Again, giving Dems props by assuming competence.Originally Posted by xerxe
Again, giving Dems props by assuming competence.
@xerxe, I mean, Hillary Clinton is as good a guess as anyone.
I think Trump had it done. As soon as a picture appeared of Trump and Epstein together with young girls, Epstein's fate was sealed.
Lol.
Actually, if Trump tried to kill Epstein, I'm pretty sure that the job would be botched in 100 different ways.
Epstein probably killed himself. Men who molest kids do not do well in most prisons. He took the easy way out, I'd guess.
Last edited by Adam Strange; 04-20-2020 at 02:10 AM.
The FBI leans Republican IIRC, while the CIA leans Democrat. But Trump was a Democrat until recently, so which could he trust to commit the assassination secretly?
There are many layers of this snow-fort.
Based on Trump's history, he'd put Jared Kushner in charge of the operation. That's why Epstein almost certainly died by his own hand. If he hadn't killed himself, he'd have outlived us all.
In the spirit of scientific objectivity, to be as clinically scientific about it as possible, I will grant that we don't know for sure who killed Epstein.
Trump has done absolutely nothing to mitigate the effects of COVID-19. His daily briefings are feeding his narcissism, not helping anyone. And yesterday, he suggested that victims of the virus either inject bleach or stick a flashlight up their ass.
Is he evil? Or just stupid? And does the answer to that question really matter at this point?
This could be Biden's campaign ad: https://giphy.com/gifs/movie-sci-fi-...-wahznsJcuMe2I
I think he's a moron. Stupid AF.
Arnie is your supervisor.
Arnie is my Identical. He's even Te-subtype.Arnie is your supervisor.
Check the jawline.
https://i.imgur.com/XsCu52c.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/y2i3xXh.jpg
Last edited by Adam Strange; 04-24-2020 at 10:08 PM.
I have to apologize because I was inaccurate. Arnie is neither your supervisor nor your identical. But you are not far from him.
Still it is a jolly good slogan: Come with me if you want to live.
Lol. This is such a T2 reference, I can't help myself.
Are you sure, Adam; isn't he a little too physical to be NT? (not saying that us NT's all have to be weedy nerds, but the guy works out like 2 hours at the gym every day).
I used to run track in HS and ran almost every day until my knees gave out. I also would go to the gym every day in the morning, and yes, it took about 1.75 hours to go through the workout.
I attribute his workouts to two things. One, he has enhanced Te and therefore enhanced Se and you are seeing his Se-HA. Take a look at a video somewhere where he talks about working each muscle just enough to win the contest. That's Te efficiency. Two, along with strong Te enhancing his Se, it also weakens his Ni. So he has arrived at a place in life where he doesn't know what to do next, and has returned to that thing (weightlifting) that brought him satisfaction at one time. I've been at that point myself. I might be there now.
Honestly, if making my body into a sculpted machine was what would bring me success, I'd be spending hours in the gym, too.
I was actually talking to my doctor yesterday and I told her that I'm fairly sensitive to shifts in my mental state caused by drugs, but I'm not sensitive at all to physical pain. My body feels like a vehicle to get me somewhere, and it either does that or it doesn't. I went on to tell her that I once stepped on a large nail that came out the top of my foot, and just stared at it and thought, "Hmm, that's inconvenient."
Really, Schwarzenegger's treatment of his body in "The Terminator" is EXACTLY the way I look at my own body. I once accidentally sliced open the skin on the back of my thumb and looked inside and thought "Looks like chicken bones." I got my finger too close to some twin counter-rotating shafts and they pulled it in, but I pulled it back out. The skin on the sides of the finger just slipped off, like a condom. I'm pretty sure that's an evolutionary adaptation to being bitten. It hurt like hell but, eh, I still have the finger. Man, that accident filled up so many paper towels with blood. Rise above the pain, push the skin back up around the finger, wrap paper towels around it, press hard, and when the towels fill with blood, renew the towels. Ignore the feeling in your stomach, but pay attention to feeling faint. Lie down, feet above your head, so you don't pass out from shock.
Schwarzenneger isn't a great actor; he was just playing himself, minus smiles.
Last edited by Adam Strange; 05-05-2020 at 07:22 PM.
At this point, I think he is stupid... However, this is not to deny he has an agenda... He has the American conservative agenda that he respects and responds to (unfortunately). It really fucking sucks. (He only has this agenda for dumb ideas of his own "survival".) He's hurting all of us. He's hurting the world.And, honestly, I don't even hate him. I just think he isn't qualified for his position and if he were a reasonable person he'd resign for that very reason. Unfortunately he isn't a reasonable person. He's (as you mentioned) a narcissist. I don't hate people for having that disorder. I just want him gone because he's hurting so many people. It's so stupid in the sense that I had a narcissistic father, that it makes me a bit more sympathetic. I know it's hard when someone has that disorder, I know they struggle. But in Trump's case, he is the president of the US, and that means he has a certain responsibility. He's not measuring up to that responsibility. He's hurting all of us. It needs to stop. He NEEDS TO BE FIRED. If he had enough compassion for people he'd fire himself. Sadly, as this rich asshole, he doesn't have enough compassion. I don't hate him, but I wish he could understand. I wish he could see his lack of empathy and compassion and how it's hurting people, and I wish he could see what that's doing to people. He's really too stupid to understand, IMO.
Even more than him, I'm mad at the ppl who voted for him. WHY? WHY WHY WHY!!!!!!! Please, you're hurting all of us... PLS, PLS, PLS!!!!!
Last edited by marooned; 04-24-2020 at 10:37 PM.
I'm just going to lay this out here. There is no real divide between quadras in this instance. There is only a divide between those who live in the "clouds" (i.e. those who reside within the coastal regions of the U.S./the "core" regions of the EU) and those of us like me who reside within the "dirt" (i.e. everyone else/the likes of me). Why did Trump get elected? Simple. Us "dirt" folk wanted to show you "cloud" fuckers just how much we aren't going down without a fight. That we still had some "fight" left as it were. We made a bet. You could, could, have rigged that election, but y'all knew that there would be no hiding that fact if ya did and were painfully aware of what'd happen if ya pulled that shit.
This is now an experiment on my end. Respond and give unto me some data! I am wondering just how far you'll go in order to try and "reclaim" your former positions of power?
Last edited by End; 05-08-2020 at 07:52 AM.
That's um great... You wanted to show people you won't go out without a fight by electing someone who only cares about himself and other super wealthy people. The "dirt people" are busy working right now in essential jobs and it is killing them. And our illustrious idiot in chief is just fine with that. He doesn't care about you. You are worthless to him. If you are a "dirt fucker" you are especially worthless to him. It's your job to toil away for people like him and die doing it while getting paid nothing. That's how it is for the "dirt fuckers" and it doesn't matter which state in the country. It's sick and wrong. I can't stand these people in power. Trump ran on some fake populist campaign, newsflash, he was lying. At least half of what comes out of his mouth is a lie because he's a pathological liar.I'm just going to lay this out here. There is no real divide between quadras in this instance. There is only a divide between those who live in the "clouds" (i.e. those who reside within the coastal regions of the U.S./the "core" regions of the EU) and those of us like me who reside within the "dirt" (i.e. everyone else/the likes of me). Why did Trump get elected? Simple. Us "dirt" folk wanted to show you "cloud" fuckers just how much we aren't going down without a fight. That we still had some "fight" left as it were. We made a bet. You could, could, have rigged that election, but y'all knew that there would be no hiding that fact if ya did and were painfully aware of what'd happen if ya pulled that shit.
This is now an experiment on my end. Respond and give unto me some data
And yes I think the neoliberals have failed us too.
ETA: That said there is a disparity with COVID (and everything) between rural and urban areas. These differences affect how people vote (before COVID and after). When there is a higher population density in an area people start looking for policies that will take care of as many of those people as possible (it's a different kind of social management). So I agree the urban/rural divide is intense and that increasingly we are becoming two Americas. Trump's admin doesn't speak to "my people" (it's like we don't exist) and I think a lot of people in rural areas don't think Democrats speak to them (see H. Clinton's awful put down about the "basket of deplorables" which is basically, no matter how she intended it, a broad class put down to the working class in less urban or population dense areas, though I took it as a put down to the entire working class personally because it's coming from someone sitting on her high horse talking down to people a lot poorer than her while she sucks up to the banks).
My problem is that both sides are classist in their own way, though Democrats are more sensitive to class issues in more population dense areas because they need the vote from those people. The only politicians I see who seem to care about the working class are progressives, however they are far left and their sensitivity to people in rural areas is probably lacking (so they are in danger of repeating the same problem). And I really hope the same problem doesn't repeat because America needs a united working class IMO. It badly needs representation for the bottom earners, and to do that it has to be understood that the bottom earners are an extremely diverse group from all over the country. Some are deeply affected by racism. Some come from rural areas. The reasons why they are in the bottom earner group vary wildly. But I do see one "working class" in the sense that the working class is preyed upon in unique ways in each area, but preyed upon they are. And that is part of the same phenomenon, a nation that is okay with people being this poor, that is okay with people dying early, a nation that doesn't care enough. (Although some people in the working class also are not actually bottom earners, but a lot of what they come from and how they feel is very similar - for instance people without college degrees working in blue collar jobs and how they might feel about being lorded over by the professional class, and still their work history may cause them severe health issues in life that people sitting pretty in professional jobs don't suffer so it is still very much a class issue. Also from my experience in university, I think universities may have a class issue and seem culturally inaccessible to a lot of people from the working class. I'm being generous but I really think they absolutely DO have a class issue, I just doubt I know enough having not been to them all. But anyway some people in blue collar jobs may never have believed that was a direction they could have taken in the first place for reasons tied up in class issues, or they went and dropped out.)
ETA2: I also want to add on that I know that COVID is killing more people in highly population dense areas, especially the lower classes and people of color, and I don't want to imply that someone living in middle America in a town with a population of 5000 working at McDonalds is more in danger right now, because at least right now they may not be, meat packing plants aside. I don't want to downplay the economic hardship things like stay-at-home orders have been causing either. It's a juggling act between protecting lives on two fronts: the virus can kill you and so can job loss or lack of access to things you need to save yourself. It's a game with time until we have a vaccine basically. This is why it requires responsible and thoughtful leadership...
Last edited by marooned; 05-08-2020 at 05:30 PM.
All good points, @inumbra.
I've been thinking for a long time about how our government could be made to better represent everyone's interests, and not just those interests of some special groups.
I don't think the answer to the problem of achieving full representation rests in trying to bring two politically disparate groups together. Research has shown that Conservatives and Liberals place different emphasis on different moral values. Personally, I think that this is a genetic difference, not a learned one, since it seems to originate in a person's fear response level. People who instinctively fear out-groups are going to self-sort into areas where the population density is low, and people who don't care where you came from are not going to have bad reactions to high density levels of strangers in cities and hence can make use of the greater opportunities available there. This is not to say that one response is better than the other. Disease spreads faster in cities, and strangers sometimes really are dangerous. But these differences are not something that I think are going to change anytime soon.
A better way of correcting the poor job that both parties are doing of representing the interests of average people would be to reduce the level of wealth and income inequality, since money = political power. Both parties seek money from groups that have it, since elections are presently expensive, and both parties try to appeal (by deed or by lies, whatever) to the largest number of voters, regardless of whom they actually represent.
If you make it impossible or unnecessary for a political party to gain wealth predominantly from any small group (and right now, Republicans serve the mineral extractive industries like mining and oil, while the Democrats serve the financially extractive industries like finance and high tech), then they would both be forced to appeal to the vast majority of US citizens whose needs are being completely ignored.
You could either change the laws to prevent parties from getting money from a few big donors, or you could change the law to reduce the wealth of the big donors. Either one would work.
My personal preference would be to do both, because I like living in more equal societies, and because I think that the campaign contribution law could operate as a backup for the more equal society.
I guess I am not sure I would say this is genetic, although there is something I think to the fear response thing. People's backgrounds can actually deeply affect what their fear response is. For instance, highly stressful childhoods in which someone was in danger from an early age can affect the brain for life and create a much more fearful adult who is less trusting of new people and has a lower stress tolerance. Growing up in a place in which there are a lot of different people from a lot of different places can condition one to be more accepting of differences. I think there are probably genetic factors, but my guess is that experiences trump that for most people.
I agree with you, but I don't know how we can get money out of politics unless enough people care enough. It's down to the people to somehow do something. This is why I think a united working class is important because basically a revolution of some sort is needed, hopefully non-violent. America needs a class revolution, IMO. Otherwise I don't see how we can get the money out of politics unless it starts impacting, say, the upper middle class more and more. They should be "joining with" the rest of us, but as long as they are comfortable enough, they won't.
I think a lot of people know we've ceded control of the world to horrible industries that kill us and the planet... but knowing isn't enough. Knowing is apparently cheap.
ETA: Bah, and even with the upper middle class it's this annoying partisan thing. Upper middle class democrats may be annoyed with how high their taxes are while the major corporations and super rich manage to avoid paying taxes. But for some reason upper middle-class Republicans seem to think the problem is the Democrats and their social programs (the source of the higher taxes)? Ugh. It all really sucks. All of this is beside the point because the problem is larger than their taxes, and I guess if they don't feel that way, I feel like they're just really comfortable. (Ahem, my perspective is from someone not in the upper middle class obviously, so it comes with my own class bias.)
Last edited by marooned; 05-08-2020 at 05:55 PM.
I can simplify it for you. r/K selection theory. Read up on it. It's actually how I overcame my "hatred" for my political opponents. I am, and they are as well, "victims" of their circumstances. I was born into and grew up in scarcity, a place where each purchase, each expenditure of money, mattered. 20 bucks to me and my family was and still is a significant expenditure. Cloud people think that's an absurdity reserved for those who "fail" at life, r-selected rabbits that they are they fully buy into that last part. That those like me are "failures" who deserve to die as it were.
I know I sound like I hate them, but I don't, not anymore. Were I born into a family with six figures in their bank account without even trying and within one of the "super" ZIP codes that encompass cities like New York or L.A. I'd almost certainly not be all that religious and view those country bumpkins in "flyover" country as the "barbarians" our current ruling class views and treats them as. But for the grace of God I myself may have become yet another stereotypical ILI "Death Cultist" as I understand it.
I think I've said it before here but I'll say it again. I can turn a Trump supporter into a hater and vice-versa. All I need is their initial position. If they hate him I can turn the r-selected hater into a lover by kicking them into the outlands with but a knife and flint to their name. Should they survive somehow and successfully return to civilization despite not having an ounce of survivalist knowledge, they'll be a rock-ribbed conservative who thinks Trump is a pussy in regards to what he/she now sees as what "needs" to be done.
Likewise, take a hardcore "nationalist/conservative" of any type and both move them into a very nice/peaceful neighborhood and inform them that every month they'll get a million bucks for doing nothing but living (and follow up on that of course). They'll be an atheistic death-cult feminist dogma espousing liberal before the second year is out at most!
Only applies for those who are average of course. Ideologues/types like me won't fall for it as we're set in our ways. Sadly (or thankfully, depending on your viewpoint), the likes of me are quite rare. The grand majority of humans are oh so very, very vulnerable to such easy manipulation. I mean fuck, LBJ had a thing or two to say about "blacks" and how he'd have em' voting Democrat for the next hundred years. He used the racial slur to refer to them, but to point that out now would probably get you labeled a bigot...
Last edited by End; 05-09-2020 at 04:56 AM.
I can't help but comment on this. You called "cloud people" those living on the coasts, as though everyone in coastal states is wealthy and as though there are not a ton of people on the political left (myself included) who come from backgrounds of scarcity. This dichotomy about the cloud people vs. the dirt people is nonsense to me if you're going to say some states are "cloud states" while others are "dirt states" as though things are uniform for everyone in a state; and if you're going to say that everyone on the left is a "cloud person" implying affluence. These things simply are not true. Furthermore the party that most blames people for their own poverty is the Republican party. That's why they do not support things life welfare, universal healthcare, prison reform, funding schools in poor neighborhoods, debt relief from college loans, etc. They don't view it as circumstances you come from. They view it as your fault. And during the current COVID crisis they have no mercy for essential workers, in say meat packing plants. They want to force them to work and risk themselves and deny them unemployment if they quit afraid they will become infected. They blame those people for their plight, they say it's how they live and their personal choices, while ignoring the hazardous working conditions that they will do nothing to change, while ignoring a long history of systemic injustice, while refusing to get the US to the testing capacity it needs to have a chance of controlling the virus. I can hear that the Democrats are run by corporate money too (they are), but what I can't accept is that they are worse than the Republicans when they are the ones who provide any government assistance at all. Ever had to use food stamps? That was the Democrats. Ever needed healthcare? Obama did try to get us a national healthcare system, flawed as it is. Ever needed to be on welfare? The Democrats support programs like that. Republicans want to leave you on your own. If you fall through the cracks, if you die, they won't pretend to care and they will offer no aid.
Here's some examples of our lovely Republican leadership defending rich corporations from the workers they find it acceptable to kill, blaming workers for getting sick in conditions they have to work in to sustain their wages, blaming communities of color for their communities being disproportionately affected rather than blaming systemic racism:
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinio...an-ncna1194226
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...workers-241915
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/11/21217428/surgeon-general-jerome-adams-big-mama-coronavirus
All of these are examples of Republicans either actively harming or condoning the harm of real life "dirt people." Dirt people because they treat them like dirt. (Adams is apparently an independent, but he's in bed with the rest of them, so the distinction means little to me.)
Last edited by marooned; 05-11-2020 at 07:00 PM.
Politics are cancer.
We are all going to die in fire very soon and nothing will be done about it.
There is no safe distance to look into the politics shitpit without getting polluted by it. You will change. You will become worse for it. You will accrue regrets for it, you hate yourself, and you will drive yourself into fear and helplessness. The minute you think you are shrewd enough to avoid getting lied to, you are tricked.
I disavow informing or opining anything on politics again. I'm done. Hold me to this promise. I wish I'd never come near and I never want to go back.
Let it all burn down one way or another, but let my voice have as little sway on it as possible, even when it takes me with it. Damn this whole thing. I hate it.
A good stance to take I'd say. After all, like I've heavily implied, no logical "argument" will sway anyone in regards to their politics/morality (I can argue how the two are directly correlated). Only within a "teaching moment" will mere words (or hell, a direct experience) have any effect. Those occur by pretty much divine fiat. Like writing the next biggest hit novel, if anyone knew the universal formula in regards to creating them they'd be doing just that 24/7.
Just don't come to hate your "opponents" as it were. I know I seem to hate my "enemies" but in truth I pity them. Death Cultists are basically begging someone to actually try and stop them, that someone will finally judge them as being as evil as they know they are deep down and smite them with the consequences they know they rightfully deserve. The fact that they not only aren't receiving righteous judgement but are successfully persecuting the righteous at this current moment in time ironically drives them deeper into despair.
Plus ça change...
Yeah, and it's really in a way what we choose to be and what mindset we choose to have... If we believe we are inherently violent competitors then we will be more paranoid if stranded together in a survival situation and more likely to create the very thing we so fear. It doesn't have to be that way. It isn't even "natural" for it to be that way.
If much of society believes that there isn't enough and we all have to fight each other for it, then that is the world we will create. So in that sense, it's all about perceived scarcity (contrary to my ignoring the relevance of perceived scarcity in my previous post). Probably the most greedy corporations operate with the belief there isn't enough, so they must take, take, take and hoard it, and then that creates an actual situation of scarcity, and it perpetuates among those who suffer from that actual scarcity more of this mindset of scarcity, so they can recycle that back into collective thought/action, creating more actual scarcity.
And lol that's why there's toilet paper shortage. We always had enough of this oh so precious resource, but because much of US society concentrated its scarcity fears on toilet paper of all things, a shortage soon appeared. It was completely unnecessary.
The way the economy runs so as to create scarcity for far more people than it creates prosperity for, is completely unnecessary too.
ETA: An interview I found with Bregman: https://www.ips-journal.eu/interview...friendly-4269/
It's funny, it also talks about toilet paper. Anyway, it mentions how at one point even the Trump admin was considering UBI, and Bregman's feeling at the time. I remember feeling uplifted when that happened, like maybe this crisis would bring everyone together and they would start helping people. Then sometime later, the Republicans changed their tune. I don't know if their corporate masters swooped in and activated their choke chains or what. It is good UBI is now floating around more in thought though. I attribute it mainly to Andrew Yang (the discussion on it politically in the US).
I think I am not very much of an optimist and fear that optimists often get carried away with themselves, like the people who spin everything like it's going well when it's not. But I suppose a sort of vigilant optimism would correct this.
ETA 2 https://youtu.be/ydKcaIE6O1k
Wouldn't that be nice.
Last edited by marooned; 05-13-2020 at 03:15 AM.
Perhaps there will be a restoration of the Obama era.
"They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Perfectly valid for the democrats.
You will know that the Democrats have learned something when there are public hangings.
Germany once had a Nazi problem. With some help, they fixed that.
Italy once had a fascist problem. It seems that they were more forgiving and more forgetful, and it's back.
We are still at the beginning of "The roaring 2020s".
The invasion is expected to accelerate and the unconstrained multiculturalism will lead to the gradual erosion of many historical societies.
Calling something an "Invasion" makes it sound like you are against immigration. Do you agree?
Which historical societies should we try to preserve, going forward?
An article with a nice infographic showing the political leanings of various news organizations: https://medium.com/s/story/why-does-...s-9625b0dd28c6
The need for cheap labour will be accelerated after the restoration of "Progressive" Democracy.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-...ation-debate-0
Last edited by khcs; 05-18-2020 at 08:10 AM.
Russia will be forced into a second Perestroika, which will be much more damaging than the first one.
https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/will-pa...stronger-still
ESI. Enneagram Six, the Loyal Skeptic. Definite Eminem vibes.
China will be The New Enemy Number One in the 2020s.
https://www.cfr.org/report/implement...y-toward-china
Last edited by khcs; 05-18-2020 at 08:17 AM.
Welcome to the 2020s
The flags of Sodoma and Gomorrah will fly high in this Decadent Decade.
The best advice for the roaring 2020s. Do not speak out or question!
Sad but true really. I'll still speak out of turn and insult our godless (at best) masters. Because to just kowtow to them would be the ultimate display of cowardice and simpitude. I ain't either of those, and I pray that none who read this are either. After all, better to die defiantly spitting into the face of your oppressors than to die begging for your life like a little bitch as they extract the maximum amount of satisfaction from your pleas as they kill you nice and slow anyway.The best advice for the roaring 2020s. Do not speak out or question!
Political Correctness will be even more prevalent.
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