Excellent valuable discuss about the political climate that touches on a few points I think aren’t discussed enough.
I want to break down the talk a little and see if anyone feels like talking politics. But I’m done for tonight so I leave you with the comment I felt compelled to share back at that link.
The moral of this story >>> we need to do a better job about explaining Trump’s record of lies upon lies, his ruthless fantasizing, his crimes big and small - the pettiness of his ME FIRST mentality and how all it offers is a road to self-destruction.
Recognize we are dealing with a very successful FOX (et al) long term brainwashing campaign - Reaguns and evangelicals and big money and a lot of strategizing and learning about how to manipulate people over the past decades -
We lefties are dealing with amoral people possessed with ruthless self-certainty - yet we do nothing to address that. Very stupid - if we aren’t changing minds, we are losing. And they are playing for keeps and possess a visceral hatred that runs deep and should not be ignored!!!
We all need to work harder to figure out how create doubt within the self-certain FOX brainwashed crowd. That’s the only way to keep our situation from spiraling totally out of control - stop pretending things are automatically going to get saner. That can only happen if all rationalists, fact-based science loving rationalists, progressives, you know we children of the Intellectual Enlightenment vs. the money/power hungry faith-shackled crowd.
I think you are damn right of the need and urgency to somehow rescue what is left of truth. But I too, am about to sign off, so Hopefully, I will get back to this thread tomorrow.
Did I post the article about economics somewhere? Most of the 150 million who vote don’t vote based on a calculus of how well a candidate matches up with facts. They look at the price of cheese and how well their car is running and vote. Incumbents have an advantage because this country has been doing pretty well for a while now, so most people think it’s due to whoever is in. Plus if you’re in, it’s easier to say the other person is a risk. What Bernie and Warren are doing is trying to sell how their policies will improve the economy, get regular folks jobs and let them off the hook for worrying about getting cancer. That’s the most important thing to work on if you want progressives in office.
People aren’t “fact voters” these days, they’re “meme voters”. It’s hard work looking up a politician’s record to see where he or she really stands. It’s much easier to spend the second and a half to read the words on the funny picture. Russia understands this all too well.
FairPlay in politics is essential for a healthy civil society.
Don’t cheat people.
Don’t lie about what others have said.
Don’t slander others! Especially not to divert attention away from yourself.
Don’t lie about well understood facts. Hell try not to lie much as you can.
Answer questions directly and stay on point.
Contracts are to be honored, unless there’s some damned good justification for cancelling.
Know the difference between right and wrong.
Have a conscience, being able to admit to one’s own wrong doing.
Don’t be a freeloader or leech off society. {Corporations and uber-rich are way more guilty of that than the lost souls and losers on the street who need a little food, shelter and health care, along with some humanity.}
Don’t collude with foreign powers to cheat on American elections - or for self-enrichment.
Number 1 would be the sanctity of truth itself. (I mean even a wee bit of sanctity. They treat truth like a crack Ho that has long since reached her expiration date).
Loyalty to allies might be a good value.
Realizing it is horribly wrong to separate young children from their primary caregivers and thereby screw up their development.
Valuing the future rather than dismissing the reality of climate change.
Valuing the former controls and system of ethics, and system of checks and balances in our govt, instead of trying to bulldoze it all down for the sake of T rump having more autocratic power. (The DOJ, says the President cannot be indicted of any crime. And now they are arguing all the way to the supreme court that the President cannot even be investigated.)
Recognizing their own massive amount of corruption, instead of ignoring it, while paying lip service to draining a swamp.
The MAGA heads also need to recognize that T rump only cares about their wellbeing to the extent that they are available to support him and maintain his power. And recognize that he is supporting the wealthy in his economic actions, not the working class.
If you could go ahead and emphasize those to T rump supporters, I can have a follow up list of more.
Did I post the article about economics somewhere? Most of the 150 million who vote don’t vote based on a calculus of how well a candidate matches up with facts. They look at the price of cheese and how well their car is running and vote.
So does that mean we simply accept it? And its consequences?
What about trying to engage some media cluttered minds?
Or not. It’s what I constantly run into when I’m in the big city, it’s all so big, and people really are so incredibly disconnected and disinterested and consumptive. And it’s multiplied by beyond what any of us can comprehend.
But just giving up to the inevitable ain’t where it’s at because the inevitable still has to play itself out, and there’s plenty variable worth fighting for in that. We’ve burned a lot of bridges but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to stop some of those fires. It’s what humans have always done, hang on in the life raft one more day, one more hour, and another hour, and another minute, until it’s over. Fini. Gonna be some crazy chemistry going on upon this planet Earth these next few dozens of millennia and probably much longer.
Oh for what it’s worth out here in these parts, we have a few Trump supporters, who are also supporting the creation of new library district in order to save a couple rural libraries. I mean I can get along with plenty of red-necks, politics is only a small aspect of who we are and things we need to do.
The real problem is the vicious ruthless FOX brainwashing campaign that’s been going on a long long time.
What about trying to engage some media cluttered minds?
Sure, but you say stuff about hitting them below the belt, so that's not "engaging". My comment was about picking candidates and a message, that's one part of the political process. Talking to your community is another. You can do both. So there's "what about" question here.
Connecting global warming to economics is already being done. Connecting health care seems obvious to me, but not many are doing it. You don’t stop talking about issues when you talk about economics.
Very compelling. I still think it’s going nowhere unless a real campaign to paint Republicans as inherently dishonest for defending this type of behavior takes off. It’s political death for any Republican to support Trump’s impeachment. And let’s face it, most politicians, especially Republicans, are not in office because they want to “serve”. They’re there to get something for themselves.
It is difficult for me to believe that the T rumpists, and Repub hangers-on, do not recognize their own and T rump’s inherent dishonesty. I just think that honesty doesn’t mean much to them. (Which is fundamentally worse for society. At some point trust cannot be sustained in a society where truth is optional. And a society without trust cannot survive for long, I don’t think.)
Oh, they recognize it. “Inherent dishonesty” is a defining trait of the Republican party. They don’t care as long as their getting their single issue addressed. Hell, it doesn’t even really have to get addressed. They just have to make it look like they’re doing something.
Actually I think a root problem is that I don’t hear any liberals defending what they’re all about.
Politicians are all stuck in a pro-growth world, which was great for all of human history before us - but in this time and place, all economic growth and expansion is doing is pressing down the gas peddle, the one that’s taking us to where no one wants to go. So where does that leave everyone who recognizes the reality of what we’ve done to ourselves these past four decades of disregard and apathy toward the reality of the Population Explosion and Anthropogenic Global Warming?
That’s why I’m so in to explicitly recognizing the two domains of human reality - the one is the physical world that created us - the other is the production of our own incredible evolutionary brains - what I refer to as mindscape. Then going further to recognize that religion and philosophy is all about our mindscapes, while science is all about objectively understanding that world that exits outside of our petty egos.
Simple definitions, but how we define terms determines how we view the world.
Oh and here’s another few good minutes at the news desks,
