What Is Americas Biggest Problem?

[Ten oz]

it is interesting to me that the last two national elections has shifted control of both the house and the senate to the Republicans and the only thing this means to liberals is that the republicans are misguided dupesI think as scientists, you might look for other more reasonable explanations.

TAR, because of the way districts are drawn out and gerrymandered the GOP has been winning larger shares of seats than percentages of actual votes. This is one of the reason so many in here are complaining about the system being broken.

 

" The House is shockingly skewed toward the Republican Party. It’s always hard to oust incumbents—some 96 percent just won re-election—but now it extends to control of the chamber. In 2012, Republicans won a lopsided majority of seats despite securing only 48 percent of the vote, about the same vote share as Democrats this year. To keep the House in 2014, Republican needed only 45 percent of votes. Putting it another way: control of the House comes from winning 218 races or more. The 218th biggest Republican margin was fully 14 percentage points."

http://www.thenation.com/article/republicans-only-got-52-percent-vote-house-races/

 

Ten Oz,From your link."On the topic of poverty, liberals claim the moral high ground. Their response includes federal and local interventions including entitlements, higher taxes, and a generally bigger and more active government. Despite liberals' insistence to the contrary, conservatives and libertarians also care about the poor, but they have their own ideas about how to lift people out of poverty. This symposium will explore these ideas."There is indeed more than one way to skin a cat. And indeed, if you think about it, if entitlements were indeed the way to do it 50 years of entitlements should have done the trick.Regards, TAR

Okay, so you agree with some of their crap. What does that have to do with anything? You think it is acceptable for a politically partisan group to plant judges in our system to change law to their liking from the bench? They complain about liberals however there is not a liberal equivalent to the Federalist Society TAR. They are the only organized group doing this and it is wrong!!! Our courts are not suppose to be political!!!! That is one of the reason supreme court appointments are for life. To seperate judges from the political atomesohere of the day. The Federal Society is a pn affront to that.

 

This is no small issue. Do you remember when Conservatives through a fit over Bush nomination Harriet Myers to the Supreme Court? She was a life long Republican but was not a participating member of the Federalist Society. That is what the beef was about. They (Federalist Society and Conservatives) have created a political litmus test for bench seats. That is wrong. That is not the way our system is designed to work. And on this issue the door does not swing both ways. Democrats do not have an political action commitee they pull all their court appointments from.

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

Views on Abortion was a litmus test. Any number of issues, down through the years has caused the congress to reject or accept nominations.

 

It is the fact that you call it "some of their crap", as if they are not intelligent people with valid arguments, and good judgement and intentions, that validates my argument in this thread that the problem is not the Republican party, but that you think the Repubican Party is full of crap and the Republicans think the Democrats are full of crap. Fox viewers get offended at what MSNBC commentators say about Republicans, and MSNBC viewers get offended at what Fox commentators say about their heroes.

 

However, my insight into this situation, and my argument throughout the thread, is that each of us has their own position on any number of spectrums. Whether its Male or Female, Black or White, Settler or Indian, rich or poor, weak or strong, pacifist or war monger, union or management, house of lords or house of commons, capitalist or communist...we all have our views, we all have our background, we all have our strengths and weaknesses, we all have our hopes and dreams and we all have a will, and judgement and a certain amount of power and people we want to see win and people we want to see lose.

 

The promise of America is to live in a country where each can worship their own god and pursue happiness, protected by the law from each others interference in that pursuit. We are supposed to pledge our honor and our wealth to the continuation of the nation, with these aspirations.

 

It is false for a Republican to think a Democrat does not have these values.

It is false for a Democrat to think a Republican does not have these values.

 

We are each Americans, and should respect the other and the other's rights.

 

Regards, TAR

 

Regards, TAR

Edited January 30, 2016 by tar

[Ten oz]

@ TAR, there is a HUGE difference between using views on a specific couple issues as a litmus test and being part of a organization with a long term political agenda that incentuosly seeks to plant individuals to the bench. It does not matter how intelligent they are. Courts are not suppose to be political and judges should not have pre-slated agendas. It is morally bankrupt for you to turn a blind eye to it simply because on the surface you assume it benefits your worldview. And to that point you assume incorrectly. Making money speech and corporations people does not help you. It doesn't help your family.

The promise of America is to live in a country where each can worship their own god and pursue happiness, protected by the law from each others interference in that pursuit. We are supposed to pledge our honor and our wealth to the continuation of the nation, with these aspirations.

It is false for a Republican to think a Democrat does not have these values.
It is false for a Democrat to think a Republican does not have these values.

We are each Americans, and should respect the other and the other's rights.

You keep falling back to this B.S. and it is very fustrating. You are drawing equivalents that are not real. As though though politics are just competing opinions and our system is not manipulated. I am not attacking the values of common voters who lean left or right. I am attacking specific organizations who are seeking influence and power within our government! Who circumvent our process and oppress the vioce of average people. You and I are a peons to them. You think your support of their facade (you have no idea what their true agendas are) gives you seat at their table? You think the no bid contractors who made billions off the Iraq war honestly care about your safety? Stop falling back to your views about typical American voters when presented with specific arguments about individual groups.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Ten oz

[Phi for All]

We are each Americans, and should respect the other and the other's rights.

 

I think you're always going to boil it down in your head this way. It's a seemingly reasonable position that sits the fence while simultaneously blocking the road, mostly because it's the complete opposite of what's happening in reality.

 

It's also a position that allows you to ignore challenges to your ideals. I think you misunderstand what it means to maintain ideals. It doesn't mean protecting them as if sacred, and never wavering from their original script. It means maintaining their value and effectiveness over time, performing maintenance if you will, to insure your ideals match an ever-changing world.

 

 

 

 

To me, it's almost bizarre how the conservatives in this country have blinkered their view of our present situation. I can understand how fear of progress affects many these days. Our technology and knowledge seems to be racing ahead faster each day. That can scare a lot of people who don't bother to learn about what they fear, and instead just listen to pundolt hysteria that feeds it instead.

 

What seems so weird is that these fearful folks have privatized their control of the vehicle of government, handing the keys over to people who only want progress slowed so they can take more profit from existing infrastructure and well-established markets. Change costs money, even really beneficial change. So the vehicle of government slows down to granny speeds, blocking traffic, pissing everyone off, making them blame government instead of the people misusing it. And what these fearful People have traded is a speed that makes them feel safer for chauffeurs that are slowly driving them off the edge of the cliff.

 

They don't appreciate intellectuals, and so don't trust them to be smart enough to handle the pace AND direction of progress. They themselves aren't that smart, so it's hard to comprehend the policies of those who are. Actually, scratch that. It's not about smart, it's about critical thinking, and the lack of it in too many People.

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

From your link.

 

"Over the past twenty-five years, Democratic gains in the electorate have come from increases in the number of voters who are people of color and single women, but Democrats have lost support among white voters overall. The result is a startling urban/rural divide, with the Democratic base increasingly concentrated in cities—as evidenced by the fact Jimmy Carter in 1976 won 1,711 counties, nearly three times the 693 counties won by Obama in his comparably close win in 2012. This inefficient distribution of Democratic votes explains why even impartial redistricting will strongly favor Republicans. Indeed, the district skew was already in place by 1996, when Bill Clinton ran behind his national share of the popular vote in 55 percent of districts despite Democrats having drawn most of them—exactly the same share of districts where Obama trailed his national average in 2012."

 

If the democrats drew the lines, you cannot blame the republicans for being unfair.

 

If the cities normally go democrat and the county normally goes republican, then the "fair" draw of districts completely city and districts completely country would result in several city districts receiving overwhelmingly city votes, and all the county districts receiving overwhelmingly country votes. To balance out the situation, democrats, who usually get the black and single women vote, drew some lines out into the country and the suburbs to spread out the power of the college and inner city poor vote to the rural and suburban districts. So that the number of city votes could win three districts for the democrats rather than just the one where the college and working poor lived.

 

So what is "fair" to the populace? If the majority of the country is white and rural and older, why should the lines be drawn to the benefit of the black and city and younger? I would say, because we respect the rights of the minority in the first place and want to make it fair. If such lines, because of changing demographics and opinion, should cause instead the Republicans to win the house, then the problem is not Gerrymandering. The problem, for the democrats is that their gerrymandering backfired, and now the claim is that rigging the system for the benefit of the minority is unfair?

 

Regards, TAR

Phi,

 

But you allow only the elite, with critical thinking skills, equal to yours to be allowed to run the place. This argument would defeat the argument that the populace should not allow the top 1 percent to run the county.

 

You can not both argue the top 1 percent should run the country and also argue the top 1 percent should not.

 

Regards, TAR

what the freaking heck was that neg rep for?

[Phi for All]

But you allow only the elite, with critical thinking skills, equal to yours to be allowed to run the place. This argument would defeat the argument that the populace should not allow the top 1 percent to run the county.

 

You can not both argue the top 1 percent should run the country and also argue the top 1 percent should not.

 

I think People with critical thinking skills outnumber rich People (not to say rich folks don't have them, just that it seems they use theirs mostly for personal profit). And the thing you're forgetting about having a country run on reason instead of hysteria is that it will make more sense over time, as smart processes and programs become the norm again.

 

When we start saving money on healthcare and getting better mortality rates, when People have access to the knowledge that will let them become productive citizens no matter how they were born, when we stop bombing the world and start being an example of peace and prosperity, when middle-class workers can expect their wages to be tied fast to their productivity instead of getting more bits of it shaved off and thrown into the clouds, rarely if ever to settle back down to Earth, when all this happens you may join the rest of the world in thinking that America has solved some of it's biggest problems.

[tar]

Phi,

 

When and if.

 

People with critical thinking skills may outnumber rich people, but I think most people that are rich have critical thinking skills, or they would not have been able to accumulate and maintain more than about minimum wage.

 

Here your argument is saying that people who don't like Obamacare, people in the military industrial complex, people in corporate America and Wall Street are devoid of critical thinking skills. I think that claim can be proved false. Just using common sense, one would ascribe a required thinking ability to businessmen and generals and leaders of industry and finance.

 

And if I were to trust and respect, good bosses and good generals, and good business men and good financial advisors, then I am not being devoid of critical thinking skills to do so.

 

I voted for Lautenburg and respect Corey Booker. This might in your mind give me critical thinking skills. I voted for some Republican house and senate members as well. Matter of fact I spoke to Lautenburg in person for about 10 minutes one time at a McGovern event, and I have written him letters that he has responded to. One was a letter about letting cameras cover the goings on in the house and senate. This was before c-span began covering the house. I have a bachelors degree and credits toward an EE. I have an IQ that used to be 142 that is now probably down in the low 130s. I for years was technical support and was primary technical lead on several successful products and an excellent troubleshooter and problem solver answering third level hotline calls, helping expert techs solve difficult problems. I HAVE critical thinking skills. Yet I am a republican. The critical thinking skills argument does not work.

 

Regards, TAR

[Ten oz]

@ TAR

Phi,.Here your argument is saying that people who don't like Obamacare, people in the military industrial complex, people in corporate America and Wall Street are devoid of critical thinking skills. I think that claim can be proved false.

That is not what Phi for All said!!!!! You are not merely misunderstanding what posters are writing you are are right making #%*! up.

[tar]

I was a philosophy major for a while and learned to think from a brilliant man who was also a family friend and is now Scholar in residence at a university. I have critical thinking skills.

I was not responding to what Phi said, I was responding to what he is saying.

Talking about my philosophy professor reminded me of a time I was in a room with my dad and that professor and two other philosophy professors...four of the most intelligent people I have ever known. They were having a conversation and I realized they were talking about two different thing at the same time, and then I saw it was three things. I do not know the other levels they may have been conversing on as well.

 

We have a lot of arguments going on here at once in this thread. What somebody says and what somebody has said and is saying is all in play.

[Willie71]

Ten Oz,Well wait, I might not know what being a federalist means. I took it as simply a point of view thing were the spectrum was a battle between centralized control and control at the state level. That is that a federalist would argue that the land in Oregon should belong to the people of the U.S. and state's right leaning individual would argue that the land belongs to the people living on it.This battle is not an evil vs good battle, but one of point of view. Much like conservative and progressive, the battle is not between good and evil but between the benefits of maintaining the status quo, and the benefits of progress and discovery. The one is not bad and the other good.In my former company I lived through many lay offs and cutbacks and many absorptions of other firms. There was a constant battle between centralization and local control. Were should the power lay? In the hands at the top? Or where the rubber meets the road.Should the federal government have control of the range or should the rancher?Should the federal government have control of my health care, or should I?Willie71,We cross posted, but I explained in a small paragraph what can happen when the force of the law, the powerful force of the Federal government gets written in to laws that are intended to help drug addicts recover and become productive members of society and get all fouled up, because nobody knows what is the spirit of the law and what is the intent of the law, and everbody just does things that don't make sense, but that follow the letter of the law. If the spirit behind the law is to get poor and homeless people healthcare then what was wrong with the free clinics of the 60s. If the spirit of the law is to prevent people from being bankrupted by a family medical emergency, then that is what private insurance was for in the first place. Even under our new system there are four levels of coverage you pay more, to protect yourself against the big expenses. I don't know the formulae but my wife selected the Gold cthat cost more, but has a lower deductible better matching percentage after the deductible and a closer cap on total expenditure in a year, where the company will pay everything afterbut this does not include hearing aids or glasses or dental or if you get care outside the network or are on a ship more than half a day from port...and whatever other complicating factors you might throw inStill the wealthy are better protected because they have better coverage because they paid for it.At my work, listening to all the plans and the HSA and FSA and the out of network and in network and eye care and prescription medication rules and what would happen this way or that and when yu would lose money if you didn't use it, and everything else, made my head spin. And ANY selection I made, would have left me paying more for healthcare than I had paid in previous years, for the same healthcare coverage I had already. So I went with my wife's company plan where the company chipped in some more, and made better deals, and was in a different state that may have had different rules. In ANY case, without a job and a company to chip in, the monthly costs are very high. I think we paid like 800 a month to cover our daughter who was too old to be under us. And under the new rules you get fined if you don't buy insurance, as if that makes any sense. If you don't have the money to pay for healthcare, why would you have money to buy insurance against high expenses... and where are you supposed to get the money to pay the fine? From the government that leveed the fine?Anyway, you are in Canada, your system might be more sensible.Regards, TARTen Oz,The framers of our constitution were people in the top 10 percent of intelligence and probably people in the top 1 percent of wealth and power.They did a good job with the thing. They balanced individual rights against the rights of the collective. They didn't count women and slaves equal to freemen but we are working out those kinks as we go along. The meat of the thing though was well thought out. The balance of power between the people that make the laws and the people that enforce the laws and the people that make sure the laws are just. Each branch has certain powers over the other branches. And in the congress the houses are structured for a reason. The house of representatives to reflect the will of the population and the senate to reflect the will of each state. Each with two senators regardless of their population.The will of the minority is given consideration in our system, in both spirit and letter.Regards, TAR

So it's not Obamacare that is the problem, it's that the insurance companies are not regulated from gouging people so they can make more profit. Obama wanted regulation on rates, but guess who opposed it. Republicans.

[Ten oz]

I was a philosophy major for a while and learned to think from a brilliant man who was also a family friend and is now Scholar in residence at a university. I have critical thinking skills.I was not responding to what Phi said, I was responding to what he is saying.

Your assumptions about what people mean disrespect those who are taking time to bother explaining themselves to you. You have been doing it to me as well. You have yet to respond in context to a single one of my posts regarding the Federalist Society. Instead you just qoute political positions they stand for. Now you are project nonsense into other posts that simply isn't there. Phi for All clearly wrote that they use their critical thinking skills for profit. That is very different than saying they have no critical thinking skills at all. I can read that plainly and I didn't major in philosophy.

 

@ TAR, I apologize for my tone. It is not polite or useful. I am just fustrated that you choose to ignore posters words and instead respond to what you assume they must really mean.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Ten oz

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

I was not ignoring you a bit. You called the ideas of the federalist group crap and I pointed out that by calling their ideas crap you are calling any ideas that I have along those lines crap as well. I happen to think that dependency does not help a person climb out of poverty and there are other ways we should address poverty that we are not. If we were doing it right, and have been trying to do it right for 50 years, and it is not yet done, then maybe we need a workshop that looks into the other ideas. How is this not hearing what you are saying?

 

Phi wants universal healthcare. Maybe that is a good way to go, maybe it is not, but the last bill does not do the job. Willie71 thinks its the republicans that are letting the insurance companies gouge Americans, and he thinks my example of what happened to me at the sports medicine place is proof of this? It was the sports medicine place charging the obscene rate of 500 dollars for an hour at the gym with a helper and a few measurements of movement angle. I was out of network so the insurance company had nothing what so ever to do with it.

 

Regards, TAR

no one needs to take the time to explain their ideas to me unless they are also open to me pointing out where their idea is weak

Edited January 30, 2016 by tar

[iNow]

Tar - You don't even realize how profoundly you miscomprehend others nor how frequently and broadly you misrepresent them, do you?

[Ten oz]

Ten Oz,I was not ignoring you a bit. You called the ideas of the federalist group crap

I said you may like their crap and then continued to say how their political views for better or worse aren't the issue. You then proceeded to make them the central issue off every response on the topic. By doing so you have yet to address anything, in context, I posted on the subject. So please go back, read my posts without your projected assumptions and respond to what I actually said rather than cherry picking and mischaracterizing my posts.

[tar]

Ten Oz,

 

My assumptions about what people mean may often be wrong. I do my best to understand people. I have been studying the meaning behind language as an endeavor for the last four years. I have had some insights about the world and objective and subjective reality, and the difference between having an idea that works in your head, and having an idea that works in the waking world.

 

29 percent of the people that exist in the waking world are the people that Overtone needs to defeat to have her ideas that are in her head work. This is not realistic.

 

Regards, TAR

[Ten oz]

Tar - You don't even realize how profoundly you miscomprehend others nor how frequently and broadly you misrepresent them, do you?

I thought that for awhile but now believe that he simply doesn't care. Perhaps this is all sport. Refusing to address what posters say is a means of avoiding being pinned down and counted out.

[Willie71]

Ten Oz,I was not ignoring you a bit. You called the ideas of the federalist group crap and I pointed out that by calling their ideas crap you are calling any ideas that I have along those lines crap as well. I happen to think that dependency does not help a person climb out of poverty and there are other ways we should address poverty that we are not. If we were doing it right, and have been trying to do it right for 50 years, and it is not yet done, then maybe we need a workshop that looks into the other ideas. How is this not hearing what you are saying?Phi wants universal healthcare. Maybe that is a good way to go, maybe it is not, but the last bill does not do the job. Willie71 thinks its the republicans that are letting the insurance companies gouge Americans, and he thinks my example of what happened to me at the sports medicine place is proof of this? It was the sports medicine place charging the obscene rate of 500 dollars for an hour at the gym with a helper and a few measurements of movement angle. I was out of network so the insurance company had nothing what so ever to do with it.Regards, TARno one needs to take the time to explain their ideas to me unless they are also open to me pointing out where their idea is weak

I suspect you misunderstood what the sports clinic was telling you, or are misrepresenting what they said.

 

What is the republican plan for poverty? Trickle down economics? That is a proven farce. Cutting everyone off of assistance? That results in an increase in the homeless population, crime, and prostitution. You use the rhetoric "dependency" yet it has been shown that the vast majority if people using assistance only do so temporarily. Please Tar, enlighten us with the republican plan. We have been waiting for 40 to 50 years, and there hasn't been one.

Republicans and critical thinking:

 

The Washington Post

 

Local

Texas GOP rejects critical thinking skills. Really.

Resize Text Print Article Comments 336

 

By Valerie Strauss July 9, 2012 Follow @valeriestrauss

(Update: Stephen Colberts take; other details)

 

 

In the you-cant-make-up-this-stuff department, heres what the Republican Party of Texas wrote into its 2012 platform as part of the section on education:

 

Knowledge-Based Education We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the students fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

 

 

Yes, you read that right. The party opposes the teaching of higher order thinking skills because it believes the purpose is to challenge a students fixed beliefs and undermine parental authority.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html

 

You really can't make this shit up. Tar considers himself part of the team that hates critical thinking to the point of wanting to ban it. Yet he claims it's the "others" that lack critical thinking skills.

Edited January 31, 2016 by Willie71

[overtone]

Should the federal government have control of the range or should the rancher?

Should the federal government have control of my health care, or should I?

The owner of the land should have major control over it. In the case of the national public range, that owner is the Federal government.

 

Or as my Mom used to say to little kids who were acting like the Bundys: "You know it isn't yours. So put it back. "

 

As far as control of your health care, you should have as much control as possible. Beyond that your family. Beyond that your doctor. One way to do that is to have the federal - or some community - government pay for it, and then via democratic control of them make sure operational control is ceded to you, your family, your doctor. There are other ways.

 

One of the ways to lose control of your medical care is to set things up so the recipient pays as they go - since only the very wealthy among the sick, injured, young, and old, people can pay as they go, the rest lose access. You cannot control what you don't have.

 

Another way is to set up corporate insurance - to cover the payment problem - but fail to govern the insurer. The insurer then controls your medical care, with an interest in extracting as much money from you and paying as little to doctors etc as possible.

 

and so forth.

 

 

 

29 percent of the people that exist in the waking world are the people that Overtone needs to defeat to have her ideas that are in her head work. This is not realistic.

I never said that America's biggest problem was small, or easy.

 

btw: Nothing you have assumed about me or "my ideas" is accurate. Nothing. Do you realize that? How dependent on delusion and defensive presumption you have become in this matter - an entire world built of strawmen?

 

Like this:

I am saying it is unfair to say you are American but you hate America and what it stands for.

Again with the "hate" bs. Does your world contain any other negative assessment or judgment or emotion? Do you hate everything and everybody you don't think is behaving well, and that's why you project hatred into everybody else?

 

For the last few decades the Republican Party has increasingly become opposed to almost everything good that America stands for. This is demonstrable - one can make a list of what good America supposedly stands for, and check off the overwhelming evidence of growing Republican Party opposition. (You even did a little of that, above - only instead of crediting America with those virtues, you credited the Republican Party!) It has reached a crisis stage, now, with the nature of the current batch of Republican Presidential candidates having become impossible to camouflage. What do you intend to do about that?

 

 

It was the sports medicine place charging the obscene rate of 500 dollars for an hour at the gym with a helper and a few measurements of movement angle. I was out of network so the insurance company had nothing what so ever to do with it.

Dude: what goes through your mind when you type the words "out of network", and then type the words "insurance company - - nothing whatsoever to do with it"?

 

And why are you complaining about free market capitalism setting prices as it pleases?

 

Do you know how many people are ever gouged for being "out of network" in the other 30+ First World health care systems?

 

 

There is indeed more than one way to skin a cat. And indeed, if you think about it, if entitlements were indeed the way to do it 50 years of entitlements should have done the trick

The entitlements we actually managed to hold on to for fifty years did do the trick.

 

Old people are not the poorest of all Americans, eating pet food as their only source of affordable protein, living in penury and squalor far from the reach of medical care or even pain relief, dying years before their time of things like malnutrition and abscessed teeth. Thank you, Social Security and Medicare.

 

The prosperity founded by the GI bills and other veteran's benefits - the free college, the government subsidized house, all the rest - although limited to white men in general, is still with us. They have been much reduced by Reagan era budget cuts and Republican mismanagement and the Second Great Republican Crash, but they sure did the trick for white men while they lasted.

 

 

It is the fact that you call it "some of their crap", as if they are not intelligent people with valid arguments, and good judgement and intentions, that validates my argument in this thread that the problem is not the Republican party, -

Unless, of course, the Republican Party honchos don't actually have valid arguments, good judgment, or even good intentions. That is a matter to be determined by evaluating evidence - not assumed, as if it were some principle of the universe that the Republican Party was well staffed and controlled by the benevolent and the wise.

 

Why is it that when you place your blind trust and unexamined faith in some batch of politicians, it's the Ws and Cheneys - why not the Feingolds and Sanders's?

 

 

This inefficient distribution of Democratic votes explains why even impartial redistricting will strongly favor Republicans.

Let's try it and see - the Republican gerrymandering of the past couple of decades has done obvious harm, and it's not what America stands for: let's revoke it and try impartial redistricting. Any objection? Edited January 31, 2016 by overtone

[Willie71]

Tar, instead of providing rambling anecdotes, can you lease cite some evidence that the republicans are actually interested in things like fiscal responsibility, veterans, or the working class? I understand that the republicans have been trying to convince people for 40 years that academics and science is part of a liberal conspiracy. I'm asking you for a moment, just a moment consider that it's not a conspiracy, and that the republican policies are not supportable with evidence? And that they use the conspiracy idea to hide their agenda? What would that do to your world view?

[iNow]

Cue the false suggestion of equivalence, red herring of both sides, and evasion of core request.

[tar]

Thread,

 

Just lost a post. Not in the mood to reconstruct it. Getting tired of being blamed for misunderstanding other people's motivations and thinking, and being blamed for mischaracterizing other people's points...while being barraged by blanket statements disparaging my intentions, or the intentions of a priest or a businessman, or a general or an average American living in peace and prosperity in the suburbs, or on the f farm.

 

I do however have my images of some of you, that I have constructed over many posts from you on many subjects. I know a little from where you are speaking. Each of you a different place, but there are some places where you come to other's defense and some places where you come automatically to reject the thinking of another poster.

 

Sometimes you lump. We all do it. We recognize agreement and we recognize disagreement and we tend to put thoughts into other people's heads that they never had. But the idea of having the same thought as another is crucial to communication. That is what symbols and language are about. If you think I am mischaracterizing your statements and intent, just imagine how badly you are misunderstanding mine...and more importantly for this thread, how badly you are mischaracterizing the intentions of your enemies.

 

Regards, TAR

There are a lot of cities in America, that bustle during the day, and the same streets are ghost towns at night.

 

The people that make the place live during the day, go home, across the bridge, across the tracks, up into the hills or down into the valleys, or whatever.

 

Often, or at least in the case of a few cities, where I have been, it is not particularly safe to walk around at night, on the same streets that were civilized during the day.

 

What do I mean to say, when I say this? What ill intentions would you figure I was harboring, to say this? What demons are you preparing to construct, to explain the causes of this phenomenon?

Edited January 31, 2016 by tar

[Willie71]

Thread,Just lost a post. Not in the mood to reconstruct it. Getting tired of being blamed for misunderstanding other people's motivations and thinking, and being blamed for mischaracterizing other people's points...while being barraged by blanket statements disparaging my intentions, or the intentions of a priest or a businessman, or a general or an average American living in peace and prosperity in the suburbs, or on the f farm.I do however have my images of some of you, that I have constructed over many posts from you on many subjects. I know a little from where you are speaking. Each of you a different place, but there are some places where you come to other's defense and some places where you come automatically to reject the thinking of another poster.Sometimes you lump. We all do it. We recognize agreement and we recognize disagreement and we tend to put thoughts into other people's heads that they never had. But the idea of having the same thought as another is crucial to communication. That is what symbols and language are about. If you think I am mischaracterizing your statements and intent, just imagine how badly you are misunderstanding mine...and more importantly for this thread, how badly you are mischaracterizing the intentions of your enemies.Regards, TARThere are a lot of cities in America, that bustle during the day, and the same streets are ghost towns at night.The people that make the place live during the day, go home, across the bridge, across the tracks, up into the hills or down into the valleys, or whatever.Often, or at least in the case of a few cities, where I have been, it is not particularly safe to walk around at night, on the same streets that were civilized during the day.What do I mean to say, when I say this? What ill intentions would you figure I was harboring, to say this? What demons are you preparing to construct, to explain the causes of this phenomenon?

Tar, I am a mental health professional. What you posted is nonsense. Obfuscation, avoidance, deflection, and solipsism.

 

How about you answer the questions rather than claiming "poor me?" Republicans can be so avoidant of personal responsibility, and so sensitive.

[Ten oz]

Thread,Just lost a post. Not in the mood to reconstruct it. Getting tired of being blamed for misunderstanding other people's motivations and thinking, and being blamed for mischaracterizing other people's points...while being barraged by blanket statements disparaging my intentions,

How many people need to notice the behavior before you are willing to step back and considers it?

 

I do however have my images of some of you, that I have constructed over many posts from you on many subjects. I know a little from where you are speaking. Each of you a different place, but there are some places where you come to other's defense and some places where you come automatically to reject the thinking of another poster.Sometimes you lump. We all do it.

Perhaps this is part of your problem in here; you are to concerned with who we are rather than what we post. You seem to be running What is said by posters through a filter of black, white, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, socialist, young, old, and etc. How about excersizing some reading comprehension at its most basic level and not treating our words as postmodernist art that requires philisophical interperitation. It someone posts the Bush admin lying to get us into the Iraq war you responding with a story about finding an hurt bird walking home from school when you were a child is not an oppropriate response.

 

 

We recognize agreement and we recognize disagreement and we tend to put thoughts into other people's heads that they never had. But the idea of having the same thought as another is crucial to communication. That is what symbols and language are about. If you think I am mischaracterizing your statements and intent, just imagine how badly you are misunderstanding mine...

No one is mischaracterizing your posts. Pointing out that you have misrepresented our words not not equal to misrepresenting yours. You are outlining a major false equivalency here.

 

There are a lot of cities in America, that bustle during the day, and the same streets are ghost towns at night.The people that make the place live during the day, go home, across the bridge, across the tracks, up into the hills or down into the valleys, or whatever.Often, or at least in the case of a few cities, where I have been, it is not particularly safe to walk around at night, on the same streets that were civilized during the day.What do I mean to say, when I say this? What ill intentions would you figure I was harboring, to say this? What demons are you preparing to construct, to explain the causes of this phenomenon?

You don't think it is not safe to walk around major cities in the United States at night. That is what I read. The questions you added here require speculation. So in answering them I would not be misrepresenting you because the questions are rhetorically asking for the readers thoughts: "would you figure I was", "are you preparing to construct".

[Willie71]

We seem to be experiencing the principles described by Chris Mooney.

 

You might be thinking that Conservapedia's unabashed denial of relativity is an extreme case, located in the same circle of intellectual hell as claims that HIV doesn't cause AIDS and 9-11 was an inside job. If so, I want to ask you to think again. Structurally, the denial of something so irrefutable, the elaborate rationalization of that denial, and above all the refusal to consider the overwhelming body of counterevidence and modify one's view, is something we find all around us today.

 

Every contentious fact- or science-based issue in American politics now plays out just like the conflict between Conservapedia and physicists over relativity. Again and again it's a fruitless battle between incompatible "truths," with no progress made and no retractions offered by those who are just plain wrong—and can be shown to be through simple fact checking mechanisms that all good journalists, not to mention open-minded and critically thinking citizens, can employ.

 

What's more, no matter how much the fact-checkers strive to remain "bi-partisan," it is pretty hard to argue that, today, the distribution of falsehoods is politically equal or symmetrical. It's not that liberals are never wrong or biased; in my new book, The Republican Brain, The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality, from which this essay is excerpted, I go to great lengths to describe and debunk number of liberal errors. Nevertheless, politicized wrongness today is clustered among Republicans, conservatives, and especially Tea Partiers. (Indeed, a new study published in American Sociological Review finds that while overall trust in science has been relatively stable since 1974, among self-identified conservatives it is at an all-time low.)

 

Their willingness to deny what's true may seem especially outrageous when it infects scientific topics like evolution or climate change. But the same thing happens with economics, with American history, and with any other factual matter where there's something ideological—in other words, something emotional and personal—at stake.

 

As soon as that occurs, today's conservatives have their own "truth," their own experts to spout it, and their own communication channels—newspapers, cable networks, talk radio shows, blogs, encyclopedias, think tanks, even universities—to broad- and narrowcast it.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/chris-mooney-republican-brain-science-denial

 

We are asking Tar to do something he might not actually be capable of.

 

The republican Brain by Chris Mooney is a recommended read for want one who debates conservatives, whether Isis, American Republicans, or Hescetic Jews. They can deny reality, and strengthen their belief in mythology in ways now better u derstood by neuroscience and psychology.

[Ten oz]

^^^^ A lot of the lies pushed out by conservative pundits are understood to be allegories. Provided something could be truth it is okay to treat it as true. When Carly Fiorina claims to have watched a video that doesnt exist her follwers don't bat an eye because they believe under the right circimstances such a video would exist. If it could be than that is equal to it being. This view plays itself out in conservative politics constantly. Saddam could have had WMD's so Bush wasn't lying when he claimed to know for a fact that Saddam had WMDs. Whether or not there were WMDs gets lost in the potentiality. Another example: refugees could be terrorists, which is equal to them actually being terrorists, so Obama has already made our country less safe and we are all presently in danger.