Roger Bissell
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Posts posted by Roger Bissell
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12 hours ago, william.scherk said:
If held at gunpoint, I will say the same thing about this election as I did throughout 2012 -- the GOP has a deficit in necessary demographics as measured today. If Mr Trump can beat Romney's demographics, he can squeak out a win. If he can poach Bernie crazies from the Democrats, he can edge even higher in electoral votes. On the other hand, if the Democrats grip the same demographic as 2012, it's a walk. Will Bernie and Barack and Hillary grab hands and head out on the campaign trail against Trump?
Yes, and I think that will be decisive. Johnson's impact will be (mostly) to throw some should-be Trump states back to Clinton, by siphoning off some of the laboring-class Reagan Democrats from Trump.
The marijuana issue will have a minor effect, and perhaps none, if Trump or (more likely) Clinton co-opt it from Johnson. Hard to say, though - Hillary is making a big deal about the "chaos" of Trump's foreign and domestic policies, and she might extend this mantra to the idea of legalizing drugs, even if just pot. I can't see Trump going for it, because he has been ranting about heroin coming over the border, and as we all know, marijuana is a "gateway" drug to the really bad stuff.
But yes, count on Democratic Party unity. Bernie will have a Come to Jesus moment with Obama, and he will marginalize his hopes for future influence if he balks at helping Clinton get elected - which she will, with or without him.
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16 hours ago, Guyau said:
I'm sure this will be true in some states. But what about West Virginia, which Hillary should lose (because of antagonism toward her anti-coal position)? Won't Johnson throw it toward Clinton? I'd wonder the same about states like Ohio.
3 hours ago, Guyau said:“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
. Or what’s a heaven for?” –R. Browning
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Looks like best states in which to concentrate.
To win any electoral votes or to win any seat in the Congress would be a toehold.
Yup.
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9 hours ago, Guyau said:
Thanks for these perspectives, Roger. For some reason unknown, when I read the "gentle reader" line, I did not connect it to anything but her own literature. So it was just a note and reminder of that intimate positive connection of the reader to her. I and many others were reading her nonfiction writing at all, and indeed in that very moment, only because we had so much loved her fiction writing. And when we read her nonfiction, of course we were interested in the ideas, but we were also after the continuation of her style of writing, her personal voice, which was so enjoyable to us. My favorite essays of hers became "Apollo 11" and "Kant v. Sullivan." As I recall, in a Q&A session in '76, she mentioned that she too was especially fond of them for their literary quality. Her children were usually pretty bright, and we naturally set our thought on the extents to which what she was writing was true or false.
1I remember leaping directly from the fiction to the available non-fiction, which in 1966 included only For the New Intellectual and The Virtue of Selfishness. And the Objectivist Newsletter and Objectivist, which I didn't have access to until sometime the next year, followed closely by Capitalism the Unknown Ideal. Powerful, exciting stuff. Even Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, as geek-friendly as it was, had a really delicious literary quality to it.
9 hours ago, Guyau said:I think I mentioned to you before, but it would right to include here, that it was one of your Iowa associates Linda Northcote who read the Branden letter to our little group, and she remarked that some say it was more than a solicitation, it was an affair. In his later report in the subject book, Branden includes that he and Rand told Allan Blumenthal about the affair in the last crumbling days of the Rand-Branden association. That was one person who actually knew of it outside the two couples. Ellen has mentioned here the occasion, prior to the split, she Ellen hit "Ah ha" on what was going on. On hearing Linda with the letter, my naive attitude towards Rand and Branden was anger that they dissolved the professional association over an ended romance. I had some things to learn about human nature in this area, and anyway my picture of the social importance of the NBI and the Rand-Branden team was way off. They would both continue to new writings and with readers old and new, and their influence on personal growth and in the political arena would continue. My anger with them soon evaporated, and I wished them only for the remainder of their lives to be "watched by every human love" (to borrow Auden). At the time I knew Linda, she was a grad student in geology at University of Oklahoma. I gather from the internet that she then went to work in Texas, that she died some years ago, never married, and that she was loved very much by friends in a rock club.*
I remember Linda Northcote very well. We called her "Rocky," because of her geology major.
She was a sweetheart, and one of my friends had a serious crush on her, which alas came to naught. Side-tracked and derailed romances - sometimes it's interesting to speculate on how different the world might have been, had those relationships continued or taken root.
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On 5/29/2016 at 7:02 PM, william.scherk said:
Pretty dang funny, William.
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20 minutes ago, Mikee said:2 hours ago, Roger Bissell said:
Me 'n' some of them other "stupid assholes" would like to get a peek at the Trumpster's federal tax returns for...oh...some reasonable and relevant portion of the past 20 years.
("Every single thing he's done is in the public record...What's not to know? Hahahahahahahahaha ROTFLMAO on that one, buddy!
)
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Do you consider yourself an honest man Bissell? Do you think any dirt on Trump that could be dug up wouldn't have been dug up by now? Have you considered that "Trumps" tax returns are private corporate business, businesses being run now by Trump's kids, revealing private information to their competitors could be very costly. If not a requirement of the law why should he reveal information that could cost his kids millions? Go find your own dirt, then prove it, stop the bs. I think you're a clown, you have no idea what's really going on, that embarrasses you, and no, you're not honest about it. You called it: " Me 'n' some of them other "stupid assholes" "
How's that Anger Management therapy going for ya, chum?
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12 hours ago, Guyau said:
My personal associations clash harshly with Branden’s response to something Rand wrote in 1966. It was the close of “Art and Sense of Life” published in The Objectivist. I remember where I was in my university library reading that essay for the first time, which was about 1968. I remember because of my response to the close of the essay, which is: “When one learns to translate the meaning of an art work into objective terms, one discovers that nothing is as potent as art in exposing the essence of a man’s character. An artist reveals his naked soul in his work—and so, gentle reader, do you when you respond to it.” I felt a thrill of intimate kinship with the author (of the novels and these lines) in that phrase gentle reader. Those two sentences were all warmth and light in my reception of them. Branden writes of them: “The use of words like expose, naked, and gentle reader could have no other purpose than to intimidate—to scare the hell out of her audience” (307). How different, New York and Oklahoma. I imagine I was fortunate not to have been plugged into NBI.
I've always felt that way, too, Stephen. Living in the Midwest during the heyday of NBI was providential insulation from the worst of the dysfunction of the earliest days of the movement.
I think NB's "scare the hell out of her audience" was a bit hyperbolic, but there is some intimidation and fear and self-doubt that naturally occurs when someone pontificates about certain works of art being no good and says that your response reveals your soul. Suppose you like one of those (supposedly) rotten or defective works of art - you really like it. Now your revered font of philosophical wisdom and truth tells you, in effect, that you are rotten or defective, that you have revealed a flawed soul. Softening the blow and offering rapport by concluding it with friendly phrases like "gentle reader" or "my friend" &c was a good idea, considering how emotionally precarious a position Rand was putting her followers and readers by in effect asking consumers of art to psychologize themselves and evaluate themselves as in being in some sort of spiritual trouble. But who was going to counsel you through this agonizing self-appraisal (assuming you don't evade)? Especially if you lived not in NYC, but somewhere out in the boondocks of Fly-Over Country, like Oklahoma or Iowa? Lucky you, if all of your favorite art and music were approved by Miss Rand and your nakedly revealed soul had no ugly spiritual sores on it.
So, yes, a lot of us feel lucky not to have been subjected (much) to that.
12 hours ago, Guyau said:The purpose of this note, however, is mostly to correct a certain specific impression this book gives about public knowledge of the love affair between Rand and Branden. In his Introduction, Branden writes that at the time of his break with Rand, “neither she nor I (for different reasons) chose to disclose to the world its actual cause.” He means the factor of the romantic relationships, their shifts and pains. Nathaniel Branden did reveal his affair with Ayn Rand, if not to “the world,” then at least to a good number of us. It was in the form of a letter, as I recall, he wrote to some of his Objectivist-type associates. Some time before finishing college in 1971, I had been shown the letter and knew about the affair. I informed my friends immediately. I imagine hundreds, if not thousands, were informed by little ripples from that letter.
I don't think NB's letter to subscribers actually confirmed The Affair in so many words. The way he worded it, he was suggesting that the triggering event of The Split was a rejection of Rand's request to have an affair. , and her reaction as a "woman scorned."
Naturally, many of us "read between the lines" and inferred that they actually had been having an affair, and that he was trying to extricate himself from it. But he did not actually say that there was an affair. We had to connect the dots for ourselves, and many of my friends refused to do so. Were they being naive? or just objective?
So, there was no "public knowledge about the love affair between Rand and Branden." There was, in our relatively minuscule subculture, enough lurid verbiage from Branden to suggest that there had been an affair. But that's all.
12 hours ago, Guyau said:To Rand’s remark “A gentleman would have carried it to his grave,” Devers replied “All the years when you and your supporters were attacking him, he never said a word about it.” Not quite. From early on, some of us knew about the affair. I did not and do not think any the less of either of them for that. Actually, my friends and I thought it was neat, apart from the sad ending. We were not normal (thank goodness).
Well, I think NB said all he possibly could, without actually saying that there had been an affair. Interpret it how you like. There were lots of people taking it either way. But I don't think that any of us in the movement actually "knew about the affair."
I wasn't psychologically astute enough in those days to think it was a really bad idea for them to have had an affair. Nor were most of my friends in Iowa. We were just greatly fascinated in the drama and relieved at the end of the mystery, relieved to know that there was something human and intelligible behind the breakup of our Movement.
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12 hours ago, Mikee said:
Trump's entire life has been totally public. Every single thing he's done is in the public record and he's written books about me! me! me!. What's not to know? Stupid assholes.
Me 'n' some of them other "stupid assholes" would like to get a peek at the Trumpster's federal tax returns for...oh...some reasonable and relevant portion of the past 20 years.
("Every single thing he's done is in the public record...What's not to know? Hahahahahahahahaha ROTFLMAO on that one, buddy!
)
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One reason why is the intellectual inconsistencies of conservatives:
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Too funny not to share:
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13 hours ago, william.scherk said:13 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:On 6/1/2016 at 2:56 PM, william.scherk said:
I consider emotions to be 'tools of cognition.' I believe that without emotion, human cognition is gravely compromised.
Which emotions??? Do anger and hatred promote cognition or do they cripple cognition. A little fear increases watchfulness. Panic destroys reason and judgement.
I have been boring at length on this since I came to the forum in 2006. My thesis is borrowed almost entirely, with biggest debt to Antonio Damasio. I have only convinced one person to read an item or two from Damasio's booklist.
I am saying I have been banging a drum for some time. I don't recall you engaging with any of my other boring banging, so I am kind of self-bored at the prospect of freshening up that bonging boring droning.
Perhaps I could just sketch the scope of what I mean by 'tool of cognition' ...? I will call cognition not just thinking, but reasoning, reasoning in the sense of normal everyday evaluations, decision-making, analyses and self-reports. For cognition, for a person making his way in the world, a lack of emotion otherwise standard issue from birth, the lack is a handicap. For a poetic version of the bonging and droning see my most recent post in this thread..
First off, I have to enthusiastically second William's recommendation of Damasio's work. I've read two of his books so far and thoroughly enjoyed and learned from them. I liked Descartes' Error very much, but I especially liked Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. If these sound like too much work, check out Damasio's TED talk here: http://www.ted.com/speakers/antonio_damasio
Secondly, while I think emotions are very important, both in our lives and in our knowledge and understanding, I wouldn't call them tools of cognition. Instead, I think that, like sensations, percepts, memories, etc., they are data of cognition - conscious products that we use to gain further insight and awareness into ourselves and the world. The tools of cognition that we use on that data are concepts, propositions, and arguments. (These are discussed in detail in Henry B. Veatch's and Francis Parker's fine but sadly out of print book, Logic as a Human Instrument.) But without emotions and all our other experiential data, there is nothing for those tools to operate on!
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On 4/1/2016 at 11:39 AM, George H. Smith said:
Some Personal Reflections on Ayn Rand
Smith discusses some good and bad influences that Ayn Rand’s ideas had on his own intellectual development.
My Libertarianism.org Essay #203 has been posted.
I commented on this previously a couple of months ago, but there is a discussion of the essay on Facebook in the Neo-Liberal Drawing Room, and since I cannot trust that my comments will not be deleted, I thought that I'd share them here.
What the author is pointing to is the paradox of referring to someone (Aristotle) as the "father of individualism," when he held statist-collectivist political ideas - which, if you think about it, is no more perplexing than referring to Kant as the "father of collectivism," when he upheld constitutional government and individual rights. In each case, the claim is made by some Objectivists that what matters in the promotion of political freedom is not a thinker's political views, but his epistemology - rational in Aristotle's case, irrational in Kant's. The author, by contrast, goes on in separate articles to show that the connection between a thinker's epistemology and the political views drawn from them is not straightforward, either in that thinker or those who come after. To conclude, I'll just say that if Aristotle was the father of individualism, it was his unacknowledged, bastard child, one that he may or may have not acknowledged if he had been held to account for his having fathered it - just as Kant, demonized by some Objectivists as being the "most evil man in history," may well have not accepted the indictment that he is to blame for communism and fascism.
Here is a link to the discussion: https://www.facebook.com/groups/876936259052288/1043601959052383/?notif_t=group_activity¬if_id=1464881087113823
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8 minutes ago, Peter said:
when she walked around the White House, NO ONE was permitted to look her in the eye, they all had to lower their heads with their eyes towards the ground whenever she walked by. Clearly she is a class act......!
This ill-tempered, violent, loud-mouth, hateful and abusive woman wants to be your next President, and have total control as Commander-in-Chief of our Military, the very Military for which she has shown incredible disdain throughout her public life .If Barbra Streisand had been a Marine drill sergeant...
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17 minutes ago, anthony said:
Everyone doesn't follow, or do you pretend not to?
False alternative. Check your premises.
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23 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:
I'm amused to hear about Beck. Never read or listened to one word of Beck. Seriously. (Maybe second or third-hand.)
Almost the same with Rush Limb[...]. I liked him on his TV show over 2 decades ago, but it's been +99% zip listen since. I don't listen to any talk radio. Period. (Does Beck do radio? TV? Podcasts?)
I occasionally listen to Beck and Rush who have morning weekday programs on a local AM talk radio station, but lately, I find them really hard to stomach. Beck also has a tv show on his "Blaze" network. I don't subscribe. I bought two of Rush's books back in the early 90s (approximately). They were ok, not great.
I much prefer Mark Levin, who is on a local FM talk radio station in the evening. His books are pretty good, much more principled. He's followed by Michael Savage, who is marginally ok. On the same station in the morning is a guy named Michael Delgiorno. He's too religious for my taste, but he's very principled about liberty and the Constitution.
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On 5/30/2016 at 8:55 AM, Brant Gaede said:
I wonder when they'll hit her with an indictment
It will be in November or December after she's elected, and BHO will issue a pardon, and we'll move on into the 5th term of George W. Bush (or the 3rd of BHO, if you see it that way).
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4 hours ago, Marcus said:
Thanks for your non-contribution Roger Bissell. I'm sure you have other threads to troll or else pick another e-fight with Jonathan. Please do so now and lets get on with the real responses.
3 hours ago, 9thdoctor said:BTW, does he get to keep the orange hair?
3 hours ago, anthony said:Toohey would have tried to enlist a black Roark as an underprivileged and repressed minority in his altruist-collectivist cause, and naturally been swiftly told to go to hell.
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If Roark had been black, his courtroom speech could have been much shorter, and he'd have had people demonstrating outside the courtroom with signs saying "Black architects' lives matter." And Loretta Lynch would have intervened saying his civil rights were violated by their changing his building design. I think it would have been a very entertaining book, especially hearing it snap, crackle, and pop after I threw it in the fireplace.
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22 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:
A modern army hasn't much use for draftees. It runs on brains. I suppose in Israel it's different. They have a lot of brains to pick from.
--Brant
aren't they socialists?
Our brainy modern army has lost over 5,000 service folks in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 15 years, thanks to ambushes, IED's, and whatnot. Granted, that figure is a far cry from the 58,000+ lost during a decade or so 50 years ago, and that is certainly something to be thankful for - but from the high intensity of present-day 24/7 cable news coverage, you'd think that the respective casualty figures were just the opposite.
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2 hours ago, william.scherk said:
We each pay the rent around here in different ways.
Yes. Sometimes it's done according to the Trader Principle - and sometimes according to the Traitor Principle. Heh.
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2 hours ago, william.scherk said:On 5/20/2016 at 1:39 PM, Quoting, William, Smith Jonathan He said:
"Of all the smokey recent things from Newberry, this is one of my favourites. I like it for the free gesture. It has an exuberance and freedom that is so lovely to see in Newberry's production."
"Free gesture" "exuberance and freedom"
2 hours ago, anthony said:"Gesture" is in the style of the art, by the stylization of an artist - and while being a metaphor, not mystifying. Aptly in keeping with "microcosm" as the theme of this, it is illuminating just how neo-mysticism and empiricism reflects here - about art, as it does in philosophies and people.
I can try to translate this into a more standard English: While being a metaphor not mystifying, aptly in keeping with microcosm, it is illuminating Gesture is of the style the art. This does not mystify (me). In keeping with it, as them of this, just how reflects here mysticism. It me mystify does, not. It reflects here just how. Empiricism reflects here. Here reflects it Empiricism. And mysticism here it being reflected. It does. It does in people. It does in me not. About art. Here.
I applaud the gestural freedom and abstraction Tony brings with his inventive if-jarring arabesques on our shared heritage, English. The giddy swoops between missing active subjects of no-term-limits run-on thoughts is like zip-lining through a canopy. Exhilarating and just a bit scary. A few hard thuds. Memorable, if mostly a blur.
My gestalt snapshot is kind of me being witness, a kind of awe, wherein I spectate on something ineffable, like the aching-with-meaning gibberish of Ulysses.
We each pay the rent around here in different ways.
QuoteOn the one hand, is constantly analysed and admired the manual/visual techniques: of brush strokes, colour and perspective and so on - on the other, is the suggestion of transcendant and mysterious processes at work. Only one or the other. The artist as manual worker - or, as the conveyor of man's spirituality.
Is constantly analysed by whom and so technique. Is the suggestion. Transcendance mysteriousness at work suggestion One. Or the Other. My worker while hands only. Spirituality conveyed it. By the other hand. No.
I love these discussions about art that mentions art not by, only the Them circling pitiless above in the updraft. Tony the Them circling the ineffable, the inhumane the artless. But the other hand no.
No, Jonathan! -- do you hear? No them pitiless empty art talk hand rent concept talk talk value death. No.
Three this game play it. Can.
This has disturbing echoes of Yoda and Sarah Palin. With maybe some hints of Anthony Weiner poised to jump in.
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46 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:
There never were 100 billion (with a B) homo-sapiens. We only emerged about a quarter of a million years ago and 75,000 ybp Mt. Toba a super volcano blew and kill all but maybe about 5000 breeding pairs of humans. Our kind of primate did not start getting numerous until about 200 years ago.
Where's your info on that death rate? From DNA analysis?
There were a hell of a lot of people 200 years ago.
--Brant
It appears that Brant is correct on this. Apparently the total number of human beings who were ever alive is about 108 billion. (Sorry for doubting you on this, Brant!)
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13 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:
Rand's political influence. Where is it? Why is it as it is whatever it is?
We have not had a military draft for about 40 years, due to Rand's influence on Martin Anderson who advised Richard Nixon to make and keep a campaign pledge to end it.
Some (mostly leftists?) claim that if the draft were still in effect, we would not have been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 5000+ who died there would still be alive. Perhaps, but perhaps more would have died elsewhere. Hard to invest in retrospect.
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Gary Johnson for President
in Stumping in the Backyard
Posted
If the November election "mirrors the primary," then Hillary will win by a comfortable margin.
I got the following data from Real Clear Politics, in case someone wants to double-check my analysis: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/democratic_vote_count.html
Hillary got 15.7 million votes in the primaries, while Trump got only 13.3 million votes. That's a spread of 2.4 million. Even if you allow for the greater number of GOP primary candidates, there were also 1 million more votes cast in the GOP primaries than in the Democratic ones. (So, after all the hooplah about how much greater the GOP participation was this time around, they still barely eked out more than the Democrats? Surely a reality tv star should be able to do better than that - and in fact we were all bedazzled with this claim, which turns out to basically have resulted in approximate parity between the parties.)
Trump didn't do as well percentage-wise either: 57% of the Democratic primary votes for Hillary, 43% for Bernie, compared to 46.5% for Trump against all the rest. (I saw Fox News last Tuesday night posting primary results with Hillary's percentage compared to Bernie's *BELOW* Trump's percentage, which while often noticeably and impressively larger than Hillary's (e.g., 80% vs. 60%), were far short of 100%, even though everyone else had dropped out. (Perhaps Fox is no longer in the tank for Trump after his stupid racist remark about the judge, but they still appeared so in their biased primary result graphics. This stuff isn't accidental. Why report Trump's results at all, if he has no opposition? If he does have opposition, why not include at least the highest other one in the totals?)
William is exactly right that we have 50 individual races now that will all culminate on the same day, and demographics will rule in many of the close ones. Trump is shooting himself and the GOP in the foot repeatedly, while Clinton will have the backing of Obama (endorsed her today, has high approval ratings) and Elizabeth Warren and (I predict) Bernie, along with a unified Democratic Party. It may not be a 1964-style bloodbath, but it won't be close either. I predict Clinton, even with multiple opponents, will get about 50% of the popular vote, and Trump somewhere between 40 and 45%, with 5-10% for the rest. (And no, I do not think Gary Johnson will have the 15% poll support necessary to be in the debates, sad to say. I'm supporting and voting for him, anyway.)
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