applegrove
applegrove's JournalFor such a long while the GOP has been crazily talking getting rid of taxes and promoting
libertarian social policies and policy has not gone that far, but has been influenced by the fully flushed out GOP extreme. Compromise, when it has happened, has happened somewhere in the middle. But the middle has moved as those GOP nuts went extreme and pushed the bounds of acceptable discussion. Now we have Bernie Sanders promoting a 90% tax rate on the richest americans. It is the Liberals time to fully flush out programs on the left (many of which I agree with, just not 90% tax) and put progressive utopias into the MSM and conscience of America. Hopefully that will mean the American middle moves left. Go Bernie. Go Warren. Go Hillary. Dream away! Talk about all manner of liberal/progressive policy no matter how far they go. Fully flush out the kind of world we want to live in. Guaranteed income that will pay for college? I've wanted that for 30 years. Dream it, talk about it, live it and it may come true.
The Saudis have got to undo what wahabism has done to the ME.
The Saudis have got to connect to the Sunnis in Iraq and Syria. They've got to build a sunni coalition of sorts that is more moderate. They've got to be involved till it hurts. It is about their survival after all. I think ISIS calling themselves Islamic State in the Levant (Levant leaves out Saudi Arabia) is a misdirection/fake on the part of ISIS. I doubt very much they want to fight the Saudis at this juncture. But I don't doubt that they want to take over mecca one day with their caliphate. That is my best guess as to what is going on.
Saudis don't want to fight for their survival and the US is trying to point out they have to. After all Obama is once again downplaying the threat ISIS is. Just like he did last August. Too calm. Waiting for the Saudis to step up. And the Saudis are used to just getting their way or paying someone, one way or another, to do their dirty work.
My guess is Cruz is putting the idea out there that
heterosexual will be forced into a mandatory gay marriage. Ted Cruz is a terrorist. Of course when pressed he will say he did not mean it to be taken that way. But he successfully has put a rape meme in the heads of some in the base. Their senses have been assaulted by the gay people. They will make good little pasties or pawns for Ted Cruz in the months to come. And they will hate the LGBT community even more and even with nobody from the LGBT community having participated in any way. To quote Sarah Mclaughlin, Cruz is 'building a mystery'. Who knows where his narrative will go next i the dance deep within the gut of the GOP base that Cruz leads... but build it he will. And the base will be none the wiser.
The 12 step program I've been to used a higher power
as a way to teach addicts they have no power over their drug of choice. I'm not religious so I made my higher power nature or my ancestors. And though as an agnostic I do not know how the universe was created, how it was created is a god I can accept. So nature or ancestors or physics are all scientific truths that tie me to that higher power. And something fantastic but scientific started it all. And that is when I truly was done drinking. When I handed the delusion that I myself had power over my drinking (a delusion shared by every addict) to this god/higher power/nature. By handing my delusion over to some other entity I had to deeply admit I could never be the one in control of my addiction. If I could never control my addiction - I could never drink. And I was done. And I'm back to living a science based life regarding alcohol where I have a disease and better treat it like one. Which balances with my science based life. So my god is science in the end. And at the start. And in the middle. And that really works for this agnostic.
To know oneself is power. So that people can't run a false narrative of
your life because they are so inadequate. I knew myself well enough at 23 to steer clear of a psychopath. The night I met him I did not want that shit in my life. Unfortunately my friends did not know me or themselves. They fell victim to a cognitive opening that takes place in young adults who are looking for a new meaning in their lives. We were in our early 20s. They didn't seem to notice that the creep working his way into their lives was a decade older than them and thus in a position of power over them. The old cult grievance/aspiration one two step was used. Really knowing all your grievances and knowing them well, and not being fooled into something that seems too good to be true (like you don't have to learn harsh truths about yourself...if you just follow the asshole he'll make your dreams come true), or falling for manufactured grievances and aspirational moments created by a psychopath, can stop one from joining a gang or a cult. Knowledge and science are power. Nothing else comes close. Empathy is a way to connect and learn. I don't think one can be truly happy without a good amount of empathy. But empathy without self knowledge makes one a target for the creepy. I had to learn to not empathize so much to survive. I had too much. That is the thing about self knowledge... one can never have too much. Kids in all neighborhoods should be taught about the grievance/aspirational two step. It is what Muslim youth and their families in the west are being taught as we speak. Why not kids from all neighborhoods? Are sociopaths who pray on the rich for their money and power, and gangs who pray on teenagers, not causing mayhem just like ISIS if not more so? How about the GOP gutting the middle class? I wonder what the state of anti cult education of youth is in the red states.
What is your favorite thing about politics? I like speculating
about what is going on and sometimes being ahead of the news cycle and correct in my assumptions at the same time. Even the columnist Paul Krugman isn't right all the time when he predicts things (though he is pretty darn close). You can't be when you are talking about the future and guessing at what is going on behind the scenes. But I very much enjoy Obama as president because he is accomplishing a lot and undoing what the GOP has done to America. At changing the country and the world in fundamental ways. What I don't enjoy is news from what the right is up to. I sometimes speculate on their reasons for doing things and I don't enjoy that. At all. All in all being in a group like the DU and working together for a better world is the best thing.
This indiana law. In arkansas and Georgia too. One woman being interviewed said about not serving
gays "Jesus died on the cross for me, this is the least I can do for him". So it is about religious people being closer to god. A grievance (gay people making inroads towards equal rights when being gay is against the bible) and an aspiration (closer to god) together in one action...which is how people in cults are manipulated. Or ISIS. That grievance-aspiration technique has been all over the news about how teens and young adults are being lured to Syria or Iraq to join ISIS. For ISIS recruits the grievance is not being big men in America or to be able to buy what they want or having access to the women they want (normal for young men anywhere), the aspiration is to be closer to allah and adrenaline. Did not take long for the GOP to jump on those two techniques in coming up with policy that fits its' very own religious base. The GOP obviously feels their religious base are just the people to be manipulated in the same way ISIS does its' base. As with racism and the southern strategy, this has nothing to do with the scapegoat (gays here) and everything to do with the GOP winning through wedge issues and then not paying taxes. They may well have worried that they were losing their religious base to walk the walkers like Pope Francis. After all the religious were put on this earth not to pass on God's love but to give power to the rich in their role as a wedge issue.
I still say the GOP don't like black attorney generals because the position, held by someone black,
might teach some in the base not to hate black people. It is a position of trust. The attorney general keeps Americans safe. The GOP want to protect the goose that lays the golden egg, the biggest wedge issue: the Southern Strategy. What with Obama and Erik Holder it has been a nonstop slurfest. A female african american attorney general might be harder to destroy in the eyes of their base and easier to connect to. And what if some in the base connected with some great person tough on crime? That would be a nightmare for the GOP. Would they do anything to protect their best political strategy? Of course. I don't think it is racism at the top of the GOP so much as so much powerlust and low taxes that they have lost all morals if they ever had any. Though I am sure most are racist. But the opportunity to keep interconnectedness from happening between their followers and other Americans is more cult like.
I'm dyslexic and as such keep different narratives separate.
That means that I totally empathize with someone. And then I totally empathize with the next person. And then I totally empathize with someone on the right and am very frightened by that. My own views are based on all those views of the world - but are the big picture. It is why dyslexic make great leaders... they see everyone for who they are and can see the creeps for the creeps they are, the religious walk the walkers for who they are, the good and bad that is found on the left and right (not much good on the right these days as they are all in a cult). And on and on and on. So in my big view of things I want all sorts of policies that will help all sorts of people be their best... even if said policies go against each other. I'm not a one track mind. Takes me hours and days and weeks and months and years to come up with the big picture of all the realities I come across. Why a dyslexic like Churchill figured out what a danger Hitler was long before anyone else in government. When cults get formed by psychopaths it is really obvious to someone who can empathize will all people's narratives and see a growing group of people with the exact same faulty lockstep narrative based on likes and tricks of the psychopath. Only the military in Britain saw Hitler as as much of a danger as Churchill did. The others in government were good eggs who projected their goodness onto Hitler and said "he wouldn't" when presented with the atrocities Hitler was building to. Fact is an average person has to change their whole world view and view of the culture they are apart of to get how the big picture has in fact changed. Pretty hard to change everything you believed in. A dyslexic is used to a changing big picture and grasps the cult sooner because they have already accepted that each person's narrative are slightly different in normal times, and that reality is something that takes them all in together, including the narrative of the people who are being persecuted, which are the opposite of all those many narratives in lockstep in the cult.
They don't want someone black in a laudable, trust
oriented, symbiotic relationship with the American people. They had to take out Eric Holder early as attorney general. Why what would happen when some national legal threat took place and a black attorney general acted with authority to save the day? Why regular American folk might have some good feelings towards how a black person kept them safe or stabilized a situation. Security feelings might occur. Then their would be a hole in the whole GOP southern strategy. Can't hate/fear a whole people you have had positive relations with.
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Member since: Mon Feb 7, 2005, 03:14 AMNumber of posts: 118,600