OT Thinking, learning, wisdom.

[Tom Del Rosso]

bitrex wrote:

On 5/11/19 5:11 PM, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

You think fascists are to the right of me, when they are to the left
of you. They are to the right only of communists. Placing fascists
to our right started as a propaganda lie by socialists and
communists to disassociate themselves from the Nazis, whom the
communists supplied with the fuel they used to bomb London. Consider
how ludicrous it is to claim that our society is between
Hitler and Stalin. Since we are obviously not in between them, your
concept of the political spectrum is confusion based on that lie.

I see. But all modern no-fascists and neo-Nazis I've ever heard of (no
shortage of them really) self-identify as right wing. They would be
deeply offended to be called left-wing of any kind.

That's because they are to the right of Communists. Since socialism has
gained enough ground for openly socialst presidential candidates in the
Democratic primary, that would go for them too, but only because the DNC
moved left.

Their racism is an independent, orthogonal factor. There's plenty of
anti-Semitism in Antifa.

But no shortage of them? There's about one for every 1000 Antifa
socialists. Trump's populists aren't neo-fascist like you think.
Populism has no philosophical rudder.

That's OK with me you should wear that shoe proudly, in
fact. In the US you'll have no lack of company.

You know enough Sun Tsu to know "know your enemy", right? Well you
don't, in the slightest.

I gotta say making analogies between no-Trump-supporter signs in some
shop window (can't say I've ever seen one IRL, do they hate money? I
don't hate money, personally) and historical Stalin-ism sounds a
little paranoid, yeah?

But it's a good analogy. They exclude speakers at college just like
fascists would. The Soviets could be called red fascists as opposed to
black fascists, because their differences are too subtle to really
matter.

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

John Larkin wrote:

The Left can't get over Hillary losing, and have contempt for the
clingy deplorables who elected him. And who probably will re-elect
him.

It says a *lot* that Democrats have claimed the election has been stolen
every single time a Republican has been elected president since and
including 1980.

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 5:01:39 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

What US corporations insist that I drink bad water?

How about Avtex and Du Pont? They were major polluters on the Shenandoah for decades. I don't know if they will ever get the mercury out. Now there are 200,000,000 chickens, turkeys and cows dumping raw manure into the river. This is just one river of many along the east coast that are so fouled that it is not recommended to eat the fish or even to swim in the waters.

Corporations and many farmers don't give a rat's ass about the water quality because for them to care they would need to spend money.

It's hard to imagine the degree of ignorance for someone to not know the country's waterways are not clean. Or maybe it's not ignorance, but denial?

--

Rick C.

++-- Get a 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
++-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[bitrex]

On 5/11/19 7:20 PM, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 6:07:51 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
John Larkin wrote:

The Left can't get over Hillary losing, and have contempt for the
clingy deplorables who elected him. And who probably will re-elect
him.

It says a *lot* that Democrats have claimed the election has been
stolen every single time a Republican has been elected president
since and including 1980.

If we ever fix the Constitution so that the President is elected by
popular vote no one will be able to make that claim anymore will
they?

And if you chose a good candidate you wouldn't need to. Now Biden is
admired, but he was the first to drop out in the 2008 primnary. Jim
Webb was the first to drop out in 2016 and you probably forgot he ran.

GrabbyHands Biden is admired by paleocrats over 50 who think the best
way to "win" is to play it safe. He ain't any "safe bet" though not by a
long shot.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 11/05/19 22:01, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 11 May 2019 21:14:16 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 11/05/19 18:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 11 May 2019 12:25:43 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 5/11/19 10:59 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 10 May 2019 15:17:32 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highland_snip_technology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 10 May 2019 11:37:22 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 09 May 2019 13:25:01 -0700, George Herold wrote:

This is great,
https://fs.blog/2013/05/the-buffett-formula-how-to-get-smarter/

And gives me an excuse for reading more. https://fs.blog/best-articles/

And buying more books!

Well, if we're into book recommendations, here's my tip:

https://tinyurl.com/y22xnp9k

It tells about how a fawning, conniving Western media covered up Stalin's
systematic starvation of the Kulaks during the 1930s. A timely warning
from history as to the how Communism ultimately invariably plays out.
A shame it hasn't been reprinted as remaining copies are very hard to
find and consequently pretty expensive.

Save your money. Venezuela and North Korea are happening now.

And Cuba.

https://apnews.com/42b62f24be9b4e0d9f764f1a3fa9647a

Imagine a country so screwed up that it depended on *Venezuela* for
support.

The universal feature of communism seems to be hunger.



The universal feature of communism is that 20th century communist
nations that last for any length of time are outliers; what usually
happens is the CIA assassinates any democratically-elected leaders who
get those kind of ideas, and funds right-wing paramilitary groups who
execute and torture a few thousand or tens of thousands of the local
population who thought it might be worth trying, and install a puppet
fascist dictator far more amenable to US corporate interests then any of
this "democratically-elected" nonsense.

Commies are pretty good at killing one another. By the millions.

Losing a war to the US seems to be a good thing long-term. Being a
former possession of the British Empire seems to be helpful too.

US corporate interests are terrible, forcing people to have tractors
and electricity and vaccines and houses and clean water and bad things
like that.

There are quite a few people in the USA that would
be surprised that corporations insist they have
clean drinking water. Quite the opposite, in fact.

You'd rather drink out of some multi-use river in Zambia?

What US corporations insist that I drink bad water?

Quite a few pollute the water, and then insist it is safe.

For some reason or other, Reserve in Louisiana has been
in the media over here recently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve,_Louisiana#Pontchartrain_Works
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/06/cancertown-chemicals-reserve-louisiana-science

Over the decades I remember many equivalents, but I
don't bother to keep references. After all, nobody
really cares about Louisiana.

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Rick C wrote:

On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 6:07:51 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
John Larkin wrote:

The Left can't get over Hillary losing, and have contempt for the
clingy deplorables who elected him. And who probably will re-elect
him.

It says a *lot* that Democrats have claimed the election has been
stolen every single time a Republican has been elected president
since and including 1980.

If we ever fix the Constitution so that the President is elected by
popular vote no one will be able to make that claim anymore will
they?

And if you chose a good candidate you wouldn't need to. Now Biden is
admired, but he was the first to drop out in the 2008 primnary. Jim
Webb was the first to drop out in 2016 and you probably forgot he ran.

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 7:20:34 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 6:07:51 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
John Larkin wrote:

The Left can't get over Hillary losing, and have contempt for the
clingy deplorables who elected him. And who probably will re-elect
him.

It says a *lot* that Democrats have claimed the election has been
stolen every single time a Republican has been elected president
since and including 1980.

If we ever fix the Constitution so that the President is elected by
popular vote no one will be able to make that claim anymore will
they?

And if you chose a good candidate you wouldn't need to. Now Biden is
admired, but he was the first to drop out in the 2008 primnary. Jim
Webb was the first to drop out in 2016 and you probably forgot he ran.

So you are saying rather than letting the population have equal votes, we should just pick candidates that can be elected by the electoral college even if they aren't the person the voting population wants in the office?

Yeah, thanks for clarifying that one for me.

--

Rick C.

++++ Get a 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
++++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Rick C wrote:

On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 7:20:34 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 6:07:51 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
John Larkin wrote:

The Left can't get over Hillary losing, and have contempt for the
clingy deplorables who elected him. And who probably will re-elect
him.

It says a *lot* that Democrats have claimed the election has been
stolen every single time a Republican has been elected president
since and including 1980.

If we ever fix the Constitution so that the President is elected by
popular vote no one will be able to make that claim anymore will
they?

And if you chose a good candidate you wouldn't need to. Now Biden is
admired, but he was the first to drop out in the 2008 primnary. Jim
Webb was the first to drop out in 2016 and you probably forgot he
ran.

So you are saying rather than letting the population have equal
votes, we should just pick candidates that can be elected by the
electoral college even if they aren't the person the voting
population wants in the office?

Yeah, thanks for clarifying that one for me.

Here's clarification: Biden was indeed the best you had in 2008 whether
your party's majority thinks so or not. And so was Webb in 2016.

To be more clear, you make bad choices.

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Rick C wrote:

When Clinton won with 43% of the popular vote, and most of Perot's
votes would have gone to Bush, Republicans didn't complain because
that's just the way it works. We didn't demand a run-off election.

What are you ranting about? Bush lost both the popular and electoral
vote. There was no mismatch between them.

I just said we didn't rant about it.

And without Perot he would have won both. But we didn't demand a
run-off. That would have been ridiculous, as your party's ranting and
whining is, in every single election you lose, which was my original
point.

The idea that "a few percent error is unimportant." is absurd. Trump
only won the electoral vote because of a few percent of the voters
were in the right states. That's what is wrong with the electoral
college. It allows a very small percentage of the population to
select the President rather than giving everyone an equal say. It's
that simple.

Why shouldn't we all have a say in who becomes President?

We all do. If half are too stupid to vote that's on them.

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Rick C wrote:

The idea that "a few percent error is unimportant." is absurd. Trump
only won the electoral vote because of a few percent of the voters
were in the right states.

Actually he only won because you made bad choices in your primary.

Webb would have beaten him.

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Rick C wrote:

On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 8:19:29 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Rick C wrote:

When Clinton won with 43% of the popular vote, and most of Perot's
votes would have gone to Bush, Republicans didn't complain because
that's just the way it works. We didn't demand a run-off election.

What are you ranting about? Bush lost both the popular and
electoral vote. There was no mismatch between them.

I just said we didn't rant about it.

And without Perot he would have won both. But we didn't demand a
run-off. That would have been ridiculous, as your party's ranting
and whining is, in every single election you lose, which was my
original point.

That election has NOTHING to do with the electoral college. Why are
you going on about it? You seem to be the one ranting.

It has to do with your party's predictable complaints of "we was
robbed".

That was the subject of my post that you replied to. You're talking
about something else because you changed the subject. If I try to
change it back you claim I'm digressing.


> I don't know if you are playing dumb or not.

I thought you were. You say the problem is the electoral college, but
that's just your opinion. You brought it up in the context of my post
about a common element in several elections, and you complain that the
EC is not relevant in those elections, but then you shouldn't have
brought up the EC. You changed the subject, but you claim I did.

The EC exists to prevent fraud, which it does, and to keep out
extremists like Sanders, which you think is a problem. You can't get
your head around the fact that you make bad choices and a system that
filters out bad choices is not the problem. You are.

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 8:12:55 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 7:20:34 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 6:07:51 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
John Larkin wrote:

The Left can't get over Hillary losing, and have contempt for the
clingy deplorables who elected him. And who probably will re-elect
him.

It says a *lot* that Democrats have claimed the election has been
stolen every single time a Republican has been elected president
since and including 1980.

If we ever fix the Constitution so that the President is elected by
popular vote no one will be able to make that claim anymore will
they?

And if you chose a good candidate you wouldn't need to. Now Biden is
admired, but he was the first to drop out in the 2008 primnary. Jim
Webb was the first to drop out in 2016 and you probably forgot he
ran.

So you are saying rather than letting the population have equal
votes, we should just pick candidates that can be elected by the
electoral college even if they aren't the person the voting
population wants in the office?

Yeah, thanks for clarifying that one for me.

Here's clarification: Biden was indeed the best you had in 2008 whether
your party's majority thinks so or not. And so was Webb in 2016.

To be more clear, you make bad choices.

You confuse the issue. Let me make it clear... ELECTORAL COLLEGE

There, is that something you can read?

--

Rick C.

----- Get a 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
----- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 8:19:29 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Rick C wrote:

When Clinton won with 43% of the popular vote, and most of Perot's
votes would have gone to Bush, Republicans didn't complain because
that's just the way it works. We didn't demand a run-off election.

What are you ranting about? Bush lost both the popular and electoral
vote. There was no mismatch between them.

I just said we didn't rant about it.

And without Perot he would have won both. But we didn't demand a
run-off. That would have been ridiculous, as your party's ranting and
whining is, in every single election you lose, which was my original
point.

That election has NOTHING to do with the electoral college. Why are you going on about it? You seem to be the one ranting.

The idea that "a few percent error is unimportant." is absurd. Trump
only won the electoral vote because of a few percent of the voters
were in the right states. That's what is wrong with the electoral
college. It allows a very small percentage of the population to
select the President rather than giving everyone an equal say. It's
that simple.

Why shouldn't we all have a say in who becomes President?

We all do. If half are too stupid to vote that's on them.

I don't know if you are playing dumb or not. Surely you understand that the electoral college takes away the votes of the minority in states where a large majority decides the electoral votes. California was never going to vote for Trump, so there was little need to campaign there. Other states were not going to vote for Clinton, so Trump didn't bother to campaign there.. Other states were just not at all important enough with tiny electoral votes, so neither candidate campaigned there.

The swing states were the ones that received the lion's share of attention by candidates. Why should the election be so focused in this way. If the President were elected by popular vote all voters would receive equal attention and there would be NO focus on states at all since it would be a national election.

Do you really not understand the issue? This has nothing to do with parties or candidates. This has to do with people having a say in who is elected President!

--

Rick C.

----+ Get a 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
----+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Rick C wrote:

You confuse the issue. Let me make it clear... ELECTORAL COLLEGE

There, is that something you can read?

Sure and it's something the founders had enough sense to create.

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 8:55:45 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Rick C wrote:

You confuse the issue. Let me make it clear... ELECTORAL COLLEGE

There, is that something you can read?

Sure and it's something the founders had enough sense to create.

This has been discussed at length. Originally it served a purpose in a time when mass communication was limited. Then it was perverted by the states adopting a winner-take-all approach to the electoral college. At this point it serves no purpose at all and has serious detriments as I have explained.

I expect you understand all this and you are just jerking me around.

--

Rick C.

---+- Get a 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
---+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 9:23:39 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

Rick C wrote:
On Saturday, May 11, 2019 at 8:19:29 PM UTC-4, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
Rick C wrote:

When Clinton won with 43% of the popular vote, and most of Perot's
votes would have gone to Bush, Republicans didn't complain because
that's just the way it works. We didn't demand a run-off election.

What are you ranting about? Bush lost both the popular and
electoral vote. There was no mismatch between them.

I just said we didn't rant about it.

And without Perot he would have won both. But we didn't demand a
run-off. That would have been ridiculous, as your party's ranting
and whining is, in every single election you lose, which was my
original point.

That election has NOTHING to do with the electoral college. Why are
you going on about it? You seem to be the one ranting.

It has to do with your party's predictable complaints of "we was
robbed".

That was the subject of my post that you replied to. You're talking
about something else because you changed the subject. If I try to
change it back you claim I'm digressing.

I don't know why you call it "your party". I don't own Democrats.

As to subject, you keep ranting about that one thing. Can you get past that??? The issue of the electoral college is separate from what you seem to be whining about.

I don't know if you are playing dumb or not.

I thought you were. You say the problem is the electoral college, but
that's just your opinion. You brought it up in the context of my post
about a common element in several elections, and you complain that the
EC is not relevant in those elections, but then you shouldn't have
brought up the EC. You changed the subject, but you claim I did.

The EC exists to prevent fraud, which it does, and to keep out
extremists like Sanders, which you think is a problem. You can't get
your head around the fact that you make bad choices and a system that
filters out bad choices is not the problem. You are.

I gave you a clear and coherent explanation of why the electoral college is a problem. If you can't understand what I wrote, why not ask questions?

I'm saying the electoral college is a problem in people having equal votes. I suppose this is not as important to you as whining about politics.

The electoral college has nothing to do with fraud. It doesn't keep "extremists" out. Your continual whining about politics is irrelevant.

Why can't you just discuss the facts? Tell me how the electoral college prevents fraud. Give up on the political whining, ok?

--

Rick C.

---++ Get a 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
---++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, May 12, 2019 at 1:45:21 AM UTC+10, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 10 May 2019 15:17:32 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highland_snip_technology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 10 May 2019 11:37:22 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:


https://tinyurl.com/y22xnp9k

It tells about how a fawning, conniving Western media covered up
Stalin's systematic starvation of the Kulaks during the 1930s. A
timely warning from history as to the how Communism ultimately
invariably plays out.
A shame it hasn't been reprinted as remaining copies are very hard
to find and consequently pretty expensive.

Save your money. Venezuela and North Korea are happening now.

And Cuba.

https://apnews.com/42b62f24be9b4e0d9f764f1a3fa9647a

Imagine a country so screwed up that it depended on *Venezuela* for
support.

The universal feature of communism seems to be hunger.

But the full history of that "fawning, conniving Western media" and the
left in general has to be retold and not forgotten, now that they deny
they ever denied the genocide, and pretend to be concerned about the
Russians etc.

Some parts of the western media did ignore what Stalin did

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor

Others didn't. The USSR did mount a massive disinformation program at the time, and kept it running until the 1980's.

The UN has an official definition of genocide that includes killing
people for their race or religion, but not for politics. That's because
we stupidly gave Russia and China a say in the UN charter and they
wanted to continue killing people for their politics.

Both Russia and China seem to have decided genocide isn't worth the bad publicity it generates. They prefer a definition that doesn't get them labelled as having previously committed genocide.

The western left still thinks like Stalin, so we have retail businesses with
signs in the window forbidding Trump supporters. It's illegal to do that on racial or religious grounds.

Nobody wants stupid customers. They are more trouble than they are worth.

Racial and religious prejudice is less practically useful.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 12/5/19 12:49 pm, Bill Sloman wrote:

On Sunday, May 12, 2019 at 1:45:21 AM UTC+10, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 10 May 2019 15:17:32 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highland_snip_technology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 10 May 2019 11:37:22 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:


https://tinyurl.com/y22xnp9k

It tells about how a fawning, conniving Western media covered up
Stalin's systematic starvation of the Kulaks during the 1930s. A
timely warning from history as to the how Communism ultimately
invariably plays out.
A shame it hasn't been reprinted as remaining copies are very hard
to find and consequently pretty expensive.

Save your money. Venezuela and North Korea are happening now.

And Cuba.

https://apnews.com/42b62f24be9b4e0d9f764f1a3fa9647a

Imagine a country so screwed up that it depended on *Venezuela* for
support.

The universal feature of communism seems to be hunger.

But the full history of that "fawning, conniving Western media" and the
left in general has to be retold and not forgotten, now that they deny
they ever denied the genocide, and pretend to be concerned about the
Russians etc.

Some parts of the western media did ignore what Stalin did

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor

Others didn't. The USSR did mount a massive disinformation program at the time, and kept it running until the 1980's.

The UN has an official definition of genocide that includes killing
people for their race or religion, but not for politics. That's because
we stupidly gave Russia and China a say in the UN charter and they
wanted to continue killing people for their politics.

Both Russia and China seem to have decided genocide isn't worth the bad publicity it generates. They prefer a definition that doesn't get them labelled as having previously committed genocide.

China is currently committing genocide against the Uyghurs, and dealing
with the bad publicity by controlling the publicity, not the "bad".

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, May 12, 2019 at 3:06:46 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 11 May 2019 12:25:43 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:
On 5/11/19 10:59 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 10 May 2019 15:17:32 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highland_snip_technology.com> wrote:
On Fri, 10 May 2019 11:37:22 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
curd@notformail.com> wrote:
On Thu, 09 May 2019 13:25:01 -0700, George Herold wrote:

This is great,
https://fs.blog/2013/05/the-buffett-formula-how-to-get-smarter/

And gives me an excuse for reading more. https://fs.blog/best-articles/

And buying more books!

Well, if we're into book recommendations, here's my tip:

https://tinyurl.com/y22xnp9k

It tells about how a fawning, conniving Western media covered up Stalin's
systematic starvation of the Kulaks during the 1930s. A timely warning
from history as to the how Communism ultimately invariably plays out.
A shame it hasn't been reprinted as remaining copies are very hard to
find and consequently pretty expensive.

Save your money. Venezuela and North Korea are happening now.

And Cuba.

https://apnews.com/42b62f24be9b4e0d9f764f1a3fa9647a

Imagine a country so screwed up that it depended on *Venezuela* for
support.

The universal feature of communism seems to be hunger.



The universal feature of communism is that 20th century communist
nations that last for any length of time are outliers; what usually
happens is the CIA assassinates any democratically-elected leaders who
get those kind of ideas, and funds right-wing paramilitary groups who
execute and torture a few thousand or tens of thousands of the local
population who thought it might be worth trying, and install a puppet
fascist dictator far more amenable to US corporate interests then any of
this "democratically-elected" nonsense.

Commies are pretty good at killing one another. By the millions.

Fascists are just as good. It's a totalitarian thing. The political philosophy invoked to justify the killing doesn't really matter, as you could have worked out from the wars of religion, if you knew an history.

Losing a war to the US seems to be a good thing long-term. Being a
former possession of the British Empire seems to be helpful too.

As contrasted with what?

US corporate interests are terrible, forcing people to have tractors
and electricity and vaccines and houses and clean water and bad things
like that.

Where have they done any of that? US corporate interests do seem to favour regimes who will be tough on trade unions - it saves them from having to import Pinkertons or whatever to indulge in anti-union thuggery.

The problem with this approach is that it leads to regimes who are unpopular with the people being exploited. Iran is a particularly fine example of the US acting against it's long term interests when it installed the Shah in 1953.

Chile seems to got rid of Pinochet with fewer traumatic side-effects (though the tens of thousand of political opponents he killed are still dead).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, May 12, 2019 at 3:50:24 AM UTC+10, Tom Del Rosso wrote:

bitrex wrote:

It must be really frustrating sometimes being a wingnut;

The left wing is also a wing, nut.

The left includes some nut cases. The right/left distinction is between people who think that society is just fine the way it is (right-wing) and people who think that it can be changed for the better (left-wing).

The left-wing is under a self-imposed obligation to understand the society they live in, and to rationally justify the changes that they think will improve it.

The right-wing is under no such obligation, and - as can be seen here - includes quite a number of people who couldn't reason their way out of paper bag, and don't see them selves as under any obligation to be remotely rational.

holding the intrinsically contradictory ideas that the left is simultaneously made up of sniveling, weak, limp-wristed snowflakes

No, only the latest generation is snowflakes, maybe because they had day
care instead of going out to play without constant supervision.

Bizarre delusion.

> Previous generations of the left were just "useful fools".

Universal education, universal health care, civil rights are useful foolishnesses. The right wing can't see the point, but that's the right wing for you.

> > who are also the most powerful destructive and divisive force there is in the world, on the equal of Stalinist Russia.

Stalinist Russia defeated Hitler's Germany, which was a constructive achievement. It took them quite a while, which suggests that they weren't all that powerful, and that their destructive and divisive capacity wasn't anything like preeminent.

One is not "also" the other. Inability to make distinctions is a
hallmark of extremism, you know.

Not being able to tell the difference between advocates of left-wing and right-wing views would be another. Not being able to tell the difference between totalitarian left-wing regimes (like Soviet Russia and China) and democratic left-wing governments (like the ones ruling in Scandinavia) is an another such diagnostic feature.

In most right-wing philosophies I've looked at that's where the Jews
fit in. they're the "brains" of the operation who secretly conspire
with malice to give the weak and genetically unfit the level of power
they need, above their natural genetic station, to challenge the
Aryan race.

National Socialism is not a right-wing philosophy, nor is anti-Semitism
even limited to Nazis.

National Socialism certainly was a right-wing philosophy, and anti-Semitism is popular amongst right-wing nut cases. Cursitor Doom's distaste for George Soros and the imagined globalist conspiracy probalby has something to do with the fact that the Soros family were Jewish (if non-observant).

> So you just don't have a clue about anything political.

As opposed to Tom Del Rosso, who doesn't seem to have much of clue about the world in general (politics included) and is really bad at rational argument.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney