Trump Sabotages America

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Are Conservatives really ready to give up on America for the sake of Donald Trump? Has Trump truly become their Messiah?

They’re the flip side of the socialists who say the same crap, but for different reasons. As you’re aware, there’s a lot of bickering happening with regard to the homeless situation in SLC and on our Nextdoor there’s thread after thread about it. It’s not unusual for the Democratic Socialists, Brown Berets, and other shades of utopianists to agitate for overt revolution because the system is unfair, we’re not doing enough, the homeless are angels who bear no responsibility to self-manage, we should just leave them be as they grow their hepatitis camps, etc. This is just their cudgel to agitate for universal housing and ‘free’ everything because it’s a ‘human right’. They literally want to do away with our government ignoring the realities of financial systems, laws, policies, and so on. They get insane very quickly when you to talk numbers with them, or dare suggest that people can’t shoot up and crap where they please, and no I’m not exaggerating in the least because I’ve experienced this over the last two days. There’s no reasoning with them, just like it’s impossible to reason with the magatards. They’re both caught up in a delusional and hateful cycle where they both believe in their political religions that ignore the ground realities of society as it stands now. They’re both selfish in their own ways, believing in the rightness of their positions to the point of agitating for open rebellion.

We need to grow the middle and get as far away from the destruction-obsessed idiots, but it’s not going to happen most likely.

eta: If you have a hard time understanding what I’m talking about, have the courage to do this: Take an opposite position and argue with them in order to understand them. It’s beside the point if you yourself are a Leftist or a Rightist. Take the opposite position and give it your best shot, breaking everything down in not just a moral or idealistic frame, but discuss the economics of it - work out the numbers. You’ll find pretty quickly either side doesn’t understand how tricky their position is.

- Doc

[Chap]

Take an opposite position and argue with them in order to understand them. It’s beside the point if you yourself are a Leftist or a Rightist. Take the opposite position and give it your best shot, breaking everything down in not just a moral or idealistic frame, but discuss the economics of it - work out the numbers. You’ll find pretty quickly either side doesn’t understand how tricky their position is.

Whether you do that depends on whether you are attempting to convince an audience, or the people holding the views you disagree with.

If the former - fine, argue away. Often that is what you have to do.

But if the latter - is it not well known by now that the presentation of logical and evidence-based criticism of strongly extreme views is, far from loosening their hold on cherished delusions, more likely to make people clutch all the more desperately and fiercely at the views you are attacking? Have you ever changed someone's extreme views in the way you suggest?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Take an opposite position and argue with them in order to understand them. It’s beside the point if you yourself are a Leftist or a Rightist. Take the opposite position and give it your best shot, breaking everything down in not just a moral or idealistic frame, but discuss the economics of it - work out the numbers. You’ll find pretty quickly either side doesn’t understand how tricky their position is.

Whether you do that depends on whether you are attempting to convince an audience, or the people holding the views you disagree with.

If the former - fine, argue away. Often that is what you have to do.

But if the latter - is it not well known by now that the presentation of logical and evidence-based criticism of strongly extreme views is, far from loosening their hold on cherished delusions, more likely to make people clutch all the more desperately and fiercely at the views you are attacking? Have you ever changed someone's extreme views in the way you suggest?

Maybe. Maybe not. I had my mind changed about various topics over the years. You never really know what's in the heart of the Other.

What I'm suggesting is that to understand 'your side', whatever you may think that is, it's an effective tool to get them to open up and then out of that is born a sort of introspection. For example, out here in Utah we talk about the Mormons being in a bubble, and that if they'd only open themselves to others' opinion their minds could see the light, or whatever. There's a smugness to that, and I'm not trying to push a whatabout argument here. I've found virtually EVERYONE ensconces themselves into an ideological bubble - and you can see that manifest pretty quickly when they argue their points either on the internet or in real life. The people who argue for 'free everything' haven't thought it through beyond class warfare, not understanding that, as Xanax would love to hear, even if we took all the billionaires' money it still wouldn't be enough to meet demand and it'd have far reaching negative effects if we act too rashly with other people's money or disrupting the layered and nuanced systems we have in place to address our needs, the needs of a fractious society.

Another quick anecdote. I've argued repeatedly to the more vocal types in my locality, that we shouldn't wait on the federal government, or even the state government, to cough up money if we believe in this strongly enough. I suggested, repeatedly, that we implement various consumer taxes, property taxes, and other forms of taxes to raise hundreds of millions of dollars annually where we'd, in fact, feel the pinch, the pain as it were, but we could start to actually get things done - building apartments and staffing them with social services. To a last I've gotten massive push back from the socialists who don't want that. They want the rich people to pay for everything. When I suggested that wasn't reality and we should just move forward by electing politicians who can get it done locally, they go into repeater mode about revolution. I'm being serious. And so are they.

- Doc

[Chap]

The people who argue for 'free everything'* haven't thought it through beyond class warfare

Sadly, very few people, whether left right or center, have really thought at length about the political positions they take and submitted them to any kind of critical examination. People's loyalties tend to be to individual politicians and their own perceived identity groups rather than to any systematic ideology.

It's a very, very painful experience for those not used to it. You know that saying about people loving you if you make them believe they are thinking, but hating you if you actually make them think?

* By the way, don't you think that people who really argue for that are an insignificant portion of the population? So why bother about them?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

The people who argue for 'free everything'* haven't thought it through beyond class warfare

Sadly, very few people, whether left right or center, have really thought at length about the political positions they take and submitted them to any kind of critical examination. People's loyalties tend to be to individual politicians and their own perceived identity groups rather than to any systematic ideology.

It's a very, very painful experience for those not used to it. You know that saying about people loving you if you make them believe they are thinking, but hating you if you actually make them think?

* By the way, don't you think that people who really argue for that are an insignificant portion of the population? So why bother about them?

That's a good quote. I'm going to tuck that one away.

And no, they're not an insignificant population right where I reside. Salt Lake City bends pretty hard to the Left - which I think is a cultural reaction to being in the heart of the Morridor. The ideological purity tends to dilute the further from the city you get. And even if they're a relatively small population they're very active. For example, when I was on the Police Civilian Review Board we'd get the occasional wild-eyed Leftist 'All Cops are Bastards' type who'd lose their crap at our meetings which then require explaining policy and procedure to them, after which they seemed to accept what we were doing. They also did a significant amount of damage to our downtown this last summer. They used violence. They throw tantrums. They're incredibly aggressive.

Anyway. There you go.

- Doc

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Welp. The GOP can’t seem to help themselves. Ramping up the crazy Lin Wood drops this batch of bat guano on Twitter:



- Doc

[Philo Sofee]

The paranoia is out of control ridiculous. People need to calm down and go bake some bread and share it for Christmas for crying out loud. Go out and do something nice for someone already man. It is a much more enjoyable way to breathe and live, I assure you.

[Res Ipsa]

Lin Wood has always been this crazy. He just didn’t have a National profile.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

The paranoia is out of control ridiculous. People need to calm down and go bake some bread and share it for Christmas for crying out loud. Go out and do something nice for someone already man. It is a much more enjoyable way to breathe and live, I assure you.

If it makes you feel any better I offered to buy a stranger a Christmas tree today because he didn’t have the money and his kid wanted one. If anyone reads this, I challenge you to follow Philo’s advice. It feels alright.

- Doc

[Chap]

The paranoia is out of control ridiculous. People need to calm down and go bake some bread and share it for Christmas for crying out loud. Go out and do something nice for someone already man. It is a much more enjoyable way to breathe and live, I assure you.

Yup. Our all-you-need-to-survive-just-long-enough-to-make-babies monkey brains tell us that "if you get hold of lots of good stuff just for yourself you will feel really great". But they are completely wrong. You don't feel great, or not for very long. Soon you want more, and you are afraid of people who might take all your good stuff away. Then you feel worse than before, even though you still have lots of stuff.

If you want to do yourself a lot of good (and this works in measurable physical ways), go and do something really nice for someone else. The effect is amazing, and it lasts.