Why Politics is Pointless


SoAMadDeathWish

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 364
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

.sdrawkcab deppilf srettel eht taht drah os deliared niart taht ,nmaD

Oh no! She's begun speaking in code, or, tongues...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah, I knew it was being clever...just did not have the time to figure out why...

Thanks.

Pretty funny though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Try pausing without pausing.

--Brant

large.gif

Must be nice to have a cartoon reality...

I will proudly refer to what would now be declared as a sexist statement by Mark Twain, which is, apparently, apocryphal. My response would be, deal with it:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

Unless you are over 25, which would be the amount of time that would be added to the quote in our modern "progressive" and "enlllightened" society's time lines, it applies.

A...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Complaining will never free anyone.

False. Read The Declaration of Independence, one of the founding documents of your "Judeo-Christian" country. It is full of complaints.

Ah, but they were not just impotent complaints of helpless blaming victims.

They were statements of fact responded to by men of virtue. :wink:

(more later...)

Greg

I see you are now backing away from your assertion in Post #166 that "Complaining will never free anyone."

But your current attempt to draw some specialized distinction between the complaints of The Declaration of Independence and complaints I've written on this board is baseless. Every criticism I've posted about Obama's government is just as factual as Jefferson's list of particulars on King George's government.

But what of the Declaration's supposed potency?

No one could possibly know whether the Declaration would be impotent or effective at the time it was written. For one thing, there had been criticism after criticism of British rule going back a generation with no good result. Secondly, independence seemed laughably remote when, up to that time, no British colony had managed to overthrow the mother country. Finally, when the Founders launched their rebellion, the odds against them seemed overwhelming. They all might have ended up dead in a vicious slaughter like the one 30 years earlier at Culloden. Bear in mind, there were 16 rebellions in Ireland before the final, successful Irish War of Independence.

Let's consider Ayn Rand’s novel of life in the Soviet Union, We the Living, written a half century before communism fell. Is that book and others critical of Soviet life valid and valuable only now in retrospect after we know the Soviets were vulnerable?

Or, more pertinently, consider that in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal Rand was specifically critical of antitrust laws and government regulation of the airwaves. Now since all those regulations are still on the books, should we regard Rand's criticism as just the "impotent complaints of a helpless blaming victim"?

No one can possibly know whether or not present critiques of the U.S. welfare state will have a positive effect in the long run. People once thought that the military draft and the prohibition of gold ownership would be permanent too.

You might say that every complaint in the history of mankind is impotent until the moment when it finally is successful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The fact that you don't feel bothered by the government does not mean that the government's treatment of others is not invasive, aggressive and criminal.

Sorry, Frank... I have absolutely no control over nor responsibility for how other people choose to live their lives. That's not any of my business. Each individual has to work out their own life for themselves, for they're the ones who get the consequences of their own actions, just as I get what I deserve for mine.

Just a reminder that you've gotten yourself stuck in the dead past again. Fixation on the dead past can be an indicator of a poorly tended present. The past is also where the blamers go to accuse others in their minds. It can get caught in people's heads and go round and round like an endless tape loop.

The fact that you are not suffering under Obamacare does not mean that Obamacare does not impose enormous costs and disadvantages for many in the rest of the population,

That is for others to learn how to change their lives so as not to become a victim of the government they deserve today. I can only assume the personal responsibility for refining my own life and can only do what is within my power.

Nor does it follow that those who will pay dearly for Obamacare are in some ways not "decent" or somehow deficient in "what they truly were inside." Nor does it follow that everyone is the sole determinant of how the government treats him.

We each see that from different points of view...

Where you see weak helpless spineless innocent victims of the government, I see immoral people getting the immoral government they had created in their own immoral image being shoved down their throats just as they deserve. They demanded the government they deserve to indemnify them and to make them whole for every calamity known to mankind by making others pay their bills.

Surprise!... they're getting screwed by the very same monster they created to screw others.

"What goes around comes around." :wink:

I did not demand a radical socialist regime.

Impotent wordy demands mean nothing, for it is only what you are inside that determines how the government treats you.

I have being fighting socialism for four decades.

And in those four decades have you learned how to free yourself from it? Here's how you can know for yourself. Are you still complaining about how the government is oppressing you?

Furthermore, I am decent. "What I truly am inside" is good.

Yet I am one of those who is choking.

Sorry, man... I can't do anything for you. You need to work this out for yourself. I can only free myself. I already told you how I did it. But I can offer you this little joke by Bill Cosby. This is actually a parable that can show you the way to free yourself from the government if you have the discernment to understand its meaning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaSsAm5j05M

So much for the theory that my inner self is the sole determinant of how the government treats me.

Check your premises, Frank... for objective reality is at odds with your own theory that what you are inside has absolutely nothing to do with how the world is treating you right now.

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see you are now backing away from your assertion in Post #166 that "Complaining will never free anyone."

...except those weren't weak spineless powerless helpless blaming victims. They were men of God who took action to free themselves from the government of England.

So why not find the balls to free yourself?

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It has been a while since there was a civil war.

It may indeed come to that, hopefully not.

NSA and other agencies stocking up on millions of rounds of ammo. Not just handgun ammo either, sniper rounds, hollow points... Kinda makes ya think civil unrest is definitely on the governments minds.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It has been a while since there was a civil war.

It may indeed come to that, hopefully not.

NSA and other agencies stocking up on millions of rounds of ammo. Not just handgun ammo either, sniper rounds, hollow points... Kinda makes ya think civil unrest is definitely on the governments minds.

There is no possibility of a serious civil war. Any armed rebellion will be put down quickly. The government will be well armed and the general population will be mostly unarmed. The population of sheep will get what they deserve, a government of wolves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The fact that you don't feel bothered by the government does not mean that the government's treatment of others is not invasive, aggressive and criminal.

Sorry, Frank... I have absolutely no control over nor responsibility for how other people choose to live their lives. That's not any of my business. Each individual has to work out their own life for themselves, for they're the ones who get the consequences of their own actions, just as I get what I deserve for mine.

Just a reminder that you've gotten yourself stuck in the dead past again. Fixation on the dead past can be an indicator of a poorly tended present. The past is also where the blamers go to accuse others in their minds. It can get caught in people's heads and go round and round like an endless tape loop.

"Each individual has to work out their own life for themselves," you say. "That's not any of my business," you say.

Yet you are quick to call others "helpless blaming victims" and what they write "impotent complaints."

Are your doctrines intended only for the consumption of others?

As for fixating on the "dead past," I make judgments based on what has gone before. I trust people based on their past behavior. If we followed your advice, we would, apparently, have to treat Obama and the ruling progressive elite like any average Joe, for what they've done in the past is dead.

Quote

The fact that you are not suffering under Obamacare does not mean that Obamacare does not impose enormous costs and disadvantages for many in the rest of the population,

That is for others to learn how to change their lives so as not to become a victim of the government they deserve today. I can only assume the personal responsibility for refining my own life and can only do what is within my power.

Really? How is a business operating on the margin supposed to keep all of its full-time employees when Obamacare is practically forcing it to make its staff mostly part-time? How is a church-supported institution such as a hospital or college supposed to remake itself in order that it does not contribute payments towards providing abortion?

Furthermore, if you "can only assume the personal responsibility for refining [your] own life," then why don't you spend 100% of your time refining it instead of telling others not to complain, not to blame, not to live in the "dead past," etc.?

Quote

Nor does it follow that those who will pay dearly for Obamacare are in some ways not "decent" or somehow deficient in "what they truly were inside." Nor does it follow that everyone is the sole determinant of how the government treats him.

We each see that from different points of view...

Where you see weak helpless spineless innocent victims of the government, I see immoral people getting the immoral government they had created in their own immoral image being shoved down their throats just as they deserve. They demanded the government they deserve to indemnify them and to make them whole for every calamity known to mankind by making others pay their bills.

Surprise!... they're getting screwed by the very same monster they created to screw others.

"What goes around comes around." :wink:

If you think that the only people hurt by big government are the ones that created it, then you must must think that everyone in America including children under 10 was an active advocate for the welfare state and had a hand in creating it.

Even if we took only what the Cato Institute estimates as the number of libertarians in America, there are about 20 million people opposed to big government. The federal government is anything but in their own image.

Furthermore, what happened to the idea that "what you truly are inside" is the sole determinant of how the government treats you?

Most of the people I know are peaceful, pious, small-government Christians. Yet Big Brother has not taken his boot off their necks. In fact, he's leaning harder on them than on the rest of the population.

Quote

I did not demand a radical socialist regime.

Impotent wordy demands mean nothing, for it is only what you are inside that determines how the government treats you.

Then the 176 children killed by U.S. drones must have been truly horrible creatures inside.

Quote

I have being fighting socialism for four decades.

And in those four decades have you learned how to free yourself from it? Here's how you can know for yourself. Are you still complaining about how the government is oppressing you?

Part of freeing myself includes changing minds. Ayn Rand said, "A revolution is the climax of a long philosophical development and expresses a nation’s profound discontent." I am pushing for that discontent and that revolution by changing one mind at a time.

Quote

Furthermore, I am decent. "What I truly am inside" is good.

Yet I am one of those who is choking.

Sorry, man... I can't do anything for you. You need to work this out for yourself. I can only free myself. I already told you how I did it. But I can offer you this little joke by Bill Cosby. This is actually a parable that can show you the way to free yourself from the government if you have the discernment to understand its meaning.

Your idea of freedom is not mine. You work on the government tax farm. Freedom for me is no legalized robbery.

Quote

So much for the theory that my inner self is the sole determinant of how the government treats me.

Check your premises, Frank... for objective reality is at odds with your own theory that what you are inside has absolutely nothing to do with how the world is treating you right now.

Just did a quick check. The insides are in perfect moral order, thank you. Now I'll take a look-see on the internet to find out if the welfare state is still here.

Francisco Ferrer, on 25 Feb 2014 - 7:54 PM, said:snapback.png

I see you are now backing away from your assertion in Post #166 that "Complaining will never free anyone."

...except those weren't weak spineless powerless helpless blaming victims. They were men of God who took action to free themselves from the government of England.

So why not find the balls to free yourself?

My idea of freedom is not paying taxes, which you said in Post #102 is part of the cost of enjoying living in America.

But anyway, thanks for taking time away from your own business to help me work out my life for myself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Free to act = X.

The governemnt gets bigger and bigger.

Free to act = X - A, B and C.

The government gets even bigger.

Free to act in a concentration camp then the Nazis gas you and your wife and children.

Or, free to act and you help make government smaller = free to act = X + D, E and F.

Etc.

Ayn Rand said those who don't fight for freedom and for tomorrow's better world are "social ballast." Those who do live in that tomorrow they are fighting for. (Let's call it La Causa!) The direct, immediate implcations of any of these is psychological. If you're happy being ballast, fine, but those fighting for a bigger world of freedom, which you might be able to enjoy in your lifetime, btw, should get some positive acknowledgement or thanks instead of aggressive, put-down, anti-intellectual purblindedness dressed as a primary, even only, basic virtue. I think it illustrates anti-mind = anti-life except, maybe, in the right-now present, but even that keeps evolving into the future.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I find all this banter fascinating...

let me coagulate all the male testosterone blood that is pulsing...

If you have never fired at another man with a weapon, or, have been fired upon, then respecfully reconsider your rhetoric...

Secondarily, if you have never lined up against another lineman who was intent on taking your head off, and you have looked in his eyes and decided that you will take him...then reconsider your rhetoric...

Finally, every political decision by the state has consequences ... take a visit to Bethesda's recovery ward and then explain your position.

A....

Post Script:

My apologies for the anger in this post...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Each individual has to work out their own life for themselves," you say. "That's not any of my business," you say.

Yet you are quick to call others "helpless blaming victims" and what they write "impotent complaints."

So?

Virtual words on a monitor have absolutely no power to change anyone's view. Only real life possess that power. It's only an opinion, and just one of many others freely expressed here.

Are your doctrines intended only for the consumption of others?

No. I'm certainly not exempt from anything I say. On the contrary, what I talk about is drawn from real life lessons learned by my own real life experience.

As for fixating on the "dead past," I make judgments based on what has gone before.

You have just summed up the fundamental basis for our differences, Frank. I make judgments on what is happening now.

(I'll return later to respond to the rest of your comments...)

Really? How is a business operating on the margin supposed to keep all of its full-time employees when Obamacare is practically forcing it to make its staff mostly part-time? How is a church-supported institution such as a hospital or college supposed to remake itself in order that it does not contribute payments towards providing abortion?

The answer has been right in front of you for over 50 years. Gee... now just what was Ayn Rand's most fundamental lesson in Atlas Shrugged?

SHRUG :smile:

Furthermore, if you "can only assume the personal responsibility for refining [your] own life," then why don't you spend 100% of your time refining it instead of telling others not to complain, not to blame, not to live in the "dead past," etc.?

Please take another look at my words for you will never find my telling you not to complain. I've only stated that complaining without action can't free anyone because there is nothing real behind it to back it up. I also said that instead of blaming others, I take appropriate action to free myself.

Nor does it follow that those who will pay dearly for Obamacare are in some ways not "decent" or somehow deficient in "what they truly were inside." Nor does it follow that everyone is the sole determinant of how the government treats him.

Those who are caught in the Obamacare trap of their own making are the very same ones who demanded to be indemnified against every possible calamity known to mankind... and all at the expense of someone else.

Just what did you expect would happen when everyone expects someone else to pay their bills?

If you think that the only people hurt by big government are the ones that created it, then you must must think that everyone in America including children under 10 was an active advocate for the welfare state and had a hand in creating it.

You must not have any children, for if you did you'd already know that parents are morally responsible for their under age kids. But aside from that point... yes, I know that everyone's personal experience of government is getting exactly the government they deserve... because they created in their own image.

Furthermore, what happened to the idea that "what you truly are inside" is the sole determinant of how the government treats you?

Most of the people I know are peaceful, pious, small-government Christians. Yet Big Brother has not taken his boot off their necks.

It is each individuals own personal responsibility to learn how to stand morally upright so that their neck will never see the underside of a boot.

When Jesus sent out his Disciples into the world, He gave them good advice which applies right here and now:

"Behold, I am sending you out like sheep in the midst of wolves; be wary and wise as serpents, and be innocent, harmless, guileless, and without falsity as doves."

(Matthew 10:16)

Anyone living here and now in America who takes Him at His Word will never find their neck under anyone's boot. :smile:

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Each individual has to work out their own life for themselves," you say. "That's not any of my business," you say.

Yet you are quick to call others "helpless blaming victims" and what they write "impotent complaints."

So?

Virtual words on a monitor have absolutely no power to change anyone's view. Only real life possess that power. It's only an opinion, and just one of many others freely expressed here.

You have just confessed that your words on this forum are impotent.

Are your doctrines intended only for the consumption of others?

No. I'm certainly not exempt from anything I say. On the contrary, what I talk about is drawn from real life lessons learned by my own real life experience.

As for fixating on the "dead past," I make judgments based on what has gone before.

You have just summed up the fundamental basis for our differences, Frank. I make judgments on what is happening now.

If that is true, there is no point in keeping murderers and rapists in prison. After all, they are not murdering or raping anyone now.

(I'll return later to respond to the rest of your comments...)

Really? How is a business operating on the margin supposed to keep all of its full-time employees when Obamacare is practically forcing it to make its staff mostly part-time? How is a church-supported institution such as a hospital or college supposed to remake itself in order that it does not contribute payments towards providing abortion?

The answer has been right in front of you for over 50 years. Gee... now just what was Ayn Rand's most fundamental lesson in Atlas Shrugged?

SHRUG :smile:

Those who shrugged in Atlas had a hidden valley in Colorado to retreat to. It is not feasible for everyone who is suffering under Obamacare or the IRS or the Fed or the BATF to move into a little enclave in the Rockies.

Furthermore, the author of Atlas herself did not go into hiding. On the contrary, she wrote non-fiction books, essays and speeches complaining about the state of American culture and politics. She did everything in her power to spark an intellectual revolution.

Furthermore, if you "can only assume the personal responsibility for refining [your] own life," then why don't you spend 100% of your time refining it instead of telling others not to complain, not to blame, not to live in the "dead past," etc.?

Please take another look at my words for you will never find my telling you not to complain. I've only stated that complaining without action can't free anyone because there is nothing real behind it to back it up. I also said that instead of blaming others, I take appropriate action to free myself.

Expressing complaints, specifically using words, facts, and logic to show that the present regime in Washington is based on falsehoods, fallacies, erroneous history, and bogus economic theories, is action.

It is no different than the Enlightenment and its magnificent complaints about tyrannical government. It was the verbal actions--the ideas--of Enlightenment thinkers that made the American revolution possible.

Similarly but regrettably, it was the words, the ideas, the complaints of Karl Marx that made the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia possible.

Nor does it follow that those who will pay dearly for Obamacare are in some ways not "decent" or somehow deficient in "what they truly were inside." Nor does it follow that everyone is the sole determinant of how the government treats him.

Those who are caught in the Obamacare trap of their own making are the very same ones who demanded to be indemnified against every possible calamity known to mankind... and all at the expense of someone else.

Just what did you expect would happen when everyone expects someone else to pay their bills?

I have already answered this point previously and more than once. The people I know who are suffering from the tyranny of Obamacare never asked Uncle Sam to pay their medical bills. It is not a trap of their own making because they have been consistent opponents of all federal encroachments into the healthcare field: Hillary's, Romney's and Obama's.

If you think that the only people hurt by big government are the ones that created it, then you must must think that everyone in America including children under 10 was an active advocate for the welfare state and had a hand in creating it.

You must not have any children, for if you did you'd already know that parents are morally responsible for their under age kids. But aside from that point... yes, I know that everyone's personal experience of government is getting exactly the government they deserve... because they created in their own image.

You must be saying that since it's not kids that are morally responsible but rather their parents, then it's only the parents that suffer under Obama, Hitler or Stalin. The kids must live in some sort of protective bubble, immune from the effects of socialism.

But if in fact the kids do suffer, then your theory that how the government treats us is solely determined by what we truly are inside is exploded for the wishful thinking it is.

Furthermore, what happened to the idea that "what you truly are inside" is the sole determinant of how the government treats you?

Most of the people I know are peaceful, pious, small-government Christians. Yet Big Brother has not taken his boot off their necks.

It is each individuals own personal responsibility to learn how to stand morally upright so that their neck will never see the underside of a boot.

When Jesus sent out his Disciples into the world, He gave them good advice which applies right here and now:

"Behold, I am sending you out like sheep in the midst of wolves; be wary and wise as serpents, and be innocent, harmless, guileless, and without falsity as doves."

(Matthew 10:16)

Anyone living here and now in America who takes Him at His Word will never find their neck under anyone's boot. :smile:

Greg

Then, according to your doctrine, any people slaughtered by the government are getting "exactly what they deserve" (Post #166). You would have it that it is person's "own personal responsibility to learn how to stand morally upright so that their neck will never see the underside of a boot." Too bad for those who are slow learners, such as children.

For after all, it is what the person "truly is inside" that is "the sole determinant of how the government treats" him, including, apparently, the 176 kids killed by U.S. drones.

By this doctrine, why should any government thug have to go on trial or face prison time for slaughtering unarmed civilians? After all, aren't the government-paid assassins just delivering divine retribution for what the victim "truly is inside"?

Why should any rapist or child molester go to jail? Isn't he just giving the woman or girl what she deserved?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now