President Donald Trump
I assume it's still acceptable to have a Trump thread in a Politics forum?
So this is an obvious lie - basically aimed at
it's actually the green dream, or whatever. more honest
I am not God. It is beyond my pay grade to approve or disapprove of others.
I am simply curious about cause and effect and do my best to help put things into a context which explains natural phenomena.
As a child born into the Jewish tribe, I had to learn how to make sense of the Nazi's and the Holocaust. History seems to indicate that the indifference to the plight of the German people exhibited at Versailles was a root cause of the Holocaust.
So ... my lessons are that indifference to the experience of suffering people is a type of mass social disease which has a tendency to boomerang back on the indifferent.
In 2016, Trump won in the industrial swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin running against the wife of a POTUS who signed NAFTA into law and thus impaired the livelihoods of blue-collar manufacturing employees in those states. An opponent who made the unprecedented decision to go on a $12M public speaking tour to elitisits after resigning her position of Sec State. Unprecedented in that she didn't wait for her political career to end before cashing in.
Trump and MAGA are a manifestation of a situation in which too many people are failing. Your indifference is obvious .... you express contempt for their not having everything they want.
"I'M NOT MAGA BUT LOOKIT WHAT THE EVUL DEMS DID DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
As someone else pointed out, for business purposes, replacing commercial air travel with other means of transportation could end up being far more fossil fuel intensive than you imagine. And for better or worse, air travel has made the world more global. It has made the world smaller. It has encouraged an understanding that we all live on the same planet. It has greatly fac
What forms of transportation might be more fossil fuel intensive than air travel ? You should do a little statistical investigation before making such comments and allowing yourself to wander off into grave concern territory.
And I don't consider my assertion that human civilization is on a trajectory to collapse to be dramatic. Dramatic orientation involves a villain / victim and savior.
Humans are going to go extinct at some point regardless of whether it happens in the near term. I don't represent myself as being the virtuous savior. I don't want to run the world.
I'm just helping people understand the forces that are taking us there and pointing to the forces within ourselves which are contributing factors.
fyi - your suggestion that we need to hop on airplanes to interact with people from distant places is ludicrous. We have robust internet connections that facilitate such connection.
Why are you quoting Victor?
I'm not tripping on a world of good v evil.
I believe Einstein was correct in his view on determinism. That we can't choose what we wish for.
In a world without good and evil, there is no drama. There is just life and death.
My preference to advocate for the continuity of human civilization is not meant to be a representation of something good. It's not a choice on my part .... it's an expression of something which is hard-coded.
In the same way, Donald Trump is not choosing to be the polarizing divider that he is. That is an expression of something hard-coded into him at this point.
The world looks very different when look at it through a lens which is free from the addiction to notions of virtue.
fyi - your suggestion that we need to hop on airplanes to interact with people from distant places is ludicrous. We have robust internet connections that facilitate such connection.
The idea that interacting with the world through the internet is mostly the same as interacting with the world in more tangible ways is hopelessly depressing imo.
Conversations between the two of us are mostly pointless, so I'm going to check out for now. Please feel free to have the last word (or the last 2000 words).
Contempt is the polar opposite of compassion. It stems from clinging to a superior self-image.
yeah that’s what he said, he’s superior to them
For what it's worth, I believe in a concept which can be titled as "God".
In my imagination, God is synonymous with creation and nature and partially revealed through scientific inquiry.
My imagination is that we are all part of one universally integrated entity. You and I may appear to have distinct identities which are bounded by the surface of our skin. But the energy fields we occupy are shared.
I view us all as one. So therefore, there is no me which is separate from and superior to others.
Each of us is a vessel through which God's will is expressed. Each of us is the result of billions of years of evolutionary editing which has been very effective at tossing out useless traits.
My traits are not better or worse than anyone else. They are just part of the total mix and they are here for a reason.
For what it's worth, I believe in a concept which can be titled as "God". In my imagination, God is synonymous with creation and nature and partially revealed through scientific inquiry. My imagination is that we are all part of one universally integrated entity. You and I may appear to have distinct identities which are bounded by the surface of our skin. But the energy fields
On ignore now, lunatic.
For what's worth, I have never voted for a Republican in my life.
I volunteered for Bernie Sanders campaigns in 2016 and 2020. I wish for a Democratic Party that emulates FDR's Social Democratic example. I find some hope in the success of candidates like Mandami.
There isn't anything appealing to me personally in Donald Trump as a person or as a POTUS.
That doesn't mean I can't try to put myself in the shoes of those who support him and find some legitimate rationale.
For what's worth, I have never voted for a Republican in my life. I volunteered for Bernie Sanders campaigns in 2016 and 2020. I wish for a Democratic Party that emulates FDR's Social Democratic example. I find some hope in the success of candidates like Mandami. There isn't anything appealing to me personally in Donald Trump as a person or as a POTUS. That doesn't mean I can't
its all these guys can argue.
In my view, most people are the same.
The most important thing to most people is death avoidance.
How do we keep death at a distance ? We maintain a sense of utility to our communities which provide both practical benefit and psychological ego rationale for our existence. And we accumulate savings intended to ensure the visibility to survival resources into the future.
We also compete with our fellow humans for a place in the pecking order.
When decisions like NAFTA jeopardized the survival prospects of white blue collar workers in rust belt states, the people who weren't impacted by that policy had access to cheaper good as a result of that global outsourcing. They didn't care. That decision elevated themselves in the pecking order while pushing their fellow citizens down the pecking order.
They (like TheBigEasy) tell themselves a story that those people who were displaced were less intelligent and skilled and therefore deserved their plight. Unfortunately, it is the people like TheBigEasy who don't have the intelligence to understand that their plight is intertwined with those they have contempt for.
Our fates are all intertwined. Compassion is wise and conducive to survival Cooperation is wise.
Nut Nut isn't MAGA. He simply thinks a benevolent dictatorship is the best way out of this. If he himself must don the role of an enlightened Cincinnatus, then so be it.
That's closer to the truth.
Lincoln was the model of an effectively benevolent dictator in a democratic regime.
Our current version of democracy in the USA is transparently farcical. It's a system in which the inhuman force of money is the dictator. For the last half century, it has only produced results which further concentrate the wealth into fewer and fewer hands. American democracy has been warped by the self-interest of a numerically superior generation of Boomers who have dominated the voting booth. When we entered the workforce, our greed caused us to choose the low tax policies of Reagan and Prop 13 to enhance our personal wealth at the expense of the long-term social fabric. Having no alternative but to cater to Boomers, the Dems followed suit and the pro-labor populist version of the Democrats vanished.
As Obama acknowledged in 2012, his policies were "80's moderate Republican".
FDR was effectively a benevolent dictator, such was his popular support. He could bully the rest of the political establishment with the will of the people behind him. He welcomed the hate of government by "organized money" .... precisely the situation we are presently confronted with. While I supported Bernie Sanders, I see that he didn't have the alpha characteristics of an FDR. He didn't have what it took to go toe to toe with Obama.
An alpha leftist like FDR is going to emerge. Mandami is symptomatic of our coming back full circle in the direction of a new FDR.
