Re: Q Anon is the tip of the iceberg

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spudb...@aol.com

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Feb 23, 2021, 11:14:48 PM2/23/21
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Well look at it this way The billionaires the globalist all the same funded and conspired with news media according to Time magazine a couple of weeks ago to get their China money back which was the essence of their opposition to the orange man. Going forward it's going to be more interesting to see what happens with the US domestic economy first, and then see if the so-called Democrats decide to use political oppression on top of this. What I am guessing is that if and when they do, and it is no certainty, we'll see a rebellion in the USA, because not everybody in this continent is so easily persuaded by whatever Obama and Kamala and of course Joe have to say about things specifically don't lose sight of the fact that it is there oligarchy that is running things now and not the US middle class and I think things will break along class lines if it when things go bad especially economically. Peace out!

On Tuesday, February 23, 2021 Bruno Marchal <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 21 Jan 2021, at 01:34, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Bruno, I completely agree and will be delighted to be proven wrong, as thus, the new people (basically Obama's people) have a turn again at bat (US baseball reference). QANON, I ignored because they produced nothing useful, Basically, a disinformation campaign, and many of these in the past seemingly, were not all by the Soviets, the Chinese Communist Party, but were spun up by US advertising agencies. All in the name of psychological warfare. 

I don’t think we can compare the lying propaganda (of the USSR for exemple) with the advertising in the US. Even the lies on drugs could be criticised, and the truth be known, like with the book of Jack Herer. He has not been sent in jail, nor his family get under threats. Threats in politics in something new in America, and seems to come up through Trump and those who enabled him. That is very grave, but, thank God, the US is still a democracy. But the Republican Party is very sick, that is what we can say.



 

Here is my questions for the departed Orange President? Where is your evidence of massive, successful, voter fraud?

Since you had mentioned back in 2016 when you ran against Hillary,

I ran for nobody. After one week of Trump’s campaign I predicted (wrongly) that he would not get more than one vote. I am vey naïve, but once he promised he would show his taxes, I knew he was a crook. I am a republican, just horrified by Donald Trump and most of his acolytes. For me you can put Trump at the extreme left. You need this to lick Putin and Kim-Young-Un feet...



and quoted a study that indicated illegals in the US voting, you must have expected vote fraud, so why not take the steps to ensure that it would be difficult to conduct mass fraud??

The election in the US are very well organised. To have mass fraud is basically impossible. You would need thousands of democrats becoming (fake) member of the Republican Party. At this hours, we would have many whistleblowers using some doubt, at the least. But none of this occur, and no people witnessing frauds have maintained their claim under oath. I think, with Crebs, that: those were the most secure election ever made on the planet.

Now, the facts that republicans continue to fear Trump worry me. They will lose the election and the honour, and that’s the best case scenario for the US.

Bruno




-----Original Message-----
From: Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be>
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, Jan 20, 2021 10:41 am
Subject: Re: Q Anon is the tip of the iceberg


On 17 Jan 2021, at 08:22, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Universities are the autocratic kings of censorship and repression.
Some universities are like that, with some degree. When I was young, there were some excellent course in philosophy alongside with course which were pure and simple propaganda.

Then even the math departement was politicised, after may 1968. You needed to be communist to be well seen by the geometers, to be socialist to be well seen by Algebraists,  and to be capitalist to be analyst (calculus). Well, not as clearcut at this, but that was in the air, and some student got bad note for not applauding some local ideology, which was outrageous,
Some have fight on this and win, others have fight and got many problems. It all depends on the character of many individuals, but of course, the pré-eminance of the human general law “the boss is right” does not help.

At least, in a working democracy, we can change the boss from time to time. That is a real progress, and perhaps the only one since Plato, in the human science.



It is no mistake that the most tyrannical of presidents Wilson and Obama arrived from the realm of professorship. I would add FDR and his internment camps, but he did free more peeps, than he imprisoned to say the least, so good on him. 
So what to do? My part is easy! Wait for errors on the side of the ruling class, that affects the middle class, and when enough uncorrected problems pile up, people, naturally will react. Repression from social media and the banks will be one thing that initiates a back-reaction (right outta optical physics).
If the Dems do well with economic recovery, then it will be sunny skies for them.  Once Kamala gets in gear, we will see what her leadership takes us?

Let us give them a chance. We will see.

Bruno



On Saturday, January 16, 2021 Philip Benjamin <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

[John K Clark]
“No universities are doing any censoring either and for exactly the same reason, although I do think threatening to expel students for what they say is a very unproductive thing to do”
[Philip Benjamin]
   There are hundreds if not thousands of instances to the contrary. Some are listed below. That is why I call these Universities WAMP—Western Acade-Media Pagan(ism).
     ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Attorneys for a California State University, Northridge scientist who was terminated from his job after discovering soft tissue on a triceratops fossil have filed a lawsuit against the university.
    Astronomer Sues the University of Kentucky, Claiming His Faith Cost Him a Job
    A Psychiatry Professor fired after speech opposing puberty-blocking drugs sues university
    A Chapman University law professor who has come under fire for his election fraud claims and participation in a rally led by President Donald Trump just before the insurrection at the Capitol fought back Monday against critics who are calling for his ouster from the university
       Big science has expelled smart new ideas from the classroom ... What they forgot is that every generation has its Rebel! That rebel, Ben Stein (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) travels the world on his quest, and learns an awe-inspiring truth … that educators and scientists are being ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired – for the crime of merely believing that there might be evidence of design in nature, and that perhaps life is not just the result of accidental, random chance. To which Ben Says: Enough! And then gets busy. NOBODY messes with Ben.
Philip Benjamin  
 
From: everyth...@googlegroups.com <everyth...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Saturday, January 16, 2021 6:12 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Cc: goldenfield...@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Q Anon is the tip of the iceberg
 
On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 10:00 PM spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
 
> For me, all I need to see is which companies are doing the censoring?
 
To censor someone you need the power to imprison or kill them if they say something you don't like, so no company is doing any censoring, some of them may want to but none of them are able to because only governments have enough power to do that. I'm not saying companies don't have any power at all because they do, and sometimes they use the power they do have unwisely, and that's a problem, but the solution is not to give even more power to the government because it already has quite enough power thank you. So what is the solution?  I don't know, there may not be one, there is not always a solution to every problem and that's why we live in an imperfect world and probably always will, but we should try to make the imperfections as small as possible. And if history has taught us anything it's that  giving even more power to the government, which is already the most powerful institution in our society, will not make the world perfect.
 
> Which universities are censoring for the "safety of the students"
 
No universities are doing any censoring either and for exactly the same reason, although I do think threatening to expel students for what they say is a very unproductive thing to do. And I think the idea that university students are such delicate snowflakes that they need protection from harsh language or exposure to views different from their own is ridiculous; they're not gonna be in college for their entire life and sooner or later they're going to have to toughen up if they want to live in the real world. So that's a problem, but the world is full of problems and some of them we just have to live with. I know one thing for sure: a government edict banning such a practice would cause more problems than it solved.
 
> We had 7 months of sporadic riots and the liberals (which I sometimes side with) and now they freak out when conservatives targets the capital.
 
If you are not freaked out by a murderous mob of Stormtrumper zombies staging a coup d'état by attacking the Capital Building which contained the Vice President and every single member of the House and Senate in an attempt to overturn the Constitution of the USA and a free election to keep their "Dear Leader" in power indefinitely then there is something very seriously wrong with you!  
 
John K Clark.
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Bruno Marchal

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Feb 24, 2021, 3:36:42 AM2/24/21
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On 24 Feb 2021, at 05:14, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Well look at it this way The billionaires the globalist all the same funded and conspired with news media according to Time magazine a couple of weeks ago to get their China money back which was the essence of their opposition to the orange man. Going forward it's going to be more interesting to see what happens with the US domestic economy first, and then see if the so-called Democrats decide to use political oppression on top of this. What I am guessing is that if and when they do, and it is no certainty, we'll see a rebellion in the USA, because not everybody in this continent is so easily persuaded by whatever Obama and Kamala and of course Joe have to say about things specifically don't lose sight of the fact that it is there oligarchy that is running things now and not the US middle class and I think things will break along class lines if it when things go bad especially economically. Peace out!


In a democracy, the idea is to vote on the Left when the country go to much on the Right, and to vote on the Right when the country go to much on the left. That is an important degree of “freedom”. We can only pray that we don’t go off the sinuous reality road.
Now, when we put bandits into power, they are difficult to dislodge. If they are clever, they will still respect the democratic rule, and influence only by lies. If they are “stupid”, they will show that they are bandits, like in Trump case, and … to me the US has shown that democracy still works in the US, and hope remains.
I am a republican, (centre-right) but I consider Trump to represent the extreme left, like defending Russia and North Korea against Europa, and apparently against the US interests.
A rotten democracy is still better than any Tyranny.

Bruno





Telmo Menezes

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Feb 24, 2021, 9:31:38 AM2/24/21
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As an outside observer, I can't help but notice the following pattern in American politics: every presidential election is now seen as a civilization-threatening event, where each side believes that the other side is literally pure evil in its crystalized form, and that if they win, life as we know it will be over. We have now been through several iterations of this, and the reality is that nothing ever seems to happen, one way or the other.

Let me propose a (I know, perhaps crazy), alternative hypothesis:

Your limbic system has been hijacked for clicks. The presidency is not as important as you think it is. Most people are mostly incompetent. China is incompetent, Russia is incompetent, the CIA is incompetent and so on and so forth. Very little of what they do matter to you or me in any way, shape or form.

There is no class consciousness in the 21st century in the west. There will be no revolt of the middle classes. Antifa is just a bunch of college kids doing what college kids do. BLM protests created no problems of any significance whatsoever. Statues don't matter, cancel culture doesn't matter, the alt-right doesn't matter, none of it matters. Most of the public personalities on both the right and the left are entertainers making a living. Nothing of what they say matters.

The stuff that matters is boring: laws, education, serious journalism. If the legal system, or education, or newspapers give you an emotional rush, you're probably getting counterfeit goods. Being able to talk to each other without accusing the other side of being nazis or harvesting babies for adrenochrome is what probably matters. There is no conspiracy. There is just short-term greed, and new technologies that create environments that we did not evolve for.

I detest Trump, but I detest him because he's a dumb and mean narcissist who sets a horrible example. I don't like bullies, and I hate it when they win. Otherwise, he didn't matter. He accomplished nothing of any significance, good or bad. The covid fuck-up probably had more to do with American culture and overall circumstances than anything else. The lack of a real public health system, the self-reliant mentality that has a great side and a horrible side, the glorification of work at all costs, the social inequalities that force a lot of people to work at all costs. All stuff that was already there, and will keep being there. Every country in the world thought they were very smart about covid until they weren't. If one compares covid to the Spanish flu, it's unfolding in exactly the same way. The curves look the same, it's uncanny.

Biden won't matter either, nor will Kamala.

Is there a lot of stuff that we should improve in the world? Oh yes! But none of this has anything to do with that.

Telmo

Brent Meeker

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Feb 24, 2021, 1:47:28 PM2/24/21
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On 2/24/2021 12:36 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 24 Feb 2021, at 05:14, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Well look at it this way The billionaires the globalist all the same funded and conspired with news media according to Time magazine a couple of weeks ago to get their China money back which was the essence of their opposition to the orange man. Going forward it's going to be more interesting to see what happens with the US domestic economy first, and then see if the so-called Democrats decide to use political oppression on top of this. What I am guessing is that if and when they do, and it is no certainty, we'll see a rebellion in the USA, because not everybody in this continent is so easily persuaded by whatever Obama and Kamala and of course Joe have to say about things specifically don't lose sight of the fact that it is there oligarchy that is running things now and not the US middle class and I think things will break along class lines if it when things go bad especially economically. Peace out!


In a democracy, the idea is to vote on the Left when the country go to much on the Right, and to vote on the Right when the country go to much on the left. That is an important degree of “freedom”. We can only pray that we don’t go off the sinuous reality road.
Now, when we put bandits into power, they are difficult to dislodge. If they are clever, they will still respect the democratic rule, and influence only by lies. If they are “stupid”, they will show that they are bandits, like in Trump case, and … to me the US has shown that democracy still works in the US, and hope remains.
I am a republican, (centre-right) but I consider Trump to represent the extreme left, like defending Russia and North Korea against Europa, and apparently against the US interests.
A rotten democracy is still better than any Tyranny.

Bruno

I don't know why you would associate defending Russia and North Korea as leftist.  Russia is run by a mob oligarchy and NK is a hereditary monarchy.  There's nothing "leftist" about them.   Trump is as racist as any Nazi; just read about his behavior toward the Central Park Five.  He really has no political ideology.  He is only idea is that he's right and everybody should admire him for being so smart and tough.

Brent

spudb...@aol.com

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Feb 24, 2021, 7:26:38 PM2/24/21
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As a trumpy, I would say that we chose him, because Obama and Bush 43, and Clinton previously, had successfully betrayed the interests of US middle class. This was highlighted by former Clintonista, NY times economist and former Yale prof Paul  Krugman, who acknowledged last fall that the North American Free Trade Agreement, screwed over the US middle class. All power is now in the hands of the globalists, the China Facing companies. We chose Orange man because of his obnoxiousness, and ability to say no. The politicians in the Rep party also take globalist monies as campaign donation$, as well as all of the Dems. 

My guess is because we will now be taxed by the dems to satisfy the needs of illegal foreign workers,* and the dems, despite claims that "economies work better under democrats" -a lie, there will probably be some sort of rebellion, because who wants to obey people who want you dead? I hold for looking at economic separation first, as a means of survival. This, combined with inflation + high unemployment will make the US based globalists weak, and eventually they will set their organizations offshore to avoid full retaliation, by a now united middle class. Marx & Engels, if now been resurrected and brought up to this moment, would immediately see the promise of revolution based on reason! Lenin? Sketchy. Mao and Stalin would have shrugged and simply ordered our executions.

*Biden endorsed health care services for illegal workers and this has been something the Koch brothers had supported because cheap employment, plus health-not out of their own pocket. 


spudb...@aol.com

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Feb 24, 2021, 7:55:23 PM2/24/21
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What the white liberals and communists will never admit is that so many Blacks and people of all ethnicities are bigoted and racist. Refute this media if you can Brent, and no, you won't get away easily with calling this individual and 'outlier' or myself telling a little truth to tell a Big Lie Goebbels-style. 
Like:

and:

This, then is the big cheese of an issue so to speak, a true phenomena. Pretending the white racism is the central issue of the day, is something I am good to laff off, because its not. In the case of attackers, be they Kluxers, Communists, or Islamists, punching back twice as hard. Yes, getting down on their level. Your hatred of Big Don is not such a thing for me, because he was often obnoxious and you hated his policies. He was no more racist than Jesse Jackson or Al, the kiddies pal, Sharpton. I have moved on from Donny, and will wait and see if your teams spins up hyperinflation, with high US unemployment, plus, political oppression? In which case your enemies, (me) go for economic separation. 

This could all be done at the US state level as a start IF Necessary? If Kamala and Joe play 'smart' politics, the skies will be bright and blue for you and your team. IF your leaders do the ideological two-step, and combine depression, inflation, and the Gulag? Hopefully, they are not such schmucks, but as of now, who knows?

for 2024 (2022 if horrible)  I would say a nationalist US party, that is backward-looking, say to the year 2018. That's all. The US middle class abandons both Globalist, China-facing parties and strike out on our own. Competitive industries started in Flyover country. Many starting as......Co-Ops at first. A business in support of the US bill of rights, which the democrats constantly now yak against. 


Cthulu bless us!


-----Original Message-----
From: 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, Feb 24, 2021 1:47 pm
Subject: Re: Q Anon is the tip of the iceberg

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Bruno Marchal

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Feb 25, 2021, 5:55:36 AM2/25/21
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On 24 Feb 2021, at 15:30, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

As an outside observer, I can't help but notice the following pattern in American politics: every presidential election is now seen as a civilization-threatening event, where each side believes that the other side is literally pure evil in its crystalized form, and that if they win, life as we know it will be over. We have now been through several iterations of this, and the reality is that nothing ever seems to happen, one way or the other.

I think that before Trump, most Dems and Rep saw themselves as adversary, but not as enemy. Only with Trump, the adversary has become a scapegoat, an enemy, the responsible of all wrongs. Trump does not seem to be able to dialog, not even with its close accomplices. Trump is the worst enemy of … Trump. I think that his case is close to being pathological.




Let me propose a (I know, perhaps crazy), alternative hypothesis:

Your limbic system has been hijacked for clicks. The presidency is not as important as you think it is. Most people are mostly incompetent. China is incompetent, Russia is incompetent, the CIA is incompetent and so on and so forth. Very little of what they do matter to you or me in any way, shape or form.

There is no class consciousness in the 21st century in the west. There will be no revolt of the middle classes. Antifa is just a bunch of college kids doing what college kids do. BLM protests created no problems of any significance whatsoever. Statues don't matter, cancel culture doesn't matter, the alt-right doesn't matter, none of it matters. Most of the public personalities on both the right and the left are entertainers making a living. Nothing of what they say matters.

?
If Trump would have said what he knew about covid-19 in February 2020), May people would still be alive. 
If Trump would have won the second term election: I think that democracy would not have survived, on the whole planet, and the whole planet would be like … Texas today. I mean without water, ...




The stuff that matters is boring: laws, education, serious journalism. If the legal system, or education, or newspapers give you an emotional rush, you're probably getting counterfeit goods. Being able to talk to each other without accusing the other side of being nazis or harvesting babies for adrenochrome is what probably matters. There is no conspiracy. There is just short-term greed, and new technologies that create environments that we did not evolve for. 

If short term greed is satisfy by honest means, there is no problem, but when lies are made at the top, soon the belly, the health, and the basic needs disappear, leading to suffering. 



I detest Trump, but I detest him because he's a dumb and mean narcissist who sets a horrible example. I don't like bullies, and I hate it when they win. Otherwise, he didn't matter. He accomplished nothing of any significance, good or bad.

I think he did one good thing, and a tun of very bad things, and his endangering of democracy is not yet terminated. Thanks to him, there are QAnon people in the government. That’s very bad. 




The covid fuck-up probably had more to do with American culture and overall circumstances than anything else. The lack of a real public health system,

That’s because prohibition and free-market are inconsistent. Then, the abandon of rigour in the fundamental human science makes people accepting inconsistencies, which lead to human catastrophes. Even the “electric crisis” in Texas comes from the worst political isolationnisme possible, and a willingness to refuse a free-market for electricity. 




the self-reliant mentality that has a great side and a horrible side, the glorification of work at all costs, the social inequalities that force a lot of people to work at all costs. All stuff that was already there, and will keep being there. Every country in the world thought they were very smart about covid until they weren't. If one compares covid to the Spanish flu, it's unfolding in exactly the same way. The curves look the same, it's uncanny.

Biden won't matter either, nor will Kamala.

When good willing people can do compromise, people have a bigger chance to drink when thirsty or to eat when hungry. And kids have more chance to get a solid education, and become less prone to lies. I fear as much Sanders than Trump, and the task will not be easy for Biden and Kamala, but I leave them a chance, and at least, they are of the type of beings capable of conceding losing elections. Trump, it seems to me, has clearly shows his envy to be a dictator, which it is the first time in the US that this could have happened. Without the honesty of the Republicans in Georgia, Trump might have become the 46th president, and I don’t even want to imagine the state of the US after that.




Is there a lot of stuff that we should improve in the world? Oh yes! But none of this has anything to do with that.

I think that the democracy is the base to make any long-term improvement possible. Of course, it is a “living” thing, and so it can get sick, and even die.

For me, democracy is a symptom of our Löbianity: the knowledge that we don’t know the truth, nor can we know what is the best for us, and the consequence: let us try and see if it works, and letting people judge if it works, by oscillating between alternative solutions.

Paul Valery said that the human choice is between war and logic. Democracy is the attempt to use logic, and argumentation around a table, instead of bloody war on a battlefield, and I think it is a key progress. It prevents dark lasting ideology of possible bully monarchs. 

Bruno



Bruno Marchal

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Feb 25, 2021, 6:14:11 AM2/25/21
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That’s true, and I already said that to my leftist friends in the 1960s and 70s. 
There is nothing leftist or rightist about any authoritarian regime, except names. (Well, except some small nuances also, but fundamentally, without democracy “right” and “left” are no more ideas, but label to attracts some people in some circumstances.



Trump is as racist as any Nazi;

I agree.

Note that nazism was called national socialisme (Nationalsozialismus), despite being rightly considered at the extreme right, but some put it at the extreme left: it was the party of the German workers…

Extreme right and extreme left are basically the same, and they are against democracy, and they see their opponents as dissident, or enemies...



just read about his behavior toward the Central Park Five.  He really has no political ideology. 

I agree. He is a con man escaping forward. At the start he was Democrat, I read. But for him, right and left are just tools for his egocentric concern. I think he is a sort of autiste. He deserves the jail, or some medical treatment, perhaps. 

It is just that by Left or extreme Left, we mean the party who defended the Soviets (and satellites) against America and Europa, like the French communist party. North Korea is of course just a blind monarchy, it is not to the left or right, but it belongs to the club of countries defended by the left for many years, like the Communist China, Russia, etc. 

Without a democracy, right and left have not much meaning.


He is only idea is that he's right and everybody should admire him for being so smart and tough.

No problem with this. I agree. 

Bruno




Brent

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Telmo Menezes

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Feb 25, 2021, 7:03:29 AM2/25/21
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Am Do, 25. Feb 2021, um 10:55, schrieb Bruno Marchal:

On 24 Feb 2021, at 15:30, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

As an outside observer, I can't help but notice the following pattern in American politics: every presidential election is now seen as a civilization-threatening event, where each side believes that the other side is literally pure evil in its crystalized form, and that if they win, life as we know it will be over. We have now been through several iterations of this, and the reality is that nothing ever seems to happen, one way or the other.

I think that before Trump, most Dems and Rep saw themselves as adversary, but not as enemy. Only with Trump, the adversary has become a scapegoat, an enemy, the responsible of all wrongs. Trump does not seem to be able to dialog, not even with its close accomplices. Trump is the worst enemy of … Trump. I think that his case is close to being pathological.

I agree, but I think Trump is a symptom, not a cause. There is also Boris Johnson, who is Britain's Trump, Bolsonaro, who is Brazil's Trump, etc.

With the mainstream adoption of the Internet, in the early 2000s, political campaigns were reinvented (data-driven, highly targeted like advertisement). The early examples of this appear to be Tony Blair's second campaign in the UK and Obama's first in the US. Then it became the new norm, with increased sophistication. At the same time, journalism responded to the exestential threat created by the Internet by merging itself with the nascent ad-tech industry, pioneered by Google. In this new attention economy, the one who engages people's emotions the most wins. We are witnessing the race to the bottom that this creates, with widespread hysteria and irrationality from both sides of the political spectrum. I think that Trump and QAnon are products of this, and so is brexit on this side of the Atlantic.

I think that this is not so different from the obesity crisis created by fast food. Like with hyper-palatable food, we have not evolved for an environment where we are constantly targeted by emotionally-charged "news" that are fine-tuned by algorithms to be hyper-stimulating.

If it wasn't McDonald's, it would be something else. If it wasn't Trump, it would be someone else.




Let me propose a (I know, perhaps crazy), alternative hypothesis:

Your limbic system has been hijacked for clicks. The presidency is not as important as you think it is. Most people are mostly incompetent. China is incompetent, Russia is incompetent, the CIA is incompetent and so on and so forth. Very little of what they do matter to you or me in any way, shape or form.

There is no class consciousness in the 21st century in the west. There will be no revolt of the middle classes. Antifa is just a bunch of college kids doing what college kids do. BLM protests created no problems of any significance whatsoever. Statues don't matter, cancel culture doesn't matter, the alt-right doesn't matter, none of it matters. Most of the public personalities on both the right and the left are entertainers making a living. Nothing of what they say matters.

?
If Trump would have said what he knew about covid-19 in February 2020), May people would still be alive. 

Perhaps, but we have no way of testing the counter-factual scenario. Trump was extremely selfish and incompetent, I don't doubt this for a second, but I'm not sure if his incompetence didn't just result in the forest fire being started a bit earlier rather than later. But I wouldn't be surprised if you're right. I don't think we can know. It's a complex scenario.

In Portugal they kind of did the right thing early, and the country had one of the best outcomes in Europe. Then they became confident, and ended up relaxing restrictions for Xmas. Then they quickly became the worst case in Europe. The US is exponentially more complex than Portugal. How long can you keep restrictions when you don't feel the outcomes? From what I see here in Berlin, it's not easy. Much worse in a country where self-reliance and distrust of government is baked into the culture from the beginning, I would say. (for good and bad!)

If Trump would have won the second term election: I think that democracy would not have survived, on the whole planet, and the whole planet would be like … Texas today. I mean without water, ...

I don't think that the US is as important to rest of the world as it used to be. With all its flaws, I believe it is the EU that is now carrying the torch of liberal democracy, the "free world" as they liked to say during the Cold War. Perhaps because the still recent lessons on the XX century don't leave so much space to get drunk with fantasies of exceptionalism.




The stuff that matters is boring: laws, education, serious journalism. If the legal system, or education, or newspapers give you an emotional rush, you're probably getting counterfeit goods. Being able to talk to each other without accusing the other side of being nazis or harvesting babies for adrenochrome is what probably matters. There is no conspiracy. There is just short-term greed, and new technologies that create environments that we did not evolve for. 

If short term greed is satisfy by honest means, there is no problem, but when lies are made at the top, soon the belly, the health, and the basic needs disappear, leading to suffering. 

I agree. My point is that we are still adopting to a highly transformative communication technology. Every time a qualitative jump in communication technology happens, it seems to create profound social transformations and challenges. Consider Gutenberg and Protestantism, or, what would have been of Hitler without radio, etc.



I detest Trump, but I detest him because he's a dumb and mean narcissist who sets a horrible example. I don't like bullies, and I hate it when they win. Otherwise, he didn't matter. He accomplished nothing of any significance, good or bad.

I think he did one good thing, and a tun of very bad things, and his endangering of democracy is not yet terminated. Thanks to him, there are QAnon people in the government. That’s very bad. 

I guess you get my position by now: the Internet is the ulterior cause here, Trump is one of the consequences. I agree that democracy was and is endangered.


The covid fuck-up probably had more to do with American culture and overall circumstances than anything else. The lack of a real public health system,

That’s because prohibition and free-market are inconsistent. Then, the abandon of rigour in the fundamental human science makes people accepting inconsistencies, which lead to human catastrophes. Even the “electric crisis” in Texas comes from the worst political isolationnisme possible, and a willingness to refuse a free-market for electricity. 

I agree.


the self-reliant mentality that has a great side and a horrible side, the glorification of work at all costs, the social inequalities that force a lot of people to work at all costs. All stuff that was already there, and will keep being there. Every country in the world thought they were very smart about covid until they weren't. If one compares covid to the Spanish flu, it's unfolding in exactly the same way. The curves look the same, it's uncanny.

Biden won't matter either, nor will Kamala.

When good willing people can do compromise, people have a bigger chance to drink when thirsty or to eat when hungry. And kids have more chance to get a solid education, and become less prone to lies. I fear as much Sanders than Trump,

Really? Sanders sounds like a moderate social-democrat to my European ears...

and the task will not be easy for Biden and Kamala, but I leave them a chance, and at least, they are of the type of beings capable of conceding losing elections. Trump, it seems to me, has clearly shows his envy to be a dictator, which it is the first time in the US that this could have happened. Without the honesty of the Republicans in Georgia, Trump might have become the 46th president, and I don’t even want to imagine the state of the US after that.

I agree with you that he wished to become a dictator, and there is no doubt that he tried a coup. It looks like about 30% of the population will support him no matter what, and desires a military coup and a tyrant backed by the military. They also fantasize about the public execution of all political rivals. That being said, it looks like 30% is the ceiling, and I suspect they were there all along. It is just that it was easier to hide them, from all of us and from each other, when that state had a firmer grip on centralized media pre-Internet. My optimistic view is that 4 more years of Trump would not cause this 30% ceiling to grow. On the contrary, it is perhaps doomed to recede due to demographic changes.

I think it is also good to take a step back from all the emotionally charged environment that ad-tech enabled "journalism" has created for all of us.


Is there a lot of stuff that we should improve in the world? Oh yes! But none of this has anything to do with that.

I think that the democracy is the base to make any long-term improvement possible. Of course, it is a “living” thing, and so it can get sick, and even die.

I agree.

For me, democracy is a symptom of our Löbianity: the knowledge that we don’t know the truth, nor can we know what is the best for us, and the consequence: let us try and see if it works, and letting people judge if it works, by oscillating between alternative solutions.

I agree and it is very fragile because people can be convinced to vote for tyranny. But I do think that:

(1) The US is far from that;
(2) The US doesn't matter as it once has.

Paul Valery said that the human choice is between war and logic. Democracy is the attempt to use logic, and argumentation around a table, instead of bloody war on a battlefield, and I think it is a key progress. It prevents dark lasting ideology of possible bully monarchs. 

Yes. I know a lot of people who fetishize war. It is a particularly bad problem in the US, with all the acritical "thank you for your service" mentality. Perhaps a bit like what happened in Rome, where the only avenue to climb the social ladder for a lot of people was through the army. But it is also a problem here and elsewhere.

Telmo

Brent Meeker

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Feb 25, 2021, 1:40:05 PM2/25/21
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On 2/25/2021 2:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 24 Feb 2021, at 15:30, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

As an outside observer, I can't help but notice the following pattern in American politics: every presidential election is now seen as a civilization-threatening event, where each side believes that the other side is literally pure evil in its crystalized form, and that if they win, life as we know it will be over. We have now been through several iterations of this, and the reality is that nothing ever seems to happen, one way or the other.

I think that's hyperbole.  No Democrat I know thought John McCain or Mitt Romney was evil or their election would threaten the nation.  Many thought W. was muddled and let us be led into middle east wars by the neo-conservatives like Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.  But even then they thought he was a nice guy.



I think that before Trump, most Dems and Rep saw themselves as adversary, but not as enemy. Only with Trump, the adversary has become a scapegoat, an enemy, the responsible of all wrongs. Trump does not seem to be able to dialog, not even with its close accomplices. Trump is the worst enemy of … Trump. I think that his case is close to being pathological.

Remember Trump attacked all the leadership of the Republican party.  He used to register as a Democrat.  He has no political ideology.  He just wants to be an autocrat who is loved and admired.  He adopted populism, nativism, and conspiracy theories because there was a sufficient number of anti-government voters in the Republican who had been fed that line for the last 40yrs.





Let me propose a (I know, perhaps crazy), alternative hypothesis:

Your limbic system has been hijacked for clicks. The presidency is not as important as you think it is. Most people are mostly incompetent. China is incompetent, Russia is incompetent, the CIA is incompetent and so on and so forth. Very little of what they do matter to you or me in any way, shape or form.

There is no class consciousness in the 21st century in the west. There will be no revolt of the middle classes. Antifa is just a bunch of college kids doing what college kids do. BLM protests created no problems of any significance whatsoever. Statues don't matter, cancel culture doesn't matter, the alt-right doesn't matter, none of it matters. Most of the public personalities on both the right and the left are entertainers making a living. Nothing of what they say matters.

?
If Trump would have said what he knew about covid-19 in February 2020), May people would still be alive. 
If Trump would have won the second term election: I think that democracy would not have survived, on the whole planet, and the whole planet would be like … Texas today. I mean without water, ..



The stuff that matters is boring: laws, education, serious journalism. If the legal system, or education, or newspapers give you an emotional rush, you're probably getting counterfeit goods. Being able to talk to each other without accusing the other side of being nazis or harvesting babies for adrenochrome is what probably matters. There is no conspiracy. There is just short-term greed, and new technologies that create environments that we did not evolve for. 

If short term greed is satisfy by honest means, there is no problem, but when lies are made at the top, soon the belly, the health, and the basic needs disappear, leading to suffering. 



I detest Trump, but I detest him because he's a dumb and mean narcissist who sets a horrible example. I don't like bullies, and I hate it when they win. Otherwise, he didn't matter. He accomplished nothing of any significance, good or bad.

I think he did one good thing, and a tun of very bad things, and his endangering of democracy is not yet terminated. Thanks to him, there are QAnon people in the government. That’s very bad.

He not only endangered democracy, he endangers the whole planet by tearing down international agreements (TPP, Iran nuclear, Russian missiles, Chinese trade, Paris accords,...). 





The covid fuck-up probably had more to do with American culture and overall circumstances than anything else. The lack of a real public health system,

That’s because prohibition and free-market are inconsistent. Then, the abandon of rigour in the fundamental human science makes people accepting inconsistencies, which lead to human catastrophes. Even the “electric crisis” in Texas comes from the worst political isolationnisme possible, and a willingness to refuse a free-market for electricity.

It came because they tried to make a free-market electric system.  The electricity producers had no incentive to provide reliability against weather events happening ten or twenty years apart.  To provide excess capability and backups and weatherize would just raise cost and lose customers to the competition.  Customers were free to buy electricity on a daily basis...which is why some of them now have $16,000 bills for five days service.





the self-reliant mentality that has a great side and a horrible side, the glorification of work at all costs, the social inequalities that force a lot of people to work at all costs. All stuff that was already there, and will keep being there. Every country in the world thought they were very smart about covid until they weren't. If one compares covid to the Spanish flu, it's unfolding in exactly the same way. The curves look the same, it's uncanny.

Biden won't matter either, nor will Kamala.

When good willing people can do compromise, people have a bigger chance to drink when thirsty or to eat when hungry. And kids have more chance to get a solid education, and become less prone to lies. I fear as much Sanders than Trump, and the task will not be easy for Biden and Kamala, but I leave them a chance, and at least, they are of the type of beings capable of conceding losing elections. Trump, it seems to me, has clearly shows his envy to be a dictator, which it is the first time in the US that this could have happened. Without the honesty of the Republicans in Georgia, Trump might have become the 46th president, and I don’t even want to imagine the state of the US after that.




Is there a lot of stuff that we should improve in the world? Oh yes! But none of this has anything to do with that.

I think that the democracy is the base to make any long-term improvement possible. Of course, it is a “living” thing, and so it can get sick, and even die.

For me, democracy is a symptom of our Löbianity: the knowledge that we don’t know the truth, nor can we know what is the best for us, and the consequence: let us try and see if it works, and letting people judge if it works, by oscillating between alternative solutions.

Paul Valery said that the human choice is between war and logic. Democracy is the attempt to use logic, and argumentation around a table, instead of bloody war on a battlefield, and I think it is a key progress. It prevents dark lasting ideology of possible bully monarchs.

But argumentation that is not based on facts, that starts from conspiracy theories, is likely to end in violence.  There is a conundrum in the U.S.  The government is forbidden to restrict speech, especially political speech.  But this has been interpreted so as to allow the purchase of public speech by corporations and wealthy individuals (Rupert Murdoch, Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson,...) to drown out facts and expertise.

Brent

Telmo Menezes

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Feb 25, 2021, 2:30:45 PM2/25/21
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Am Do, 25. Feb 2021, um 18:39, schrieb 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List:


On 2/25/2021 2:55 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 24 Feb 2021, at 15:30, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

As an outside observer, I can't help but notice the following pattern in American politics: every presidential election is now seen as a civilization-threatening event, where each side believes that the other side is literally pure evil in its crystalized form, and that if they win, life as we know it will be over. We have now been through several iterations of this, and the reality is that nothing ever seems to happen, one way or the other.

I think that's hyperbole.  No Democrat I know thought John McCain or Mitt Romney was evil or their election would threaten the nation.  Many thought W. was muddled and let us be led into middle east wars by the neo-conservatives like Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al.  But even then they thought he was a nice guy.

Isn't it that each iteration makes people look kindly on the past? I also have the feeling that W. was a nice guy, but I know I didn't think that at the time, nor do I seem to remember that being a general opinion amongst the opposition. I think it's Trump that is making him look good by comparison. Neo-cons were definitely painted (I think deservedly so) as sinister.

But that was before the Internet really kicked in, which happened I think during Obama's administration. I remember visiting the US during the first Obama campaign, and I felt what appeared to be a real grass-roots movement centered around this idea of hope, and that things could be different. Obama is a very charismatic and, to my taste, likeable fellow, but he was running for president, and my point is precisely that the presidency doesn't matter as much as it appears to.

My worry is that there is a growing disconnect between people's heightened emotional state and what is actually going on in the world. The stuff that matters is hidden from view, under layers and layers of abstraction and complexity, while the public sphere has been dominated by bullshit emotion-arousing topics such as kids dressing in black and breaking Starbucks windows, or whatever irrelevance Trump tweeted or said, or Q-Shaman's diet in jail. Not because of some vast conspiracy, but because the Internet became a self-reinforcing infernal machine that is destroying public discourse, journalism and basic civility.

Which is a very hard pill for me to swallow, because I was very idealistic about the transformative power of the Internet in the 90s, and I really though (naively) that it would liberate us instead of enslave us.



I think that before Trump, most Dems and Rep saw themselves as adversary, but not as enemy. Only with Trump, the adversary has become a scapegoat, an enemy, the responsible of all wrongs. Trump does not seem to be able to dialog, not even with its close accomplices. Trump is the worst enemy of … Trump. I think that his case is close to being pathological.

Remember Trump attacked all the leadership of the Republican party.  He used to register as a Democrat.  He has no political ideology.  He just wants to be an autocrat who is loved and admired.  He adopted populism, nativism, and conspiracy theories because there was a sufficient number of anti-government voters in the Republican who had been fed that line for the last 40yrs.


Yes I know. The same is true of Boris Johnson, who started his career writing lies about the European Union for British tabloids, then later on became pro-EU because he wanted to be mayor of London, then again became anti-EU because he wanted to be Prime Minister. Apparently he wrote two opinion pieces on the night before the Brexit vote, saying contradictory things, and published the one that helped him the most politically in face of the result. Again, the fact that politics is now dominated by people that believe in nothing (this is also true of Putin, by the way) is not a coincidence. It's a consequence of the system that we all inadvertently created. There is no simple solution nor a single bad guy to whom we can point our fingers. This seems obvious to me. I first step would be to deescalate the emotional arousal and look at modern media for what it is.




Let me propose a (I know, perhaps crazy), alternative hypothesis:

Your limbic system has been hijacked for clicks. The presidency is not as important as you think it is. Most people are mostly incompetent. China is incompetent, Russia is incompetent, the CIA is incompetent and so on and so forth. Very little of what they do matter to you or me in any way, shape or form.

There is no class consciousness in the 21st century in the west. There will be no revolt of the middle classes. Antifa is just a bunch of college kids doing what college kids do. BLM protests created no problems of any significance whatsoever. Statues don't matter, cancel culture doesn't matter, the alt-right doesn't matter, none of it matters. Most of the public personalities on both the right and the left are entertainers making a living. Nothing of what they say matters.

?
If Trump would have said what he knew about covid-19 in February 2020), May people would still be alive. 
If Trump would have won the second term election: I think that democracy would not have survived, on the whole planet, and the whole planet would be like … Texas today. I mean without water, ..




The stuff that matters is boring: laws, education, serious journalism. If the legal system, or education, or newspapers give you an emotional rush, you're probably getting counterfeit goods. Being able to talk to each other without accusing the other side of being nazis or harvesting babies for adrenochrome is what probably matters. There is no conspiracy. There is just short-term greed, and new technologies that create environments that we did not evolve for. 

If short term greed is satisfy by honest means, there is no problem, but when lies are made at the top, soon the belly, the health, and the basic needs disappear, leading to suffering. 



I detest Trump, but I detest him because he's a dumb and mean narcissist who sets a horrible example. I don't like bullies, and I hate it when they win. Otherwise, he didn't matter. He accomplished nothing of any significance, good or bad.

I think he did one good thing, and a tun of very bad things, and his endangering of democracy is not yet terminated. Thanks to him, there are QAnon people in the government. That’s very bad.

He not only endangered democracy, he endangers the whole planet by tearing down international agreements (TPP, Iran nuclear, Russian missiles, Chinese trade, Paris accords,...). 


Are you sure that any of that stuff really matters? To be clear, I am against tearing down some of those agreements. I do think that China should be sanctioned for committing genocide, and I am skeptical of things like TPP. I certainly don't desire the transatlantic version of that, and in fact joined protests against it. Not because I dislike you Americans, but because I think that such trade deals are used to smuggle in stuff that goes against the interest of the common people on both sides. For example, opening the possibility for corporations to sue for loss of profits if a government adopts measures in the public interest...  on climate, but also protecting workers, food quality and so on.

Telmo

Brent Meeker

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Feb 25, 2021, 9:16:56 PM2/25/21
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On 2/25/2021 11:30 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> Are you sure that any of that stuff really matters? To be clear, I am
> against tearing down some of those agreements. I do think that China
> should be sanctioned for committing genocide, and I am skeptical of
> things like TPP. I certainly don't desire the transatlantic version of
> that, and in fact joined protests against it. Not because I dislike
> you Americans, but because I think that such trade deals are used to
> smuggle in stuff that goes against the interest of the common people
> on both sides. For example, opening the possibility for corporations
> to sue for loss of profits if a government adopts measures in the
> public interest...  on climate, but also protecting workers, food
> quality and so on.
>
> Telmo

Yes, the TPP had some provisions protecting bad behavior and I opposed
those provisions; but on the whole I think trade barriers are negative
and opening up trade is good.

Brent

Brent Meeker

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Feb 25, 2021, 9:29:12 PM2/25/21
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On 2/25/2021 4:03 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
> With the mainstream adoption of the Internet, in the early 2000s,
> political campaigns were reinvented (data-driven, highly targeted like
> advertisement). The early examples of this appear to be Tony Blair's
> second campaign in the UK and Obama's first in the US. Then it became
> the new norm, with increased sophistication. At the same time,
> journalism responded to the exestential threat created by the Internet
> by merging itself with the nascent ad-tech industry, pioneered by
> Google. In this new attention economy, the one who engages people's
> emotions the most wins. We are witnessing the race to the bottom that
> this creates, with widespread hysteria and irrationality from both
> sides of the political spectrum. I think that Trump and QAnon are
> products of this, and so is brexit on this side of the Atlantic.
>
> I think that this is not so different from the obesity crisis created
> by fast food. Like with hyper-palatable food, we have not evolved for
> an environment where we are constantly targeted by emotionally-charged
> "news" that are fine-tuned by algorithms to be hyper-stimulating.

You should be pleased then with "Sleepy Joe" Biden, successor to "No
Drama" Obama.

Brent

Telmo Menezes

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Feb 26, 2021, 2:39:45 AM2/26/21
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I agree.

Telmo

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Telmo Menezes

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Feb 26, 2021, 2:40:57 AM2/26/21
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Didn't say I wasn't. I would have voted for him if I could.

Telmo

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Bruno Marchal

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Mar 31, 2021, 11:47:32 AM3/31/21
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On 25 Feb 2021, at 13:03, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:



Am Do, 25. Feb 2021, um 10:55, schrieb Bruno Marchal:

On 24 Feb 2021, at 15:30, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

As an outside observer, I can't help but notice the following pattern in American politics: every presidential election is now seen as a civilization-threatening event, where each side believes that the other side is literally pure evil in its crystalized form, and that if they win, life as we know it will be over. We have now been through several iterations of this, and the reality is that nothing ever seems to happen, one way or the other.

I think that before Trump, most Dems and Rep saw themselves as adversary, but not as enemy. Only with Trump, the adversary has become a scapegoat, an enemy, the responsible of all wrongs. Trump does not seem to be able to dialog, not even with its close accomplices. Trump is the worst enemy of … Trump. I think that his case is close to being pathological.

I agree, but I think Trump is a symptom, not a cause.

Certainly. But Trump is a sort of extreme symptom. Almost a caricature. But you are right, and this is exemplified by the fact that it keeps, apparently, his seduction power on the Republicans, even after those last month where he showed how much a bad looser he can be.



There is also Boris Johnson, who is Britain's Trump, Bolsonaro, who is Brazil's Trump, etc.

Maybe for Bolsonaro. But Boris Johnson is not comparable to Trump. I did fear that he could be like Trump, but he is not. Johnson is not an enemy of democracy. Trump is. That’s what I feel, or smell… I might be wrong, but Johnson has reassured me on that key point. 
The other Trump in power are more like Kim Young Un, ABS (Saudi), Erdogan, and Putin...





With the mainstream adoption of the Internet, in the early 2000s, political campaigns were reinvented (data-driven, highly targeted like advertisement). The early examples of this appear to be Tony Blair's second campaign in the UK and Obama's first in the US. Then it became the new norm, with increased sophistication. At the same time, journalism responded to the exestential threat created by the Internet by merging itself with the nascent ad-tech industry, pioneered by Google. In this new attention economy, the one who engages people's emotions the most wins. We are witnessing the race to the bottom that this creates, with widespread hysteria and irrationality from both sides of the political spectrum. I think that Trump and QAnon are products of this, and so is brexit on this side of the Atlantic.


You are right. I would add the Russian propaganda. Since long I tend to think that the Brexit is almost a pure result of Russian propaganda, but I have not found the time to verify all the evidences, so I cannot swear on this. 

Causation is a difficult subject. The systematic lies in the Oil industry and derivatives has put the bandits into power, but even this necessitates a millenium of training in believing in fairy tales. Maybe the cause is the poor level of education in math and logic. Postmodern relativism does not help, … Truth Research is not well-seen those days...




I think that this is not so different from the obesity crisis created by fast food. Like with hyper-palatable food, we have not evolved for an environment where we are constantly targeted by emotionally-charged "news" that are fine-tuned by algorithms to be hyper-stimulating.


It is a general problem with universal machine. But as long as we fight to keep up our universality, we will survive as individual. If not, we will be swallowed by a higher level organism (and never get any opportunity to say “no” to the doctor…).

The choice is in between liberty and insecurity (like to remain a free bacteria), or get a job and a limited social security (like becoming a mitochondria, or a chloroplaste).

After Trump we get a lesson, and all democracies should be solider and consolidate themselves, improved and get rid of the most recent lies (and stop asking for the legalization of cannabis, and ask for penalisation of prohibitionism, for example).

Theology should come back to the academy, before the theotechnologies develop too much...




If it wasn't McDonald's, it would be something else. If it wasn't Trump, it would be someone else.


Yes, I saw Trump as a chance. A sort of proof by absurd. But the GOP has awaken me that some people really does not acre of the truth. The GOP remind me a student who reject a proof, because when I got the contradiction: 0 = 1, he asked me why was that a problem, and argued that my belief that 0 should be different from 1 was a cultural prejudices. 
(I gave him a zero, … and when complaining I showed him that it was the best note possible, in a world where 0 = 1).








Let me propose a (I know, perhaps crazy), alternative hypothesis:

Your limbic system has been hijacked for clicks. The presidency is not as important as you think it is. Most people are mostly incompetent. China is incompetent, Russia is incompetent, the CIA is incompetent and so on and so forth. Very little of what they do matter to you or me in any way, shape or form.

There is no class consciousness in the 21st century in the west. There will be no revolt of the middle classes. Antifa is just a bunch of college kids doing what college kids do. BLM protests created no problems of any significance whatsoever. Statues don't matter, cancel culture doesn't matter, the alt-right doesn't matter, none of it matters. Most of the public personalities on both the right and the left are entertainers making a living. Nothing of what they say matters.

?
If Trump would have said what he knew about covid-19 in February 2020), May people would still be alive. 

Perhaps, but we have no way of testing the counter-factual scenario. Trump was extremely selfish and incompetent, I don't doubt this for a second, but I'm not sure if his incompetence didn't just result in the forest fire being started a bit earlier rather than later. But I wouldn't be surprised if you're right. I don't think we can know. It's a complex scenario.

I think that, at the least, this should be inquired.  I do think many lives would have been saved. Each of its last rallies have lead to surge of cases.  Such virus have higher probability to mute if not kept controlled. And in his interview, he really shows he knew the danger, just before hiding it to the public. 

The voters for Trump are more problematic. Some believes the lies, some just don’t care.




In Portugal they kind of did the right thing early, and the country had one of the best outcomes in Europe. Then they became confident, and ended up relaxing restrictions for Xmas. Then they quickly became the worst case in Europe. The US is exponentially more complex than Portugal. How long can you keep restrictions when you don't feel the outcomes? From what I see here in Berlin, it's not easy. Much worse in a country where self-reliance and distrust of government is baked into the culture from the beginning, I would say. (for good and bad!)


How can we take seriously people who lie in the human science since 1492 tears, and on medication even more since a century.

Money is the most wonderful mean, and the most horrible goal, and today, we are in the extreme confusion between means and goals. 

Planned obsolescence, which is partially detrimental for the environment, was asked by people and obtained through strikes, more or less influenced by private interests too, but it makes sense for people who feared to loss their jobs. That was an error, guided by short term interest, and it is hard to solve such kind of problem, and much more so in absence of genuine information, or worse, in presence of misinformation.





If Trump would have won the second term election: I think that democracy would not have survived, on the whole planet, and the whole planet would be like … Texas today. I mean without water, ...

I don't think that the US is as important to rest of the world as it used to be. With all its flaws, I believe it is the EU that is now carrying the torch of liberal democracy, the "free world" as they liked to say during the Cold War. Perhaps because the still recent lessons on the XX century don't leave so much space to get drunk with fantasies of exceptionalism.


I am not that optimistic about the EU. If the US makes some wrong, usually the EU will do it later. I hope you are right, and maybe you are.








The stuff that matters is boring: laws, education, serious journalism. If the legal system, or education, or newspapers give you an emotional rush, you're probably getting counterfeit goods. Being able to talk to each other without accusing the other side of being nazis or harvesting babies for adrenochrome is what probably matters. There is no conspiracy. There is just short-term greed, and new technologies that create environments that we did not evolve for. 

If short term greed is satisfy by honest means, there is no problem, but when lies are made at the top, soon the belly, the health, and the basic needs disappear, leading to suffering. 

I agree. My point is that we are still adopting to a highly transformative communication technology. Every time a qualitative jump in communication technology happens, it seems to create profound social transformations and challenges. Consider Gutenberg and Protestantism, or, what would have been of Hitler without radio, etc.


Gengis Kan did not need radio or technology to torture and massacred entire cities and countries.

The communication technology just accelerate everything. 

Mark Twain said that the times that truth take to put its shoes, the lies have the time to circle the whole planet. Today, the lies have the time to circle a million times on the whole planet, when Truth is still in its bed...







I detest Trump, but I detest him because he's a dumb and mean narcissist who sets a horrible example. I don't like bullies, and I hate it when they win. Otherwise, he didn't matter. He accomplished nothing of any significance, good or bad.

I think he did one good thing, and a tun of very bad things, and his endangering of democracy is not yet terminated. Thanks to him, there are QAnon people in the government. That’s very bad. 

I guess you get my position by now: the Internet is the ulterior cause here, Trump is one of the consequences. I agree that democracy was and is endangered.


The Internet has a big accelerating role, like the radio did for Hitler, but it is essentially the same human blindness in the human domain, still too hot, and where we are regressing in the name of tolerance. 

Freedom of religion is a sort f freedom of lying in the most important domain. We have just not yet left the Middle-Âge. We are at the peak of obscurantism. Only our ability to destroy the planet keep us in a sort of local peace, but the mentality is still, “my boss is right and yours is not”.





The covid fuck-up probably had more to do with American culture and overall circumstances than anything else. The lack of a real public health system,

That’s because prohibition and free-market are inconsistent. Then, the abandon of rigour in the fundamental human science makes people accepting inconsistencies, which lead to human catastrophes. Even the “electric crisis” in Texas comes from the worst political isolationnisme possible, and a willingness to refuse a free-market for electricity. 

I agree.


the self-reliant mentality that has a great side and a horrible side, the glorification of work at all costs, the social inequalities that force a lot of people to work at all costs. All stuff that was already there, and will keep being there. Every country in the world thought they were very smart about covid until they weren't. If one compares covid to the Spanish flu, it's unfolding in exactly the same way. The curves look the same, it's uncanny.

Biden won't matter either, nor will Kamala.

When good willing people can do compromise, people have a bigger chance to drink when thirsty or to eat when hungry. And kids have more chance to get a solid education, and become less prone to lies. I fear as much Sanders than Trump,

Really? Sanders sounds like a moderate social-democrat to my European ears…

Sanders said that he would move the US embassy back from Jerusalem. The only “good” thing Trump did.

The left is unaware that Islamism is a German Nazi construct, ameliorated by the Soviet-Union, and that the conflict in the Middle-East is the continuation of the seconde War. It is not a war against Muslims, nor against Arabs, but a war against Nazis and nazis doctrine.

We are entirely responsible, by subtracting the nazi muslims from the Nuremberg trial, and we have let nazism proliferate in the Middle-East. The French president still collaborate with the Muslim Brotherhood, which are nazi since 1942. Islamism is nazism, disguised into a religion.






and the task will not be easy for Biden and Kamala, but I leave them a chance, and at least, they are of the type of beings capable of conceding losing elections. Trump, it seems to me, has clearly shows his envy to be a dictator, which it is the first time in the US that this could have happened. Without the honesty of the Republicans in Georgia, Trump might have become the 46th president, and I don’t even want to imagine the state of the US after that.

I agree with you that he wished to become a dictator, and there is no doubt that he tried a coup. It looks like about 30% of the population will support him no matter what, and desires a military coup and a tyrant backed by the military.

They are mainly the white suprematist, the nostalgic of the confederate, … it smells like the American civil war… It is so sad...




They also fantasize about the public execution of all political rivals. That being said, it looks like 30% is the ceiling, and I suspect they were there all along. It is just that it was easier to hide them, from all of us and from each other, when that state had a firmer grip on centralized media pre-Internet. My optimistic view is that 4 more years of Trump would not cause this 30% ceiling to grow. On the contrary, it is perhaps doomed to recede due to demographic changes.

That its why the act now. That is why they try by all means to prevent people from voting. Some state makes illegal to give water to people waiting on a line for voting. That is not … christian. 

30% of illiterate people, and clever demagog, liars and manipulators can still do a lot of bad. 




I think it is also good to take a step back from all the emotionally charged environment that ad-tech enabled "journalism" has created for all of us.


I agree. But we live at a forking period, and without a bit of vigilance, the worst is not excluded. I hope the best, but I fear the worst, and with some chance it will be a reasonable in-between...





Is there a lot of stuff that we should improve in the world? Oh yes! But none of this has anything to do with that.

I think that the democracy is the base to make any long-term improvement possible. Of course, it is a “living” thing, and so it can get sick, and even die.

I agree.

For me, democracy is a symptom of our Löbianity: the knowledge that we don’t know the truth, nor can we know what is the best for us, and the consequence: let us try and see if it works, and letting people judge if it works, by oscillating between alternative solutions.

I agree and it is very fragile because people can be convinced to vote for tyranny. But I do think that:

(1) The US is far from that;
(2) The US doesn't matter as it once has.


I hope you are right. In my country I know that there are some “Trump”, well hidden, and basically doing worse than Trump, but in a more discrete way. There are still nazis here too. We are not cured. And the lies move quickly, by this wonderful but double edged communication power.




Paul Valery said that the human choice is between war and logic. Democracy is the attempt to use logic, and argumentation around a table, instead of bloody war on a battlefield, and I think it is a key progress. It prevents dark lasting ideology of possible bully monarchs. 

Yes. I know a lot of people who fetishize war. It is a particularly bad problem in the US, with all the acritical "thank you for your service" mentality.


Well; and the shooting made by people who can’t buy a joint, but can buy a military assault rifle capable of killing hundreds of people in a minute…

I am OK with gun, and I could even defend the right of the personal atomic bomb.  There is no better gift when you want tell someone that you trust him/her.

But still, this has to be regulated properly, like anything dangerous, and it should not be available easily. Maybe with medical prescription. 



Perhaps a bit like what happened in Rome, where the only avenue to climb the social ladder for a lot of people was through the army. But it is also a problem here and elsewhere.

The army is specialised in urgent decision in absence of complete information, where curiously enough the old human theory “the boss is right” makes sense.
Outside the army, in "normal” peace time, "the boss is right" is the sempiternal invalid argument per authority. It prevents improvement, and can kill the doubts in the fundamental inquiry, leading to obscurantism, which helps only the criminals, and the tyrants.

What we have to do is simple. We must get the free-market back, so 1) Abolish the prohibition laws, ...

Bruno

"Prohibition... goes beyond the bound of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded" -Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President

"If the people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who lives under Tyranny." -- Thomas Jefferson








Bruno Marchal

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Mar 31, 2021, 1:08:41 PM3/31/21
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On 25 Feb 2021, at 19:39, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

That’s because prohibition and free-market are inconsistent. Then, the abandon of rigour in the fundamental human science makes people accepting inconsistencies, which lead to human catastrophes. Even the “electric crisis” in Texas comes from the worst political isolationnisme possible, and a willingness to refuse a free-market for electricity. 

It came because they tried to make a free-market electric system.  The electricity producers had no incentive to provide reliability against weather events happening ten or twenty years apart. 


Only by limiting the system to the state, making the market not free, and unreliable. Free-market you buy it anywhere, at the lower price, even to foreigners. 



To provide excess capability and backups and weatherize would just raise cost and lose customers to the competition. 

In the Airline industries, that is mention as cutting corners. The type of economy which can make a plane to not de-ice properly and crash.

Again, this comes from making the texans unable to buy electricity elsewhere. It is perverse free-marketing, obliged to cut the security to get the fund to make the system working. 




Customers were free to buy electricity on a daily basis...which is why some of them now have $16,000 bills for five days service.

Which is simply insane. Normally we agree on the price, and then pay, and only if the product is well delivered and working. A free-market is not crime driven market, or when it does, it means we are confronted to criminals, like in the prohibition files.

Bruno

Bruno Marchal

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Mar 31, 2021, 1:21:43 PM3/31/21
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On 25 Feb 2021, at 20:30, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

Are you sure that any of that stuff really matters? To be clear, I am against tearing down some of those agreements. I do think that China should be sanctioned for committing genocide,


I know we can’t due to Covid, but I am sad we don’t show more solidarity with the people of Hong Kong. The democracy there is in peril. 

China’s play is dangerous for everybody in the long-term. 



and I am skeptical of things like TPP. I certainly don't desire the transatlantic version of that, and in fact joined protests against it. Not because I dislike you Americans, but because I think that such trade deals are used to smuggle in stuff that goes against the interest of the common people on both sides. For example, opening the possibility for corporations to sue for loss of profits if a government adopts measures in the public interest...  on climate, but also protecting workers, food quality and so on.


Yes, here something grave has been done making the corporation into legal person, I think under Bush. Yes, the political economy favour corporation against individuals, and that has to be corrected, before "becoming mitochondria” without the ability to say “no” to the doctor. 

That type of law has favoured investment in catastrophes, diseases, and wars. The NRA plays a bad role here, and is not alone.

Bruno









Telmo

Brent Meeker

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Mar 31, 2021, 2:53:44 PM3/31/21
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On 3/31/2021 10:21 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 25 Feb 2021, at 20:30, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

Are you sure that any of that stuff really matters? To be clear, I am against tearing down some of those agreements. I do think that China should be sanctioned for committing genocide,


I know we can’t due to Covid, but I am sad we don’t show more solidarity with the people of Hong Kong. The democracy there is in peril. 

China’s play is dangerous for everybody in the long-term. 



and I am skeptical of things like TPP. I certainly don't desire the transatlantic version of that, and in fact joined protests against it. Not because I dislike you Americans, but because I think that such trade deals are used to smuggle in stuff that goes against the interest of the common people on both sides. For example, opening the possibility for corporations to sue for loss of profits if a government adopts measures in the public interest...  on climate, but also protecting workers, food quality and so on.

There was a reasonable concern that governments would adopt protectionist trade restrictions under the guise of public interest.  There needed to be some court to adjudicate complaints.  The problem is how to structure the court so it was not simply captured by corporate interests.




Yes, here something grave has been done making the corporation into legal person, I think under Bush.

A corporation has always been a legal person in terms of having the ability to make contracts and held responsible.  The US supreme court ruled that a corporation has freedom of speech in the context of a corporation cannot be forbidden to spend money in support of politician campaigns.

Brent

Yes, the political economy favour corporation against individuals, and that has to be corrected, before "becoming mitochondria” without the ability to say “no” to the doctor. 

That type of law has favoured investment in catastrophes, diseases, and wars. The NRA plays a bad role here, and is not alone.

Bruno









Telmo

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Philip Benjamin

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Mar 31, 2021, 6:08:31 PM3/31/21
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[Bruno Marchal]

I think Trump is a symptom, not a cause

[Philip Benjamin]

Symptom of what? What exactly are the reasons why he is so hated? Personal? Official?

 

From: everyth...@googlegroups.com <everyth...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2021 10:47 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Q Anon is the tip of the iceberg

 

 

On 25 Feb 2021, at 13:03, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

 

 

Am Do, 25. Feb 2021, um 10:55, schrieb Bruno Marchal:

 

On 24 Feb 2021, at 15:30, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

 

As an outside observer, I can't help but notice the following pattern in American politics: every presidential election is now seen as a civilization-threatening event, where each side believes that the other side is literally pure evil in its crystalized form, and that if they win, life as we know it will be over. We have now been through several iterations of this, and the reality is that nothing ever seems to happen, one way or the other.

 

I think that before Trump, most Dems and Rep saw themselves as adversary, but not as enemy. Only with Trump, the adversary has become a scapegoat, an enemy, the responsible of all wrongs. Trump does not seem to be able to dialog, not even with its close accomplices. Trump is the worst enemy of … Trump. I think that his case is close to being pathological.

 

I agree, but I think Trump is a symptom, not a cause.

 

Certainly. But Trump is a sort of extreme symptom. Almost a caricature. But you are right, and this is exemplified by the fact that it keeps, apparently, his seduction power on the Republicans, even after those last month where he showed how much a bad looser he can be.

 

 



There is also Boris Johnson, who is Britain's Trump, Bolsonaro, who is Brazil's Trump, etc.

 

Maybe for Bolsonaro. But Boris Johnson is not comparable to Trump. I did fear that he could be like Trump, but he is not. Johnson is not an enemy of democracy. Trump is. That’s what I feel, or smell… I might be wrong, but Johnson has reassured me on that key point. 

The other Trump in power are more like Kim Young Un, ABS (Saudi), Erdogan, and Putin...

 

 

 



 

With the mainstream adoption of the Internet, in the early 2000s, political campaigns were reinvented (data-driven, highly targeted like advertisement). The early examples of this appear to be Tony Blair's second campaign in the UK and Obama's first in the US. Then it became the new norm, with increased sophistication. At the same time, journalism responded to the exestential threat created by the Internet by merging itself with the nascent ad-tech industry, pioneered by Google. In this new attention economy, the one who engages people's emotions the most wins. We are witnessing the race to the bottom that this creates, with widespread hysteria and irrationality from both sides of the political spectrum. I think that Trump and QAnon are products of this, and so is brexit on this side of the Atlantic.

 

 

You are right. I would add the Russian propaganda. Since long I tend to think that the Brexit is almost a pure result of Russian propaganda, but I have not found the time to verify all the evidences, so I cannot swear on this. 

 

Causation is a difficult subject. The systematic lies in the Oil industry and derivatives has put the bandits into power, but even this necessitates a millenium of training in believing in fairy tales. Maybe the cause is the poor level of education in math and logic. Postmodern relativism does not help, … Truth Research is not well-seen those days...

 

 



 

.

Lawrence Crowell

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Mar 31, 2021, 9:25:48 PM3/31/21
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About every century some regions of the world enters into a sort of mass-psychosis. Last century it was Russia, Italy, Japan and the crowing evil in Nazi Germany. In college I took a general studies course in anthropology, where it was noted that about every 3 to 4 generation tribes of people would become more gregarious. We seem to be on queue for the next big tango, and we Americans are getting poised to be the big crazies this time. Since the industrial revolution the body count with these has multiplied by a factor of 10. We also have the tools to make this next tango the last tango.

Why is t’Rump so hated? The converse question might be asked about why is Don-the-Con t’Rump the object of cultish worship? It is eerily similar to the fawning over Mussolini and Hitler in the last century. Don-the-Con is also the most intellectually banal president the country ever had. He is also a moral reprobate. Jeremy Epstein, who t’Rump called “one hell of a guy,” was a pimp to wealthy men. He provided wealthy client with women for sex at a high price. Epstein and t’Rump had tape-a-thon parties with women, and even girls 13 or 14 years of age. T’Rump also displayed a shallow understanding or withering ignorance on everything from science and medicine to economics and diplomacy. Remember his idea of consuming or mainlining bleach to combat Covid? He also showed little incentive or ability to learn anything.

While I am at it; I really wish this list, which is supposed to be about science or physics, would not be rubbished up by Spudboy and Ben “Medinuclear.” In particular Ben posts the same garbage over and over, where I frankly do not give a damned about pagans vs non-pagans or quasi-philoso-theology over Augustine. That stuff is such crap. Please, I am sure there are plenty of other places for that nonsense.

LC

Lawrence Crowell

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Mar 31, 2021, 9:28:46 PM3/31/21
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On Wednesday, March 31, 2021 at 8:25:48 PM UTC-5 Lawrence Crowell wrote:

About every century some regions of the world enters into a sort of mass-psychosis. Last century it was Russia, Italy, Japan and the crowing evil in Nazi Germany. In college I took a general studies course in anthropology, where it was noted that about every 3 to 4 generation tribes of people would become more gregarious. We seem to be on queue for the next big tango, and we Americans are getting poised to be the big crazies this time. Since the industrial revolution the body count with these has multiplied by a factor of 10. We also have the tools to make this next tango the last tango.

Why is t’Rump so hated? The converse question might be asked about why is Don-the-Con t’Rump the object of cultish worship? It is eerily similar to the fawning over Mussolini and Hitler in the last century. Don-the-Con is also the most intellectually banal president the country ever had. He is also a moral reprobate. Jeremy Epstein, who t’Rump called “one hell of a guy,” was a pimp to wealthy men. He provided wealthy client with women for sex at a high price. Epstein and t’Rump had tape-a-thon [I meant rape-a-thon] parties with women, and even girls 13 or 14 years of age. T’Rump also displayed a shallow understanding or withering ignorance on everything from science and medicine to economics and diplomacy. Remember his idea of consuming or mainlining bleach to combat Covid? He also showed little incentive or ability to learn anything.

Bruno Marchal

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Apr 1, 2021, 5:37:54 AM4/1/21
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On 1 Apr 2021, at 00:08, Philip Benjamin <medin...@hotmail.com> wrote:

[Bruno Marchal]

I think Trump is a symptom, not a cause

[Philip Benjamin]

Symptom of what? What exactly are the reasons why he is so hated? Personal? Official?



It is not a question of hate. It is more fear in front of incompetence, and lies, and a behaviour which is hardly acceptable, even for a four years old. When he promised to show his taxes, I got the feeling he was a liar, as it is not the type of thing you promise, you just do it.
Then Helsinki. Even if you hate the FBI and the CIA, you don’t publicly attacks your own camp virus an hostile country.
Then you can read the Muller’s report. Obama would have done 1/100 of what Trump did, and he would have been impeached right away. 
Then some answer like this “I don’t know what is QAnon, but I heard they love me so they are right”, or about the proud boys “stand by, stand up …”.

Trump is to be feared, and even more so when it seems a whole party is in deny of reality, and behaves like having some paranoïa. They have forget the difference between political opponent and enemy.

Or just his “I love Kim-Young-Un”. That is quite enough to fear him, in the bones…

The sad mystery is how could anyone vote for Trump (except by being criminal or in a rotten corporations, like NRA, of Big Pharma).

The sad thing is that Trump has shown that even in America, the worst kind of cult of personality can arise. Trump is not the big danger, here. It is his enablers, like Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell, and many others that Trump encapsulated somehow. They do not hide their hate/fear of democracy. The voter suppression in may state illustrates this again, and is very dangerous for the future.

Bruno




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Brent Meeker

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Apr 1, 2021, 3:56:15 PM4/1/21
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On 4/1/2021 2:37 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 1 Apr 2021, at 00:08, Philip Benjamin <medin...@hotmail.com> wrote:

[Bruno Marchal]

I think Trump is a symptom, not a cause

[Philip Benjamin]

Symptom of what? What exactly are the reasons why he is so hated? Personal? Official?



It is not a question of hate. It is more fear in front of incompetence, and lies, and a behaviour which is hardly acceptable, even for a four years old. When he promised to show his taxes, I got the feeling he was a liar, as it is not the type of thing you promise, you just do it.
Then Helsinki. Even if you hate the FBI and the CIA, you don’t publicly attacks your own camp virus an hostile country.
Then you can read the Muller’s report. Obama would have done 1/100 of what Trump did, and he would have been impeached right away. 
Then some answer like this “I don’t know what is QAnon, but I heard they love me so they are right”, or about the proud boys “stand by, stand up …”.

Trump is to be feared, and even more so when it seems a whole party is in deny of reality, and behaves like having some paranoïa. They have forget the difference between political opponent and enemy.

Or just his “I love Kim-Young-Un”. That is quite enough to fear him, in the bones…

The sad mystery is how could anyone vote for Trump (except by being criminal or in a rotten corporations, like NRA, of Big Pharma).

I think the core of his support comes from voters who simply want to poke the eye of whom they see as rotten: Politicians who pander to minorities. Elitist bureaucrats and professors who tell them they are not superior persons and they must change their life style and values to save the planet.  Socialist who want to impose political correctness.



The sad thing is that Trump has shown that even in America, the worst kind of cult of personality can arise. Trump is not the big danger, here. It is his enablers, like Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell, and many others that Trump encapsulated somehow. They do not hide their hate/fear of democracy. The voter suppression in may state illustrates this again, and is very dangerous for the future.

Right. Trump has simply revealed and amplified a corruption within the body politic.  People who are relatively ignorant and intolerant, but see themselves as a chosen race...white, male Christian fundamentalists.

Brent

Bruno




 

From: everyth...@googlegroups.com <everyth...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2021 10:47 AM
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Q Anon is the tip of the iceberg

 

 

On 25 Feb 2021, at 13:03, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

 

 

Am Do, 25. Feb 2021, um 10:55, schrieb Bruno Marchal:

 

On 24 Feb 2021, at 15:30, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:

 

As an outside observer, I can't help but notice the following pattern in American politics: every presidential election is now seen as a civilization-threatening event, where each side believes that the other side is literally pure evil in its crystalized form, and that if they win, life as we know it will be over. We have now been through several iterations of this, and the reality is that nothing ever seems to happen, one way or the other.

 

I think that before Trump, most Dems and Rep saw themselves as adversary, but not as enemy. Only with Trump, the adversary has become a scapegoat, an enemy, the responsible of all wrongs. Trump does not seem to be able to dialog, not even with its close accomplices. Trump is the worst enemy of … Trump. I think that his case is close to being pathological.

 

I agree, but I think Trump is a symptom, not a cause.

 

Certainly. But Trump is a sort of extreme symptom. Almost a caricature. But you are right, and this is exemplified by the fact that it keeps, apparently, his seduction power on the Republicans, even after those last month where he showed how much a bad looser he can be.

 

 



There is also Boris Johnson, who is Britain's Trump, Bolsonaro, who is Brazil's Trump, etc.

 

Maybe for Bolsonaro. But Boris Johnson is not comparable to Trump. I did fear that he could be like Trump, but he is not. Johnson is not an enemy of democracy. Trump is. That’s what I feel, or smell… I might be wrong, but Johnson has reassured me on that key point. 

The other Trump in power are more like Kim Young Un, ABS (Saudi), Erdogan, and Putin...

 

 

 



 

With the mainstream adoption of the Internet, in the early 2000s, political campaigns were reinvented (data-driven, highly targeted like advertisement). The early examples of this appear to be Tony Blair's second campaign in the UK and Obama's first in the US. Then it became the new norm, with increased sophistication. At the same time, journalism responded to the exestential threat created by the Internet by merging itself with the nascent ad-tech industry, pioneered by Google. In this new attention economy, the one who engages people's emotions the most wins. We are witnessing the race to the bottom that this creates, with widespread hysteria and irrationality from both sides of the political spectrum. I think that Trump and QAnon are products of this, and so is brexit on this side of the Atlantic.

 

 

You are right. I would add the Russian propaganda. Since long I tend to think that the Brexit is almost a pure result of Russian propaganda, but I have not found the time to verify all the evidences, so I cannot swear on this. 

 

Causation is a difficult subject. The systematic lies in the Oil industry and derivatives has put the bandits into power, but even this necessitates a millenium of training in believing in fairy tales. Maybe the cause is the poor level of education in math and logic. Postmodern relativism does not help, … Truth Research is not well-seen those days..

 

 



 

.


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Telmo Menezes

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Apr 8, 2021, 6:20:23 AM4/8/21
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There is also Boris Johnson, who is Britain's Trump, Bolsonaro, who is Brazil's Trump, etc.

Maybe for Bolsonaro. But Boris Johnson is not comparable to Trump. I did fear that he could be like Trump, but he is not. Johnson is not an enemy of democracy. Trump is. That’s what I feel, or smell… I might be wrong, but Johnson has reassured me on that key point. 
The other Trump in power are more like Kim Young Un, ABS (Saudi), Erdogan, and Putin...

My view of Boris Johnson as an enemy of democracy stems from his attempt to prorogue parliament to prevent it from interfering with his Brexit plans:


I also find his lack of respect for international law very Trump-esque:


Perhaps worse in this case, because he was the one signing agreements that he had no intention of following.

In his defense, the UK is not really a full democracy. They have an unelected upper house of parliament, no written constitution and the queen has the power to block laws and uses it secretly:




With the mainstream adoption of the Internet, in the early 2000s, political campaigns were reinvented (data-driven, highly targeted like advertisement). The early examples of this appear to be Tony Blair's second campaign in the UK and Obama's first in the US. Then it became the new norm, with increased sophistication. At the same time, journalism responded to the exestential threat created by the Internet by merging itself with the nascent ad-tech industry, pioneered by Google. In this new attention economy, the one who engages people's emotions the most wins. We are witnessing the race to the bottom that this creates, with widespread hysteria and irrationality from both sides of the political spectrum. I think that Trump and QAnon are products of this, and so is brexit on this side of the Atlantic.


You are right. I would add the Russian propaganda. Since long I tend to think that the Brexit is almost a pure result of Russian propaganda, but I have not found the time to verify all the evidences, so I cannot swear on this. 

I also used to think that, but I am not so sure anymore. I have no doubt the Putin appreciates the ideas, and little doubt that the Kremlin gives a helping hand where it can. For me, this chart shows that the British public opinion had no interest in the EU until 2016, then the topic appears to have been artificially introduced:


I think there is a component of populism (UKIP, then Brexit Party) very similar to how Trump co-opted the Republican party. But then I also suspect that EU's push for tax haven regulations played a big role:


Causation is a difficult subject.

Agreed, to say the least...

The systematic lies in the Oil industry and derivatives has put the bandits into power, but even this necessitates a millenium of training in believing in fairy tales. Maybe the cause is the poor level of education in math and logic. Postmodern relativism does not help, … Truth Research is not well-seen those days...




I think that this is not so different from the obesity crisis created by fast food. Like with hyper-palatable food, we have not evolved for an environment where we are constantly targeted by emotionally-charged "news" that are fine-tuned by algorithms to be hyper-stimulating.


It is a general problem with universal machine. But as long as we fight to keep up our universality, we will survive as individual. If not, we will be swallowed by a higher level organism (and never get any opportunity to say “no” to the doctor…).

Yes. I think the pendulum is swinging to the "swallowing" side. I am afraid of the near future.

The choice is in between liberty and insecurity (like to remain a free bacteria), or get a job and a limited social security (like becoming a mitochondria, or a chloroplaste).

After Trump we get a lesson, and all democracies should be solider and consolidate themselves, improved and get rid of the most recent lies (and stop asking for the legalization of cannabis, and ask for penalisation of prohibitionism, for example).

Theology should come back to the academy, before the theotechnologies develop too much...




If it wasn't McDonald's, it would be something else. If it wasn't Trump, it would be someone else.


Yes, I saw Trump as a chance. A sort of proof by absurd. But the GOP has awaken me that some people really does not acre of the truth. The GOP remind me a student who reject a proof, because when I got the contradiction: 0 = 1, he asked me why was that a problem, and argued that my belief that 0 should be different from 1 was a cultural prejudices. 
(I gave him a zero, … and when complaining I showed him that it was the best note possible, in a world where 0 = 1).

Hahaha well done Bruno :)








Let me propose a (I know, perhaps crazy), alternative hypothesis:

Your limbic system has been hijacked for clicks. The presidency is not as important as you think it is. Most people are mostly incompetent. China is incompetent, Russia is incompetent, the CIA is incompetent and so on and so forth. Very little of what they do matter to you or me in any way, shape or form.

There is no class consciousness in the 21st century in the west. There will be no revolt of the middle classes. Antifa is just a bunch of college kids doing what college kids do. BLM protests created no problems of any significance whatsoever. Statues don't matter, cancel culture doesn't matter, the alt-right doesn't matter, none of it matters. Most of the public personalities on both the right and the left are entertainers making a living. Nothing of what they say matters.

?
If Trump would have said what he knew about covid-19 in February 2020), May people would still be alive. 

Perhaps, but we have no way of testing the counter-factual scenario. Trump was extremely selfish and incompetent, I don't doubt this for a second, but I'm not sure if his incompetence didn't just result in the forest fire being started a bit earlier rather than later. But I wouldn't be surprised if you're right. I don't think we can know. It's a complex scenario.

I think that, at the least, this should be inquired.  I do think many lives would have been saved. Each of its last rallies have lead to surge of cases.  Such virus have higher probability to mute if not kept controlled. And in his interview, he really shows he knew the danger, just before hiding it to the public. 

The voters for Trump are more problematic. Some believes the lies, some just don’t care.




In Portugal they kind of did the right thing early, and the country had one of the best outcomes in Europe. Then they became confident, and ended up relaxing restrictions for Xmas. Then they quickly became the worst case in Europe. The US is exponentially more complex than Portugal. How long can you keep restrictions when you don't feel the outcomes? From what I see here in Berlin, it's not easy. Much worse in a country where self-reliance and distrust of government is baked into the culture from the beginning, I would say. (for good and bad!)


How can we take seriously people who lie in the human science since 1492 tears, and on medication even more since a century.

Money is the most wonderful mean, and the most horrible goal,

That is is!

and today, we are in the extreme confusion between means and goals. 

Planned obsolescence, which is partially detrimental for the environment, was asked by people and obtained through strikes, more or less influenced by private interests too, but it makes sense for people who feared to loss their jobs. That was an error, guided by short term interest, and it is hard to solve such kind of problem, and much more so in absence of genuine information, or worse, in presence of misinformation.





If Trump would have won the second term election: I think that democracy would not have survived, on the whole planet, and the whole planet would be like … Texas today. I mean without water, ...

I don't think that the US is as important to rest of the world as it used to be. With all its flaws, I believe it is the EU that is now carrying the torch of liberal democracy, the "free world" as they liked to say during the Cold War. Perhaps because the still recent lessons on the XX century don't leave so much space to get drunk with fantasies of exceptionalism.


I am not that optimistic about the EU. If the US makes some wrong, usually the EU will do it later. I hope you are right, and maybe you are.








The stuff that matters is boring: laws, education, serious journalism. If the legal system, or education, or newspapers give you an emotional rush, you're probably getting counterfeit goods. Being able to talk to each other without accusing the other side of being nazis or harvesting babies for adrenochrome is what probably matters. There is no conspiracy. There is just short-term greed, and new technologies that create environments that we did not evolve for. 

If short term greed is satisfy by honest means, there is no problem, but when lies are made at the top, soon the belly, the health, and the basic needs disappear, leading to suffering. 

I agree. My point is that we are still adopting to a highly transformative communication technology. Every time a qualitative jump in communication technology happens, it seems to create profound social transformations and challenges. Consider Gutenberg and Protestantism, or, what would have been of Hitler without radio, etc.


Gengis Kan did not need radio or technology to torture and massacred entire cities and countries.

The communication technology just accelerate everything. 

True, but I also take seriously an old slogan from Complexity Science: "more is different".

Mark Twain said that the times that truth take to put its shoes, the lies have the time to circle the whole planet. Today, the lies have the time to circle a million times on the whole planet, when Truth is still in its bed...







I detest Trump, but I detest him because he's a dumb and mean narcissist who sets a horrible example. I don't like bullies, and I hate it when they win. Otherwise, he didn't matter. He accomplished nothing of any significance, good or bad.

I think he did one good thing, and a tun of very bad things, and his endangering of democracy is not yet terminated. Thanks to him, there are QAnon people in the government. That’s very bad. 

I guess you get my position by now: the Internet is the ulterior cause here, Trump is one of the consequences. I agree that democracy was and is endangered.


The Internet has a big accelerating role, like the radio did for Hitler, but it is essentially the same human blindness in the human domain, still too hot, and where we are regressing in the name of tolerance. 

Freedom of religion is a sort f freedom of lying in the most important domain. We have just not yet left the Middle-Âge. We are at the peak of obscurantism. Only our ability to destroy the planet keep us in a sort of local peace, but the mentality is still, “my boss is right and yours is not”.





The covid fuck-up probably had more to do with American culture and overall circumstances than anything else. The lack of a real public health system,

That’s because prohibition and free-market are inconsistent. Then, the abandon of rigour in the fundamental human science makes people accepting inconsistencies, which lead to human catastrophes. Even the “electric crisis” in Texas comes from the worst political isolationnisme possible, and a willingness to refuse a free-market for electricity. 

I agree.


the self-reliant mentality that has a great side and a horrible side, the glorification of work at all costs, the social inequalities that force a lot of people to work at all costs. All stuff that was already there, and will keep being there. Every country in the world thought they were very smart about covid until they weren't. If one compares covid to the Spanish flu, it's unfolding in exactly the same way. The curves look the same, it's uncanny.

Biden won't matter either, nor will Kamala.

When good willing people can do compromise, people have a bigger chance to drink when thirsty or to eat when hungry. And kids have more chance to get a solid education, and become less prone to lies. I fear as much Sanders than Trump,

Really? Sanders sounds like a moderate social-democrat to my European ears…

Sanders said that he would move the US embassy back from Jerusalem. The only “good” thing Trump did.

But isn't it likely that he is just in favor of deescalating the situation? You can argue if it is fair or wise to do it, but I think it's a big jump to link Sanders with geneocide because of this...

I do agree with you that the left overlooks islamic fundamentalism, and I would add that they overlook genocide in China. Political tribalism produces such non-sensical default positions.

The left is unaware that Islamism is a German Nazi construct, ameliorated by the Soviet-Union, and that the conflict in the Middle-East is the continuation of the seconde War. It is not a war against Muslims, nor against Arabs, but a war against Nazis and nazis doctrine.

We are entirely responsible, by subtracting the nazi muslims from the Nuremberg trial, and we have let nazism proliferate in the Middle-East. The French president still collaborate with the Muslim Brotherhood, which are nazi since 1942. Islamism is nazism, disguised into a religion.






and the task will not be easy for Biden and Kamala, but I leave them a chance, and at least, they are of the type of beings capable of conceding losing elections. Trump, it seems to me, has clearly shows his envy to be a dictator, which it is the first time in the US that this could have happened. Without the honesty of the Republicans in Georgia, Trump might have become the 46th president, and I don’t even want to imagine the state of the US after that.

I agree with you that he wished to become a dictator, and there is no doubt that he tried a coup. It looks like about 30% of the population will support him no matter what, and desires a military coup and a tyrant backed by the military.

They are mainly the white suprematist, the nostalgic of the confederate, … it smells like the American civil war… It is so sad...




They also fantasize about the public execution of all political rivals. That being said, it looks like 30% is the ceiling, and I suspect they were there all along. It is just that it was easier to hide them, from all of us and from each other, when that state had a firmer grip on centralized media pre-Internet. My optimistic view is that 4 more years of Trump would not cause this 30% ceiling to grow. On the contrary, it is perhaps doomed to recede due to demographic changes.

That its why the act now. That is why they try by all means to prevent people from voting. Some state makes illegal to give water to people waiting on a line for voting. That is not … christian. 

30% of illiterate people, and clever demagog, liars and manipulators can still do a lot of bad. 




I think it is also good to take a step back from all the emotionally charged environment that ad-tech enabled "journalism" has created for all of us.


I agree. But we live at a forking period, and without a bit of vigilance, the worst is not excluded. I hope the best, but I fear the worst, and with some chance it will be a reasonable in-between...

Agree.





Is there a lot of stuff that we should improve in the world? Oh yes! But none of this has anything to do with that.

I think that the democracy is the base to make any long-term improvement possible. Of course, it is a “living” thing, and so it can get sick, and even die.

I agree.

For me, democracy is a symptom of our Löbianity: the knowledge that we don’t know the truth, nor can we know what is the best for us, and the consequence: let us try and see if it works, and letting people judge if it works, by oscillating between alternative solutions.

I agree and it is very fragile because people can be convinced to vote for tyranny. But I do think that:

(1) The US is far from that;
(2) The US doesn't matter as it once has.


I hope you are right. In my country I know that there are some “Trump”, well hidden, and basically doing worse than Trump, but in a more discrete way. There are still nazis here too. We are not cured. And the lies move quickly, by this wonderful but double edged communication power.

Yes here too. And they are also being growing quickly in Portugal, among the young voters, which is particularly scarry. The old catholic-center-right party is almost disappearing, being quickly replace by "Chega!" (translation: "Enough!"), a nationalist party that blames all the problems of the country on foreigners, homossesuals and non-christians.




Paul Valery said that the human choice is between war and logic. Democracy is the attempt to use logic, and argumentation around a table, instead of bloody war on a battlefield, and I think it is a key progress. It prevents dark lasting ideology of possible bully monarchs. 

Yes. I know a lot of people who fetishize war. It is a particularly bad problem in the US, with all the acritical "thank you for your service" mentality.


Well; and the shooting made by people who can’t buy a joint, but can buy a military assault rifle capable of killing hundreds of people in a minute…

I am OK with gun, and I could even defend the right of the personal atomic bomb.  There is no better gift when you want tell someone that you trust him/her.

I like the ideia of the personal atomic bomb!

But still, this has to be regulated properly, like anything dangerous, and it should not be available easily. Maybe with medical prescription. 



Perhaps a bit like what happened in Rome, where the only avenue to climb the social ladder for a lot of people was through the army. But it is also a problem here and elsewhere.

The army is specialised in urgent decision in absence of complete information, where curiously enough the old human theory “the boss is right” makes sense.
Outside the army, in "normal” peace time, "the boss is right" is the sempiternal invalid argument per authority. It prevents improvement, and can kill the doubts in the fundamental inquiry, leading to obscurantism, which helps only the criminals, and the tyrants.

What we have to do is simple. We must get the free-market back, so 1) Abolish the prohibition laws, ...

Hear, hear!

Telmo

Bruno Marchal

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May 19, 2021, 6:51:32 AM5/19/21
to everyth...@googlegroups.com
Hi Telmo,

Sorry for discovering this a bit late.

On 8 Apr 2021, at 12:19, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.net> wrote:



There is also Boris Johnson, who is Britain's Trump, Bolsonaro, who is Brazil's Trump, etc.

Maybe for Bolsonaro. But Boris Johnson is not comparable to Trump. I did fear that he could be like Trump, but he is not. Johnson is not an enemy of democracy. Trump is. That’s what I feel, or smell… I might be wrong, but Johnson has reassured me on that key point. 
The other Trump in power are more like Kim Young Un, ABS (Saudi), Erdogan, and Putin...

My view of Boris Johnson as an enemy of democracy stems from his attempt to prorogue parliament to prevent it from interfering with his Brexit plans:


I also find his lack of respect for international law very Trump-esque:


Perhaps worse in this case, because he was the one signing agreements that he had no intention of following.

In his defense, the UK is not really a full democracy. They have an unelected upper house of parliament, no written constitution and the queen has the power to block laws and uses it secretly:



I really don’t know. My feeling is that the Brexit is half due to Russian Propaganda, which find “good ear” on the extreme left, close to nazis, since long.







With the mainstream adoption of the Internet, in the early 2000s, political campaigns were reinvented (data-driven, highly targeted like advertisement). The early examples of this appear to be Tony Blair's second campaign in the UK and Obama's first in the US. Then it became the new norm, with increased sophistication. At the same time, journalism responded to the exestential threat created by the Internet by merging itself with the nascent ad-tech industry, pioneered by Google. In this new attention economy, the one who engages people's emotions the most wins. We are witnessing the race to the bottom that this creates, with widespread hysteria and irrationality from both sides of the political spectrum. I think that Trump and QAnon are products of this, and so is brexit on this side of the Atlantic.


You are right. I would add the Russian propaganda. Since long I tend to think that the Brexit is almost a pure result of Russian propaganda, but I have not found the time to verify all the evidences, so I cannot swear on this. 

I also used to think that, but I am not so sure anymore. I have no doubt the Putin appreciates the ideas, and little doubt that the Kremlin gives a helping hand where it can. For me, this chart shows that the British public opinion had no interest in the EU until 2016, then the topic appears to have been artificially introduced:


I think there is a component of populism (UKIP, then Brexit Party) very similar to how Trump co-opted the Republican party.

Yes, indeed.



But then I also suspect that EU's push for tax haven regulations played a big role:


Probably this too, but in a minor part.




Causation is a difficult subject.

Agreed, to say the least...

The systematic lies in the Oil industry and derivatives has put the bandits into power, but even this necessitates a millenium of training in believing in fairy tales. Maybe the cause is the poor level of education in math and logic. Postmodern relativism does not help, … Truth Research is not well-seen those days...




I think that this is not so different from the obesity crisis created by fast food. Like with hyper-palatable food, we have not evolved for an environment where we are constantly targeted by emotionally-charged "news" that are fine-tuned by algorithms to be hyper-stimulating.


It is a general problem with universal machine. But as long as we fight to keep up our universality, we will survive as individual. If not, we will be swallowed by a higher level organism (and never get any opportunity to say “no” to the doctor…).

Yes. I think the pendulum is swinging to the "swallowing" side. I am afraid of the near future.

Yes, indeed.
Mechanism makes clear why the sum is usually much greater than its (proper) parts.





Mark Twain said that the times that truth take to put its shoes, the lies have the time to circle the whole planet. Today, the lies have the time to circle a million times on the whole planet, when Truth is still in its bed...







I detest Trump, but I detest him because he's a dumb and mean narcissist who sets a horrible example. I don't like bullies, and I hate it when they win. Otherwise, he didn't matter. He accomplished nothing of any significance, good or bad.

I think he did one good thing, and a tun of very bad things, and his endangering of democracy is not yet terminated. Thanks to him, there are QAnon people in the government. That’s very bad. 

I guess you get my position by now: the Internet is the ulterior cause here, Trump is one of the consequences. I agree that democracy was and is endangered.


The Internet has a big accelerating role, like the radio did for Hitler, but it is essentially the same human blindness in the human domain, still too hot, and where we are regressing in the name of tolerance. 

Freedom of religion is a sort f freedom of lying in the most important domain. We have just not yet left the Middle-Âge. We are at the peak of obscurantism. Only our ability to destroy the planet keep us in a sort of local peace, but the mentality is still, “my boss is right and yours is not”.





The covid fuck-up probably had more to do with American culture and overall circumstances than anything else. The lack of a real public health system,

That’s because prohibition and free-market are inconsistent. Then, the abandon of rigour in the fundamental human science makes people accepting inconsistencies, which lead to human catastrophes. Even the “electric crisis” in Texas comes from the worst political isolationnisme possible, and a willingness to refuse a free-market for electricity. 

I agree.


the self-reliant mentality that has a great side and a horrible side, the glorification of work at all costs, the social inequalities that force a lot of people to work at all costs. All stuff that was already there, and will keep being there. Every country in the world thought they were very smart about covid until they weren't. If one compares covid to the Spanish flu, it's unfolding in exactly the same way. The curves look the same, it's uncanny.

Biden won't matter either, nor will Kamala.

When good willing people can do compromise, people have a bigger chance to drink when thirsty or to eat when hungry. And kids have more chance to get a solid education, and become less prone to lies. I fear as much Sanders than Trump,

Really? Sanders sounds like a moderate social-democrat to my European ears…

Sanders said that he would move the US embassy back from Jerusalem. The only “good” thing Trump did.

But isn't it likely that he is just in favor of deescalating the situation? You can argue if it is fair or wise to do it, but I think it's a big jump to link Sanders with geneocide because of this…


People ignored that the Hamas, and the Fatah are construction by the nazis of the Middle-East. The Muslim Brotherhood is nazi since 1942 (and anti-democracy since 1925). 

The war in the Middle-east is not a war against Muslims, nor against Arabs, but against nazis, just disguised into Islamist. 

It is OUR fault, us the Europeans and Americans, who did not get the balls to judge the Nazis of the Middle-east at the Nuremberg trial. 






I do agree with you that the left overlooks islamic fundamentalism, and I would add that they overlook genocide in China. Political tribalism produces such non-sensical default positions.

The extreme left and the extreme right are delusional, and emotional, and not interested in peace. They have the hate.




The left is unaware that Islamism is a German Nazi construct, ameliorated by the Soviet-Union, and that the conflict in the Middle-East is the continuation of the seconde War. It is not a war against Muslims, nor against Arabs, but a war against Nazis and nazis doctrine.

We are entirely responsible, by subtracting the nazi muslims from the Nuremberg trial, and we have let nazism proliferate in the Middle-East. The French president still collaborate with the Muslim Brotherhood, which are nazi since 1942. Islamism is nazism, disguised into a religion.






and the task will not be easy for Biden and Kamala, but I leave them a chance, and at least, they are of the type of beings capable of conceding losing elections. Trump, it seems to me, has clearly shows his envy to be a dictator, which it is the first time in the US that this could have happened. Without the honesty of the Republicans in Georgia, Trump might have become the 46th president, and I don’t even want to imagine the state of the US after that.

I agree with you that he wished to become a dictator, and there is no doubt that he tried a coup. It looks like about 30% of the population will support him no matter what, and desires a military coup and a tyrant backed by the military.

They are mainly the white suprematist, the nostalgic of the confederate, … it smells like the American civil war… It is so sad...




They also fantasize about the public execution of all political rivals. That being said, it looks like 30% is the ceiling, and I suspect they were there all along. It is just that it was easier to hide them, from all of us and from each other, when that state had a firmer grip on centralized media pre-Internet. My optimistic view is that 4 more years of Trump would not cause this 30% ceiling to grow. On the contrary, it is perhaps doomed to recede due to demographic changes.

That its why the act now. That is why they try by all means to prevent people from voting. Some state makes illegal to give water to people waiting on a line for voting. That is not … christian. 

30% of illiterate people, and clever demagog, liars and manipulators can still do a lot of bad. 




I think it is also good to take a step back from all the emotionally charged environment that ad-tech enabled "journalism" has created for all of us.


I agree. But we live at a forking period, and without a bit of vigilance, the worst is not excluded. I hope the best, but I fear the worst, and with some chance it will be a reasonable in-between...

Agree.





Is there a lot of stuff that we should improve in the world? Oh yes! But none of this has anything to do with that.

I think that the democracy is the base to make any long-term improvement possible. Of course, it is a “living” thing, and so it can get sick, and even die.

I agree.

For me, democracy is a symptom of our Löbianity: the knowledge that we don’t know the truth, nor can we know what is the best for us, and the consequence: let us try and see if it works, and letting people judge if it works, by oscillating between alternative solutions.

I agree and it is very fragile because people can be convinced to vote for tyranny. But I do think that:

(1) The US is far from that;
(2) The US doesn't matter as it once has.


I hope you are right. In my country I know that there are some “Trump”, well hidden, and basically doing worse than Trump, but in a more discrete way. There are still nazis here too. We are not cured. And the lies move quickly, by this wonderful but double edged communication power.

Yes here too. And they are also being growing quickly in Portugal, among the young voters, which is particularly scarry. The old catholic-center-right party is almost disappearing, being quickly replace by "Chega!" (translation: "Enough!"), a nationalist party that blames all the problems of the country on foreigners, homossesuals and non-christians.

That smells bad...








Paul Valery said that the human choice is between war and logic. Democracy is the attempt to use logic, and argumentation around a table, instead of bloody war on a battlefield, and I think it is a key progress. It prevents dark lasting ideology of possible bully monarchs. 

Yes. I know a lot of people who fetishize war. It is a particularly bad problem in the US, with all the acritical "thank you for your service" mentality.


Well; and the shooting made by people who can’t buy a joint, but can buy a military assault rifle capable of killing hundreds of people in a minute…

I am OK with gun, and I could even defend the right of the personal atomic bomb.  There is no better gift when you want tell someone that you trust him/her.

I like the ideia of the personal atomic bomb!


You might be able to order one on Dark-Amazon … ha ha ha! 

Don’t forget the centrifugeuses to enrich Uranium!




But still, this has to be regulated properly, like anything dangerous, and it should not be available easily. Maybe with medical prescription. 



Perhaps a bit like what happened in Rome, where the only avenue to climb the social ladder for a lot of people was through the army. But it is also a problem here and elsewhere.

The army is specialised in urgent decision in absence of complete information, where curiously enough the old human theory “the boss is right” makes sense.
Outside the army, in "normal” peace time, "the boss is right" is the sempiternal invalid argument per authority. It prevents improvement, and can kill the doubts in the fundamental inquiry, leading to obscurantism, which helps only the criminals, and the tyrants.

What we have to do is simple. We must get the free-market back, so 1) Abolish the prohibition laws, ...

Hear, hear!

:)

Bruno




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