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Author Topic:   Climate Change Denier comes in from the cold: SCIENCE!!!
Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 811 of 944 (884915)
03-13-2021 7:36 AM
Reply to: Message 810 by nwr
03-11-2021 9:57 PM


From The Perspective Of Non Believers
So in other words, according to you nobody is really trusting Jesus. Got it.

"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain "
***
far from science having buried God, not only do the results of science point towards his existence, but the scientific enterprise itself is validated by his existence.- Dr.John Lennox
The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe.
- Criss Jami, Killo
The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him. Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You
(1894).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 810 by nwr, posted 03-11-2021 9:57 PM nwr has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 812 by nwr, posted 03-13-2021 12:54 PM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
nwr
Member
Posts: 6408
From: Geneva, Illinois
Joined: 08-08-2005
Member Rating: 5.1


(2)
Message 812 of 944 (884917)
03-13-2021 12:54 PM
Reply to: Message 811 by Phat
03-13-2021 7:36 AM


Re: From The Perspective Of Non Believers
They may believe that they are trusting Jesus. However, there is no consistency to the messages that they claim to get. It seems that their Jesus is telling them exactly what they wanted to hear.

Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity

This message is a reply to:
 Message 811 by Phat, posted 03-13-2021 7:36 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
glowby
Member
Posts: 75
From: Fox River Grove, IL
Joined: 05-29-2010


(3)
Message 813 of 944 (884919)
03-13-2021 8:56 PM
Reply to: Message 806 by Porkncheese
03-11-2021 4:29 PM


A denier doesn't understand "global"
You need to back up your "mainstream scientists" prediction claims. You've lied about their positions before.
Regarding a cold Australian summer, I can't find any evidence of a recent one. Some individual towns had record cold days, but that doesn't mean the entire continent set a record. It snows every year in parts of Mexico and it's not that rare in Egypt.
So here you are, trying to argue against the phenomenon of global warming, without having a clue what the term means. It isn't evidenced by a single cold or hot day in some "unusual places", nor by a freaky hot or cold season in some part of the world. Do you know what "global" means?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 806 by Porkncheese, posted 03-11-2021 4:29 PM Porkncheese has not replied

  
marc9000
Member
Posts: 1509
From: Ky U.S.
Joined: 12-25-2009
Member Rating: 1.4


Message 814 of 944 (884924)
03-14-2021 9:16 PM
Reply to: Message 795 by glowby
03-10-2021 11:06 PM


Re: Essential vs. non-essential fuel use
Our responses should be to cut greenhouse gas emissions wherever possible and practical, even if it means inconvenience and higher prices. An overview is here... Not Found |The National Academies Press
This one paragraph in your link seems to sum it up;
quote:
The federal government should
establish a national task force that
includes formal and informal educators, government agencies,
policymakers, business leaders, and
scientists, among others, to set
national goals and objectives, and to
develop a coordinated strategy to
improve climate change education and
communication.
Meaning "GROW THE GOVERNMENT", and see what happens. The very rich, the upper middle class, the bottom class of idleness, none of them has a thing to worry about. Everyone else, look out!
Essential vs. non-essential use isn't really the issue.
Of course not, it's all political. The upper class, and very rich, are obviously the ones using the most fossil fuels strictly for recreational, non essential purposes. They have more political clout than the 70% or so of the rest of Americans.
It's about reducing use where we can, developing technologies to make it non-essential where possible, and encouraging the use of those technologies. Electric air travel isn't possible yet. But there have been public discussions in many cities, for example, over whether their fleets should move from gas to electric. The public has also been kept in the loop on regional wind and solar projects. I see discussions in the media I follow. Don't know about your media.
Some of my media questions things, like whether switching from gas to electric really makes as much sense as it seems to, since fossil fuels are often used to make electricity. The public is often kept in the loop concerning only positive things about wind and solar, and the negatives about it are often covered up. I monitor one liberal news source, it seems to be a pretty good gauge for what the rest of the mainstream media is doing.
Let the rich folks have their gas guzzling limos, yachts, and private jets. As long as the other 99% of us have cleaner energy alternatives, their selfishness won't matter much.
I know that's your honest opinion - I've seen similar sentiments on these forums before. It's really appalling to freedom loving people, it's easy to see how past tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, many others, rose to power with that type of thinking anywhere near the mainstream in the societies they took over.
Rich folks' cars must be tested too. It's free for all here in Illinois, so no one is "targeted". Emission testing is more about preventing toxic pollution than making sure you're getting good fuel efficiency. But I agree that the program's time and usefulness may have passed. I haven't had a car fail since the '90s, thanks in part to stricter regulations on the auto industry.
Stricter regulations resulting in price increases, making it harder and harder for people who want or need a new car to be able to buy one.
In the 1950's, 60's, and 70's, it was practically unheard of for a car or truck that was 25 years old or older to be used in any meaningful way, they were simply worn out by that time. Anything over 10 years / 100,000 miles was considered a pretty good bonus in the 60's, I remember it well. Today, there are a LOT of 25, and 35 year old cars and small trucks that are still heavily relied on, there are even a significant percentage of 35 year old heavy trucks that still perform useful work. (in construction, etc.) It could be debatable just what the reasons for that is, I think the main one is simply technological increases in metallurgy. 200,000 or 300,000 miles can be expected of most new cars today, over a million for OTR trucks.
As cars and trucks last longer and longer, and fewer and fewer people need new ones, the new car and truck makers marketing has gotten more and more challenging. 15 years ago, a GM employee told me that $2000 in the price of every new GM car went for nothing else but past employee's retirement. It's probably 3 or 4 thousand by now, not only for GM, but for Ford and Chrysler as well. Could one new marketing strategy be to lobby politicians to somehow increase the restrictions on the use of old ones, so they can then sell more new ones? That would increase their profits, but throwing away old, but very useful vehicles wouldn't be very good for a society that is approaching $30 trillion in debt, an additional $10 trillion in only one decade. Yes, "climate change" is useful for some, but it has very little to do with the climate.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 795 by glowby, posted 03-10-2021 11:06 PM glowby has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 817 by DrJones*, posted 03-14-2021 10:01 PM marc9000 has not replied
 Message 818 by glowby, posted 03-15-2021 3:05 AM marc9000 has replied

  
marc9000
Member
Posts: 1509
From: Ky U.S.
Joined: 12-25-2009
Member Rating: 1.4


Message 815 of 944 (884925)
03-14-2021 9:35 PM
Reply to: Message 808 by Taq
03-11-2021 6:18 PM


Re: An Inconvenient Truth -- still true
marc9000 writes:
Not according to the false Message 658, and the reaction it got from most everyone here.
Then you need to reread those posts. Simply saying that all fossil fuel power plants could be replaced by other types of fuel is the truth.
Someone needs to reread those posts, but it's not me. Those messages had nothing to do with power plants, they were about PRODUCTS. The public's ignorance about the significance of fossil fuels in things other than only power plants is because today's climate change alarmism covers up that information and discussion.
It was a mixture of Republicans and plant owners. Republicans threw away regulations that would have required plant operators to winterize. Those same policies also resulted in the loss of connections with surrounding states. The plant owners decided they wanted more profit, so they didn't make the changes they needed to.
You are claiming that it is the Democrats fault, somehow. Care to explain?
Don't mind if I do. You might remember this famous statement of Obama's;
quote:
If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them, Obama said, responding to a question about his cap-and-trade plan. He later added, Under my plan electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.
Uttered in 2008, still haunting Obama - POLITICO
Coal plants, over the past several years, have closed in Texas. The reason was they were no longer profitable. They were increasingly regulated by the government, while wind and solar were increasingly subsidized by the government. After increasing amounts of those two things, of course they were no longer profitable. It's a Democrat thing, not just Obama's, to get coal plants shut down. If Texas would have had more coal plants, the recent disaster would have been much less, if not non existent.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 808 by Taq, posted 03-11-2021 6:18 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 816 by DrJones*, posted 03-14-2021 9:59 PM marc9000 has not replied
 Message 819 by Taq, posted 03-15-2021 5:19 PM marc9000 has replied

  
DrJones*
Member
Posts: 2284
From: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Joined: 08-19-2004
Member Rating: 6.8


Message 816 of 944 (884926)
03-14-2021 9:59 PM
Reply to: Message 815 by marc9000
03-14-2021 9:35 PM


Re: An Inconvenient Truth -- still true
If Texas would have had more coal plants, the recent disaster would have been much less, if not non existent.
and if they had winterized the existing plants as they had been warned to do after 2 previous severe weather events then the recent disaster would have been much less severe, if not non-existent. This is a "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me a third time after having been warned about the amount of damage a fooling could produce then someone should be getting sued for criminal negligence" situation.
Edited by DrJones*, : No reason given.

It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds
soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor

This message is a reply to:
 Message 815 by marc9000, posted 03-14-2021 9:35 PM marc9000 has not replied

  
DrJones*
Member
Posts: 2284
From: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Joined: 08-19-2004
Member Rating: 6.8


Message 817 of 944 (884927)
03-14-2021 10:01 PM
Reply to: Message 814 by marc9000
03-14-2021 9:16 PM


Re: Essential vs. non-essential fuel use
Of course not, it's all political. The upper class, and very rich, are obviously the ones using the most fossil fuels strictly for recreational, non essential purposes. They have more political clout than the 70% or so of the rest of Americans.
sounds like you're jealous

It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds
soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor

This message is a reply to:
 Message 814 by marc9000, posted 03-14-2021 9:16 PM marc9000 has not replied

  
glowby
Member
Posts: 75
From: Fox River Grove, IL
Joined: 05-29-2010


(1)
Message 818 of 944 (884928)
03-15-2021 3:05 AM
Reply to: Message 814 by marc9000
03-14-2021 9:16 PM


Re: Essential vs. non-essential fuel use
You see it as "growing the government". I see it as demanding that our government help us deal with the problem, providing strategies and leadership. As we learned with COVID, a national response to a crisis is much better than a willy-nilly approach.
marc9000 writes:
The very rich, the upper middle class, the bottom class of idleness, none of them has a thing to worry about. Everyone else, look out!
No one is getting out of this unscathed except the very rich, and they're sure to find it a huge nuisance and expense. The smart ones support mitigation efforts. It's better for their ultimate bottom line and that of their heirs.
marc9000 writes:
glowby writes:
Essential vs. non-essential use isn't really the issue.
Of course not, it's all political.
Make up your mind. Essentiality or politicality. Because next you say...
marc9000 writes:
The upper class, and very rich, are obviously the ones using the most fossil fuels strictly for recreational, non essential purposes. They have more political clout...
Not all rich folks are into politics. Not all politicians are rich.
Don't worry if your rich neighbor's sit-down mower is gas-powered instead of electric and his yard is astroturf anyway. It has virtually no effect on the outcome. When his old Toro breaks down, his only options will be better ones. Electric ones.
I'm sure the solar and wind marketers downplay the downsides. But they don't hide them. That leaves them open to monster lawsuits they can't afford. Their industries are very competitive.
marc9000 writes:
glowby writes:
Let the rich folks have their gas guzzling limos, yachts, and private jets. As long as the other 99% of us have cleaner energy alternatives, their selfishness won't matter much.
I know that's your honest opinion - I've seen similar sentiments on these forums before. It's really appalling to freedom loving people, it's easy to see how past tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, many others, rose to power with that type of thinking anywhere near the mainstream in the societies they took over.
I don't get it. I'm just talking about tolerating rich people, not fascist tyrants. Yes, the very very rich screw up economies around the world. But from a logistics POV of the climate crisis, they're not likely to help or hurt much. They'll find ways to profit from it. But so what. They profit from everything.
marc9000 writes:
Stricter regulations resulting in price increases, making it harder and harder for people who want or need a new car to be able to buy one.
The regs don't necessarily cause price increases.
I'm OK with paying more to help deal with the problem. For generations we had no idea that the trash we were throwing into the air would come back to haunt us. Oops! Now we have to deal with the garbage. It's not a cheap easy task. Our ancestors had free atmospheric garbage disposal, they thought. We don't.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 814 by marc9000, posted 03-14-2021 9:16 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 823 by marc9000, posted 03-17-2021 9:12 PM glowby has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 819 of 944 (884942)
03-15-2021 5:19 PM
Reply to: Message 815 by marc9000
03-14-2021 9:35 PM


Re: An Inconvenient Truth -- still true
marc9000 writes:

Don't mind if I do. You might remember this famous statement of Obama's;

How did Obama prevent those power plants in Texas from winterizing? Please be specific.


This message is a reply to:
 Message 815 by marc9000, posted 03-14-2021 9:35 PM marc9000 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 820 by AZPaul3, posted 03-16-2021 12:03 PM Taq has not replied
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AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 820 of 944 (884947)
03-16-2021 12:03 PM
Reply to: Message 819 by Taq
03-15-2021 5:19 PM


Re: An Inconvenient Truth -- still true
I thought it had something to do with watermelons in Kenya? I'm unclear.

Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 819 by Taq, posted 03-15-2021 5:19 PM Taq has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 821 of 944 (884953)
03-16-2021 6:18 PM
Reply to: Message 738 by Phat
03-03-2021 3:19 PM


Re: An Inconvenient Truth -- still true
No, but it describes fairly thoroughly the differences between left and right wing thinking...at least in regards o Authoritarian tendencies. Each side tends to believe stereotypes about the other side.
Except that Bob Altemeyer, the author of The Authoritarians (downloadable for free as a PDF or for cheap in a few e-book formats, plus an easy and interesting read), was not in the least engaging in spinning stereotypes about high-RWAs (right wing authoritarians). Rather, you and yours are the ones prone to engaging in stereotyping.
[ Yes, we low-RWAs are also subject to stereotyping, but we also engage in much more independent thought than high-RWAs do. That is why we are so much more difficult to organize, kind of like trying to herd cats, whereas high-RWAs are so compliant that herds of sheep turn green with envy. ]
Here is what Altemeyer wrote (pp ):
quote:
The second reason I can offer for reading what follows is that it is not chock full of opinions, but experimental evidence. Liberals have stereotypes about conservatives, and conservatives have stereotypes about liberals. Moderates have stereotypes about both. Anyone who has watched, or been a liberal arguing with a conservative (or vice versa) knows that personal opinion and rhetoric can be had a penny a pound. But arguing never seems to get anywhere. Whereas if you set up a fair and square experiment in which people can act nobly, fairly, and with integrity, and you find that most of one group does, and most of another group does not, that’s a fact, not an opinion. And if you keep finding the same thing experiment after experiment, and other people do too, then that’s a body of facts that demands attention.3 Some people, we have seen to our dismay, don’t care a hoot what scientific investigation reveals; but most people do. If the data were fairly gathered and we let them do the talking, we should be on a higher plane than the current, “Sez you!”
Altemeyer, now retired, was a professor of psychology at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg (AKA "The Peg"). He conducted four decades of actual research in authoritarianism, gathering data in the wild (well, from his students and their families) and analyzing it. He spent most of his PhD career studying authoritarianism and published several papers on the subject. Then shortly before retirement, he wrote The Authoritarians as a more accessible work on the subject (his articles were heavily laden with mathematics and hence virtually unreadable by laypersons) and motivated by the greatest authoritarian threat at the time, Dubya (he and John Dean have since co-written a second book dealing with Trump).
His entry into this specialization was almost by accident. From the introduction of The Authoritarians:
quote:
In the fall of 2005 I found myself engaged, most unexpectedly, in a heavy exchange of emails with the man who had blown the whistle on Watergate, John Dean. He was writing a book about "conservatives without conscience"--which the late Senator Barry Goldwater was to have co-authored. Dean, Goldwater, and others with solid Republican credentials had been alarmed by the capture of the Grand Old Party by the Religious Right and its seemingly amoral leaders. Dean was plowing through the social science literatures on conservatism and religion to see what perspective academics could offer his analysis, and eventually he ran across my name.
Who am I? I'm a nearly retired psychology professor in Canada who has spent most of his life studying authoritarianism. I got into this field by being lazy. When I took the exams for getting a Ph.D. at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1965, I failed a question about a famous early effort to understand the authoritarian personality. I had to write a paper to prove I could learn at least something about this research, which had gotten itself into a huge hairy mess by then. However, I got caught up in the tangle too. Thus I didn't start studying authoritarianism because I am a left-winger (I think I'm a moderate on most issues) or because I secretly hated my father. I got into it because it presented a long series of puzzles to be solved, and I love a good mystery.
Now, 40 years later, everyone who knows me would rather volunteer for a root canal operation at a school for spastic dental students than ask me a question about authoritarianism. My wife has never read a single page in any of my books. Few of my colleagues in the psychology department at the University of Manitoba have asked about my research since 1973. People I meet at parties, including folks in their 70s, inevitably discover they have to call the baby-sitter about three minutes after casually asking me, "What do you do?" You can't shut me up once I get going. Yet John Dean was reading everything I had written and pummeling me with insightful questions for months on end. I had died and gone to heaven. And since John's best-selling book, Conservatives Without Conscience had used my research to help explain how America was going to the devil, he thought I should write an easy-read, non-technical account of what I have found before I do die, and go to heaven or the devil. It will begin appearing on a screen near you soon.
He devised and perfected that tools of his craft, questionnaires, and collected data for the next four decades. He subjected all of his students to those questionnaires as well as those of their families whom he could get to volunteer. He also conducted diachronic studies, following those students throughout their lives to see how their attitudes and RWA ratings changed over time (eg, most arrived from being insulated in their families and communities with high RWA scores, then their experience in university lowered their RWA scores, but when then they had their own kids to raise their RWA scores went up, etc).
After having arrived at his subjects' RWA scores, he also administered questionnaires about their attitudes and beliefs. Thus his findings of what high-RWAs think and believe are based on his research and not at all on any stereotyping.
Just read the book. It's free and it is an easy and interesting read. And despite his joking that only masochists would read his footnotes, those footnotes contain the most interesting content.
In general,however, one group believs in caring for the group (of humanity on the planet) above their own self interests. The other side does not...but not simply because they are selfish or power hungry. The Hight RWA believe that it is detrimental to be forced to arrive at a consensus that impinges on personal freedom.
No, that's not really what he found. Rather, you have just offered some of the rationalizations used by high-RWAs.
High-RWAs operate on a daily basis in a heightened state of fear and hate (most of that hate generated by near paranoid fear). They tend to adopt a xenophobic world view of "them against us" in which "us" is a narrowly defined in-group. In that world view, those in the out-group are perceived as threats to your very existence.
A corollary that should be noted is not mentioned by Altemeyer. The limbic system (AKA "r-complex", "reptilian brain" since we share that with reptiles). That includes the amygdala which includes the processing of emotional responses (including fear, anxiety, and aggression) also known as "fight or flight" -- it is reported that brain scans of right and left wingers show the amygdalae of right-wingers to be enlarged. On top of our limbic system we have the mammalian cortex and then the primate neo-cortex, which we use for our rational thought processing. Blood flow to the brain is important and physical anthropologists discuss (at least in science popularizing) the metabolic and nutritional demands that our brains place on our bodies.
Punch line: Brain scans reportedly show changes in the distribution of blood in the brain (and hence greater or lesser brain activity) in response to different kinds of situations. When engaged in rational thought (eg, performing mental arithmetic), then blood flow is mainly to the neo-cortex. When responding to an emotional situation, especially to fear and anger, then blood flow to the neo-cortex is shut down and redirected to the limbic system, to a "fight or flight" response.
I am a military veteran with 35 years of service. Our most important evolutions were training evolutions (yes, Navy). Consider that military service, especially in war time, has been described as weeks of boredom punctuated by minutes of sheer terror. In those minutes of sheer terror, all your brain's blood is redirected to your limbic system shutting down your neo-cortex (any hope of rational thought). So when the sh*t hits the fan, not only do you not have time to think, but you are also incapable of thinking. That is why you train constantly, so that in those emergency situations you don't have to think but rather your training kicks in and you do what you need to do to function and to survive and to do what you need to do.
How that relates to high-RWAs with their hyper-active amygdalae is that high-RWAs will tend to react emotionally with their right-wing propaganda kicking in without putting any thought into it, whereas low-RWAs will actually stop and think about things.
If you are an authoritarian wanna-be leader, then you would want to gather support from high-RWAs and to suppress the low-RWAs. High-RWAs are the actual "sheeple", ever ready to follow a leader, whereas low-RWAs are more like cats whose independent thinking makes them so difficult to herd as to spawn their own meme ("like herding cats"). As Altemeyer describes it (cannot find the actual text right now) when an authoritarian leader tells high RWAs that he believes what they do, then they believe him, but when he tells the same thing to low RWAs, they don't believe him and question his motives.
 
Another characteristic of high RWAs is their cruelty. Well, it's more a tendency to blame and want to punish the victim.
For example, when a hurricane hits a red state, then everybody, including those low-RWA Democrats, move immediately to help them recover. But when a blue state gets hit (eg, Hurricane Sandy hitting New York City) then the high-RWA Republicans work to block aid to the blue state.
We saw this in action at the start of the pandemic. The earliest outbreaks were in the ports of entry which are predominantly in blue states like New York, California, and Washington. So the Trump Administration, gleefully noting that blue states were being affected, did the best it could to completely f*ck up our response (including having FEMA steal PPE and ventilators from states' shipments, which led to the Maryland governor to smuggle supplies in from South Korea in a James Bond operation). In order to punish the blue states.
 
And starting from page 20 (but also read the preceding pages):
quote:
The last string of studies I want to lay before you regarding authoritarian
submission concerns authoritarians’ willingness to hold officials accountable for their misdeeds. Or rather, their lack of willingness--which catches your eye because high RWAs generally favor punishing the bejabbers out of misdoers. But they proved less likely than most people to punish a police officer who beat up a handcuffed demonstrator, or a chief of detectives who assaulted an accused child molester being held in jail, or--paralleling the trial of U.S. Army Lt. William Calley--an Air Force officer convicted of murder after leading unauthorized raids on Vietnamese villages.
The “Milgram experiment,” which we shall discuss at the end of this book,
offers another example of authoritarian followers “going easy” on authorities. In his famous study Stanley Milgram maneuvered subjects into a situation in which they were ordered by an Experimenter to inflict painful, and possibly lethal, electric shocks on another person (who in fact was not hurt at all). The subjects clearly did not want to deliver the shocks, but the Experimenter told them they had to. The Experimenter even said, if pressed, that he would accept responsibility for whatever happened. Yet Tom Blass of the University of Maryland at Baltimore found that high RWA students tended to blame the Experimenter less for what happened to the victim than most students did.15 Whom did they blame instead? I found, when I replicated the study, they blamed the poor devil who was ordered to deliver the shocks, and the victim, more than most others did.
If some day George W. Bush is indicted for authorizing torture, you can bet
your bottom dollar the high RWAs will howl to the heavens in protest. It won’t matter how extensive the torture was, how cruel and sickening it was, how many years it went on, how many prisoners died, how devious Bush was in trying to evade America’s laws and traditional stand against torture, or how many treaties the U.S. broke. Such an indictment would grind right up against the core of authoritarian followers, and they won’t have it. Maybe they’ll even say, “The president was busy running the war. He didn’t really know. It was all done by Rumsfeld and others.”
Authoritarian Aggression. When I say authoritarian followers are aggressive I don’t mean they stride into bars and start fights. First of all, high RWAs go to church enormously more often than they go to bars. Secondly, they usually avoid anything approaching a fair fight. Instead they aggress when they believe right and might are on their side. “Right” for them means, more than anything else, that their hostility is (in their minds) endorsed by established authority, or supports such authority. “Might” means they have a huge physical advantage over their target, in weaponry say, or in numbers, as in a lynch mob. It’s striking how often authoritarian aggression happens in dark and cowardly ways, in the dark, by cowards who later will do everything they possibly can to avoid responsibility for what they did. Women, children, and others unable to defend themselves are typical victims. Even more striking, the attackers typically feel morally superior to the people they are assaulting in an unfair fight. We shall see research evidence in the next chapter that this self-righteousness plays a huge role in high RWAs’ hostility.
Just read the fracking book already!
What would happen, for instance, if the majority was poor and needed a lions share of the funds shared? That does not sound fair and equitable to me, and I wouldn't automatically believe that Jesus would support it.
In such a situation as you describe, all of society would be on the verge of complete collapse. So there would be no optimal solution to save society.
Let's try an analogy. You are on the USS Arizona on 07 Dec 1941 at 0806 when the last bomb has hit it. What is the optimal solution to saving the ship? If you were in a position to help evacuate wounded shipmates, would you refuse to do so because that would detract from saving the ship which you already know is a lost cause?
In their opposition to social programs, Republicans bitch and moan that it's too expensive and, beside, there are those who cheat on those programs (Reagan's "welfare queens"). For one thing, evidence of cheating on these programs rank alongside "voter fraud" in that they constitute a very small percentage.
So is this the Army? If one soldier out of 1,000 does something wrong, do you punish the 999 other soldiers who did right because of that f*ck-up? I've been there in the Air Force at tech school. Since our basic electronics doctrine (BED) school was on the other side of the runway from the Keesler Triangle, we had to march there in formation. One morning in the pouring rain, one airman out of the entire formation had forgotten his raingear, so nobody could wear their own raingear. We were all punished for one troop's f*ck-up. As the CO of Reese's military school in Malcolm in the Middle would say, "Now I will leave the room so that you can all thank him."
Is that how we are supposed to run a social program? In the high-RWA mind, yes. In the rational mind, no.
So how much does it really cost? Watch Robert Reich's video, Where Your Tax Dollars Really Go, in which he breaks down the Discretionary Spending Budget :
Income Security spending, which includes food stamps: 6%
54% goes to defense, most of which goes to defense contractors.
So you want to argue that that 6% is going to destroy the economy, then you answer this one pressing question for me: What the hell have you been smoking?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 738 by Phat, posted 03-03-2021 3:19 PM Phat has not replied

  
marc9000
Member
Posts: 1509
From: Ky U.S.
Joined: 12-25-2009
Member Rating: 1.4


Message 822 of 944 (884978)
03-17-2021 9:05 PM
Reply to: Message 819 by Taq
03-15-2021 5:19 PM


Re: An Inconvenient Truth -- still true
marc9000 writes:
Don't mind if I do. You might remember this famous statement of Obama's;
How did Obama prevent those power plants in Texas from winterizing? Please be specific.
I never said nor implied that Obama "prevented those power plants in Texas from "winterizing". Let's look at the quote about coal plants that you chopped off;
marc9000 writes:
Don't mind if I do. You might remember this famous statement of Obama's;
quote:
“If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them,” Obama said, responding to a question about his cap-and-trade plan. He later added, “Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
Why did you dishonestly imply that I said something I didn't?
There have been lots of accusations in this thread about Texas Republicans being responsible for the lack of "winterization" of the Texas power plants. I'd like to see some specifics on that - just who those Republicans were, and what they did to prevent the plants being ready for unusually cold weather.
Actually the plants were winterized, for normal Texas winters. They weren't fully prepared for once-in-a-decade-or-two arctic blasts. Possibly because of the ever increasing "global warming" alarmism among the population and Democrats in Texas. For global warming alarmists to point fingers at Republicans for the lack of readiness in extra cold weather is pretty laughable, considering the lack of specifics shown for that so far in this thread.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 819 by Taq, posted 03-15-2021 5:19 PM Taq has not replied

  
marc9000
Member
Posts: 1509
From: Ky U.S.
Joined: 12-25-2009
Member Rating: 1.4


Message 823 of 944 (884979)
03-17-2021 9:12 PM
Reply to: Message 818 by glowby
03-15-2021 3:05 AM


Re: Essential vs. non-essential fuel use
I don't get it. I'm just talking about tolerating rich people, not fascist tyrants.
When tolerating them means letting them set rules for the unwashed masses, then exempting themselves from those same rules , that's when they have their foot in the door to become fascist tyrants.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 818 by glowby, posted 03-15-2021 3:05 AM glowby has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 824 by glowby, posted 03-17-2021 9:36 PM marc9000 has not replied

  
glowby
Member
Posts: 75
From: Fox River Grove, IL
Joined: 05-29-2010


Message 824 of 944 (884980)
03-17-2021 9:36 PM
Reply to: Message 823 by marc9000
03-17-2021 9:12 PM


Re: Essential vs. non-essential fuel use
When tolerating them means letting them set rules for the unwashed masses, then exempting themselves from those same rules , that's when they have their foot in the door to become fascist tyrants.
Unwashed masses? Speak for yourself! Just got out of the shower and I smell great.
What rules? "You can buy it if you can afford it" isn't a rule. It's a fact of life.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 823 by marc9000, posted 03-17-2021 9:12 PM marc9000 has not replied

  
marc9000
Member
Posts: 1509
From: Ky U.S.
Joined: 12-25-2009
Member Rating: 1.4


Message 825 of 944 (886191)
05-09-2021 6:12 PM


PaulK, you didn't participate in this thread much, your participation was pretty much in the middle of the thread only. Did you notice Message 747? You might want to check the other messages that led up to it, if you need to. But I can sum it up pretty easily; One of my opponents grudgingly acknowledged that I proved an earlier message completely wrong, and another opponent called me "a liar worse than Trump" when I claimed it was wrong. And they both got approval dots from the same 3 posters.
Maybe they approved them for different parts of the messages????? Who knows. Logic tells me one thing; SHOUTING ME DOWN HERE IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY ATTEMPT TO FIND OUT WHAT THE TRUTH IS.
Other ways I'm responded to all over the place here indicates the same thing.

Replies to this message:
 Message 826 by AZPaul3, posted 05-09-2021 9:50 PM marc9000 has not replied
 Message 827 by PaulK, posted 05-10-2021 12:24 AM marc9000 has replied
 Message 828 by Tanypteryx, posted 05-10-2021 11:27 AM marc9000 has replied

  
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