Hypothesis: Dictators aren't altruists

[Selene]

Certainly Obama's international background was considered, on balance, to be an asset by the Democratic Party. It's interesting to think about whether he would have entered politics at all if, like his mother, he had married a foreign student, instead of a pluggedin Chicagoan. The wife factor is too often discounted!

Not by me, she is the real power behind that throne...

[caroljane]

Yes, I rhink in this case the cliché is true that he could not have done it without her. I know you wish he had never met her and gone for being a writer instead!

[Selene]

Yes, I rhink in this case the cliché is true that he could not have done it without her. I know you wish he had never met her and gone for being a writer instead!

Carol:

Not at all. I have stated clearly that his puppetmasters engineered the best Presidential campaign organizationally and technologically ever.

It was brilliant. I was positive that he was going to win the Democratic nomination.

A...

[anthony]

|I can't agree that so many Americans care about being "accepted and appreciated by the world at large" aside from the political necessities for maintaining advantageous economic relations and national security. My impression is that over the past three decades they have become far more concerned about internal conditions and the "culture wars."

How is that a complete explanation for the rise of American progressivism?

[caroljane]

|I can't agree that so many Americans care about being "accepted and appreciated by the world at large" aside from the political necessities for maintaining advantageous economic relations and national security. My impression is that over the past three decades they have become far more concerned about internal conditions and the "culture wars."

How is that a complete explanation for the rise of American progressivism?It

It isn't even a partial one. Progressivism has actually declined in the last 30 years overall, and libertarianism has risen and become more powerful. America is still in a postReagan afterglow, or fallout, depending on your point of view. Unions are significantly weakened, tax cuts for the rich still stand, deregulations have not been re regulated.

[Brant Gaede]

I think the outcome is as you put it, but disagree that philosophy was not a large causal factor.

As I see it, one big problem is with many Americans wanting badly to be accepted and appreciated in the world at large - which means, in reality, by Europe and the European. Europe - if I may be very generalistic- has become an increasingly greying mass, collectivized and Statified by the will of the majorities, with only variance in culture etc. defining who the European actually IS. So that proportion of Americans craving acceptance by them desires to be a copy of a copy of a hodge-podge collective, ultimately.

Correct me if I'm off here.

Many may but I don't think most give a damn. You have a strange perspective for me from where you are in southern Africa. In fact I suspect it might be a characteristic European perspective on Americans.

--Brant

[anthony]

I think the outcome is as you put it, but disagree that philosophy was not a large causal factor.

As I see it, one big problem is with many Americans wanting badly to be accepted and appreciated in the world at large - which means, in reality, by Europe and the European. Europe - if I may be very generalistic- has become an increasingly greying mass, collectivized and Statified by the will of the majorities, with only variance in culture etc. defining who the European actually IS. So that proportion of Americans craving acceptance by them desires to be a copy of a copy of a hodge-podge collective, ultimately.

Correct me if I'm off here.

Many may but I don't think most give a damn. You have a strange perspective for me from where you are in southern Africa. In fact I suspect it might be a characteristic European perspective on Americans.

--Brant

Brant, I'm a bit surprised you should consider my perspective in any way African or regional. I've been around quite a lot, and have found myself atypical of anywhere or any people - coming from my own world-view and an (obviously) Objectivist perspective. In that non-locational mix, there's also the additional fact that I have considered myself a sort of honorary American since mid-teens. (I was forever eating up the American 'sense of life' as I eventually heard it called - through its novelists mainly, its films, popular music and jazz and blues, somewhat.)

Anyway, in my decades after drifting out of Objectivism, I picked up shit loads of observations about people and countries - I have always been a keen student of human nature - and can safely assert to my own satisfaction that the ethos and methodology of Objectivism fits and accurately applies, 90+% of the time. Philosophy rules, only thing being: do people know it? and is it good philosophy, or terrible? Somehow and sometime, people everywhere you look put the political cart ahead of the individual-moral horse, and that's where we are today.

[Brant Gaede]

I think the outcome is as you put it, but disagree that philosophy was not a large causal factor.

As I see it, one big problem is with many Americans wanting badly to be accepted and appreciated in the world at large - which means, in reality, by Europe and the European. Europe - if I may be very generalistic- has become an increasingly greying mass, collectivized and Statified by the will of the majorities, with only variance in culture etc. defining who the European actually IS. So that proportion of Americans craving acceptance by them desires to be a copy of a copy of a hodge-podge collective, ultimately.

Correct me if I'm off here.

Many may but I don't think most give a damn. You have a strange perspective for me from where you are in southern Africa. In fact I suspect it might be a characteristic European perspective on Americans.

--Brant

Brant, I'm a bit surprised you should consider my perspective in any way African or regional. I've been around quite a lot, and have found myself atypical of anywhere or any people - coming from my own world-view and an (obviously) Objectivist perspective. In that non-locational mix, there's also the additional fact that I have considered myself a sort of honorary American since mid-teens. (I was forever eating up the American 'sense of life' as I eventually heard it called - through its novelists mainly, its films, popular music and jazz and blues, somewhat.)

Anyway, in my decades after drifting out of Objectivism, I picked up shit loads of observations about people and countries - I have always been a keen student of human nature - and can safely assert to my own satisfaction that the ethos and methodology of Objectivism fits and accurately applies, 90+% of the time. Philosophy rules, only thing being: do people know it? and is it good philosophy, or terrible? Somehow and sometime, people everywhere you look put the political cart ahead of the individual-moral horse, and that's where we are today.

Thank you for this information. However, there is no cultural-intellectual American dynamic except perhaps amongst a scrum of academic and media "intellectuals" desiring European acceptance, whatever that might be. Americans are too caught up in themselves for that kind of thing and while deserving some criticism for that there is more to praise. I do have some weak envy for Europeans speaking several languages--weak envy or weak admiration. English is one third French words already, I've read, but we don't have to pronounce them with that to-me horrible nasal accent. It seems the French talk through their noses. German is too harsh and Spanish best for business on this side of the world. I wish I could speak Italian. The Italians have so much fun with their language! Unlike President Zero, I have no use for "Austrian." As for Afrikaans, don't let me get started. My Anglophobe father liked it, I guess. I've still got his two-way dictionary my Objectivist kameraad.

--Brant

rant and pant

[caroljane]

Tony is not Afrikaner but that true South African minority, English. His impressions may have been somewhat filtered through the English viewpoint of Americans as big powerful puppydogs.

[Brant Gaede]

Tony is not Afrikaner but that true South African minority, English. His impressions may have been somewhat filtered through the English viewpoint of Americans as big powerful puppydogs.

But that's what we are!

--Brant

woof!

[Selene]

grrr

[anthony]

Tony is not Afrikaner but that true South African minority, English. His impressions may have been somewhat filtered through the English viewpoint of Americans as big powerful puppydogs.

Ja, dis reg, ek is 'n Engelsman. Ek kan net a bietje praat van Afrikaans, maar kan verstaan meer van die taal.

[Brant Gaede]

Tony is not Afrikaner but that true South African minority, English. His impressions may have been somewhat filtered through the English viewpoint of Americans as big powerful puppydogs.

Ja, dis reg, ek is 'n Engelsman. Ek kan net a bietje praat van Afrikaans, maar kan verstaan meer van die taal.

Yes, that is, I am an Englishman. I can speak a little Afrikaans . . .

--Brant

wait a minute, I'm not a factotum

[Samson Corwell]

Typing of words...

Something original would be appreciated. You put me in mind of that definition of a cynic as one who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

No, that would be an economist.

[Samson Corwell]

Typing of words...

Something original would be appreciated. You put me in mind of that definition of a cynic as one who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

My favorite definition of a cynic is a humanist with experience.

I like George Carlin's definition as one with a disappointed idealist on the inside.

[anthony]

Typing of words...

Something original would be appreciated. You put me in mind of that definition of a cynic as one who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

My favorite definition of a cynic is a humanist with experience.

I like George Carlin's definition as one with a disappointed idealist on the inside.

Good one. As far as it goes, as has been traditionally accepted, Carlin is right. Trouble is it poses only two options- of cynical realist, or Platonic idealist.

Carlin's definition is reminiscent of this: "The skeptic is a disillusioned intrinsicist who, having failed to find automatic supernatural guidance, seeks a substitute in the collective subjectivism of others."

Another false dichotomy, which overlooks the third way, that value is 'found' (of value: To whom?) and 'added' (created) - by each individual.