but conservative.  I would put you more in the communal than individual class too, but others can feel otherwise.  After all, there are monks who go off to live isolated and pure lives, and they are certainly driven by their religious beliefs.  On that axis, strength of belief or non-belief is the measure, not affiliation with other beliefs.  Other axes can also be assigned, but only if they are uncorrelated with the axes already defined.  I've never had much luck with more than 4.

I started with the classical 4 Nolanist sectors:

• leftist individualists (counterculture)
  
• right-wing individualists (libertarians)
  
• leftist collectivists (communists)
  
• right-wing collectivist (nationalists)
  

But I felt something is missing. I added one for regimes devoted to religious transcendence, and got my 5-sector diagram. Seems to work.

Some people want to have an autocracy-democracy axis. I had another idea. The distance from the centre of the circle measures the readiness to use violence or "extremism". Tyrants and violent anarchist revolutionaries are both on the periphery. Autocratic power is just a tool. Violent revolutionaries dislike it, when it's used by their opponents (the Bolshies hated the tzar), but they have to qualms about seizing autocratic power when it becomes available.

Individual vs. collective is one way to describe the vertical axis on the Nolan chart. I think anarchy vs statist is a more accurate term. As you noted, "communist" is too extreme a term for liberals, and for all the folks in the lower-left quadrant, although it may apply to those near the bottom of the chart. The essential thing about the Nolan chart is the two axes of economics and culture/social issues. These axes run diagonally from the edges of the quadrants. The left side of the chart corresponds to liberals in the USA. They are liberal on both economics and culture. The right side are conservatives; they are conservative on both. At the top, pure libertarians are liberal on culture/social issues, and conservative on economics. They maintain this means that they uphold "freedom" from state control on both subjects. At the bottom, pure statists are liberal on economics and conservative on social and cultural issues. They want state control in both fields.

In all cases, a political chart is only about politics. Politics is your view on what kind of state we want and who will have the power in it. Other charts are for other subjects.

[Eric the Green]

The Islamic State is an extreme contemporary example of social conservatism. They require obedience by all persons to their strict and narrow interpretation of Islam, on pain of execution as infidels. They are also nationalists, because the caliphate is the only true state to uphold and defend and expand against all others. They don't seem to be particularly racist, although Arabs are the main promoters of the IS. Arabic racism often creeps into the Islamic State and other Islamic regimes, however, because Arabs resent the oppression imposed by Western-backed Arab regimes and they want their own state.

In Hitler's case, the Nazis upheld the German indigenous folk religion of the middle ages, as represented in Wagner's operas to which Hitler was devoted. His religious regime required elimination of Jews and gypsies. Deviants like homosexuals were not allowed. His regime was explicitly racist, proclaiming the superiority of Aryans, and nationalist, proclaiming the goal of "liberating" Germans from other regimes, and then conquest of living space for the one superior nation, Germany, to which his regime was devoted and dedicated.

The specifics of the specific social group upheld as superior, and entitled to rule and entitled to blame, jail and/or kill those who don't agree, don't matter too much on a political chart. The principle of social conservatism is the same, whether we are talking about the Christian religious right and moral majority, Muslim fundamentalists, Catholics who advocate a Catholic state, Hindu nationalists, Nazi Arian racists, fascists in general, etc. Most of them uphold aspects of all three kinds of group, religious, national or racial, and they overlap. They may use religious institutions to inspire loyalty and obedience, without having any real interest in the precepts of the religion. It's obedience to group authority that they want. American fundamentalists of the religious right-wing in politics are generally also super-patriots who uphold their idea of America right or wrong or America first, and this means keeping out other races from America in the name of stopping illegal immigration.

As these authoritarian right-wing politicians fall closer to the bottom center of the chart, the degree of economic control increases too; and as it blends with the left side of the authoritarian axis, then economic class can also be one of the groups whose entitlement to rule is upheld. Communist totalitarian regimes also tend to enforce ethnic and national uniformity, so aspects of the quadrant next door creep in. There are gradations and shadings in all the quadrants; that's what makes a circular chart accurate and useful.

[Eric the Green]

Clean that wall! Trump vs. Pelosi. Even Trump's tie has moved to the left! Have the wheels come off the Trump wagon?

[Eric the Green]

Watching paint lie! Everybody who was anybody who was not indicted was there.

[pbrower2a]

Will Rogers...

[pbrower2a]

The 6 essential cons that define Trump’s success (more at the source, the Washington Post)


Con No. 1: To borrow billions, Trump lies to inflate his net worth.


As Trump’s power has grown, his lies have become bolder and more apparent. Early in his career, however, when Trump first conned me into putting him on the Forbes 400 list and then deceived financial institutions to loan him billions of dollars based upon a vastly exaggerated net worth, his deceptions were more elaborate and difficult to track. As recounted in The Washington Post last year, Trump fed me carefully crafted false information for years. This included two long phone interviews in which Trump pretended to be a nonexistent assistant named John Barron, as well as his having his notorious fixer Roy Cohn call me at Forbes in 1982 and 1983 to lie on his behalf.

Con No. 2: To avoid taxes, Trump lies to deflate his net worth.

The only people Trump ever wanted to convince that he had less money than he did were those who worked for the Internal Revenue Service. And somehow, despite his inflated public claims of income and valuations, he managed to do just that. Last year, the New York Times published the results of a painstakingly researched investigation into Trump’s tax dodges. The article stated: “President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents … He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents … He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings. … The president’s parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances.” Instead, the Times reported, “the Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent.”

Con No. 3: To be a winner, Trump makes losers of those he does business with.

To make every business deal with him sound sweeter than it was, Trump marketed his name as synonymous with gold-plated luxury. But few of his deals had happy endings. His narcissistic need to be a winner every time meant that there were losers every time. This included just about anyone who made the mistake of signing a contract to lend or partner or supply goods or services to him. After stiffing his partners and lenders in Atlantic City in 1991 by declaring bankruptcy and forcing them to write down billions of dollars in losses, Trump soon retook control of the properties by creating a public casino company in 1995 and selling the stock to suckers attracted to his name. According to a MarketWatch columnist, “Donald Trump was a stock market disaster,” with Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts racking up more than $1 billion in losses during his 13 years as chairman, while its stock fell from a high of $35 to just 17 cents. But despite making losers of the poor saps who invested with him, Trump emerged a winner, soaking the bankrupted public company for what Fortune magazine estimated was $82 million in compensation.

Con No. 4: To win in politics, Trump makes voters believe that his presidency benefits them.

One of the great mysteries of Trump’s ascension to power is his support among working-class Americans. He is far from being a person who mingles with the masses. Trump’s social and professional activities have been limited to those who are superwealthy, famous or influential. To the extent that he has interacted with common Americans, it has been as a commercial icon: He sells them chances to lose money at his casinos’ slot machines; he grants them admission to real estate society through the scam that was Trump University; he offers them armchair viewing of crass demonstrations of cruel power in “The Apprentice.”

Con No. 5: To avoid accountability, Trump makes the media, and truth, the “enemy of the people.”


Truth is the greatest threat to Donald Trump. He despises the transparency and accountability that flows from a free press. He continually attacks the media as “the enemy of the people,” despite increasing violence against journalists by some of his supporters, repeating the phrase in a Wednesday tweet in reference to the Times. Gabriel Sherman, national affairs editor at New York magazine, described Trump’s use of this term as “full-on dictator speak.” For opponents of Joseph Stalin, being branded an enemy of the people was a death sentence. In Nazi Germany, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels also favored the term, arguing in 1941 that “each Jew is a sworn enemy of the German people.”


Trump regularly insults or threatens to sue journalists who refuse to act as stenographers for his lies. “It’s frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write. And people should look into it,” he said, referring to NBC News on Oct. 11, 2017. “Network news,” he tweeted that day, “has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked.” This prompted Sen. John McCain to note that the comment was “how dictators get started.”

Con No. 6: To stoke fear, Trump recasts perpetrators as victims.

As president, Trump’s primary governance strategy relies on the same deceptive manipulation of human fear that brought him victory as a candidate. He has proved himself masterful at playing the white Christian male grievance card. Whether it is the foreigners streaming across the border to take American jobs, the dark-skinned urbanites coming for rural Americans’ guns or empowered women upending patriarchal traditions, Trump and his Fox News echo chamber let white Christians know that they are being victimized and that far worse will follow if they do not fight for their right to oppress others.

(my comment) There you have it -- lies to get financial leverage that would be bank fraud for you and me, lies to avoid taxes. making himself into a 'winner' by making 'losers' of others in business: in politics, misrepresenting the good that he can do for people, rejecting objective truth when the truth is inconvenient, and casting the bad people who do his bidding as innocent victims.

[pbrower2a]

[pbrower2a]

[Eric the Green]

Conductor of the Trump train: here's your hat!

[Classic-Xer]

(03-22-2019, 03:46 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Conductor of the Trump train: here's your hat!

So, who is laughing now?

[Eric the Green]

With Trump in the White House, the best we can do is laugh at his hideous ridiculousness. So, we continue to laugh every day, Mueller or no Mueller. We know he's still guilty as sin of everything in the book!

[Classic-Xer]

(03-27-2019, 12:16 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: With Trump in the White House, the best we can do is laugh at his hideous ridiculousness. So, we continue to laugh every day, Mueller or no Mueller. We know he's still guilty as sin of everything in the book!

Well, you can keep laughing at him as we continue laughing at you and the Democratic party.

[Eric the Green]

Well, let's keep laughing. Colbert said that Trump is doing the opposite of everything Obama did. Well, Obama got re-elected...

[pbrower2a]

To Trump or not to Trump, as I put it, with apology to the Bard:




50% or more against Trump, margin 9% or higher
50% or more against Trump, margin 5% to 8%
50% or more against Trump, margin 4% or less

The usual margin of error is 4%, and twice that is not close.

I have yet to see any state poll asking such a question as "Do you want to re-elect Donald Trump or do you want someone else?" or "Do you plan to vote for Trump or for the Democratic nominee?" in which this question comes back positively -- yet. This is different from approval, probably suggesting that one likes the results even if one despises the President.  Opposing Trump may not mean that one has fallen in love with liberalism; it may mean that one would rather have some different expression of conservatism as President.