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Paul Anthony » April 16th, 2017, 12:04 pm wrote:
I agree with the essence of your message, but take exception to your inference that supporters of Trump are followers but those who support Democrats are not. Both parties rely on followers - people who parrot what they are told without thinking too much about it. "Social Justice", "Living wage", "Women's health", "Save the planet" are cute catch-phrases that few can actually define. They are just as useful and as inane as "Make America great again".
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Athena » April 17th, 2017, 2:42 am wrote:We have become followers instead of leaders, and this time we chose a very bad leader. We could be in serious trouble, not simply because we could be headed for economic and environmental disaster and possible war, but because so many people think the biggest bully on the block is the best choice for a leader. We have had education for this, education for the "worker/consumers" since 1958, and know cares enough about education for children, to investigate for themselves what I am saying. The Military Industrial Complex requires followers. The democracy we had required leaders.
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Machiavelli argued that it is better to be feared than loved. It’s also better to look like something other than a fool.
Because that’s what you look like when you misstate the mission and location of an entire aircraft carrier group: specifically, the USS Carl Vinson, a Nimitz class, nuclear-powered beast of the seas, accompanied by a strike force of two destroyers and a cruiser.
[...]
The only problem is that the Carl Vinson armada wasn’t sailing towards North Korea. It was sailing away from Pyongyang. A long, long way away: more than 3,500 miles away to the Indian Ocean for a joint exercise with the Australian navy.
[...]
Now we know that the era of strategic impatience needs to wait a little longer for the aircraft carrier to sail 3,500 miles back to the hot zone. Do not test Donald Trump’s resolve or, for that matter, his naval knowledge.
The problem with this kind of chest-thumping is that it spills across the whole team of once professional adults. Defense secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser HR McMaster played their own part in leaving the impression that the aircraft carrier was steaming towards Korea. Serving a clueless boss, their reputations are growing tarnished on a daily basis, like that of the United States itself.
[...]
“So what happens is I said, ‘We’ve just launched 59 missiles heading to Iraq and I wanted you to know this.’ And he was eating his cake. And he was silent.”
If you were the Chinese president sitting opposite a nuclear-armed president who couldn’t tell Iraq from Syria, you too might remain silent and savor every bite of the last chocolate cake you might encounter on this planet.
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Mossling » April 20th, 2017, 1:22 am wrote:Athena » April 17th, 2017, 2:42 am wrote:We have become followers instead of leaders, and this time we chose a very bad leader. We could be in serious trouble, not simply because we could be headed for economic and environmental disaster and possible war, but because so many people think the biggest bully on the block is the best choice for a leader. We have had education for this, education for the "worker/consumers" since 1958, and know cares enough about education for children, to investigate for themselves what I am saying. The Military Industrial Complex requires followers. The democracy we had required leaders.
I get your sentiment, but I must stress again that this "we" you speak of would probably not be accepted by the democratic majority who elected Trump. What is your intention - to force this "we'-ness onto them somehow?
They do not apparently agree with you, and so are not in a social collective with you beyond the fact that they share a passport with you - a mere beaurocratic relic of a time now passed.
The "we" you speak of seems a somewhat loftier perception than what has ever existed, in fact. We (on the forum) discussed this over on my 'The Enlightenment was a veneer?' thread recently. I concluded there that the Enlightened state of the military commanders (and one could probably include the police to some degree) is the key to the future - anything else does not matter as much because a pen can be mightier than a sword, and yet a sword can only fight one person at a time. Automatic rifles, drones, and so on are another ballpark entirely. And who knows whether even the most Enlightened US military commander would join you in your "we".
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Mossling » April 20th, 2017, 1:35 am wrote:[...]
The news was full of "imminent war between US fleet and N Korea" - what a waste of journalism. Another abuse of executive power to try to distract people from the Russia investigations perhaps?
So there goes the 'Enlightened military commanders' hopes...
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Paul Anthony » April 21st, 2017, 6:33 am wrote:How main stream media creates news (and what becomes of it).
http://www.webtoons.com/en/comedy/dustinteractive/ep-54-news-dogs/viewer?title_no=907&episode_no=54
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Athena » April 20th, 2017, 11:53 pm wrote:No one agrees with me because I have a different point of reference, a collection of old books that reveals something about the histories of education of which others are not aware.
past President Eisenhower did warn us of the dangers, but no one seems to be paying attention to what he said, even though he was a highly respected military man in his day.
Some rare souls have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and at the same time they’ve also seen the madness of the majority and realized, in a word, that hardly anyone acts sanely in public affairs and that there is no ally with whom they might go to the aid of justice and survive, that instead they’d perish before they could profit either their city or their friends and be useless both to themselves and to others, just like a man who has fallen among wild animals and is neither willing to join them in doing injustice nor sufficiently strong to oppose the general savagery alone. Taking all this into account, they lead a quiet life and do their own work. Thus, like someone who takes refuge under a little wall from a storm of dust or hail driven by the wind, the philosopher – seeing others filled with lawlessness – is satisfi ed if he can somehow lead his present life free from injustice and impious acts and depart from it with good hope, blameless and content.
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Eisenhower’s desire to communicate his views and policies directly to the public governed many of the media initiatives that were a legacy of his administration and are still in use today.
Eisenhower, the only president to win an Emmy, held the first televised news conference, held almost weekly press conferences and utilized other new techniques to communicate his message and policies.
http://www.press.org/news-multimedia/ne ... ts-and-his
As of August 2016, the US has already appropriated, spent, or taken on obligations to spend more than $3.6 trillion in current dollars on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria and on Homeland Security (2001 through fiscal year 2016). To this total should be added the approximately $65 billion in dedicated war spending the Department of Defense and State Department have requested for the next fiscal year, 2017, along with an additional nearly $32 billion requested for the Department of Homeland Security in 2017, and estimated spending on veterans in future years. When those are included, the total US budgetary cost of the wars reaches $4.79 trillion
http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/file ... l%20v2.pdf
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Athena » April 23rd, 2017, 12:44 am wrote:Mossling, I very much like your post.
Now I will point out, despite the unpleasant reality of his day Plato wrote and what he had to say influenced many people over many centuries.
The woman who wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Harriet Beecher Stowe, influenced opinions about slavery and so did Mark Twain. I firmly believe writing is a way to change things and that citizens of the US are well prepared to read about what it means to be citizens of the US and how this is different from being a citizen in Nazi Germany. That is the main drive of my book.
The shift in values we have experienced in my lifetime is very destructive! This shift in values began with a change in education, and I just have to make it possible for people to be aware of that! The meaning of being American was not getting rich. It was creating a healthy democracy with liberty and justice for all and defending it not only in war but very much so, defending it in the classroom, and through journalism and protecting our liberty and social justice by having good moral judgment.
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Thousands of scientists, academics and celebrities have marched in cities across the UK to protest at the rise of a “post-truth” era and its threat to academia.
The marches, taking place on Earth Day, were part of a global movement that has seen tens of thousands of people around the world march in support of science and evidence-based research.
Organisers of the UK marches said they were concerned that rhetoric about academics threatened to override research, citing claims made by the former cabinet minister Michael Gove during the EU referendum campaign that the public “have had enough of experts”.
[...]
Anna Krystalli, a research software engineer who helps scientists make better use of their code and data, said: “I’m marching for science because despite its imperfections, it remains our most effective way of getting to any commonly shared truth.
“I’m also fed up of efforts to improve reproducibility in science being used to discredit science as a whole. I work with a lot of people pushing to improve standards and transparency in research. We should be championing these efforts.”
[...]
Mark Wilson, the chief executive of Cochrane, a global non-profit group that reviews all the evidence on healthcare interventions, said: “We are marching because evidenced-based decision-making saves money and lives.”
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Mossling » April 23rd, 2017, 2:02 am wrote:
I would also counter that Plato's recorded belief in mystical forms undermined the glittering wisdom Socrates wished to hand down, and set the scene for the medieval dark ages where theology and philosophy were pretty much one and the same.
Indeed. Yet again, however, it seems that any good idea needs to be economically attractive, and as Axelrod points out; traditional 'upright' morality (honesty, forgiveness, non-envy) lies at the core of the most efficient and rewarding long-term (non-zero-sum, open-ended) cooperative agreements.
I find it very interesting that Socrates dropped the physical investigations and instead turned towards Ethics (the more moral questions regarding virtue, for example), and he, like Jesus, Buddha, et al, did not write anything at all. They intended to pass on physical practices that were more akin to riding a bicycle. For why write several volumes describing what the feeling of riding a bicycle is like, when readers can learn to ride themselves instead? Human economics are just what we experience in daily life, and as the saying goes, the proof of the wholesome or unwholesomeness is in the eating, not in the describing.
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And I need to take a break from the forum because I spent over an hour working on a reply yesterday, and I am devastated to find it completely disappeared. I had internet connection problems, that made editing a problem, but I don't think that is what caused my posts to disappear. There is a collapse in information whenever those in power are biased.
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Paul Anthony » April 26th, 2017, 4:59 am wrote:Is the current media living up to its purpose?
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Mossling » Tue Apr 25, 2017 10:41 pm wrote:
I think the best thing would be a president who has his/her feet firmly on the ground - not a rich elite socialite, but someone who is more concerned with the basics of human community values. It seems strange to have to wish for such a thing in this day and age, but it makes sense that such a person easily gets chewed up and spat out by the wealth whirlwind 'machine' promoting one person over another with spare cash here and there, to make their wishes so - like gods or regal emperors determining the destinies of their subjects.
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Paul Anthony » April 27th, 2017, 3:49 am wrote:I hope you can admit - if not publicly, then at least to yourself - that Clinton would not be any closer to what you are looking for. But, I'll leave that to your conscience. :)
We live in a "Post-democratic" democracy.
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Paul Anthony » May 2nd, 2017, 4:11 am wrote:This may seem off-topic, but I think it explains why so many accept what the media, government, their college professors and social media tell them to believe.
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Mossling » Mon May 01, 2017 10:12 pm wrote:
So, Paul, I would say that even you have to trust - have to follow the other sheep. That is the demand of the social contract. Americans should hope, rather, that their leader - the POTUS - the central brain, is not a sheep following, say, the Russian president's lead......
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Paul Anthony » May 2nd, 2017, 2:47 pm wrote:Mossling » Mon May 01, 2017 10:12 pm wrote:
So, Paul, I would say that even you have to trust - have to follow the other sheep. That is the demand of the social contract. Americans should hope, rather, that their leader - the POTUS - the central brain, is not a sheep following, say, the Russian president's lead......
I was with you most of the way, until...
Trump's actions of late have upset Putin even more than the Democrats, so when are you going to give up the Democrat's tired old Russian connection?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k7rxaL2LuY
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Forest_Dump » Tue May 02, 2017 11:13 am wrote:The problem was that Trump appears to be so unstable and fickle that he changes his mind and tactics so erratically, based on, as they say, the last person to get to him that no body realized how untrustworthy Trump is. Ultimately that is the real danger with Trump - you can't trust him to hold a thought beyond what the last advisor said that nobody, not other countries, not his alt-right (former?) supporters, not the business community and not even the GOP can trust him to stick to any kind of agenda.
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