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Author Topic:   Who's the bigger offender: Conservatives or Liberals?
dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 103 of 773 (886385)
05-18-2021 3:05 PM
Reply to: Message 96 by marc9000
05-17-2021 8:25 AM


DWise1 writes:
Johnson has been identified as the GOP's foremost advancer of conspiracy theories and disinformation. His disinformation claims are so in line with the Kremlin's that an MSNBC commentator always adds before showing a video of Johnson repeating that disinformation "We had to pay extra to translate it from the original Russian."
So here you're comparing yourself to Ron Johnson and claiming that you're little different from him.
I'd guess you could come up with something like this for any Republican.
Do you compare yourself with "The Squad" - AOC, Omar, Tlaib, Pressley?
I must have hit a nerve there, gotten far too close to the truth, because you immediately went for the Trumpian trick of deflect and divert.
No, I do not compare myself with "The Squad", where you were comparing yourself to Ron Johnson, or at least calling for us to make that comparison.
Well, you are like Ron Johnson in that you continually spout dezinformatsiya (дезинформация), Russian disinformation, along with so much other conspiracy theory nonsense. And no amount of deflection and diversion will change that, so please stop trying to change the subject.
We know that Ron Johnson, like Rudy Giuliani, had been in contact with a known Russian agent (though a different one than Rudy). Had he been turned? Which part of MICE was used?
Was it Money? That would most definitely have been a major factor in turning Trump, since there's hardly anything that he loves more than money besides getting his fragile ego fluffed all the time. According to my annual counter-intelligence and security GMTs (General Military Training), most Americans who betray their country do so for money. Is that what turned you?
Was it Ideology? We know that Trump has none. We also know that the GOP has none anymore ever since embracing Trumpism and Q-Anon BS to become the current GQP. And the GOP rank-and-file who might still have some remnants of the old ideology are either burying their heads in the sand or jumping ship and leaving the party.
I won't even consider Compromise or Coersion since they're all so gleeful in committing their treason.
Ego could be another matter, since that would be a high motivator for Trump. What about you? Are you that sick of a puppy too?
If anything, you would have been recruited through the Ideology of Trumpism, much the same as Trump's "sheeple" whom he repeatedly fleeces out of their money. You actually believe the lies that he and his enablers in the GQP feed you. I doubt very much that the Russians are using you directly, not even as a "useful idiot", because you are too amateurish and ineffective for them to consider you to be "useful."
 
BTW, the only reason that most "true Christians" support Israel is because they fully expect the existence of Israel to trigger World War III which will lead to their Christ's Return. They want to create the End of the World as a self-fulfilling prophesy. The very last thing that they would ever want would be peace in the Middle East, so they will do whatever it takes to keep such peace from ever happening.
In sharp contrast, we normals do want to bring about peace in the Middle East along with the existence of Israel.

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


(1)
Message 104 of 773 (886387)
05-18-2021 6:11 PM
Reply to: Message 83 by marc9000
05-15-2021 10:41 PM


The mail-in voting, the early voting, the questions about voter ID, etc.
We've been using mail-in voting for decades. It works very well, including our ability to validate each ballot. For that matter, the groups who have traditionally used it the most usually vote Republican. The only reason Republicans are squacking about it now is because of Trump's totally unfounded complaints that they weren't secure. How are they supposed to not be secure? Just exactly what is supposed to be wrong about them ... besides negating Republican attempts to suppress the vote?
Same thing with early voting. What's supposed to be the problem with that? None, except it negates the Republican vote suppression tricks of limiting voter access to the polls in key areas they want to suppress.
An example of Republicans trying to still suppress the vote was Texas governor's limiting of one drop box per county, severely limiting access to the polls for about 4 million voters in Harris County (Houston). Fortunately, the officials running the election just ignored the governor's order. But even if they hadn't, early voting would still have allowed voters to find time to get to that one drop box which couldn't happen in a non-early voting election day of about 13 hours. And just how was the governor's limit supposed to have "preserved the purity of the ballot box" outside of that wording's historic connection to Jim Crow laws to keep blacks from voting?
Seriously, please describe in sufficient detail what you think is wrong with mail-in and early voting. And how are measures against them supposed to ensure the integrity of the ballot outside of keeping "the wrong people" from voting?
Voter ID is even worse. Voter fraud is extremely low, so it's a "solution" without a problem to solve. Just exactly what "problem" is an ID supposed to solve? As long as you're registered to vote, that should be enough. In our in-person voting procedure, you need to be in the printouts to be able to vote and you sign your line of the printouts. If you try to pose as somebody else, then that can only work if that other person is registered -- there's no way that any voter ID could keep extra ballots from entering the system (and certainly not the "3 million illegals casting ballots" that Trump claimed in the 2016 election. When that other person you posed as comes in and votes, then that will flag you for investigation of voter fraud -- there were 16 cases of voter fraud in this last election and almost all of them were for Trump.
While voter fraud is almost non-existent, election fraud is widely practiced by the Republicans. And now Republican state legislatures are busy passing election laws to deepen that election fraud, even to the point of laws which would give state legislatures the power to arbitrarily overturn the elections they don't like and put their choice into office. Now that is blatantly Stalinism (Stalin quoted as saying: "It does not matter who votes. What matters is who counts those votes.").
What happened leading up to the 2016 election was that Trump was repeatedly complaining that the election was rigged and urged his followers to rise up in revolt when he lost. Well, he didn't. Then leading up to the 2020 election he was doing the same thing, claiming that if he lost then the election would have been rigged and urging his followers to rise up in revolt in that case -- and when he did lose, he went on a rally tour to whip his followers into a frenzy that led to the 06 Jan Insurrection.
The only reason why Trump's followers believe the stupid lies about voter and election fraud is because that's what Trump has been telling them and they're too stupid to realize that he's just lying to them yet again. Why don't they trust mail-in ballots? Because Trump told that to not trust them.
And all the lies about ballots mysteriously appearing at the end of Election Day. That's because the Republicans would not allow early and mail-in ballots to be processed and counted as they came in, but rather they had to be held at a secure location until the polls closed on Election Day at which point they were to be trucked in for processing. The Republicans set that up and then had the audacity to cry "foul" when what they engineered to happen did happen. That includes the "Red Mirage" in which the results of the in-person votes, anticipated to be mostly Republican, would show Republicans ahead that evening, but then would lose to the predominantly-Democratic early and mail-in ballots. And it took days for all those ballots to be processed -- California, Oregon, and Washington all use mail-in ballots and all were called at almost the very instant that the polls closed on Election Day because they allowed those ballots to be processed as they came in.
BTW, that also shows why, when you engage in a conspiracy with Trump, that you never tell Trump the plan. Because Trump is a big blabbermouth and he will reveal the entire plan to the world. That "Red Mirage" plan? Trump blabbed it. At least we know that our government doesn't have aliens or UFOs, because if we did then Trump would have blabbed it to the world.
Conservative's lack of confidence in it is really very comparable to the liberal hysteria we heard 4 years ago when it was claimed that Russia interfered with Hillary's victory.
Actually, Russia did interfere with the 2016 election. Mueller found overwhelming evidence of massive collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russia. He just couldn't gather evidence of conspiracy, but that was mainly because of multiple instances of obstruction of justice by Trump (ten of which are enumerated and described in the report). And Trump could still be charged with those multiple counts of obstruction of justice now that he no longer has cover from that OLC memo.
Not as much free speech was silenced that time.
All this fake yapping that "conservative voices are being silenced" reminds me of Lisa Kudrow's parody of Trump's last press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, in Netflix' mockumentary, Death to 2020:
Even though it's satire, we repeatedly see Republicans reading from that exact script in their fake cries of "they're silencing us!"
[details of the cause of Sicknick's death being corrected by the press, but you still bitch about it ]
Raising fake issues about one single Capitol policeman's death does not change the facts. About 150 policemen sustained injuries from the violent mob of traitorous Trump supporters as they stormed the Capitol. A number of those policemen were indeed struck by objects such as fire extinguishers (wielded by a former or off-duty fireman, as I recall), some of them on or about the head. We all saw the videos of that! Well, maybe viewers of FOX didn't, since I would doubt that FOX would have carried the videos, not wanting their viewers to see the truth.
And now we have Republicans in Congress trying to deny that the Insurrection even happened. Like Congressman Andrew Clyde (R-GA) who claims that it was all peaceful and the insurrectionists acted no differently than any tour group on any normal day. And then there are the photos of Clyde in the house chamber helping to barricade the door against those "peaceful tourists" while shitting himself in fear of his life at the hands of those "peaceful tourists".
The Republicans in Congress have a very real reason to hinder and try to prevent in investigation of that insurrectionist riot: they are implicated up to their congressional lapel pins. As the conspiracies around that riot are uncovered, they know that many of them will be found to have been co-conspirators. Like the ones who sponsored groups of rioters on reconnaissance tours of the Capitol building in the preceding days. There are a lot more shoes going to drop.
I believed the reports that conservative poll observers were sometimes denied entrance, and expelled, from polling places at times during the election.
The reports I heard were of Trumpists being urged to go to polling places and demand to be allowed in as "observers." Basically, the purpose for that was to disrupt the process and to intimidate the voters, both of which are illegal in every state I can think of. I seem to also recall some wanting to bring in firearms.
Every state has its own election laws which do include the regulation of poll watchers/observers. There are ways to register as a poll observer and there are requirements for how they are to conduct themselves, including conduct with is prohibited. From what I heard, those "poll observers" did not conform to their states' laws but rather were acting as renegades.
If you recall differently, then do please provide actual cases that we can research and determine the truth about. Please do not rely on your usual Trumpist propaganda rags.

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


(2)
Message 107 of 773 (886396)
05-19-2021 11:57 AM
Reply to: Message 106 by AZPaul3
05-19-2021 11:31 AM


marc writes:
I'm just like Trump, it doesn't matter what I say, it's automatically wrong because I say it?
Yes. Finally, you begin to understand.
Except it's not solely because Trump and marc said it (and hence are playing that stupid hypocritical "I'm a victim!" game which is virtually identical to "true Christians'" stupid hypocritical Christian persecution game), but rather because both have such a long history of being so incredibly wrong in every way possible.
It's like approaching every creationist claim like it's just another lie. Experience has taught us that that is the safe bet and best practice. Assume that they're lying until you can verify their claim or statement. Lend any credence to what they say only after you have found it to be true. Yeah, like they would ever make a truthful statement!
Edited by dwise1, : Added to last sentence " and best practice. Assume that they're lying until you can verify their claim or statement. Lend any credence to what they say only after you have found it to be true. Yeah, like they would ever make a truthful statement!"

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


Message 117 of 773 (886429)
05-19-2021 7:52 PM
Reply to: Message 111 by Phat
05-19-2021 2:43 PM


What gives you the impression that there are two sets of facts? That there is division?
Huh??? Whatever gave you that nonsensical idea?
That there is division?
The only division I know of is between reality and delusion. Normals stick with reality. The delusional lose themselves in delusion.
Are you trying to argue for delusion?
That only some are persecuted?
What?
Nothing I have written has anything to do with any actual persecution. Rather, we have all these fakers who keep screaming that they are being persecuted. "Conservative voices are being silenced" while they are practically the only voices we can hear. "Christians are being persecuted" just because they are no longer being allowed to persecute non-Christian (or vulnerable minorities within the Christian community).
What is it that makes Marc 100% wrong when he only uses 50% of the facts to begin with?
He doesn't even begin to use 50% of the facts. Nor 10%. Nor even 1%.
Basically, when someone uses only falsehoods, then how can anything they say not be wrong?

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


Message 118 of 773 (886430)
05-19-2021 7:57 PM
Reply to: Message 113 by Phat
05-19-2021 2:49 PM


Re: Say What?
I cant believe that Oklahoma Republicans are that callous...or clueless...wait maybe I can.
Believe it. I mean, what part of "Republican" do you fail to understand?
Oklahoma passes a law that can protect drivers who run over protesters.
An interviewee remarked that his child recently asked him how the Nazis could have ever taken power. His reply was "Just look at what's happening now."

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


(2)
Message 124 of 773 (886461)
05-20-2021 7:36 PM
Reply to: Message 123 by Tanypteryx
05-20-2021 6:05 PM


Multiple news sources report that "Republicans in Oklahoma's State Senate last week passed an "intimidation" bill which grants immunity to drivers who hit protesters."
For example for the link to a CNN report I provided to Phat in Message 118:
  Oklahoma passes a law that can protect drivers who run over protesters.

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


(3)
Message 138 of 773 (886558)
05-23-2021 7:34 PM
Reply to: Message 126 by marc9000
05-22-2021 7:45 PM


Re: Why, Yes, Marc. Our sky is blue. What's yours?
What did you think of the Ronald Reagan presidency?
He didn't know what he was doing. Or rather, he didn't understand reality.
Two landmark results of his governorship of California was to defund the public education system and to waste state money on "conservation" efforts. Implementing his changes to turning office lights on and off and office telephones cost much more than was ever saved.
His talk of the "traditional nuclear family" came from complete ignorance of traditional families. Traditional families are multigenerational extended families. Basically, it was accruing as many family hands as possible to work the family farm. That included grandparents to take care of the children who were too young to work yet, aunts and uncles and cousins. Not only were the elders cared for, but if any member were to be injured and unable to work then the others could cover for him. The extended family could continue to function and take care of its own.
The "traditional nuclear family" was an aberration born mainly of the Industrial Revolution which replaced the actual traditional farm family with an urban family unit consisting of non-productive children and only one wage-earner. If that single wage-earner were to become injured then that isolated family faced doom. If a family elder were to become too old to work or become infirm, there was no safety net for him. As the US population moved from being mainly rural to become urban in the 1930's and 40's, the loss of the social safety net of traditional families led to the need for Social Security.
 
There were two questions put to Reagan which told me the most about his unsuitability:
  1. The Equal Rights Amendment. Equal rights for franchised citizens. Should be a no-brainer, not controversial in the least. Kind of like the idea of "one citizen, one vote" which is currently so vehemently under attack by Republicans.
    Reagan deemed it "too controversial" and so it should not be an amendment to the Constitution, but rather become enacted through a patchwork of state and local laws -- kind of like gay marriage laws which left families vulnerable to having their children taken away from them should they ever dare to travel through another state with different laws.
  2. Abortion, which is a very controversial issue full of all kinds of moral dilemmas. If anything is far from settled and in need to thoughtful discussion and deliberation, that would be this issue.
    Reagan favored a Constitutional Amendment banning abortion.
So a highly controversial issue should be resolved with a Constitutional Amendment while a clear and obvious fact that even Mr. Magoo could see should not? This guy had no clue which way was up.
And "trickle down" economics doesn't. Never has, never will.
My views represent more of mainstream America than do yours, and that's a fact.
Then that is an indictment of "mainstream America" who are well known for voting against their own interests. But most of that is because the Republicans are lying to them.
 
ABE:
I forgot to mention Reagan's "big tax cut" that he and Republicans bragged about. It nearly doubled my taxes -- lower middle class at that time. And nearly everybody I asked about it at the time also saw their income tax go up drastically. Yet again, the rich got a big tax break and the middle class got screwed.
Ever since then, every time a Republican starts talking about "tax cuts" I grab hold of my wallet very tightly. The Great Republican Tax Scam of 2017 is a prime example.
Edited by dwise1, : ABE

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Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 141 of 773 (886564)
05-24-2021 12:40 PM
Reply to: Message 139 by LamarkNewAge
05-24-2021 1:56 AM


Re: Why, Yes, Marc. Our sky is blue. What's yours?
As I said: "There were two questions put to Reagan which told me the most about his unsuitability:"
These were statements he made during the campaign about his position. So what the f are you talking about?
Something that is controversial like banning abortion he wanted to be enacted on the federal level as part of the Constitution while he opposed the same for something that is so obviously right like equal rights for citizens.
As I said, that is what showed me that Candidate Reagan was unsuitable.
Also, the draft ended in the early 70's.

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


(4)
Message 144 of 773 (886622)
05-27-2021 8:51 PM
Reply to: Message 137 by Mercury
05-23-2021 6:24 PM


Re: Why, Yes, Marc. Our sky is blue. What's yours?
As to defund the police, I'm open to negotiations. How about police duty? It'll be like jury duty but you're doing it for observing/aiding the police.
To be honest, I misread this entire section a couple times.
One of the biggest problems with "defund the police" is that it's a lightning rod for GQP lies and propaganda, like some Democrats self-identifying as "democratic socialists" (despite their instead describing social democracy which is an improved form of capitalism).
Police are needed, but we do need better police. Part of the problem is a form of "creeping features" (a problem well known to all engineers) in which more and more social tasks have been given to the police with insufficient or no training and no resources. Their mission needs to be well defined and they need to be trained and supported for that mission. Reorganization is needed to create agencies within the police who are trained and supplied for those extra missions that had creeped in and entire police organizations to be set up to work together and support each other in the police organization's overall mission. Yes, I'm running in military mode right now, but remember that it's the amateurs who study combat whereas the professionals study organization and logistics.
Greater community involvement such as you advocate could help in providing direction for that reorganization by helping to identify what it needs to address.
The trend towards militarizing the police further confuses their mission, basically transforming de-escalation and negotiation into armed conflict. That's where a lot of funding has been going (though I understand that police departments can get good deals from government military surplus). Again, it's not so much defunding but rather diverting the funds to where they can do more good for the community. We will still need police special tactics units for certain situations that will still arise, but that's different from creating an environment where every stop is seen as that certain situation.
There's also that police culture for hiding and moving problems (not unlike what the Catholic Church and other organizations have done with their problematic leaders) while getting rid of the good cops who try to do the right thing even when that's short of whistleblowing (I'll spare us of what I've seen). Greater community involvement should help in stopping that, but it will undoubtedly take more.
But now I'm going to downshift from military mode into my Chief mode. Training! Police forces in other countries, especially in Europe, do much better. Why? Training! In Europe, in order to become a cop you need to basically get a college degree, at least two years worth. Here, I'm not even sure whether you need to be a high school graduate. You get selected for Police Academy and after a couple/few months of intensive training you're considered qualified. Mind you, that training is not trivial. For one thing, you are required to memorize by heart every single word of the entire criminal and traffic code (ie, all the laws that you will be expected to enforce) -- in some cases, if you transfer from one state to another you might need to go through that state's academy in order to come up to speed, or maybe not.
It's that "or maybe not" that worries me as a retired Chief Petty Officer. Shifting back up to military mode, training can make the difference between life and death. We've all seen depictions of USMC basic training where the DI tells his recruits to remember their training in order to survive. That is true (along with giving 110%, which is a real thing and our only weapon against mediocrity). Warfare has been described as days of mind-numbing boredom punctuated by minutes of sheer terror. Not unlike police patrols where any traffic stop could go sideways in an instant even though the vast majority of them don't. In those minutes of sheer terror, changes in blood flow within the brain shut down the ability to think rationally and kick into high gear near-instinctive reacting. The fundamental purpose of training for emergency situations is to make the correct actions nearly instinctive, so that when an emergency happens your training will kick in and you will know what to do without having to think it out when you have no time to think it out. Truly, remember your training.
And if there's no training for the emergency situations you find yourself in? Then random shit happens and people get hurt and even die.
My son's a cop who had to go through police academy a second time because he moved from one state to another. And when he did the right thing instead of covering up for another cop (Down, boy! It was a DUI involving a sheriff's deputy who had a loaded weapon in the car full of other drunks (the deputy was the least drunk of them, but not by much) -- in one CPO induction, one of the selectees was a sheriff's deputy who had joined the Sheriff's Department because, as his father advised him, "Son, since you drink so much and still drive, you need to become a cop." During that stop, civilians were coming out of the Denny's across the street, each with a phone that has a camera, so my son did the right thing for the community and took the deputy in (BTW, the deputy agreed that that was the right thing). As a result, his PD leadership went on a campaign to expel him even though he was an outstanding cop.
About a year ago, there was a small town incident in which a policewoman on patrol drew her sidearm and it accidentally discharged, killing the suspect. She resigned.
It turns out that she had never been to the police academy, nor had received much in way of formal training. Basically, she was out on patrol learning OJT (On the Job Training)! And because of her lack of training, a life was lost.
Following up on the news coverage saying that she had been put in for the police academy, but a slot hadn't opened up yet, so they had started training her locally and placed her on patrol as part of that training. I texted my son about it and he said that that is a common situation what with too many local PDs needing to fill positions but they can't qualify them by getting them the training that they need. My son was trying to justify what these community PDs were doing for purely practical reasons while my CPO-nature kept screaming out that if you don't train your people then you're screwed. Everybody's screwed!
Reform is definitely needed.

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


(4)
Message 166 of 773 (886979)
06-22-2021 8:36 PM
Reply to: Message 163 by Phat
06-22-2021 5:58 PM


Re: Prager U also has some good presentations.
The only counter-argument that most of you have is..."Well what do you expect? He is a conservative nut".
Well, conservative nuts are as conservative nuts do.
Did you even listen to any of that? Or did it just sooth your confirmation bias and reinforce your snowflake butt-hurt that "leftists" are just mean bullies whose only goal is to make you feel guilty and hurt your delicate feelings.
That's what I heard and not just here. Their rhetoric against The 1619 Project has nothing whatsoever to do with any valid criticisms. The 1619 Project's goal is to make known the role and consequences of slavery in US history. And indeed, anyone who knows much about US history can see that. Yet when we look at primary and secondary level textbooks, slavery is either ignored or whitewashed with depictions of content slaves who constantly sang for joy (that depiction which I read is from a Christian school textbook). But when the conservatives speak out against the 1619 Project, they do so on the basis that it will make the white students feel bad about themselves. Nothing about actual history, nor about the consequences of slavery that still affect us in the present, nor about any valid criticism of the Project. Instead, their goal is to keep the white students (and themselves) ignorant of the truth. AND to generate fake culture-war outrage in their right-wing followers, the same as with their more recent fake outrage about Dr. Seuss and Mr Potatohead and their more traditional fake outrage over the President wearing a tan suit (as least for Obama -- Biden hasn't worn one yet so they haven't had the opportunity, though McConnell has been photographed wearing a tan suit, so where's all the outrage now?) As conservative nuts do.
Same thing with their latest boogeyman, critical race theory (CRT), which they're turning into yet another conservative BS lie (as conservative nuts do). They wail and bemoan that it's meant to make the poor white students feel guilty and bad about themselves (poor next generation of little snowflakes). They're even passing laws against CRT being taught in the public schools which has never happened! CRT is a subject that is covered in law school (which is equivalent to working on a doctorate), and normally in the last year at that! Their use of CRT as a boogeyman is an outrageous BS lie which they are telling in order to create hysteria among their followers, the better to deceive and lead by the nose with. As conservative nuts do.
The thing about white privilege is that it's a situation that should not exist, yet it does. Making us aware of it is not to make us feel bad about ourselves, but rather to work to correct the situation.
I'm running out of time (dance classes at 1800). Do you know what a zero-sum game is? It's a situation in which you and someone else can either win or lose, but in order for you to win, the other guy must lose. If the other guy wins, then you lose. That is the mindset of conservative, of Trump, and obviously of you (or else you're catching those fleas from the conservative kennels you frequent).
In reality, there are many exchanges (AKA games) which are non-zero-sum. In such games, everybody can win, just not the entire pot. That's where negotiating comes into play. In order to get something you want, you let them have something that they want. Basically, win-win situations. Which Trump could never understand, which is why he couldn't negotiate his way out of a soaking wet paper bag.
The conservative BS that you're being fed is steeped in zero-sum mentality that if these other groups get something, then it's entire at your expense. Even to the point that if they win, then you lose. We keep seeing you express that. That's not the way that things actually work.
Gotta go.
Edited by dwise1, : added conservative outrage to conservative goals against 1619 Project

This message is a reply to:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 170 of 773 (886984)
06-24-2021 11:23 AM
Reply to: Message 169 by Phat
06-24-2021 8:04 AM


Re: Wannabe Conservative Thinkers
I suppose that our next step is to showcase what a true conservative thinker would think. And while we are at it, let us compare and contrast what a true liberal thinker might say.
The first step of that would be to list what true conservative thought even is (as well as true liberal thought).
For true conservative thought, you would need to go back decades to find it. They still use the old buzzwords, but that's not what they're about anymore.
An author calls the GQP "post-policy" meaning that they have no policy and no interest in governance. All they are devoted to is gaining and holding political power. They have no idea what to do with that power once they have it, nor do they have any desire to try to figure it out.
 
ABE:
In case I wasn't quite clear: Exactly what is true conservative thought and just what the hell does true conservative thought have to do with the current batch of right-wingnuts?
Conservatives used to stand for something. Like America, the Constitution of the United States of America, national defense, the military, the police, the Rule of Law, fiscal responsibility and conservativism, family values, etc. But not anymore. They now side with Russia and Putin! They stage and and continue to support an insurrection against the US government, seeking to destroy the Constitution of the United States of America. They are now calling to defund the military, which was a recurring theme in the Trump Administration. They approve of the vicious assaults on the Capitol police and not only refuse to recognize the police for protecting and saving the lives of the members and staff of Congress, but they (Congress Republicans) are doing everything they can to block any investigation into those assaults against police. They obstruct justice and the law at every turn. They give away great wealth to the wealthy and blithely start expensive wars (eg, Iraq and Afghanistan) without providing any way to pay for them -- time after time a Republican administration has exploded the deficit and destroyed the US economy leaving it up to the incoming Democratic administration to clean up the Republicans' mess while at the same time having to fight Republican obstruction (it's only when a Democrat is in the Oval Office that Republicans suddenly make a big hypocritical show of worrying about the deficit).
These right-wingnuts have nothing to do with actual conservative ideas. They are just pursuing their own agendas of deceiving and misleading the public to the detriment of our country.
 
Here is part of the reason for the Right's current call to defund the military because of the military's efforts to get rid of white supremacy in their ranks.
From Military Times: Is critical race theory OK for U.S. military? "Be open-minded and widely read," says top general:
As I have shared here before, at the US Air Force NCO Academy (I attended Air Force Communications Command (AFCC) Leadership School in 1982) they did teach us Marxism and Communism along with the structure of the Soviet government. Not in any attempt to turn us into Marxists or Communists, quite the contrary. To quote from The Art of War by Sun Tzu:
quote:
Scroll III (Offensive Strategy):
  1. Therefore I say: "Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.
  2. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.
  3. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril."

 
From the way it has been presented, my understanding is that Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was responding to further innuendo from not-yet-indicted child sex trafficker Matt "The Git" Gaetz who, lacking the courage to do so in person, wrote a nasty tweet about Gen. Milley. A retired Lt.Gen. replied pointing out that each one of the ten (10) overseas service stripes on Gen. Milley's right sleeve represents six months of combat duty and that retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense, has earned even more of those service stripes but he cannot wear them on his suit. So, Matt Gaetz, do you really want to do this?
Edited by dwise1, : ABE

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 Message 169 by Phat, posted 06-24-2021 8:04 AM Phat has not replied

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


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Message 190 of 773 (887064)
07-06-2021 1:56 PM
Reply to: Message 188 by ringo
07-06-2021 12:13 PM


Re: In Essence You Support A Meritocracy
Well, we should not make the mistake of taking the words Phat is using at face value. Nor according to their actual meaning.
Where is he getting this nonsense from? The right-wingnuts? The ones who constantly redefine words and ideas in order to create new boogeymen with which to scare their listeners, like Phat?
I've been getting the same kind of nonsense for decades from creationists. They'll go off complaining about "evilution" and its "consequences", none of which makes any sense if you understand anything about evolution. When you ask them just what they're talking about, they immediately deflect and divert. To be honest, it's almost a sure thing that they themselves don't understand anything that they're saying, but rather they're just repeating what they've been told.
So just what the hell is Phat talking about? One thing I'm pretty sure of is that he has no idea himself.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 188 by ringo, posted 07-06-2021 12:13 PM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 192 by ringo, posted 07-07-2021 12:17 PM dwise1 has not replied

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


(1)
Message 191 of 773 (887066)
07-06-2021 4:29 PM
Reply to: Message 186 by Phat
07-05-2021 11:28 PM


Re: In Essence You Support A Meritocracy
As Nationalism diminishes in the future, the United States will also diminish in scope and influence. She has been abandoned in favor of an entire planet being our collective humanist starship.
So then nationalism is yet another concept that you do not understand. A simple definition of nationalism, especially as it currently operates, is "Everything for us and just us alone ... fuck everybody else!" America First isolationalism was also strong right up until Pearl Harbor: "So what if Hitler conquers the rest of the world and now moves in to conquer us as well, America First!" Why should we care that the ship we're on is sinking? We are sitting in First Class! Your problem with the ship sinking does not concern us in the least.
I have a background in wargaming. Basically, wargaming is a technique for creating simulations of realworld conflicts (and imagined worlds as well -- one of the first games I participated in was a Star Trek miniatures ship-to-ship combat game being playtested on base). One of the purposes of gaming out a conflict is to study it -- eg, I played an Operation Market Garden game shortly before the movie, "A Bridge Too Far" came out. I also got bogged down trying to take the bridge in Nijmegen (I didn't even begin to realize that I should have used my engineer units and their boats to take the bridge from both ends -- a bridge can be one helluva choke point) while the airborne troops at Arnhem were being overrun.
For the Good of the Order (a military concept given lip service at morning quarters) we have the story of the Western Approaches Tactical Unit (WATU). Western Approaches Command, based in Liverpool, was in charge of all the incoming convoys and their defense -- hence WAC was in charge of waging the most important battle of WWII, The Battle of the Atlantic. They took a washed-up RN commander (later promoted to captain), Gilbert Roberts, disqualified from sea duty on a medical (tuberculosis), and put him in charge of the newly formed WATU manned primarily by young WRNS enlisted (Women's Royal Naval Service, AKA "Wrens" (love their flat hats) ) and charged with analyzing German U-Boot tactics and developing ASW counter-measures. They performed their mission through wargaming. First they worked out what the Germans were doing (new unexpected tactic was to sneak into the midst of the convoy and attack it from within) and how to counter it (Code Name: Raspberry as in "blowing a raspberry at Hitler" AKA "bronx cheer" AKA derisive fart sound AKA Trump (refer to Spike Jones' song used in a WWII Donald Duck cartoon -- see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWF8iRCan7I ) ). Just to CYA (euphemistically "cover your actions"), they gave later ASW tactics fruitish names like "Pineapple". Engagements in the Battle of the Atlantic could last for days, so convoys under attack would radio in the situation to WAC who would refer it to WATU who would game out the situation and come up with counter-measures that WAC would radio back to the convoy. By 1943, ADM Dönitz' only response to the devastating U-Boot losses was to withdraw his submarine fleet. The Battle of the Atlantic was effectively over. After the war, Capt Roberts visited Germany's submarine command headquarters only to see a photograph of himself on a wall with the legend, "This is your enemy." Far more recognition than he ever got from his own government.
The most famous story out of WATU was when WAC got a new Commander in Chief (CINC), Admiral Sir Max Kennedy Horton, Britain's best and brightest submarine commander of WWI, who, in Navy-speak, "really knew his shit." He was skeptical of WATU, so when he visited them he immediately waved aside the traditional dog-and-pony show and asked to be shown what they could really do. He personally took command of a German submarine attacking a convoy. He was surprised when he was quickly informed he had been sunk. Five more times he attacked the convoy and five more times he was sunk in short order. Now duly impressed, he demanded to meet the officer who had defeated him because men such as him were direly needed in the convoys. He was introduced to the victorious convoy commander, Janet Hay Okell, a 20-year-old Wren rating (ie, enlisted, not an officer) who had beaten him from a closed room where she was only fed standard action reports.
There are a number of YouTube videos about WATU. In your search, use the entire name, Western Approaches Tactical Unit, since WATU will direct you to some band. No, Phat, I do not expect you to actually take the time and effort to look that up. This one is for the lurkers (AKA visitors).
In a negative wargaming story, in preparing for Midway the Japanese used wargaming. The story goes that they lost in their game, so they changed the initial parameters until they did win. Furthermore, as the story goes, that changed parameter was our ability to return the Yorktown into service (she had been severely damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea) which we did achieve beyond everybody's expectation. See the footnotes for a related story I was surprised to learn.
 
OK, having established the value of wargaming out situations, let's look at a global simulation and how well your "nationalism" plays out. This is from Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians -- have you ever heard of it?
Addressed to lurkers/visitors (sorry, I'm rather old-school). Bob Altemeyer is a now-retired university psychology professor from Canada. In his PhD exams he failed the authoritarian section so he had to re-research that part and as a result he devoted most of his research to right-wing authoritarianism. After decades of statistical math intensive published articles, he ended his career with a very readable work, "The Authoritarians". Download it for free (as a PDF) and read it. Especially the footnotes that he keeps warning you away from; those footnotes are the best part of the book.
OK. There are a number of simulations/games in which participants play the leaders of countries. There was one being run by Altemeyer's son, so Dad appropriated a couple runs. First Daddy made sure that all participants rated high on his right-wing-authoritarian (RWA) scale. The results were disasterous with the game ending in nuclear war (then restarted two years prior and ended on the verge of a second auto-anniliation). Then Daddy selected on the low-RWA participants and we all survived and the earth too!
Here's the text (pp 30-34):
quote:
Unauthoritarians and Authoritarians: Worlds of Difference
By now you must be developing a feel for what high RWAs think and do, and
also an impression of low RWAs. Do you think you know each group well enough to predict what they’d do if they ran the world? One night in October, 1994 I let a group of low RWA university students determine the future of the planet (you didn’t know humble researchers could do this, did you!). Then the next night I gave high RWAs their kick at the can.
The setting involved a rather sophisticated simulation of the earth’s future
called the Global Change Game, which is played on a big map of the world by 50-70 participants who have been split into various regions such as North America, Africa, India and China. The players are divided up according to current populations, so a lot more students hunker down in India than in North America. The game was designed to raise environmental awareness, and before the exercise begins players study up on their region’s resources, prospects, and environmental issues.
Then the facilitators who service the simulation call for some member, any member of each region, to assume the role of team leader by simply standing up. Once the “Elites”in the world have risen to the task they are taken aside and given control of their region’s bank account. They can use this to buy factories, hospitals, armies, and so on from the game bank, and they can travel the world making deals with other Elites. They also discover they can discretely put some of their region’s wealth into their own pockets, to vie for a prize to be given out at the end of the simulation to the World’s Richest Person. Then the game begins, and the world goes wherever the players take it for the next forty years which, because time flies in a simulation, takes about two and a half hours.
The Low RWA Game
By carefully organizing sign-up booklets, I was able to get 67 low RWA
students to play the game together on October 18th . (They had no idea they had been funneled into this run of the experiment according to their RWA scale scores; indeed they had probably never heard of right-wing authoritarianism.) Seven men and three women made themselves Elites. As soon as the simulation began, the Pacific Rim Elite called for a summit on the “Island Paradise of Tasmania.” All the Elites attended and agreed to meet there again whenever big issues arose. A world-wide organization was thus immediately created by mutual consent.
Regions set to work on their individual problems. Swords were converted to ploughshares as the number of armies in the world dropped. No wars or threats of wars occurred during the simulation. [At one point the North American Elite suggested starting a war to his fellow region-aires (two women and one guy), but they told him to go fly a kite--or words to that effect.]
An hour into the game the facilitators announced a (scheduled) crisis in the earth’s ozone layer. All the Elites met in Tasmania and contributed enough money to buy new technology to replenish the ozone layer.
Other examples of international cooperation occurred, but the problems of the Third World mounted in Africa and India. Europe gave some aid but North America refused to help. Africa eventually lost 300 million people to starvation and disease, and India 100 million.
Populations had grown and by the time forty years had passed the earth held 8.7 billion people, but the players were able to provide food, health facilities, and jobs for almost all of them. They did so by demilitarizing, by making a lot of trades that benefited both parties, by developing sustainable economic programs, and because the Elites diverted only small amounts of the treasury into their own pockets. (The North American Elite hoarded the most.)
One cannot blow off four hundred million deaths, but this was actually a highly
successful run of the game, compared to most. No doubt the homogeneity of the players, in terms of their RWA scores and related attitudes, played a role. Low RWAs do not typically see the world as “Us versus Them.” They are more interested in cooperation than most people are, and they are often genuinely concerned about the environment. Within their regional groups, and in the interactions of the Elites, these first-year students would have usually found themselves “on the same page”--and writ large on that page was, “Let’s Work Together and Clean Up This Mess.” The game’s facilitators said they had never seen as much international cooperation in previous runs of the simulation. With the exception of the richest region, North America, the lows saw themselves as interdependent and all riding on the same merry-go-round.
The High RWA Game
The next night 68 high RWAs showed up for their ride, just as ignorant of how they had been funneled into this run of the experiment as the low RWA students had been the night before. The game proceeded as usual. Background material was read, Elites (all males) nominated themselves, and the Elites were briefed. Then the “wedgies” started. As soon as the game began, the Elite from the Middle East announced the price of oil had just doubled. A little later the former Soviet Union (known as the Confederation of Independent States in 1994) bought a lot of armies and invaded North America. The latter had insufficient conventional forces to defend itself, and so retaliated with nuclear weapons. A nuclear holocaust ensued which killed everyone on earth--7.4 billion people--and almost all other forms of life which had the misfortune of co-habitating the same planet as a species with nukes.
When this happens in the Global Change Game, the facilitators turn out all the lights and explain what a nuclear war would produce. Then the players are given a second chance to determine the future, turning back the clock to two years before the hounds of war were loosed. The former Soviet Union however rebuilt its armies and invaded China this time, killing 400 million people. The Middle East Elite then called for a “United Nations” meeting to discuss handling future crises, but no agreements were reached.
At this point the ozone-layer crisis occurred but--perhaps because of the recent failure of the United Nations meeting--no one called for a summit. Only Europe took steps to reduce its harmful gas emissions, so the crisis got worse. Poverty was spreading unchecked in the underdeveloped regions, which could not control their population growth. Instead of dealing with the social and economic problems “back home,” Elites began jockeying among themselves for power and protection, forming military alliances to confront other budding alliances. Threats raced around the room and the Confederation of Independent States warned it was ready to start another nuclear war. Partly because their Elites had used their meager resources to buy into alliances, Africa and Asia were on the point of collapse. An Elite called for a United Nations meeting to deal with the crises--take your pick--and nobody came.
By the time forty years had passed the world was divided into armed camps threatening each other with another nuclear destruction. One billion, seven hundred thousand people had died of starvation and disease. Throw in the 400 million who died in the Soviet-China war and casualties reached 2.1 billion. Throw in the 7.4 billion who died in the nuclear holocaust, and the high RWAs managed to kill 9.5 billion people in their world--although we, like some battlefield news releases, are counting some of the corpses twice.
The authoritarian world ended in disaster for many reasons. One was likely the character of their Elites, who put more than twice as much money in their own pockets as the low RWA Elites had. (The Middle East Elite ended up the World’s Richest Man; part of his wealth came from money he had conned from Third World Elites as payment for joining his alliance.) But more importantly, the high RWAs proved incredibly ethnocentric. There they were, in a big room full of people just like themselves, and they all turned their backs on each other and paid attention only to their own group. They too were all reading from the same page, but writ large on their page was, “Care About Your Own; We Are NOT All In This Together.”
The high RWAs also suffered because, while they say on surveys that they care about the environment, when push comes to shove they usually push and shove for the bucks. That is, they didn’t care much about the long-term environmental consequences of their economic acts. For example a facilitator told Latin America that converting much of the region’s forests to a single species of tree would make the ecosystem vulnerable. But the players decided to do it anyway because the tree’s lumber was very profitable just then. And the highs proved quite inflexible when it came to birth control. Advised that “just letting things go” would cause the populations in underdeveloped areas to explode, the authoritarians just let things go.
Now the Global Change Game is not the world stage, university students are not world leaders, and starting a nuclear holocaust in a gymnasium is not the same thing as launching real missiles from Siberia and North Dakota. So the students’ behavior on those two successive nights in 1994 provides little basis for drawing conclusions about the future of the planet. But some of what happened in this experiment rang true to me. I especially thought, “I’ve seen this show before” as I sat on the sidelines and watched the high RWAs create their very own October crisis.
So based on that, who would you rather have running your world? The "liberals" who try to work together for our mutual survival? Or your "conservatives" who would destroy the entire world and kill everybody off if it got them a few percentage points greater profit?
 
 


 
 
Operation K. A Japanese aerial attack and reconnaissance mission over Hawaii on 04 Mar 1942. In the long archipelago north of Hawaii (artifact of the Pacific Plate travelling over a magma hotspot -- it's now just east of Kona Hawaii) is the French Frigate Shoals, so named because of a French frigate that had run aground there. The Japanese were using it as a rendez-vous point for their operations. The two seaplanes used in Operation K rendez-vous'd there with a submarine which refueled them. From there, they flew on their mission which fell apart -- due to cloud cover they could not identify their intended targets so one bomb hit a hill next to a high school and the other fell into the ocean.
However, Operation K did alert our Navy to Japanese activity at French Frigate Shoals, so we started to maintain a Navy presence there. Part of the Japanese plans for Midway was to maintain a submarine picket anchored on French Frigate Shoals that would detect the approach of US forces and determine their composition. If the Japanese had had that picket in place, they would have known about the Yorktown and the Battle of Midway, the pivotal battle in the Pacific, could have ended quite differently.

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


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Message 223 of 773 (887148)
07-13-2021 3:16 PM
Reply to: Message 216 by Phat
07-13-2021 7:53 AM


Re: In Essence You Support A Meritocracy
Its the minions who are ultimately the Left Wing Thugs. Ordinary wee little bureaucrats who thirst for power and control. Money is not their downfall.
Absolutely bizarre in your divorce from reality. And why have you still not yet read The Authoritarians by now-retired psych prof Bob Altemeyer? You are very clearly displaying your ignorance of the subject matter of authoritarianism.
Thugs are thugs. Thuggery is neither right-wing nor left-wing, it simply is (like Stupid is never invited to the party, but it still always simply shows up). Without some kind of leader to direct their thuggery, it will simply devolve into random and sporadic chaos.
Altemeyer's use of the term, "right wing authoritarian", has been criticized for its political implications and he does concede and freely emphasizes that RWA ratings are independent of actual political orientation; from pages 9 & 10:
quote:
ight-Wing and Left-Wing Authoritarian Followers
Authoritarian followers usually support the established authorities in their society, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders. Such people have historically been the “proper” authorities in life, the time-honored, entitled, customary leaders, and that means a lot to most authoritarians. Psychologically these followers have personalities featuring:
  1. ) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society;
  2. ) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and
  3. ) a high level of conventionalism.
Because the submission occurs to traditional authority, I call these followers right-wing authoritarians. I’m using the word “right” in one of its earliest meanings, for in Old English “riht”(pronounced “writ”) as an adjective meant lawful, proper, correct, doing what the authorities said. (And when someone did the lawful thing back then, maybe the authorities said, with a John Wayne drawl, “You got that riht, pilgrim!”)
In North America people who submit to the established authorities to extraordinary degrees often turn out to be political conservatives, so you can call them “right-wingers” both in my new-fangled psychological sense and in the usual political sense as well. But someone who lived in a country long ruled by Communists and who ardently supported the Communist Party would also be one of my psychological right-wing authoritarians even though we would also say he was a political left-winger. So a right-wing authoritarian follower doesn’t necessarily have conservative political views. Instead he’s someone who readily submits to the established authorities in society, attacks others in their name, and is highly conventional. It’s an aspect of his personality, not a description of his politics. Rightwing authoritarianism is a personality trait, like being characteristically bashful or happy or grumpy or dopey.
You could have left-wing authoritarian followers as well, who support a revolutionary leader who wants to overthrow the establishment. I knew a few in the 1970s, Marxist university students who constantly spouted their chosen authorities, Lenin or Trotsky or Chairman Mao. Happily they spent most of their time fighting with each other, as lampooned in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the People’s Front of Judea devotes most of its energy to battling, not the Romans, but the Judean People’s Front. But the left-wing authoritarians on my campus disappeared long ago. Similarly in America “the Weathermen” blew away in the wind. I’m sure one can find left-wing authoritarians here and there, but they hardly exist in sufficient numbers now to threaten democracy in North America. However I have found bucketfuls of right-wing authoritarians in nearly every sample I have drawn in Canada and the United States for the past three decades. So when I speak of “authoritarian followers” in this book I mean right-wing authoritarian followers, as identified by the RWA scale.
So there really is no difference between your "left-wing thugs" and "right-wing thugs", no way to differentiate between them outside of your desire to paint your side's thugs as some kind of saints. Thugs are thugs and should be dealt with in the same manner regardless of their political leanings.
 
Now, that's talking about the followers. What about the leaders? For those thugs to organize into groups and engage in an organized assault on a target (eg, the US Capitol), they need to have been led. What Altemeyer found is that his RWA assessment didn't work for most of the leaders of high-RWAs. For that, he needed to draw from the work of other psychologists who developed a Social Dominance Orientation scale, "a measure of belief in social inequality" (start reading at page 160). While not necessarily being high-RWAs themselves, they take full advantage of the traits of high-RWA followers -- though some of them do turn out to be high-RWAs themselves resulting in the much-dreaded "double high" (see page 177).
Let's review some basics about high- and low-RWA personalities. High-RWA types lock themselves in a bubble of "them versus us" and "everybody not-us poses a danger to us and want to destroy us" (just look at your messages for examples of that); they find themselves surrounded by hostile and deadly stereotypes. Low-RWAs see (or at least seek to see) beyond the stereotypes and instead see other people not unlike themselves (ie, in a sense, their concept of "us" is much more inclusive -- Altemeyer conducted decades-long diachronic studies (ie, "through time") tracking students' and their families' RWA ratings from high (arriving fresh from their family and small community environments) to lower (finally meeting and learning about "the dreaded Others") to higher (becoming parents themselves) to hopefully lower again (empty nest)).
Basically, high-RWAs will readily fall in line and march unquestioningly in lock-step behind an authoritarian leader. In contrast, low-RWAs will want to think for themselves. When you try to recruit followers, if you tell a high-RWA that you believe in what he believes in, then he'll believe you, but if you tell a low-RWA the same thing, his reaction will be to not believe you.
As a potential authoritarian leader, you will want to target the high-RWAs since they are the low-hanging fruit who are the easiest to recruit, to convince, and to keep convinced -- very low maintenance. The low-RWAs are far too high-maintenance to be worth the bother. Metaphorically, the high-RWA GQP are the true "sheeple" who mindlessly follow everything their leaders tell them and who flock eagerly to get fleeced over and over and over again, while it can be frustratingly difficult to get those think-for-themselves Democrats to all agree on anything, making herding cats child's play.
Ordinary wee little bureaucrats who thirst for power and control. Money is not their downfall.
No, rather their downfall is office supplies!
I am a retired software engineer, so I spent most of my career in an office and associated labs. We would have training sessions on various aspects of security, etc. In one security presentation, the instructor informed us that most companies go out of business because of employee pilferage. Office supplies, lab items and test equipment. An earlier company I worked for used hard drives in their products and those hard drives just kept walking out the back door. And that's not counting the intangibles like using the Xerox machines and the Internet for personal use on company time.
{ Sidebar:
In 2003 ShowTime had a dark comedy series, Dead Like Me about "grim reapers" whose job was to release the souls of those who died by other means. The leader of the Reaper cell in the show would hand out the reaping assignments (date, time, and place) on little yellow Post-Its (1.5x2 inches) -- every questioned raised about why the Post-Its was met with a shrug and "don't bother asking." BTW, as Reapers they had to find means to support themselves; usually they would move into the digs of a recently deceased though some arrangements became more permanent.
In one episode, suddenly someone was given an assignment on a blue Post-It and all the characters spent the entire episode trying to figure out the special significance of the blue Post-It. It turned out that the deceased's apartment the leader was living in had spent years pilfering her employer's office supplies so she had an entire closet filled with Post-Its. And just by chance the next one he pulled out of the closet was blue.
}
 
Dont you get it?
Do you still not get it?
It is not the "Ordinary wee little bureaucrats" who thirst for power and control. Rather it is their leaders. The very ones whom you are trying to absolve of all responsibility.
Are you actually trying to argue that it's the minions who are self-organizing to engage in insurrection against the wishes of their employers? Really?
Minions acting as minions have no direction. That direction is provided by their leaders.
So trying to shift the blame from the leaders of the malfeasance to be born solely by their own minions is absolutely outrageous!
Did you at least get a good deal on your nose-ring? Or was it just a cheap Trump brand?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 216 by Phat, posted 07-13-2021 7:53 AM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(3)
Message 227 of 773 (887159)
07-16-2021 4:33 AM
Reply to: Message 226 by Phat
07-15-2021 3:18 PM


Re: In Essence You Support A Meritocracy
ringo writes:
We don't need a refuge.
Ye shall be as gods. evidence based humanists
The man in the book knows who you are.
You're projecting yet again. Your ways are not our ways, so please stop trying to burden us with your own problems. Nor are our thought processes the same -- even the Christian community recognizes that through practice as they refer Christians to Christian therapists instead of therapists for normals. This practice agrees with Dan Barker's definition of fundamentalism as being "when your theology becomes your psychology" -- remember that he was raised his entire life as a fundamentalist (his mother would sing in tongues all day while doing her housework) and he became a fundamentalist minister (having been "called personally by God" to the pulpit when he was 11), until he began to ask questions and to think which led him to his current title of "America's Leading Atheist."
So just because you think in a particular manner does not mean we do too.
For example, a fundamentalist at work about a decade ago (one of the nicer ones with whom one could actually have a decent and enjoyable discussion) asked me how I, as an atheist, solve the problem of "justification." My response was something like, "What the hell are you talking about?" When he told me what he was talking about, I informed him that is a complete non-issue so there is no need for any solution. For him with his particular theology and his particular psychology modified by that particular theology, justification was an extremely important (vitally important!) question. But for us normals, it was nothing more than a "huh?".
Similarly, atheists are sick and tired of theists constantly describing to us all the things that we "worship", projecting their own mindsets upon us just because they cannot understand anybody not needing to worship anything. Or they will claim that we "pray" to all kinds of things since they cannot understand anything different.
Or fundy theists will attack education as being "indoctrination" because that is what their own practices are. For them, the purpose of their Christian schools is to indoctrinate the students in their religion even to the point of compelling (and even forcing) the students to believe in what they're being taught. In sharp contrast, the purpose of secular education is that the students gain an understanding of the subject matter without any requirement for them to be compelled to believe in that subject matter. A few decades ago when I implored a creationist to please, please, please study evolution in order to learn something about it before "criticizing" it. His reaction was to vehemently refuse to do so, because he believed that in order to learn about evolution he would be required to believe in it. In contrast and echoing Gen. Milley's recent testimony, the US Air Force trained us in Marxism and Socialism, obviously not in order to turn us into Commies but rather so that we would have a better understanding of the Enemy (c. 1982, so during the Cold War).
But because religionists know nothing about education outside of their own abuse of it, they project their misunderstanding of it on us and make it impossible to talk sense with them.
And we have creationists still being unable to understand how science works because of their own dependence on authorities. And as a result, they employ fatally flawed strategies and tactics in their war against science; eg, if they can disprove something that Darwin had written, then they feel that should disprove all of evolution.
Religious teachings (especially Christian) depend on Authorities. That kind of makes sense since their teachings normally derive from Revelation -- since mere mortal humans cannot determine anything about the supernatural other than what some supernatural being tells them (AKA a vision or "revelation"), then a "revelation" must be valued most highly. Since you really have nothing else to build upon.
There is so much more to discuss there (and I had started on it and will return to it), but the point within this context is that science works very differently. What is for the time lost through my editing is a very important part of the religionist's view of Revelation, that Revelation is considered perfect at first, but the longer it resides within the real world the more it is corrupted by it (personified by the medieval figure of Frau Welt (page only exists in German, Verzeihung), "Mrs. World", beautiful when viewed in front, but from behind you can see all the corruption and decay). Therefore, you need to go as far back as you can to the original source of that Revelation in order to get the purest least corrupt form of it.
What that means when you want to debunk a teaching is that you go back to the earliest Revelation of it and discredit that Authority.
The problem with that is that science works very differently. While science does recognize an authority's expertise, that does not make everything that that authority says Gospel. Eg, the first of Arthur C. Clarke's laws:
quote:
  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

So when a distinguished but elderly scientist says something, you do pay attention because he's supposed to be enough of an expert to know what he's talking about, though that still does not make him right. Refer to the movie, Operation Crossbow (1965 -- I saw it in the theaters and it's now a permanent resident on my DVR -- a depiction of the actual Allied operation of the same name to destroy Nazi rocketry -- V-1, V-2, and the purported New York Rocket). As Britain is trying to assess that threat, Trevor Howard's scientist character, an expert on rocketry, keeps getting in the way since everything he knows is based on solid-fuel rocketry which all says that the Nazi rocket threat cannot possibly exist -- say that to "the widows and orphans of Old London Towne" from Tom Lehrer's song about Werner von Braun).
However, in science the reverse is true from religion, in that science gets better and better the further down the line it goes. In religion, perfect knowledge from Revelation can only decay and become worse over time. In science, an initial best guess keeps getting tested and getting better over time. Two very different ways of knowing, two very different results.
The problem for the anti-science religionists is that they do not understand how science works, so they assume it works the same as their own "way of knowing". Id est, anti-science religionists seem to believe that science also starts with some kind of "Revelation" delivered unto us non-scientific mortals in some kind of perfect form. Complete and utter nonsense! Therefore, they quasi-reason, if you attack the "scientists" (ie, their mythical "science religionists", since they also weirdly classify science as a "religion", right?) then you do so by attacking their sources of "science revelation", which are the oldest scientific "Authorities".
Well, your anti-science folk can attack Charles Darwin all you want to, but that does nothing towards attacking evolution. Because we've learned quite a few things in the 160 years since the publishing of Origin of Species. Darwin got some things right and some things wrong. We normals are able to deal with all that without batting an eyelash, but it is incomprehensible for a religionist.
 
We do not think the same as you do! So please stop projecting your own failings upon us.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 226 by Phat, posted 07-15-2021 3:18 PM Phat has not replied

  
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