The 2020 Presidential Election Tournament

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

37 minutes ago, ThatGuy said:

... from the Book of Job:

New King James Version
“Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it.”

TG,

There is a storytelling convention called the "This Is Why You Suck Speech." (btw - I got that from TV Tropes.  )

Ayn Rand wrote the second mother of all such speeches with Galt's radio speech.

The Book of Job is the original mother speech. And, frankly, it's the better of the two.

Rand did a great lead up with AS, but the radio speech climax itself lacks strong emotion and sounds condescending during most of it. It's much too long for that emotional tone. That's why it comes off as boring to readers and, when asked, many admit they skip through it.

The Book of Job is full of despair, stubborn commitment, perplexity, and so on during the lead up, and at the climax from God, righteous anger. That, to me, is how to tell someone they suck and nail the message.

  

Those who need to write a This Is Why You Suck Speech would do well to study The Book of Job.

Literature-wise, it's among the best ever produced in all of mankind's history.

Michael

[ThatGuy]

3 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

TG,

There is a storytelling convention called the "This Is Why You Suck Speech." (btw - I got that from TV Tropes.  )

Ayn Rand wrote the second mother of all such speeches with Galt's radio speech.

The Book of Job is the original mother speech. And, frankly, it's the better of the two.

Rand did a great lead up with AS, but the radio speech climax itself lacks strong emotion and sounds condescending during most of it. It's much too long for that emotional tone. That's why it comes off as boring to readers and, when asked, many admit they skip through it.

The Book of Job is full of despair, stubborn commitment, perplexity, and so on during the lead up, and at the climax from God, righteous anger. That, to me, is how to tell someone they suck and nail the message.

  

Those who need to write a This Is Why You Suck Speech would do well to study The Book of Job.

Literature-wise, it's among the best ever produced in all of mankind's history.

Michael

That's pretty interesting, considering Rand claimed ATLAS to be challenging 2000 years of Christianity. (And I have to admit to having skimmed through Galt's speech on my initial reading, as well.)

"The Book of Job is full of despair, stubborn commitment, perplexity, and so on during the lead up, and at the climax from God, righteous anger. That, to me, is how to tell someone they suck and nail the message."

Now, see, that makes me thing of another example, only instead of Job and God, this one cuts deeper, to "father and son": The "Garden of Gethsemane" scene from JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. Imagine calling out one's "father" and one's self in the same breath!


Then I was inspired
Now, I'm sad and tired
After all I've tried for three years
Seems like ninety - why, then, am I
Scared to finish what I started?
What you started! - I didn't start it!

God, thy will is hard
But you hold every card
I will drink your cup of poison
Nail me to your cross and break me
Bleed me, beat me, kill me, take me now
Before I change my mind!

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Laura was really on her game with this.

It choked me up a little.

Michael

[ThatGuy]

30 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Laura was really on her game with this.

It choked me up a little.

Michael

"Don't worry; we'll pick up the slack."

It's...strange. When Trump first ran, I was not a fan of his, for a few reasons. But then I saw the over-reactions from others turn into TDS. I started to see through the lies. THEN, I saw MY image of Trump change from Trump the sleazy casino magnet and celebrity apprentice shit-stirrer to Trump the American, the fighter, the patriot, etc. And today, when I heard that he had gone to Walter Reed, my heart dropped. Up until recently, I was concerned about the government protecting the citizens during the riots, etc; Now, I want to protect Trump. I thought this was going to be my "Kennedy" moment. I don't normally feel this way about politicians. But this...this is different. If you had told me 4 years ago I'd be feeling this way, I wouldn't have believed it.

If anything happens to Trump, he will become a martyr. Is it too strong to say that?  I hope it doesn't come to that. And maybe I'm just caught up in emotion. But he's at the forefront of something, something that years of libertarian politics or ARI trying to spread Ayn Rand's message couldn't do. Whatever happens, I really hope that people  pick up the slack.

God speed.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

16 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

Now, see, that makes me thing of another example, only instead of Job and God, this one cuts deeper, to "father and son": The "Garden of Gethsemane" scene from JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. Imagine calling out one's "father" and one's self in the same breath!

TG,

That's a far different message than "This Is Why You Suck." 

 

Rand's Way

Rand never touched the message in the video you posted, not the father and son message--the craving to know why we have to die.

Her answer was basically: Don't ask. Just do well with what you've got. She put the dying part of human existence into "The Given" category and didn't deal with it other than say: Try to avoid death for as long as possible. By the way, death is evil and life is good. Done.

That's one of the reasons Objectivism may challenge Christianity and other religions, it will never replace them. You can't leave out something universal to all humans, especially something that generates great passion, then claim you have covered all the human universals that matter.

(Objectivism gets a lot of universals right, though. And in extremely insightful ways.)

 

Jesus's end

This is what makes Objectivists think the crucifixion is an evil symbol and constantly misinterpret its true symbolic meaning. (Most call it sacrifice.) But they are not being hypocritical. For those who refuse to think about death at all, even though the core of their being wants to know about it, that symbol actually is evil. It doesn't let them forget.

Jesus was tortured and killed by other men and did not die a natural death. I used to take that as a big part of the evil of the symbol. I despised the men who would do that to another human being--I still do. But there is a deeper meaning I always missed until I started trying to get in touch with parts of me I held tamped down. (Man, have I gone a long way intellectually.)

The truth is, we all have to die, all of us, regardless of what kills us. That is universal--and it hits at the core of all of us when we think about it. This drives us to ask: "Why?" It makes us crazy at times. It makes us want to change the rules, to change the nature of existence. We want to keep living. 

 

Evolution at the individual level and volition

At some point many of us realize that there is no answer we will find while we are alive. We will have to let go of the question when our turn comes, even if we keep asking all the way up to the end. But we don't earn serenity from knowing that until we have asked, "Why?" and tried our damnedest with all our might to make sense of it all.

(That's why, I believe, many find Objectivism uninspiring. One of the things they crave to delve into in order to have meaning in their lives is simply ignored by Rand.)

I didn't use to believe the following, but now I do. I believe asking that question and seeking an answer with all our might is transcendent. It's how we move our minds individually to the next stage of human evolution. We can do this actively, and experience it individually by choice, not just wait for random accidents to evolve the human species.

That video presents that message arc in one hell of a climax. I loved it.

 

 

Transcending

Granted, Jesus accepted the inevitability of death as God's will and in Objectivism, one doesn't. Or does one? Is Jesus's acceptance much different than accepting "The Given"?

By going through what he went through with his integrity intact, by asking that question about why we have to die and trying to answer it with all his might, and by staying true to the answer in the face of extreme hostility, to stay within the Christian storyline, he earned the right to enter the Gates of Heaven and sit on the Throne next to God.

God didn't just put him there. He earned it by transcending using his own volition.

 

A Different Question - Suffering

Job asked a similar question--but about suffering, not about death--and tried to find the answer to that with all his might. But he held to the goodness of being (symbolically, to God's will) during an excruciating amount of suffering, and he did so even in the face of God's final righteous anger at his impertinence. But notice in the story, God rewarded him with a long life of no more suffering.

 

Religious symbols and individual evolution

For the non-religious, look how well that symbolizes evolving.

Evolving by choice and experiencing it as an individual.

I love these symbols now.

Does that mean I am now religious?

Who knows? Certainly not me.

I'm just doing the best I can with what I've got and, at the same time, trying to make sense of it all...

 

 

Back To Earth

To pull all this back to the thread, do you want to feel an amazing sense of contrast?

Stay in the frame of mind from pondering all this, then remember what started it.

Do you remember?

It was a two-bit politician cheating on his wife during an election.

How's them apples for contrast?

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, ThatGuy said:

Whatever happens, I really hope that people  pick up the slack.

TG,

We are already doing that.

People who never saw the things you talked about in Trump have even left OL (at lest posting-wise).

Yet here we are.

 

OL is still read by many important people and I ain't going anywhere. From what I have seen, I don't think you are either. Nor are a handful of others.

By supporting Trump based on what he does, not just what he says, is changing the world for real according to many of the core issues of our stated beliefs.

The best thing we can do to have his back is never change that form of judging and keep pointing it out to others, even if they hate us for it, irrespective of whether this is on OL or elsewhere.

Over time, the right people will be here.

Oh, we can pull political strings (when available), do marches, write essays and things like that, too, to have his back. But the important thing to me is to stand in the fire before all--stand in the virtue of judging with my own eyes and mind and face down the hypocrites and petty little souls who claim it is better to do otherwise.

It is a great honor for me to stand with others who think like this, too.

This is the way we not only have President Trump's back, we have the backs of the people who will change the world like he does.

I don't know about you, but I got sick of staying in little circles around guru-wannabes, writing posts and thinking we were changing the world, but not actually doing anything. Not even being a role model for how to change the world.

And worse, ignoring the one man who finally stood up and said, "I can do it," and then went out and did it. They hated him at first because they didn't like his tone of voice.

Bah...

Now they hate him because he made them irrelevant and they know it.

Double bah...

 

I'm for changing the world for real, not soothing the vanities of people who can talk good but don't do.

I know I have Trump's back against people like that. (And, man, are they poison to doers.) It looks like you have his back against those types, too.

Michael

[merjet]

7 hours ago, Mark said:

It’s worrying that Trump is in hospital – too easy to be a victim of the Deep State in a hospital.  There’s no question James Forrestal was assassinated at Bethesda Naval Hospital and it’s likely Joe McCarthy was as well.

I don’t trust this “cocktail” of new drugs Trump was given.  I’m not reading Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, Azithromycin.   He needs to bring in Dr. Meryl Nass or other doctor who has had great success with this combination.

This CNN article quotes a White House physician saying that President Trump will take the drug remdesivir. It follows with a large section saying that President Trump will take a "Regeneron antibody cocktail." This Bloomberg article is about the Regeneron antibody cocktail. 

Reporting by CNN and lack of detail about what all is in the cocktail makes plenty of uncertainty.

Update 1: I just saw on the tv, ABC news, he is taking remdesivir.  Gilead Sciences, Inc. developed remdesivir.

Update 2: I just saw on the tv, ABC news again, he is taking both remdesivir and the Regeneron antibody cocktail.

[Ellen Stuttle]

8 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

The truth is, we all have to die, all of us, regardless of what kills us. That is universal--and it hits at the core of all of us when we think about it. This drives us to ask: "Why?" It makes us crazy at times. It makes us want to change the rules, to change the nature of existence. We want to keep living.

Michael,

You've made statements like that a number of times, statements indicating that the question "Why do I have to die?" drives you, and drives everyone, "crazy at times."  I'm sure not eager to die, but the question "Why?" Duh, that's obvious to me, and, yes, it is The Given.  I'm a multi-cellular biological organism, and such organisms die.  That's why.  I have no belief in Someone's having put me in the spot of being an organism which dies.

Ellen

[william.scherk]

14 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

Getting Trump infected wouldn’t have to involve the person-to-person physical contact you hypothesize.

Or gathering together in the Rose Garden to celebrate a Supreme Court nomination?

Or working in close quarters unmasked?

 

Edited October 3, 2020 by william.scherk
+ ing

[tmj]

My support of DJT in 2016 was centered on my expectation of him going to DC and blowing it up. My hope was he would use his status as a RINO to grab the machine/monster of the seat of political and shake it , and a al Scott Adams  rip a hole in the fabric of reality. And the reaction would expose how far and in what directions the corruption of power mongers had infiltrated all the institutions it touches. The phenomenon of ‘red pilling’ is I think a direct consequence and proof the election of a candidate Trump was a needful catalyst to ripping open that reality. More than just exposing the Deep State and its tentacles, he galvanized the public’s reaction at rightful indignation.

Prior to President Trump , I didn’t consider DJT to be much more than a creation of pop culture and media hoopla. Post election I realized how I had let myself be fooled by years of absorbing media and cultural propaganda and blinded to his core thinking and motivations. Being exposed to past statements , especially on foreign policy and the directions he thought the country should tack to , showed I supported an actual patriot even if by accident. He is more a danger to political corruption than “they” probably even estimated him to be and thanks in large measure to support from “us”.

Michael’s framing of DJT has never wavered and , for me, has only become more and more correct. I’ve been a ticket carrying member of the Trump train since the escalator ride , but my appreciation and admiration of DJT has evolved from seeing him as a needed cudgel against naked power to a leader trying to correct the American ship of state. My  fear is that our collective slackness has allowed a much smaller chance for correction. My hope is that this is what it looks like when that turn happens, that “we” will pick up the slack and become mindful of holding it at bay.

Godspeed 45

and fuck China( I hope , when the post infection interviews happen President Trump tells how it was to recover from the China virus , and continues to highlight the danger of any and all people to remain conciliatory to the perpetrators of the Wuhan Flu, slack attitudes still allow the slow creep of propaganda to diminish China’s responsibility for this scourge, “Covid” “corona “ virus could come from anywhere and that is the point to having those terms used, let’s stop that)

[Ellen Stuttle]

13 minutes ago, tmj said:

and fuck China

A big, majorly important and urgent step in fucking China is to cease relying on China for the production of the West's antibiotics.  What China could do to us by withholding supply is mega-horrifying to think of.

Ellen

[tmj]

We need a revamped ad campaign akin to the spots from the 70’s(?) “look for the union label” as it pertains to pharmaceuticals.

[ThatGuy]

9 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

10 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

Now, see, that makes me thing of another example, only instead of Job and God, this one cuts deeper, to "father and son": The "Garden of Gethsemane" scene from JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. Imagine calling out one's "father" and one's self in the same breath!

TG,

That's a far different message to "This Is Why You Suck." 

Ok...MAYBE he's not exactly saying to his "father" "you suck", but he's sure not happy about it, either. There, he's saying it's a rough plan, and that it wasn't his plan, but HIS plan ("Why am I scared to finish what I started/What YOU started/ I didn't start it !!! You're will is hard, but YOU hold every card, fine, I'll drink the poison, this sucks, but I'll do it...but do it NOW, before I change my mind...(only later to say, "Why has thou forsaken me?", which I still kinda read to say, "damn, dad, you suck!")

But ok, context, sure... he was being crucified, after all... maybe he's not saying the Father sucks, but that the plan sure isn't pretty...
(Kind of reminds me of someone else following "the plan", and "drinking the poison", right now...)


But ok...if he's not saying that the Father sucks...I think I may be reading into that scene other parts of the movie where he's calling out Judas, Peter, and the other apostles...the Jesus of this movie is pretty angry, most of the time..telling the apostles they suck, that only Mary has given him what he needs, that there is not one of them who would go the distance for him, "NOT ONE OF YOU!". ) And of course, the infamous flipping out scene in the temple, literally "lashing out" on the money changers:
 

 
(But then, that's the whole point of the story, innit? "We all suck, we're all sinners, and he came to sacrifice himself so that we don't have to suck.")

[ThatGuy]

37 minutes ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

A big, majorly important and urgent step in fucking China is to cease relying on China for the production of the West's antibiotics.  What China could do to us by withholding supply is mega-horrifying to think of.

Ellen

But that's all part of the plan right now, isn't it? To withdraw from China, and to stop relying on them (and selling out own economy and people, in the process...)

[ThatGuy]

8 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I know I have Trump's back against people like that. (And, man, are they poison to doers.) It looks like you have his back against those types, too.

Michael

Now that it's SHTF time, we see who walks the walk (DJT), and who talks the talk (ARI, Brook, etc...)

[william.scherk]

No time like the present ... When did the virus breach the Trump bubble? Inside a big Trump mystery

Trump interacted with dozens of aides and hundreds of supporters throughout a series of widely attended events over the past week. Now his team is trying to figure out how widely the virus may have spread in his orbit.

Quote

[...] As the White House and campaign scrambled to chart a new plan for October with a hospitalized president, Trump’s aides and medical team were launching their highest-profile contact tracing exercise yet: dissecting the movements and interactions of the president, dozens of aides and perhaps hundreds of supporters throughout a series of widely attended events, from a Supreme Court nominee unveiling last Saturday to the first presidential debate in Ohio on Tuesday to a fundraiser in New Jersey on Thursday, hours after the president already knew about the threat lurking within his team. By Friday afternoon, it remained far from clear whether Hicks or Trump himself or someone else entirely was the source of bringing the virus into the White House bubble.

The result of the sprawling effort carries high stakes for the president in the final stretch of a turbulent year. A detailed contact tracing effort could uncover more positive tests across Trump world, putting more staffers in quarantine with just over four weeks left until Election Day. Yet a failure to successfully recreate the steps of Trump and those in his orbit could allow a constant drip of Covid-19 news in the coming weeks that leaves the administration looking ill-prepared — especially after it faced criticism for a lackluster effort to fund and encourage robust contact tracing systems across the nation.

“It’s just dangerous for everyone,” one White House official said. “They put people’s lives in danger. They’re all trying to get on the same message. Some people are scared. Some people are pissed off because they were put into this position.”

[...]

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

45 minutes ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

I have no belief in Someone's having put me in the spot of being an organism which dies.

Ellen,

Who said Someone?

That's the Christian story.

In the Randian story, "The Given" put you and all living organisms in the spot where you have to die.

In both stories, the one thing that did not put you in that spot is you.

The moment you start wondering if there is a way out of death, that's where the spiritual rumbling starts.

I don't believe in passionately loving existing in a state of being, then passively giving it all up because a moment in time came. You either give up the passion first (like Buddhists or people worn down by life), then let nature take its course, or you seek a way out. Passion impels action.

There's more, too. All growth from one stage to another entails death of the previous stage. That's not me saying it. That's just me observing reality. To illustrate this in an obvious manner (and avoid the rabbit holes of nuance), the caterpillar dies when it goes into the cocoon. It will no longer live as a caterpillar. And the safe immovable bug dies when the butterfly comes out. The butterfly will now fly and never be able to get back into the cocoon.

I think we do this mentally. And evolution takes us higher as a species. On a species level as opposed to an individual level, I see evolution as a form of growth. As long as there is a reality to contain that growth, I don't see evolution as an accident within chaos that somehow worked out.

Humans certainly have a different and more aware perspective on life than the monkeys from which they evolved. A similar elevation, I believe, is in our future as a species. I don't see any reason to believe humans have stopped evolving.

And one characteristic I observe of this species level growth in humans is a state of awareness, starting with awareness of one's own thinking as one thinks. That is a higher state of awareness than normal thinking. I see an emotional component to this, too.

Rand knew the state of transcendence I refer to. See the first run of the John Galt Line for a great example where she was able to communicate it to a reader. Or the declaration by Galt (I think it was Galt) to Rearden of seeing him for the first time coming out of a restaurant (or maybe some building) and detecting a state of being in his eyes that he admired greatly and aspired to himself. (I really should look that one up for accuracy of words.) 

Another form of this state is the flow state Csikszentmihalyi talks about.

The evolution to this state will be when that is our normal state instead of sporadic glimpses of it, just like conceptual thinking and story is our normal state instead of sporadic glimpses of it that monkeys coming out of the trees had when the first stories and religions and discoveries were being formed.

Granted, I'm grasping at words to describe this, but it's not merely a proposition or even an observation. It's a state of being that is available to all. From where we exist right now, I believe we can experience a movement from a lower state of awareness to another as an individual and by choice, not just passively accept the state we were born into and stay there until we croak.

 

And that question of why do we have to die (which, incidentally, even the humanoids asked in Blade Runner) is one of the ways to get to the more aware level. We push our minds to it because we choose to, so to speak.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

6 hours ago, merjet said:

Update 2: I just saw on the tv, ABC news again, he is taking both remdesivir and the Regeneron antibody cocktail.

Merlin,

And if you read the previous posts in this thread, you would have seen it, too.

It's in the White House press releases posted.

 

(I miss things like this all the time, we all do, so no biggie.  )

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

Or gathering together in the Rose Garden to celebrate a Supreme Court nomination?

William,

Of course, nothing like that happened during the riots, I mean peaceful protests, right? 

To go into the subtext you like to present that Trump is a dumbass, wasn't their behavior equally as dumbassy in terms of proximity and not wearing masks? I mean there are plenty of photos and videos of this.

How do you not see that, or at least complain and snark about it?

 

The kind of one-sided speculation you are engaging in is part of the noise I am hunkering down to ignore.

Since only high-level Republicans are involved in getting sick right now, not high-level Democrats even though they engage in their own activities where such dumbassery as you point to is the rule, and I don't think the virus selects according to political party, I am more prone to see a sinister cause.

Are the bad guys Democrat or Republican? I don't know. But I am pretty sure they are anti-Trump.

And they are such dumbasses themselves, they don't realize they need to infect some of their own as a smokescreen.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's a statement from the physicians taking care of President Trump. They give a few more specifics and say President Trump is doing great.

 

And here is a public image of this in a form to counterbalance the idiots in the fake news mainstream media at one of the Drudge replacement sites I visit often.

Michael

[william.scherk]

The mysteries compound ...

 

[tmj]

Ever notice how careful the President is with handrails? I’ve noticed FLOTUS deplane in a much more casual stance .

Lots of handrails out there , lots.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A word from the President.

 

And another word showing back to work without even blinking.

 

Michael

[Peter]

From Rasmussen. Friday, October 02, 2020. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday, sponsored by Whatfinger News shows that 46% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.

That negative approval stat is not good, but wow, this thread is huge. I wrote this before scanning the last 20 hours of this thread so I may be saying what others have said.  I saw some Senators and Kellyanne Conway have come down with it and contact tracing is going on but the more cases there are, the harder it is to trace, per Doctor Marc Siegel on Fox an hour ago. He mentioned how easy it was to trace “the spread” when people on a cruise ship caught it, but with all Americans getting Covid-19, it is harder.  

I have some questions that may be up in the air and unanswerable at this time. When will the President and first Lady be over the disease?

How and when will the Senate vote on Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court? What if sick Senators can or cannot be there in person because of Covid-19?

What will happen within the next 30 days of campaigning? Will people vote for an ailing President Trump, perhaps sensing (or knowing) the President will not recover and Vice President Pence will become be the interim President? It sounds mean and flippant (and I wish the President a speedy recovery,) but the next best/worst scenario is that President Trump is elected (hang in there buddy) and Biden loses. But the Real Clear Politics no toss-up poll is looking dismal for President Trump: 375 electoral college votes for Biden and 163 for Trump.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

40 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

The mysteries compound ...

As always, there are two sides.

No John Philip Sousa marches needed for me. 

Reality is its own emphasis.

Could it be that if you don't test, you can't report?

Just askin'...

Where is the list of high-level Democrats getting sick?

Michael