Ooh, yes! That would work pretty well.

Apparently he espoused those views strongly in person, but as what you quoted said, it's unclear he wrote on it.





Sorry. That was a rude thing to say. I was just hoping that, well, often Eversor expresses hostility and sarcasm to my views, so I thought I'd give a clear argument as to why I say some of the stuff I do to get a response on it, or at least some clues about where to go to correct my views. So I felt a little frustrated that he's backing out without offering much of what I was seeking. Considering I asked him to and he was replying.

btw, I wasn't assuming you were trying to be rude. Of course it's easy to come across as rude in this medium without trying.

It's definitely a bunch of effort to defend your position, and I was asking that of Eversor. I recognize it can be a burden to put that much thought. I don't expect him to necessarily defend his views to the end. I literally mean that if he doesn't want to express his disagreements, or if the conversation has worn him out, I'm fine not pressing the subject any longer and moving on. It just came out terse.

I mean, I guess I kind of got lost with the post you wrote on your phone. I think I know, but i wasn't super confident with what you were getting at there, so I think that's why things kind of trailed off.

Ah, I see. I think the post I was trying to respond to was this one:



I'm fine accepting Grossman's idea; Republicans vote for this gesalt vision of America rather than a program of governance. I was saying that, okay, I think we can agree that there is a difference in why they vote. But it's not clear why a gesalt vision of America is a good reason to pick a politician. That's what I'm saying, if they vote for this gesalt vision of America, then the next step is justifying why that is the right vision.

My examples were to rhetorically show that just having a reason alone isn't justification for behavior, we also judge the reason.

It seems like you also think, though, that there's something irresponsible about voting based on abstract ideas if they aren't coupled with concrete goals?

Like, you can create an analogy with when someone intentionally kills another person. It's not enough to say they had a reason to kill the other person, you also ask why. Were they defending someone? Were they doing it in self defense? Were they just getting revenge? The reasons why they killed someone matters, and we can propose arguments to justify why killing for self-defense is acceptable, but killing for revenge is not.

I don't know if that's always true, but I can see that being true often, yes.

btw, gestalt is spelled with a 't'

But we're talking about voting -- I don't see what work the killing analogy is doing here, aside from pointing out that the same action can have different motives and that that changes its moral meaning. I thought I was clear that I was suggesting that that Grossman presents a way of understanding how people could vote Republican and have benign motivations. Is that what you mean by motivation?

It seems like something at stake here is that you're implying that there's some sort of recklessness to voting on the basis of abstract principles, because that gives politicians carte blanche when it comes to policy -- there are unintended consequences involved. But Like, someone could've voted for Obama because he offered promised concrete deliverables, like a public option in healthcare and ending the Iraq War, but despite the fact that he would:

1) ramp up deportations
2) withdraw troops from Iraq only to later send them back and get involved in several other wars in the middle east
3) failing to shutdown Gitmo and carrying out drone strikes that continued some of the extralegal activities of the Bush administration that he promised to scale back
4) failing to deliver on a public option, which was one of the ways in which he distinguished himself from Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primaries, and instead designing a healthcare system inspired by a Republican governor's (Mitt Romney) that left tens of millions of people uninsured.

Promising concrete deliverables doesn't mean that a politician won't end up doing things that run counter to your good intentions when you voted for them. I don't understand why a Republican who votes on abstract principles would be any more or less accountable for the the unintended things that Republican politicians do.

That's dumb.



That's interesting.

What about a ham sandwich?

**** off *****

im sorry i forgot i was on the internet

ham is less carbon intensive than beef

lol, I was wondering what I said wrong.

yeah but after you finish curing and smoking the bacon, frying it, reducing the maple sap, candying it in maple syrup

Hmm, is Donny getting sick of being president?

[quote=The New York Times]
WASHINGTON — President Trump pushed his lawyers in recent days to try once again to reach an agreement with the special counsel’s office about him sitting for an interview, flouting their advice that he should not answer investigators’ questions, three people briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.

Mr. Trump has told advisers he is eager to meet with investigators to clear himself of wrongdoing, the people said. In effect, he believes he can convince the investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, of his belief that their own inquiry is a “witch hunt.”

[...]
[/quote]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/us/politics/trump-mueller-investigation-interview.html

Yes, that is exactly how it would work. On the left we have a classic socialist party, a party of more moderate social democrats, a left wing party that emphasizes civil liberties, climate solutions and innovative technology, a left wing party for the rights of immigrants and emphasis on challenges in a multi-cultural society (they're pretty populist though), and there's even an animal rights party (don't think PETA, think smart people) who have the most ambitious climate solutions program of them all. They're not even remotely a one-issue party, they have an extensive program on every imaginable subject.

In the centre there's a party of moderate economic liberals who emphasize civil rights, education and democratic reform. Also somewhat in the centre there's a Christian party who are the most liberal and socialist of the Christian bunch, they also emphasize climate solutions.

Then on the right you have Christian democrats for the somewhat conservative, a party of economic liberals for the wealthy (they're also more socially liberal, but slightly more conservative when it comes to immigration and law enforcement, but you absolutely can't call them conservatives). Then there's a small fundamentalist Christian party of extreme conservatives, and this is where Trump would be sitting: the populist party of Geert Wilders for the islamophobes, and another party of immigrant hating economic liberals who also have an agenda of democratic reforms. They're like an extension of Wilders' party, only slightly less populist, they're trying to be more intellectual about it, and failing if you ask me.

The populists have never really been a real problem, since there isn't a single party in all of that who want to be associated with them. This is not just for ideological reasons, they also proved to be unreliable in the past. But it's not like they haven't mattered at all. Over the past decade and a half there's obviously been a shift to the right for most parties, even the ones on the left. This is because the electoral success of the populists forced all the other parties to speak out and act on the issues they were addressing, in hope of reaching populist voters.

But that's not exclusive to the populists. Every party has some effect on policies, even just by starting the debate on some topic. Even when a party never joins in the formation of a government, there's always what we call 'initiative lawmaking', that's when the opposition pitches a proposal for policy. If they manage to convince the government, it will become reality. For example, the animal rights party may never join a government, but they've been a continuous presence in politics, and thanks to them addressing the issues, there are huge reforms going on in what we call "bio industry", or intensive animal farming, which is not only an animal rights issue, it's our country's #1 source of pollution and co2 emission.

If you do all of that to long pork made from billionaires, are you emitting a lot because of how much carbon went into your food, or are you cutting emissions because they're dead

Sooo... apparently, it's the Democratic party that are the Nazis. Thanks Don Jr.! https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/02/politics/donald-trump-jr-dinesh-dsouza/

Obviously, they spend so much time complaining about fake news and Jewish bolshevism cultural Marxism

My favorite part about posting in this thread is that sometimes I'll end up with a bunch of tabs open to Mein Kampf, lookin for some sick Trump burn, but then get bored/forget about it and come back hours later to a hilarious surprise

This is pretty outrageous. The NRA claims to be financially failing because it lobbied too hard and can no longer afford the cost of insurance for general liability in its operations.

My understanding is that due to pressure from anti-gun groups and politicians, insurers and lenders are no longer working with the NRA and various gun manufacturers, making it difficult to do business. The NRA is suing to stop it, so of course (in typical NRA fashion) they have to exaggerate and paint a grim picture to garner support.

[ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-new-york-nra/new-yorks-cuomo-rejects-nra-claim-that-blacklisting-jeopardizes-mission-idUSKBN1KO2QY

IDGAF about the NRA, but I am opposed to the backdoor legislation violating free speech going on by Cuomo and the various financial services. It just happens to be the NRA this time]

That'd be cool.

NRA membership collapsed in the 1990s when they overtly transitioned from non-partisan gun rights activism to a Republican PAC. The NRA doesn’t disclose official statistics about membership - their spokespeople vacillate wildly from day to day - but third party estimates say it fell below 2 million by Bush 43’s first term and never really recovered. Even apologists admit the official numbers are, at least, padded by the million+ lifetime members who are in fact dead.

Much like their favourite president, the only reason the NRA is still in business is because of Russian government generosity.

lol

https://twitter.com/VicBergerIV/status/1025479408130445314



I love these paintings.

Someone should chop that out and do the Led Zeppelin IV cover that is the hermit from the rider-waite-smith deck

fording the swamp

it's so beautiful

Apparently in that Dinesh D'Souza quotes Hitler as saying "if you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed."

That quote is, in my opinion, one of the most perfect examples of missing context. Hitler wasn't saying that about himself in relationship to the German people, which is what the quote is used to imply - it was said to explain how the Jewish people could have deceived the German people.

That makes D'Souza's usage ironic on a few levels. Think about what the film is trying to do, and how his misuse of that quote compares to what Hitler was saying about the Jews. (Hint: it's about fabricating falsehoods to invent a conspiracy about your political opponents)

Watching the trailer, it is really fascinating how similar it is to the movie that the US made for Kim when he met with Trump in Singapore. In this trailer, the bits at the beginning seem very deliberately to evoke Gladiator, when Russell Crowe walks through the wheat field (Elysium) and touches the grain with his hand. It's drawing a connection between historical events and a fictitious story, and, in doing so, blurring the distinction between narrative and truth, fiction and reality.

The trailer is not only a trailer for the movie. It's also an exhortation to a certain kind of political activism. The idea seems to be that you yourself, as a viewer of the trailer, are urged to live out a heroic story, a heroic narrative, that has the same kind of tidiness as a cinematic narrative, by engaging politically. Real life, in that sense, can be elevated, in the same way that movies elevate the stories of extraordinary individuals. The trailer is just as much as trailer for the movie as it is four your heroic journey.

In other words, it's no different from something Cody Johnson said in one of his videos about fascism (or several of them -- I can't keep track anymore): under fascism, everyone is a hero.

Clips of slave owners and confederate soldiers dying in battle, with a voice over claiming that the Democrats -- rather than, say, confederates -- were responsible for succession, and juxtaposing that imagery with leftist/liberal/Democrat protesters rioting in the streets. Daaaaaamn, not very subtle, to say the least.

lol, subtle is not exactly the word that came to mind when I saw

1. The poster for the movie
2. The title of the movie
3. The person who made the movie

What's more mind blowing to me that something like this even exists (and isn't satire).

****ing lmao

So if anyone doubted that Trumpism is about picking economic winners at the expense of.. well everybody else, the EPA is approving use of asbestos again in manufacturing. And a Russian company which manufactures asbestos is now distributing their product with Trump's face on it.

Damn this is good.

Sasha Baron Cohen has done more to convince me that Republicans are evil with a scandanavian accent and a goofy Hawaiian shirt than all of the major organs of the Democratic establishment.

There's really a moral clarity to this that's refreshing.