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Posted: **Tue Apr 09, 2024 7:48 pm**

Meadmaker wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 3:26 am I've listened to "enemy" news for a very long time, and you are right about both sides. It's mind numbingly stupid. It's drivel. It's nonsense.

I tend to prefer Democratic nonsense to Republican nonsense. Democrats seem to me to be more nonsensical on more things, but those things mostly don't matter. Identity politics, basically.

The Republicans are overall more sensible to me, but where they are wrong, they are very, very, wrong. Supply side economics is my chief complaint.

stanky wrote: ↑Mon Apr 08, 2024 3:09 pm the other one promises less debt and tax, and fails to deliver.

Sadly, though, this is only half true. They promise less tax, and they usually deliver. Donald Trump really did cut my taxes, and he promises to do it again. I believe him.

They promise that less tax will mean less debt, which is dumb as hell. (As an aside, I have occasionally gone to the effort of reading actual widely cited journal articles written by PhDs and Nobel Prize candidates, and there's a whole lot of stupid in those articles trying to justify that less taxes actually will result in more revenue. It's wrapped up so thickly in pseudoscience that most people can't understand it, but it's dumb as hell.)
However, since they don't understand it, the average person "reasons" that if it means less taxes, it must be good.

And, sadly, the Democrats have mostly learned that arguing against it doesn't helo them get elected, so they' pretty much given up. It's going to fall apart, eventually. I have a feeling that will happen right at the time that I start depending on a combination of retirement savings and Social Security to live comfortably in my old age, which is basically starting now.

Both succeed equally at fulfilling the agenda of the war machine and the continued (acceleration) of environmental degradation and rampant, unregulated consumption.
I think the degree of corruption is exaggerated, unless you mean just acting in the interests of constituents and/or donors. I think most politicians are basically lawful evil, or maybe even lawful neutral. They're mostly lawful, though.

Interesting last line.
Money, as free speech, can get laws upgraded for legal corruption. At the highest level, a supreme justice can be bought and it's all legal. (might sound racist if i name names). Anti-trust regulation got gone, from the looks of it...heading toward the RamJac future.
Off-shore tax havens; loop-holes for everything blatantly corrupt, which we may soon not recognize as the standards for sleeziness shrink. Shucks, stuff like "should congress be allowed to play the stock market?" with its obvious answer "No", but they can and do, even the 'good guys' like Nancy P. How can we do anything about it if it doesn't even qualify for outrage?

Posted: **Tue Apr 09, 2024 10:17 pm**

sparks wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:10 pmThe full meal deal on Kissinger can be found in Christopher Hitchens' book on him.

Read up and weep.

I know he was an awful person, but what I'm trying to get at is whether he was awful because he genuinely believed that he was doing good and what he was doing was necessary, or was he full knowing and intentionally corrupt and evil for the sake of being a shitty person?

I don't believe any evil doer does what they do because they know and intend evil. I think they do evil because they believe that it's good. There may be a few exceptions, but (to take a canonical and Godwinnical example) Hitler believed that he was genuinely doing the best for the Aryan people. He didn't do anything for pure selfishness.

Posted: **Tue Apr 09, 2024 11:49 pm**

You said it yourself: He was an awful person. His motivation is irrelevant.

Posted: **Tue Apr 09, 2024 11:52 pm**

sparks wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 11:49 pm You said it yourself: He was an awful person. His motivation is irrelevant.

I don't think it is.

Posted: **Wed Apr 10, 2024 4:34 am**

arthwollipot wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 10:17 pm
sparks wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 4:10 pmThe full meal deal on Kissinger can be found in Christopher Hitchens' book on him.

Read up and weep.
I know he was an awful person, but what I'm trying to get at is whether he was awful because he genuinely believed that he was doing good and what he was doing was necessary, or was he full knowing and intentionally corrupt and evil for the sake of being a shitty person?

I don't believe any evil doer does what they do because they know and intend evil. I think they do evil because they believe that it's good.

You mean like fucking over the commies at the UN?

Too bad about Allende. That was for making sure there´s more parking lot space at the Dollar Store than the library or some fucking muffin shop.

Posted: **Wed Apr 10, 2024 5:10 am**

President Bush wrote: ↑Wed Apr 10, 2024 4:34 amYou mean like fucking over the commies at the UN?

Yes. I'm sure he was convinced that fucking over the commies was in the best interest of his country at the time.

Posted: **Wed Apr 10, 2024 5:17 am**

arthwollipot wrote: ↑Wed Apr 10, 2024 5:10 am
President Bush wrote: ↑Wed Apr 10, 2024 4:34 amYou mean like fucking over the commies at the UN?
Yes. I'm sure he was convinced that fucking over the commies was in the best interest of his country at the time.

At the time. Now it is more socially acceptable to call them missile magnets.

Posted: **Wed Apr 10, 2024 12:06 pm**

arthwollipot wrote: ↑Tue Apr 09, 2024 10:17 pm I don't believe any evil doer does what they do because they know and intend evil.

I doubt that they say, "How can I be more evil today?"

But the core of evil is deliberately doing harm to others for your own benefit. On the scale of global leaders, that means knowingly harming your enemies because it helps your friends. Hitler thought it was important to help Germans at the expense of Jews, slavs. and other untermenschen. So, he probably didn't intend evil specifically, but he committed evil, and committed it intentionally, because he was indifferent to the harm done to certain groups.

I think Kissinger and the cold warriors could be reasonably accused of that sort of evil. They were so fixated on their cause that the harm they were doing was considered acceptable. However, it was only acceptable because it was happening to someone else. Specifically, it was happening to people who didn't really matter.

For my part, I used the phrase "reasonably accusedd". I'm not sure he was truly guilty. In reading the thread about him after his death, and refreshing my childhood memories by reading about him, this time with a more adult understanding, I don't know that he is as bad as his critics made him out to be. However, he did put the interest of Americans, and westerners in general, above the needs of the third world people where the wars were really happening. Doing so gets to the selfishness that is at the heart of evil, so I think the claim that he was truly evil is worth examining.

Posted: **Wed Apr 10, 2024 4:01 pm**

It's great to hear defense for Hitler and Kissinger. I'll bet both cleaned up after themselves as children. Good boys.
How about a defense for evil? Why does evil always get picked on, when we know, from more encompassing views, that good can't exist without evil; that the eternal picture is free of morality; that hating evil is the energetic spark for it's manifestations.

I'd suggest new terms, like 'decent' and 'icky'. Easy to spot them. Icky always wants something from you. Abiding by laws has nothing to do with it. As Noam Chomsky has claimed, decades ago, every U.S. president has been a war criminal. By accepted definitions.
I guess we're like that kid you knew who would always try to pinch and poke you if he saw you. They go on to steal hub-caps. Graffiti. Drug dealing; jail; hate society; military, punk band throwing vomit at naked skinheads; on to general degradation.

The sort of evil in this dialog always poses as good. Deception is paramount.
(Though deception, after all, is a common feature of natural life systems.)

That's why i find Biden more threatening than Trump. Trump is out front, a buffoon. He has a history of failing. Biden is a facade before a mystery. We don't really know what's behind him. Not officially, any way.

Posted: **Wed Apr 10, 2024 6:04 pm**

Yeah, he's only been around since 1973.

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