Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[wierd]

Firstly, this is what I mean by "historic Left".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

As it relates to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Specifically:

Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality.[1][2][3] Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas and programmes such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free markets, civil rights, democratic societies, secular governments, gender equality and international cooperation.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10] [check quotation syntax] Liberalism first became a distinct political movement during the Age of Enlightenment, when it became popular among philosophers and economists in the Western world.

That out of the way, I disagree with your premise that two people using critical thinking and reason cannot reach mutual agreement, when starting from disparate positions. I disagree, because it is demonstrably false. It has happened in the past, therefor it can happen now.

[Lucus Casius]

Discounting all the times when it's failed to happen, which could quite likely outweigh the times it's succeeded.

And I'm not sure how this is supposed to change my view on your wholly misinterpreting the historic left.

[wierd]

It would help, if you were specific in what ways you believe I am misrepresenting or misinterpreting them?

Like all movements, it starts one way, and evolves over time as new knowledge and tools become available.  The fundamental precept, however, remains the adoption of objectivism and reason, over dogma and faith. (specifically, as these relate to the furtherance and betterment of mankind; the tenets of liberal philosophy.)

The argument that people need to be told WHAT to think, over HOW to think, is a direct call to return to dogmatism, discarding hundreds of years of progress in human understanding and reason based policy and decision making.

Forgive me for calling it horseshit, and for calling "liberals" who advocate for it, two faced liars and charlatans.

[smjjames]

-chunk snip-

Except that we aren't the only country to be exposed to TV culture for generations, so, that alone does not explain everything. If that alone explained everything, then why don't we see it happening in other countries?

... though in other news, the president has apparently touched down in peurto rico and spoken. Sweet fucking tone deaf hell.

He's also somehow blaming them and the hurricane for blowing up the budget. Trump being an asshole, what's new.

[Frumple]

From what I could tell, it looked like he was trying to inject some levity, lift spirits and whatnot.

It's just it had all the consideration of walking up to the funeral of a religious leader known for lifelong advocacy against pedophilia and boisterously going, "Hey, you heard the one about the necrophilic priest and the dead pre-teen?"

[RedKing]

At least he didn't shoot food out of a t-shirt cannon.

[nenjin]

Could have been worse. Could have gone down like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d605rM0U3x0

[Frumple]

I'unno, food cannon might have been an improvement.

... in any case, in other news, I'm not watching it directly so much as watching some responses to it, but apparently the senate intelligence committee's holding/held a live press conference.

Interesting words seem to be coming out of it, including outright statement there's signs of collusion between russia and trump, that 21 state electoral systems were attacked over the last while, and that russia is active with the sorts of chicanery relevant in france, the netherlands, and germany... and hasn't stopped in the US.

Bipartisan agreement russia intends to fuck specifically with our elections again in the future. Can only imagine some of the older folks that weren't already aware are about to start getting rather pissed off...

[birdy51]

I modestly hope that some consensus against Russian interference comes from their efforts, but expect none.

The Congressional Budget should be one of the big discussion points here soon though. It'll be interesting to see how they navigate that with disaster relief also being an extensive factor this year.

[sluissa]

My big fear of this is they're going to use "protect the voting process from russian interference" to install some sort of way to make it easier to domestic sources to control the elections. Ideally we'd see a solution that would protect against all forms of interference, but I don't count on that.

[martinuzz]

Temporarily shutting down the entire internet a few months before the next election might help with the interference. Misinformation and manipulation through social media is the real culprit, tampering with the voting process directly failed.

Regardless of elections, a few internet-free months could very well have very enlightening effects on society as a whole.

(Heh, I'm almost tempted now to see if I can get a city-wide local event funded. "Internet-free sunday" once a year. We have "automobile-free sunday" once a year already, with lots of outdoor events and fun things to do for the kids.)

[Trekkin]

Temporarily shutting down the entire internet a few months before the next election might help with the interference. Misinformation and manipulation through social media is the real culprit, tampering with the voting process directly failed.

Regardless of elections, a few internet-free months could very well have very enlightening effects on society as a whole.

It would also cripple the economy, so maybe let's not do that.

[RedKing]

Meanwhile, Rex Tillerson may have signed his own political death warrant by admitting that he called Trump a moron once.

[EnigmaticHat]

So for a while we've been commenting on how the crippled WH wouldn't be able to react in the case of a crisis.  Does the Las Vegas shooting + Puerto Rico + the other hurricane relief + whatever the intelligence committee is going to say about Trump count as a crisis?  Personally my answer is yeah it does.  First of all because what happened in Puerto Rico is a genuine tragedy and secondly because it feels like the sky is falling right now.

Spoiler: side note (click to show/hide)

Anyone have a thought on what the most effective way to give to PR disaster relief would be?

[Frumple]

Like... the usual. Money and more direct resources, send in military aid (engineering corps, etc.), ease up on some of the shipping bullshit at least for recovery related matters, not minimizing the import of the disaster (e.g. don't fucking say it's not one relative to katrina), etc., etc., etc.

It being an island and off the coast causes problems but it's not like our disaster relief folks and military engineers don't friggin' know how to handle disaster relief and rapid infrastructure setup, island or not. Just needed to be rounded up, loaded up, and set loose. Some ways some of the folks involved are frankly going above and beyond even for disaster relief, but, y'know, more help always helps.