61–68 of 68 posts
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I always found this ironic. The answer to someone who wants to watch things burn is to, in effect, give them what they want and burn things down, on a smaller scale though, I guess?
Or perhaps by fighting such a man, you end up fulfilling their desires.
You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.
Thematically consistent, you might say.
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Ok I understand that conservatives view morality differently¹ , and factor in a wider range of concerns², fine. But I don't see how voting for Trump advances conservative voters any further in shifting the moral framework to one they would prefer. I see trump mostly as amoral if anything. Or is the point, as the study suggests, to burn down the system? To dismantle morally offensive programs/legislation? Am I missing…
The main thing Trump has been doing as a favor to conservatives is heavily loading the court benches with conservative justices. That will have a long-term impact. I think the mistake liberals make when looking at Trump, is they think he must be viewed by his supporters the same way they looked at Obama. Obama is someone they looked up to on a personal, moral level. Trump is, as you said, amoral. He goes where the po…
I'm not conservative, just FYI, so I find it interesting to discuss differences with thoughtful conservatives which you seem to be.
If conservatives value loyalty/respect for authority more than so called 'liberals', then aren't you afraid that the conservative agenda carried out to it's logical conclusion might descend into authoritarianism/theocracy?
(You didn't state that you held these views or preferences, but I just assumed them in the interest of getting my question out quicker. Correct me if I am wrong.)
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Yet almost everyone keeps on voting for the same people to run the country. They mostly believe keeping the enemy other party out of power is more important than all of the other problems combined. Either that or they don't vote which is itself a vote for the establishment.
There is no alternative, other than not voting. The political parties in the USA are not the issue, since they are both playing for the same team (big banks and corporations). It is unfathomable to many that Obama (either through naivety or deliberate will) let Wall St off the hook. That was a moment that defined the decade. The system is corrupt because the checks and balances that used to be there were dismantled (…
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There is no alternative, other than not voting. The political parties in the USA are not the issue, since they are both playing for the same team (big banks and corporations). It is unfathomable to many that Obama (either through naivety or deliberate will) let Wall St off the hook. That was a moment that defined the decade. The system is corrupt because the checks and balances that used to be there were dismantled (…
No, that's just a standard Marxist lens on things. Nobody in Wall St was let off the hook because incompetence is not illegal, nor should it be. The masses aren't about to engage in counter capitalist revolution any more than they were 100 years ago. Big banks and corporations aren't a "team" that people play for, they're just ways in which resource allocation is organised. There is no control-appeasement, whatever t…
However, it's also certainly not the case that there were no criminal acts of fraud committed by Wall St execs during the 2000s bubble. Dick Fuld's Repo 105 scam is a great example: https://www.epsilontheory.com/repo-105/
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The main thing Trump has been doing as a favor to conservatives is heavily loading the court benches with conservative justices. That will have a long-term impact. I think the mistake liberals make when looking at Trump, is they think he must be viewed by his supporters the same way they looked at Obama. Obama is someone they looked up to on a personal, moral level. Trump is, as you said, amoral. He goes where the po…
Ok, thanks. I'm not conservative, just FYI, so I find it interesting to discuss differences with thoughtful conservatives which you seem to be. If conservatives value loyalty/respect for authority more than so called 'liberals', then aren't you afraid that the conservative agenda carried out to it's logical conclusion might descend into authoritarianism/theocracy? (You didn't state that you held these views or prefer…
If both parties are just in favor of keeping the powerful in power, then I will personally side with the party that explicitly says so.
Regarding "logical conclusions", I think the key is that the goal isn't to carry it out to its extreme, but to counter-balance the pull from the other side. Sure it feels good to have momentum, but no one should be surprised when the tides turn back the other way for a while.
The goal is to find dynamic balances between opposing ideals. In order to do that, you need to try to pull past where you think the correct middle ground is. I think that's true for both sides.
A thought I had extending my previous Trump / Obama comparison, is that if you compare it to the David vs Goliath story, I think people viewed Obama as David. I.e. the unsuspecting hero that comes out of nowhere to save the people. Trump is more of a Goliath character. Did people expect Goliath to be nuanced and articulate and thoughtful? No. They just wanted him to be a big tough bastard that would go beat up on the enemy.
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Ok, thanks. I'm not conservative, just FYI, so I find it interesting to discuss differences with thoughtful conservatives which you seem to be. If conservatives value loyalty/respect for authority more than so called 'liberals', then aren't you afraid that the conservative agenda carried out to it's logical conclusion might descend into authoritarianism/theocracy? (You didn't state that you held these views or prefer…
I'm politically unaffiliated. When asked, I identify as a "Not-Democrat", which is mainly because I feel that the Democratic party pulled a bait-and-switch on the working class by using their "everyone go to college" meritocracy thing as a convenient segue into just backing the wealthy the same as Republicans do. If both parties are just in favor of keeping the powerful in power, then I will personally side with the…
In my opinion, a big part of the problem with politics in the public sphere is that we've been conditioned (deliberately, or just naturally) to think about politics along a very small number of very specific (and non-comprehensive) dimensions, and through these dimensions reality is communicated to the public (in good faith, or not, in a competent and professional manner, or not), through various media forms. (And then most subsequent discussions take place at this level (at best), with rare outliers like this one where you respectfully discuss the deeper dimensions).
And then at election time, we force them to further crush it down into one dimension with precisely two choices (chosen via an incredibly low-dimensional and flawed nomination process): Republican or Democrat. But when they make that boolean choice, the mind is secretly operating at this much higher dimensional representation of reality (based on models that are, to varying degrees: factually incorrect or null (with auto-estimate enabled by default), and they cast their vote.
Most people "logically" think their decision (and those of others) is based upon the projected dimensional reality we live in (~Overton Window), but the actual reason underlying evaluation is way more complex, and invisible to us.
That probably makes no sense, but what I mean is very similar to the argument about "How is the internet still obsessed with Myers-Briggs" the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20887213
Myers Briggs is an attempt at "a" representation of reality. Many people reject it for obvious reasons, but then they'll sometimes turn around and insist in a different thread (with a new topic) that "Republican" or "Hillary Supporter" or "pro-rights" political stances are pretty damn accurate representations of reality, and can accurately predict behavior in a (subconscious) high-dimensional model (~mind reading).
I think the verbiage is misleading and inflammatory. "Need For Chaos" can more reasonably be understood as "desire for change" when the individuals see no actual path for that change to occur. Calling it a "need for chaos" further alienates those whose very alienation is the cause of the phenomenon on display. Better to use more neutral language that doesn't inflame the population being observed or bias those doing t…
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No, that's just a standard Marxist lens on things. Nobody in Wall St was let off the hook because incompetence is not illegal, nor should it be. The masses aren't about to engage in counter capitalist revolution any more than they were 100 years ago. Big banks and corporations aren't a "team" that people play for, they're just ways in which resource allocation is organised. There is no control-appeasement, whatever t…
Even for the ones who didn't do anything illegal, they were certainly "let off the hook" in the sense that the massive bonuses they were paid for economically destructive decisions were never clawed back, and in fact the same fundamental structures of "no skin in the game" and "privatized gains, socialized losses" were preserved and even strengthened in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In the most egregious ins…
I haven't heard about Dick Fuld, I'll read your link, thanks.