The political thread that helps us understand each other

[twa]

32 minutes ago, clietas said:

 

 

 

Is that because it makes you look like a goober while you're riding your Vespa?

 

 

 

 

 

Never rode one, but I'm open to them.

I'm old and blind and use a helmet when I ride, with my knees I can drop it sitting at a red light 

[PF Chang]

7 minutes ago, twa said:

 

You expect me to pay for others though while imposing your safety mechanisms ..

 

 

The fine threat, the interference in approved ins options offered, the losing of choice in physicians,the increase in rates, the headache of dealing with the govt.

Another dang form for the IRS.

That is w/o even getting into what you are making me fund for others at your whim.

 

 

Yeah those criticisms seem fair to me. Honestly I don't know enough about healthcare costs and insurance to have an informed opinion.  

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

It's probably not the best time to have this conversation:

 

1. 100 million Americans seem to think fascism is coming

2. 100 million Americans seem to be very happy that fascism is finally coming.

3. 100 million Americans don't know what fascism is, and Betsy Devos wants to double that number.

[PeterMP]

2 hours ago, twa said:

 

You expect me to pay for others though while imposing your safety mechanisms ..

 

They aren't my safety mechanisms.  I'd probably ban motorcycles for civilians, at least on high ways.  I'm the only person in this thread that I think came up on the authoritarian side of those graphs.

 

(I blame the question about everybody should be able to have kids.  That somebody can have 4 kids under 13 in foster care, but the courts can't tell them to not have more kids makes no sense to me.  Society can say you aren't capable of raising the kids that you do have, but it can't tell you to stop?  No sense!)

 

They are societies safety mechanisms and that's generally how it works.  You pay to help people, you do some minimal things to protect yourself, and you if you get hurt society helps you and your family (and realistically, we do even if you don't follow the basic safety mechanisms.  Like I said, in practice, people tend to use the government services even if they don't wear helmets if they end up needing the help).

 

If you don't like it, you are also free to leave.  Does Russia have helmet laws?

[tshile]

3 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

(I blame the question about everybody should be able to have kids.  That somebody can have 4 kids under 13 in foster care, but the courts can't tell them to not have more kids makes no sense to me.  Society can say you aren't capable of raising the kids that you do have, but it can't tell you to stop?  No sense!)

I am adopting this position. Thank you

Also it's not free to leave

CNN - Giving up your passport? It's going to cost you

[grego]

7 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

I just wanted to say, I saw that post.  I didn't know who those people were, and I was not sure of the consequences of being on the Southern Poverty Law Center hate list.

 

I did a little reading, and there seems to be a wide variety of opinions on them, and there seems to be no real consequences to being on the Southern Poverty Law Center hate list (it doesn't as near as I can tell be connected to government action at all).  If anything it seems to have helped them become more widely known because it did generate (a little bit of) press for them.  The Southern Poverty Law Center hate list seems to be as peaceful manner to "protest" as possible (and inconsequential).

 

In that sense, I'm not sure who I should be criticizing.  I agree with some of the things that the people you are pointing out are saying, but i don't agree with all of it, and the Southern Poverty Law Center feels like it rises to the level of hate speech, I'm not sure I really agree with that, but the Southern Poverty Law Center also seems to say some good things and do some good things..  I'm certainly not looking to donate money to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

 

Two sides where I agree and disagree with some things take opposing view points.

 

What should I really do?

 

 

I think the fact that I've become very familiar with those two is playing into my position. Both are most definitely liberals by any definition and should be put on a pedestal by the left. To see them on a hate watch list- nawaz is a Muslim for pete's sake - of an organization that exists to defend liberal values is shocking, to say the least.

 

I think we share many of the same values. Picture one of the people you admire most as a person in terms of what they stand for. Then picture them being labeled a bigot or a racist by a respected group thats supposed to fight bigotry. 

 

I think if you were to look into what they stand for, or listen to some of their speeches, debates or interviews,  you'd come away with many of the same questions. 

 

[PeterMP]

2 hours ago, tshile said:

I am adopting this position. Thank you

 

I get that at some level it is funny, but I know for a fact it happened.

 

A women had 4 kids, the oldest one was in 6th grade.  There was an older girl, twin boys, and then a youngest sister.  They all have different dads (obviously, not the twin boys so 3 dads for 4 kids).  Teachers were doing laundry for the 6th grader so she'd have clean clothes to wear.  After whatever all, the state comes in and take them all.

 

Right away, none of the dads want anything to do with any of them.  After about 2 years, the dad of the oldest one steps up and takes her (apparently, he had moved away at some point in time, settled down, and started a family and had other kids and didn't really know the daughter, but after about 2 years he figures that the mother isn't going to get her act together and takes the oldest one who is now in 8th grade).

 

But in the mean time, the mother has had another kid (with another father).  Of course, the state is watching her and after about 6 months that kid was in foster care.  So now there are 4 kids in foster care all under 13 from 3 different dads AGAIN!  None of the dads want to take any of the remaining kids.

 

And then she has another kid (still another dad).  Within a year of that, she gets convicted of a (minor) drug crime and goes to jail for a few months so the state then has custody of that kid so there are 5 kids in foster care.

 

(Then it gets even stupider.  She gets out of jail and goes to a half way house/recovery place for 6 weeks or something, and then advances to a place that allows for kids.  At this point in time, she's not been raising the older kids for years, and the two younger kids don't know her because they were taken from her when they so young and she's been away.  The oldest one is in a foster home by herself, the twins are in a foster home together, and the younger two are in a foster home together.  There is some effort to get them all together sometimes, but realistically, they don't all know each other.  They live in a rural/small town area.  The state decides to move them all to Baltimore to live with the mother in this place to help her recover from drug addition/get adjusted to being out of prison.

 

And of course within a year, the state takes all 5 kids from her again (I have no idea why anybody thought it made sense to take a bunch of kids that weren't used to living with one another, didn't really know their mother, and a mother that didn't really know her kids, and throw them together in apartment in Baltimore when they were used to living in the country).

 

None of the fathers still want anything to do with any of them.  Finally, the state gets everybody to give up their parental rights, but the kids all are past the age where they are easily adoptable.  They youngest one, which is most adoptable, the state refuses to allow to be adopted alone saying it would have to be adopted with one of her siblings.

 

Today the youngest is now in kindergarten.  At least the mother has not had more kids.  She seems to have straightened herself out a good bit.  But she's perfectly allowed to have more kids if she wants and could even if she hadn't straightened her life out.

 

To me, that's absurd.)

 

**EDIT**

And just to be clear, the mother and all the fathers are white.

[tshile]

that story makes me angry for those kids.

 

[twa]

2 minutes ago, tshile said:

that story makes me angry for those kids.

 

 

Could be worse for them.

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/eae79302b99496f2468742994f9774b1be2b0084/c=16-0-625-457&r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/2015/07/31/Indianapolis/B9318291833Z.1_20150731122907_000_GTMBGJ7PV.1-0.jpg

 

Folk like that is why I believe in sterilization or injected birth control.

[tshile]

eject

[Popeman38]

15 minutes ago, twa said:

 

Could be worse for them.

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/eae79302b99496f2468742994f9774b1be2b0084/c=16-0-625-457&r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/2015/07/31/Indianapolis/B9318291833Z.1_20150731122907_000_GTMBGJ7PV.1-0.jpg

 

Folk like that is why I believe in sterilization or injected birth control.

Come on dude...

[twa]

23 minutes ago, Popeman38 said:

Come on dude...

 

people that continue to have kids they cannot support or even care for with govt support irritate me very much.

 

or were you talking about the other?

[Jumbo]

 i understood all of you a long time ago

 

did it for free, too

 

plus, i keep pretty quiet about most of it

 

 

[LD0506]

9 hours ago, Jumbo said:

 i understood all of you a long time ago

 

did it for free, too

 

plus, i keep pretty quiet about most of it

 

 

 

And where did that keeping quiet get us? Huh?

[The Evil Genius]

11 hours ago, Jumbo said:

 i understood all of you a long time ago

 

did it for free, too

 

plus, i keep pretty quiet about most of it

 

 

 

I want my $20 back then. ES Pro membership, my ass.

[Fresh8686]

I feel like we as a country and a larger global community are at a place in our lives where we have to evolve from what we currently have. A new vision, a new "American Dream" and direction that can handle all the complexities and challenges of our current environment, while still aiming to be deeply devoted to harmony and balance... I've been thinking to myself for a long while, trying to figure out what that might look like and implement it into my own standard for living. A kind of goldilocks zone of humanity.
 

I want to belong to a party that has a meta understanding of how human beings mature and behave and deal with both growth and limitation. A party that applies and practices that understanding, so when under stress we don't collapse into conflict or indulge in destructive impulses. We would understand how mixing polarities/binaries with intense emotion, pushes people away from communication and into different degrees of fight/flight. We'd understand that in those moments we have to learn how to weather that push, restrain our snap reaction, and instead add nuance and context. Sloooowing down the process and reaction of both content and emotion, so instead of a spike and escalation, we can have a smoother curve that promotes understanding and actual solutions, with DEPTH. Behaving as people and processing emotion is more than a single step process, the emotional cascade occurs, and then it is our responsibility to apply action and effort to balance and lead that cascade into positive directions. Just reacting from one thing to the next, like a pinball machine, is not how we evolve from cyclical behavior. We must be able to build layers of nuance amidst emotion, harnessing that synergy so a better choice can be within reach.

I'd like to belong to a party that understands that every person has a bubble of awareness and that awareness has a perspective that is only as good as the level of depth and diversity that has been added to it over time through experience. And then that perspective, no matter it's potential is only as useful as the quality of focus we are having at a given time. Tunnel-visioning onto a single topic or stance, limits our ability to be able to pull back from that focus and draw from other parts of our perspective. We would deeply feel that one of the greatest detriments we can have to our capability, is being "blind to our own blindness" and we would apply ourselves to limiting that blindness and enact standards of self-accountability and a healthy skepticism for our innate desire to wholly buy into whatever our first reaction may be.

If we have never traveled beyond a 100-mile radius, we should make every effort to realize we have a cognitive and emotional blind-spot when our first reaction is to discount that foreign policy decisions do not matter or aren't worth caring about. If we have never been to a place or experienced what it's like when most of the jobs that have sustained our family for generations and shaped our cultural identity disappear, we should realize we also have a blind-spot and restrain ourselves from discounting them. We need to populate our perspective with as much accurate and actionable information and emotion as possible so that we respond from a balanced place. That means exercising empathy. Not empathy purely for the validation and confirmation that we are being moral, but empathy from the place of understanding that it is a tool we must exercise to keep from isolating ourselves into our own limited little bubbles of life.

If we don't actively practice connecting and including the experience of others within our perspective, we will never expand and connect to a larger view of how individual and shared worlds inter-relate. If we want a balanced, healthy, and cooperative relationship with people on all levels we must apply consideration to all three worlds and how they impact each other. My individual world, your individual world, and our shared space. Without balancing and leading all three of those towards a positive end, there will always be conflict, because without that balance, a world will feel neglect and exclusion and will react in some way to swing the pendulum back in their favor.

That continual pendulum swing of conflict and retaliation erodes trust and breeds apathy towards the system originally set in place to harmonize and build our society. I want to belong to a party that understands how essential and incredibly fragile Trust can be. Our country discards it too easily for convenience and shiny things and in some respects gives it too easily. I want to belong to a party that realizes that we all have a long road toward redeeming the trust we have between each other. That redemption is not a point you reach where "poof" things are forgiven, but instead a promise that that particular line we crossed to kill this trust is something we will work everyday towards never crossing again.

Trust should be about more than, "I will trust this person because they are validating what I already believe in". We need to again move beyond that initial feel of attractive or repulsive chemistry and it's effect on our open or closed mindedness and have a set of standards we apply towards what we trust, accept, and consequently internalize and then normalize. There is a power to whatever is considered "normal" at the time and we should have a strong sense of differentiation between what may be "normal" at the time, and that which is healthy for everyone involved. For some people it is normal to indulge in beliefs of superiority to cover up tremors of inadequacy or scapegoat others for their failing rather than accept responsibility, but this is not healthy and not something that should be promoted and approved of. We can mature from swings of superiority, to deeper wells via the complimentary contrast of balancing confidence with being humble. Personally, I watch and manage my reactions so I de-escalate myself when I feel superiority. Lowering it back down to pride, and then down to confidence, so the emotional cascade and thought narratives that arise are focused on what I can actually do, rather than how "great" at something I may appear to be. I do the same for inferiority, raising it up to humility, and then humbleness, so I don't castigate myself for "sucking" or reject others for "making me feel this way". Instead I focus on feeling what I need to do to improve, rather than how "bad" I may feel. Our identities can be very fragile things, with many scars and wounds, waiting to trigger us into conflict and pain if we do not take action to balance and direct our emotional cascade.

Also, I want to belong to a party that understands that our goal as a country is more than mindless consumption and expansion. We are more than competition and we are more than acquiring wealth. Getting to abundance is not the end of the road, it is only a start, a platform, that once reached should allow us to then focus more on nurturing and creating a better space for everyone around us. We can develop better goals and motivations then what society seems to currently be chasing. We just don't realize it, because we're ignorant, feel isolated, deal with swings of superiority and inferiority, lack trust with each other, and don't feel all that connected or care much about this shared space we all inhabit together. But, that can change. We can become more healthy, more capable, gain a deeper and more vibrant well-spring of human expression, with more satisfying and intimate feelings of connection, while also expanding the nuance and depth of the range of choices we have available.

 

 

[brandymac27]

11 hours ago, Fresh8686 said:

Your post...
 

 

 

Thank you for sharing that. I agree with you 100% especially this part:

 

Quote

If we have never traveled beyond a 100-mile radius, we should make every effort to realize we have a cognitive and emotional blind-spot when our first reaction is to discount that foreign policy decisions do not matter or aren't worth caring about. If we have never been to a place or experienced what it's like when most of the jobs that have sustained our family for generations and shaped our cultural identity disappear, we should realize we also have a blind-spot and restrain ourselves from discounting them. We need to populate our perspective with as much accurate and actionable information and emotion as possible so that we respond from a balanced place. That means exercising empathy. Not empathy purely for the validation and confirmation that we are being moral, but empathy from the place of understanding that it is a tool we must exercise to keep from isolating ourselves into our own limited little bubbles of life.

If we don't actively practice connecting and including the experience of others within our perspective, we will never expand and connect to a larger view of how individual and shared worlds inter-relate. If we want a balanced, healthy, and cooperative relationship with people on all levels we must apply consideration to all three worlds and how they impact each other. My individual world, your individual world, and our shared space. Without balancing and leading all three of those towards a positive end, there will always be conflict, because without that balance, a world will feel neglect and exclusion and will react in some way to swing the pendulum back in their favor.

 

I know it was a long post, and I just wanted to thank you for contributing to the thread. I thought it was great!

[PeterMP]

On 2/2/2017 at 9:30 PM, grego said:

 

I think the fact that I've become very familiar with those two is playing into my position. Both are most definitely liberals by any definition and should be put on a pedestal by the left. To see them on a hate watch list- nawaz is a Muslim for pete's sake - of an organization that exists to defend liberal values is shocking, to say the least.

 

I think we share many of the same values. Picture one of the people you admire most as a person in terms of what they stand for. Then picture them being labeled a bigot or a racist by a respected group thats supposed to fight bigotry. 

 

I think if you were to look into what they stand for, or listen to some of their speeches, debates or interviews,  you'd come away with many of the same questions. 

 

 

Everybody and has their positives and negative.  This also applies to most large groups of people.  Personally, if somebody only focuses on my negatives, it is very hard to accept that they like me, especially if they only seem to do it to me.  Their comments maybe accurate in a technical sense, but in a larger context due to the emphasis might be inaccurate.

 

Does that rise to the level of hate speech?  I don't know.  But it certainly isn't showing me love.

 

While I think there is a lot to criticize Islamic societies for and I'm not saying they should not be criticized at all (I think they should be), if (for the most part) that is what somebody does, does that rise to the level of hate speech?

 

I don't know.

 

I'd be curious to see what the Southern Poverty Law Centers response to them would have been if they spent (a little) more time either focusing on the positives of Islamic societies (maybe the Red Crescent) or even also hitting other population's negatives (especially their own population).

 

Bill Maher and Sam Harris are not on the Southern Poverty Law Centers hate speech list.  Is it because they spread their criticisms more broadly?

 

As a Catholic and very much a theist and seeing the rise of the extreme athestic left and the way that some of them essentially always misrepresent the views of many theist, I do not like the implication that liberals cannot practice hate speech.

[s0crates]

7 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

As a Catholic and very much a theist and seeing the rise of the extreme athestic left and the way that some of them essentially always misrepresent the views of many theist, I do not like the implication that liberals cannot practice hate speech.

 

I might follow Whitehead and characterize myself as a "reluctant theist," and I agree with this. The folks saying "science has discovered there is no God" often exhibit the same level of dogmatism as the young earth creationists. Is it any wonder so many liberal atheists view Christians as ignorant? Is it any wonder so many on the Christian Right view science and the left with deep suspicion? 

 

There is plenty of blame to go around in the culture war. The violence at Trump's rallies and the hatred many of his supporters exhibit is horrible, but the type of thing that happened at Berkeley this week is just as bad. Building on what @Fresh8686 said, we could all do a better job practicing tolerance, rationality, empathy, and understanding (and I include myself in that).

[grego]

6 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

 

I'd be curious to see what the Southern Poverty Law Centers response to them would have been if they spent (a little) more time either focusing on the positives of Islamic societies (maybe the Red Crescent) or even also hitting other population's negatives (especially their own population).

 

Bill Maher and Sam Harris are not on the Southern Poverty Law Centers hate speech list.  Is it because they spread their criticisms more broadly?

 

As a Catholic and very much a theist and seeing the rise of the extreme athestic left and the way that some of them essentially always misrepresent the views of many theist, I do not like the implication that liberals cannot practice hate speech.

 

Interesting point about Harris and Maher. Why aren't they on the list? If an actual Muslim is, why would they not be? Here's what the splc page says- 

 

https://www.splcenter.org/news/2016/10/26/splc-publishes-media-guide-countering-prominent-anti-muslim-extremists

The newly released Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists contains profiles of 15 prominent anti-Muslim extremists, many of whom are associated with organizations identified by the SPLC as hate groups.

 

Ali is an atheist, so, she's going to be critical of any religion to some extent, and, the others (ones I'm familiar with at least) appear to lump all of Islam into one general terrorist group, which is a mistake. But, a Muslim on the anti Muslim extremist list? That's a true Wtf moment. A former jihadist who is trying to reform Islam from within is exactly the kind of person the splc should be promoting, not slandering. 

 

I'm not an atheist, but I do like the way Harris presents his positions- calmly, logically. I don't always agree with him, but he's good at making you understand why he feels how he does (going along with the theme of this thread). He's good at not letting emotion get in the way of facts. I also don't sense that his ego gets in the way of his positions. 

 

Who would you put on the extreme athestic left? Politically, people like Harris, Maher, Gad Saad, Dave Rubin, Jonathan Haidt and Douglas Murray are all center or center left. You mean extreme as in atheist? 

 

 

[s0crates]

1 hour ago, grego said:

 

Ali is an atheist, so, she's going to be critical of any religion to some extent, and, the others (ones I'm familiar with at least) appear to lump all of Islam into one general terrorist group, which is a mistake. But, a Muslim on the anti Muslim extremist list? That's a true Wtf moment. A former jihadist who is trying to reform Islam from within is exactly the kind of person the splc should be promoting, not slandering. 

 

I'm not an atheist, but I do like the way Harris presents his positions- calmly, logically. I don't always agree with him, but he's good at making you understand why he feels how he does (going along with the theme of this thread). He's good at not letting emotion get in the way of facts. I also don't sense that his ego gets in the way of his positions. 

 

Who would you put on the extreme athestic left? Politically, people like Harris, Maher, Gad Saad, Dave Rubin, Jonathan Haidt and Douglas Murray are all center or center left. You mean extreme as in atheist? 

 

 

 

I cannot speak for @PeterMP, but I think the point is more about divergent cultures than left-right economics.  There are a lot of folks on the left who openly ridicule Christianity, and there are a lot of folks on the Christian Right who feel like their culture is under attack. There is irrationality and close-mindedness on both sides of that cultural divide. 

 

I do a lot of reading and writing on the topic of science and religion. I'm currently reading Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, and he says something that strikes me as correct.

 

Quote

In thinking about [Darwinism] I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture from a very different direction: the attack on Darwinism mounted in recent years from a religious perspective by the defenders of intelligent design . . . David Berlinski has brought out the problems vividly without reference to the design inference . . . The problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair.

 

The first question of this interview seems relevant here:

 

 

[Jumbo]

This is not a chide but a guide  in preemptive manner...while "getting to know each other" as it pertains to how our personal politics are formed allows for a lot of tangential stuff, I'd avoid avoiding extended side-dialogue tangents on religion/science/philosophy/economics etc., as interesting as some of them might be.

 

I'm assuming the rationale is self-evident.

 

That's just a suggestion. If the OP or majority posting feel different, all ok with me.

 

[zoony]

Maher is not on any list because he is one of the only members of the liberal national figures who isn't a raging hypocrite in Islam

 

treatment of females matters

the right to leave your religion peacefully matters

treatment of gays matters

freedom of speech matters

 

theae are all core liberal beliefs completely irreconcilable with Islam 

 

two questions

1. If the Catholic Church started publically beheading gays in the Vatican what would the American Liberal reaction be?

2. Could there EVER be a Broadway Play called "the book of Islam"?

[s0crates]

26 minutes ago, Jumbo said:

This is not a chide but a guide  in preemptive manner...while "getting to know each other" as it pertains to how our personal politics are formed allows for a lot of tangential stuff, I'd avoid avoiding extended side-dialogue tangents on religion/science/philosophy/economics etc., as interesting as some of them might be.

 

I'm assuming the rationale is self-evident.

 

That's just a suggestion. If the OP or majority posting feel different, all ok with me.

 

 

Fair enough. My mind is in the habit of "going there," but I'm sure you're right that some of what I'm saying could easily take us off on an irrelevant tangent. Berlinski gives a lot to chew on that doesn't have much to do with this topic, although I do think the first question of that interview gets to an important and relevant point. A lot of religious folk do feel "oppressed by the sciences," and I think that's very much part of the cultural/political dynamics at work in America. My thought is that understanding that feeling could do a lot to "help us understand each other." If it's possible, I'll try to focus on that aspect and avoid talk about Darwin, God, intelligent design, and such.

[Kosher Ham]

This thread...