Non of this precludes being deluded
I would rate him Strawman out of Strawman. Unless your argument is that voting for material benefit creates idiocracy, and if so you may need to have a word with James Clyburn.
It was more that even in ideocracy people were voting for common good rather than trinkets.
But on watching that again i think comancho is actually setting quite the high bar for a presidential adress.
This issue for me is that “common good” means material trinkets for the people telling me it is virtuous to vote for the “common good” and scurrilous to vote for material trinkets.
I’m aware you aren’t American so I need to explain a bit more about James Clyburn for this example to make sense to you. James Clyburn is a member of the House from South Carolina. In the Democratic Primaries he’s considered one of the “king makers”, one of the people who it is important for them to like you in order to win. He is a patron of the Gullah People (his late wife was Gullah), a black American sub ethnicity that is a very tiny part of the overall population. He may go on the national stage an tell other people they need to vote for the “common good” to get Biden past the primary, but he is not telling the Gullah people they need to vote for the “common good” when it means a material loss for them.
That is how politics really work and a certain segment of the US specifically and the West in general has been brainwashed into thinking that voting in expectation of Treats from the Treats Regime is scurrilous and selfish while every other group is being told to vote for the Treats Regime because they will get more Treats.
Orange Man 2024, or fuck your mother.
We have similar. But our liberal party (conservatives) tend to be more about austerity pretty much. So we tend to lean towards that when the economy is starting to wilt.
Then Labor (liberal) is about services.
So once we get sick of eating shit. We swing back.
So yeah. Liberal like to earn money. Labor like to spend it.
But we have a whole bunch of bipartisan shit in place as well. The govener general. And commissions and stuff like that.
So we don’t really do the friend enemy distinction. But we do engage in adversarial politics.
So for example we have this.
And whichever government wants to sell a grand idea basically has to pass it through the bean counters to make sure its viable.
They can still do it. But if the idea is shit. Then it gets publicly exposed as a shit idea.
It might be nice to have someone else.
I can understand the revulsion of another term with Biden, or Kamala, etc.
However, surely Trump is not the only alternative the Republican Party can put up as the alternative.
For that matter, surely the Democratic Party can or could have fronted somebody else other than Biden, Kamala, Hillary Clinton, or any of the squad Senators.
Both Parties behaviors and choices are really a testament to just how far the American people will let themselves be bled like cattle.
So Friend Enemy Distinction isn’t a political system, it’s a frame work for analyzing politics as it exists de facto, not de jure. For example, we have a two party system (that de facto is only different from how Westminster systems have implemented parties in that our two parties act more as pre-election coalitions) but they govern effectively as a mono-party. Every position the mainstream Republican party has today was a Democratic party position ten years ago. Our “Conservatives” are in reality more like an outer party sitting at the far edge of the Overton window and every time it shifts they go with it with the intent of sucking the air out of the room when it comes to actual opposition to liberalism.
You might point to say, Dobbs (the decision which overturned Roe v Wade) and say “but that’s not a Democratic position from ten years ago!” Correct. But mainstream Conservative political elites absolutely did not like Dobbs. You wouldn’t know this if you weren’t sticking your head into political discussion on the mainstream “right” but pretty much every ruling class Georgetown residing Republican was engaging in major league cope and seethe when Dobbs happened. For weeks, and still even now, they are saying “it will be bad for the midterms” which is just an indirect way of saying they didn’t want it overturned because there are redlines they can’t cross to not get run out of their DC suburban neighborhoods by their liberal peers.
1 Like
Changing power as described by Schmitt isn’t something I’m supporting, at this point. I don’t trust any authoritarian to give up power willingly, and anybody who deals at the level of friends and enemies, and political murder/war, is a hard no.
There are multiple… groups vying for authoritarian rule right now, in the US. At this point, the treat regime (lol) is the least of the various degrees of evil I know of.
I’m open mined, and willing to listen and read and learn. However, I think I defined my limits above.
Interesting twist on the postmodernism make words mean whatever you want.
“Groomer” is now being coopted to describe the LGBT radicals who want any boy who plays with a doll to get gender-affirming care, etc.
We had a interesting incident up here in north Idaho, fairly recently, involving “protesters” at a “gay pride” day.
There was a group of some sort of Biker affiliated dolts, who were trying to recruit people to go and “counter protest” at at gay pride/family day event.
They were all about calling out normal gay folks as being pedophiles/groomers, vilifying them…
Yep, I get it.
The Treat Regime is one of those groups vying for authoritarian rule. The “just go to kickboxing class or drink a margarita” is what they are saying now when they feel secure.
Please tell me specifically what “gender affirming care” is.
I thought I had replied to this already, maybe I didn’t hit return or something.
I was thinking about all the various intersex issues that are biological when I wrote that, and I used the wrong words.
I am not for medical treatments of apparent psychological issue(s) gender dysphoria of children, and for sure not for state enforced treatments of that nature over parental objection.
I AM for children getting quality mental health and medical services in general.
1 Like
That’s why I asked specifically because when some say “Gender Affirming Care” they do mean medical drug and surgery intervention on minors for “gender dysphoria”.
My issue is it is not a field I am familiar enough with to make too fixed a judgement. I can not like it. But i have to recognise i also don’t really understand it.
Same with lap band surgery. I think it is dumb. And fatties should just eat salads. But if you are going to die from obesity. Then surgery is better
The section you quoted was more directed at it’s usefulness. The section before that basically says that morality and ethics are subjective, they exist in our head, they aren’t something like a natural law. It’s difficult for me to understand why one person can criticize another person’s ethical structure, in so far as that ethical structure does not cause harm to those around them (arm stops short of their neighbour). It’s all make believe to some degree at the end of the day is really my point (in terms of ethics).
There are people that follow science to explain natural phenomena, and religion for the values and the spiritual side.
Which rules aren’t arbitrary?
The supernatural entity could almost be excluded for a large part of the conversation. The supernatural part comes into play when trying to understand the creation of the universe and giving the moral structure contained in the pages legitimacy. But when we realise that all the sources of moral structures are subjective, it means regardless of source it’s probably made up to some degree.
Common thought is religion was really that early peg in the ground, these are the rules. When people ask why? You say because god said so. What else would you use? The type of social constructs we explain ethics in today hadn’t exists for the most part. The way we think about ethics largely hadn’t been developed.
Today ethics are largely still guided by the foundational block religion put down, with a bit of historic trial and error sprinkled on top, with a large dose of what is popular at the time, or viewed as socially acceptable.
As you’ve stated a few times, the risk of a bad outcome is there regardless of system. I still believe it’s the system with the greatest chance of success.
Well i guess GDP is a measurement of economic growth. I’d define it as lots of activity within the economy (cash changing hands), high levels of innovation / entrepreneurship, high levels of competition, etc.
The thing is America looks doomed , as does the UK when looked at in isolation.
When you look at the utter shit show that is the rest of the world in particular China and Russia it doesnt look so bad for either.
I have to remind people sometimes that the west won the cold war and Russia haven’t improved that much since, China is still run like a group of quakers with attitude.
Assuming there is not going to be a nuclear war, as ridiculous as the US political situation is at present this is not a race between the best its a race between the best of the worst and man there is far too much of the communist rusty cogs mentality grinding through both Chinese and Russian politics and military for them to be considered challengers to the current world order.
So many online harping on about China releasing Covid as a weapon but from what I can see it looks like they may be suffering the most so if we are to consider the beneficiaries of an act the most likely to have been responsible then perhaps in 5/10yrs time we may think the opposite is true as they are currently telling their people.
Although we can never underestimate their ability to screw something up so we will never know regardless.
Whilst Russia will always be a threat to its immediate neighbours, it’s not even remotely as influential as it was at the height of the USSR and after its poor military performance in Ukraine, it’s unlike it will ever reach that height again in the near future.
China is a different kettle of fish though, it’s learned from mistakes both East and Western powers have made and is a genuine threat to Western (read: American) global influence. Sure, it has its internal issues but it’s long-game being played externally is bad news for everyone.