Donald Trump

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Some people don't like what President Trump has said at different times. (The mostly leave out context when they gripe.)

But, they have done something about it:

The Left: An Unhinged Mob. pic.twitter.com/d4YhXrAsXe

— GOP (@GOP) October 11, 2018

They expect that to win elections for them.

They want people to know there's plenty more where that came from.

Let's see if it works.

   

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

9 hours ago, Jonathan said:

I don't know whom Lenny Peequaff commanded his toads to vote for, if anyone, but, with his long history of retarded political misdiagnosis and backward thinking in his advocacy of parties and candidates, I could easily see him supporting Hillary. Same with Yawon Bwook. Squaresville, Daddy-O. No sense of the reality of the culture, just their 50s-Rand-mimic cloistered theories.

J

Rand was much more politically sophisticated than Peikoff, which isn't saying much to her credit. 

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

On 10/12/2018 at 7:47 AM, Jon Letendre said:

I never accepted her conclusions about the impotence of evil. I see her point that it is fundamentally uncreative and utterly doomed if we could separate it from good, if we could starve it. Parasites are “impotent” in this same sense. No hosts, no parasites. Problem is, hosts. Therefore, parasites. In a world with no hosts, parasites are impotent. In this world we live in, parasites are not impotent.

Evil is horrifically potent.

While I disagree with your last sentence it all comes down to an interminable discussion about what we mean about potency.

Rand's fiction corrupted her philosophy. You can take all the bad out of your good guys and all the good out of your badies but not out of the 99.9999 of all people who have ever lived or will live. I'm for a practical philosophy of rational self interest that celebrates integrity. Rand was stuck in the world of her great novel and such was classical Objectivism as taught in the 1960s 

--Brant

Edited October 14, 2018 by Brant Gaede

[Brant Gaede]

Potency if is derived from power but there is more to power than that. There is the initiation of force. The violation of rights. We can cleave the difference.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

To continue:

I see potency a la Ayn Rand as an expression of civilization. It's individualistic as apposed to collectivist or tribalistic. If you were a Comanche warrior in early 1800s Texas on a raiding party and attacked a homestead raping the women killing everybody that was pure albeit tribal potency. The difference here is nothing was created just destroyed with some wealth transfer like a horse or even, if there was one, a little girl to be incorporated into the tribe.

So Objectivist potency is acts of creation. 

--Brant

[Jonathan]

On 10/13/2018 at 10:35 AM, william.scherk said:

Interesting. After all of this time on OL, Billy doesn't grasp the difference between initiatory force and retaliatory force. Or he doesn't want to grasp it. Or he's hoping that we won't notice his conflating them.

[Jon Letendre]

I’ve seen countless Objectivists run off with her “evil is impotent” and reach strange conclusions. Maybe it’s all her fault, maybe theirs, I don’t know for sure. On the old SOLO, we discussed the USSR and their participants who would say they would just sit back and watch it self-destruct, even if they were a direct victim, living there, between 1920s to 1990s. They asserted that no one from the outside need feel compelled to do anything, either. “Why bother?” they said. Since evil is impotent it’s doomed - so just sit back and watch it die. [USSR had already failed, we were looking back about 15 years.]

I wonder how many Russians chose not to resist communism coming to power in Russia in early 20th century on just that theory. Rand has Galt saying evil only has power by default, by the good letting it have power. Yet, if we believe it is fundamentally impotent, then giving it more power can be exactly the error we make, and die from.

Uncreative is the word for uncreative.

Impotent means no power to effect some outcome.

Evil is not impotent.

[Jon Letendre]

Brant, this feels like a word game gotcha, but I’ll put it out there anyway.

“In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”

Wow, just one drop does the trick, So, which one possesses superior potency?

[Jon Letendre]

53 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

Interesting. After all of this time on OL, Billy doesn't grasp the difference between initiatory force and retaliatory force. Or he doesn't want to grasp it. Or he's hoping that we won't notice his conflating them.

I wouldn’t want to be in Billyboy’s situation. His side, which he has spent a lifetime promoting, is running around showing their ugly, demented asses in public, hysterically clamoring for blood and civil war.

I’m not saying he is responding to his situation appropriately, he’s not.

Just saying I am really, really, glad I am not in his lousy situation.

[Brant Gaede]

16 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

Brant, this feels like a word game gotcha, but I’ll put it out there anyway.

“In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”

Wow, just one drop does the trick, So, which one possesses superior potency?

The dose makes the poison. Literally her statement is false.

--Brant

[Jon Letendre]

11 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

The dose makes the poison. Literally her statement is false.

--Brant

Her statement is in the clear if the food/poison compromise is not drops of this and portions of that with each meal, but rather whole meal compromises ... poison for breakfast, food for lunch ...

Then, just one compromise is death.

[Brant Gaede]

6 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Her statement is in the clear if the food/poison compromise is not drops of this and portions of that with each meal, but rather whole meal compromises ... poison for breakfast, food for lunch ...

Then, just one compromise is death.

Wow! That's quite a sidestep!

--Brant

[Jon Letendre]

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Wow! That's quite a sidestep!

--Brant

Sidestep? Are you saying I'm not debating straight-up and fairly? I don't think I sidestepped anything at all.

Is what I wrote not an example of "compromise between food and poison"?  I am trying to interpret her generously so that she makes sense, and I also do believe she understood there are non-lethal micro-doses of poisons.

But let's assume she did not know that. Let's assume she thought that even the slightest microscopic speck of anything poisonous will kill a person.

Keeping that belief about poison in mind, does the following sentence do a good job of de-emphasizing the potency of evil? -- “In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit"

[Brant Gaede]

51 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

Sidestep? Are you saying I'm not debating straight-up and fairly? I don't think I sidestepped anything at all.

Is what I wrote not an example of "compromise between food and poison"?  I am trying to interpret her generously so that she makes sense, and I also do believe she understood there are non-lethal micro-doses of poisons.

But let's assume she did not know that. Let's assume she thought that even the slightest microscopic speck of anything poisonous will kill a person.

Keeping that belief about poison in mind, does the following sentence do a good job of de-emphasizing the potency of evil? -- “In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit"

That's a good explanation of what's wrong with Rand's formulation. She meant it like an intellectual self evident pill to be shot right into the brain without digestion. It's rational poison here declined by you and me two different ways maybe ironically proving her point.

--Brant

oh, your highlighted statement is not true

[Jonathan]

17 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

I wouldn’t want to be in Billyboy’s situation.

Billy seems to love the left's false Narrative that Trump is an enraged lunatic, as depicted in the cartoon that he posted. But Trump doesn't actually behave like that. The left does. Trump's cool as a cucumber. He laughs at the left while talking about the prospect of using retaliatory force.

Billy, why the need to believe lies, and to attempt to perpetuate them? What do you find to be so threatening about Trump? Has he taken something away from you, or threatened to? How do you feel that you're being hurt by the scary monster Trump and his filthy supporters? In reality, what do you think you're on the verge of losing due to Trump?

J

Sotomayor spoke of being enraged at the opinions of Scalia to the point of wishing to take a baseball bat to him. Unlike Trump, she wasn't expressing the idea of using retaliatory force, but of initiating it over a mere difference of opinion. How did the left respond? Did they caricature her as a red-faced lunatic thug exploding in fury? Did they conclude that she was unfit to serve on the Court? No. Oh my gosh, settle down, it was just words. She's not really going to bust bones, but was just expressing her feelings. Duh! Don't be so, like, literal. 

[william.scherk]

[Jonathan]

6 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

"Lesley Stahl: I wish you could go to Greenland, watch these huge chunks of ice just falling into the ocean, raising the sea levels."

Yeah, if you just go to Greenland and look, that's proof of anthropogenic global warming. And, muh, muh scientists. The scientific method doesn't have to be followed, predictions don't have to succeed repeatedly and reliably. Real lefty science is just looking at something and feeling strongly that it's proof of man-made global warming, and then wishing that the president would have the same feelings.

Oh jeepers, I wish I could convince you, Mr. President, to be assimilated, to be absorbed. It is lovely being one with the Body. Kumbaya.

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 10/14/2018 at 12:19 PM, Jonathan said:

Interesting. After all of this time on OL, Billy doesn't grasp the difference between initiatory force and retaliatory force. Or he doesn't want to grasp it. Or he's hoping that we won't notice his conflating them.

Jonathan,

There's actually a bigger context that is being blanked out.

The crowds that show up at events where Trump said those things came out to see him. He was talking about the disruptors (generally paid) of peaceful crowds. Nobody in those crowds came out to see the disruptors. If the disruptors had stayed home, nobody in the peaceful crowds would have even thought about them.

As contrast, the Democratic Party MOBS that show up in restaurants, at private homes, etc., are showing up as MOBS precisely to intimidate, threaten, and sometimes commit violence against their targets. Trump gathers peaceful crowds in large venues to see him. The Democratic Party MOBS gather on their own to go and threaten and bust heads of peaceful people going about their normal lives, often in small venues.

Huge difference.

I don't believe the blanking out of this difference is innocent, either. I think it's on purpose by people who believe in mob violence against innocent people so long as it's their mob and they have a political beef with the target.

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

55 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

"Lesley Stahl: I wish you could go to Greenland, watch these huge chunks of ice just falling into the ocean, raising the sea levels."

Yeah, if you just go to Greenland and look, that's proof of anthropogenic global warming. And, muh, muh scientists. The scientific method doesn't have to be followed, predictions don't have to succeed repeatedly and reliably. Real lefty science is just looking at something and feeling strongly that it's proof of man-made global warming, and then wishing that the president would have the same feelings.

Oh jeepers, I wish I could convince you, Mr. President, to be assimilated, to be absorbed. It is lovely being one with the Body. Kumbaya.

J

It is called a hydrological cycle. It snows on the continent and ice cleaves off. This has been going on for billions of years and does not indicate net ice loss.

No doubt Lesley has stood riverside contemplating the day it inevitably runs out of water.

[william.scherk]

On 10/4/2018 at 6:53 PM, william.scherk said:

Please Santa read my Objectivist Living Xmas Wish List.

Moar Queue Pleez ...

 

[anthony]

On 10/14/2018 at 5:00 PM, Brant Gaede said:

To continue:

I see potency a la Ayn Rand as an expression of civilization. It's individualistic as apposed to collectivist or tribalistic. If you were a Comanche warrior in early 1800s Texas on a raiding party and attacked a homestead raping the women killing everybody that was pure albeit tribal potency. The difference here is nothing was created just destroyed with some wealth transfer like a horse or even, if there was one, a little girl to be incorporated into the tribe.

So Objectivist potency is acts of creation. 

--Brant

"Acts of creation", I agree with, and the created conceptual mind and morality along with that, for "Objective potency". Conversely, evil is what men do, volitionally, despite everything they see and know of the facts and their effects. First, I think evil is impotent insofar as it doesn't work -- i.e., is impractical. (Not only immoral, irrational, and contra life and individual rights.) Like some Pyramid scheme, evil and its acts need an increasing, constant flow of people and minds investing in it and must always fall apart when saturation is reached and returns fall to zero. Until the next form comes along for susceptible, evasive minds to follow -  and in this respect, that every fresh generation of mankind has to begin at the beginning and think by choice, evil will not disappear from humanity (but is "impotent" on each occasion an individual makes his identification of it and says: no).

[Jon Letendre]

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

Moar Queue Pleez ...

 

That was hilarious!

More “debunking” videos, please!

[Jon Letendre]

Time to pay up, whore.

“United States District Judge S. James Otero issued an order and ruling today dismissing Stormy Daniels' defamation lawsuit against President Trump. The ruling also states that the President is entitled to an award of his attorneys' fees against Stormy Daniels. A copy of the ruling is attached. No amount of spin or commentary by Stormy Daniels or her lawyer, Mr. Avenatti, can truthfully characterize today's ruling in any way other than total victory for President Trump and total defeat for Stormy Daniels. The amount of the award for President Trump's attorneys' fees will be determined at a later date.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-15/stormy-daniels-lawsuit-dismissed-trump-entitled-legal-fees

[Jon Letendre]

Impotent: lacking in power, strength, or vigor : HELPLESS

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/impotent

Is “uncreative” or any similar word listed in the synonyms for “impotent”?

Synonyms

hamstrung, handcuffed, helpless, high and dry, hog-tied,impuissant, paralyzed, powerless, weak

[Brant Gaede]

3 hours ago, anthony said:

"Acts of creation", I agree with, and the created conceptual mind and morality along with that, for "Objective potency". Conversely, evil is what men do, volitionally, despite everything they see and know of the facts and their effects. First, I think evil is impotent insofar as it doesn't work -- i.e., is impractical. (Not only immoral, irrational, and contra life and individual rights.) Like some Pyramid scheme, evil and its acts need an increasing, constant flow of people and minds investing in it and must always fall apart when saturation is reached and returns fall to zero. Until the next form comes along for susceptible, evasive minds to follow -  and in this respect, that every fresh generation of mankind has to begin at the beginning and think by choice, evil will not disappear from humanity (but is "impotent" on each occasion an individual makes his identification of it and says: no).

Rand's thesis is that the sanction of evil puts the potency of the sanctioner into evil. No sanction no transfer of potency and evil dies on the vine or it never gets going in the first place.

--Brant