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Of Course I'm Trying To Indoctrinate You In My Beliefs

heropsycho says...

Oh FFS. Seriously?

It's 1000x more common for people to believe the words "liberalism" and "socialism" to be seen in a derogatory light by Americans, even though the overwhelming majority of people subscribe to classical liberal ideas, such as freedom of speech, religion, and basic human rights, or in *some* socialist ideas, like a basic safety net in some way shape or form. I mean, hell, because of Glenn Beck and Fox News, there's even a move to make "Progressive", as in the "Progressive Movement" a dirty word. You know, the movement that, while it did overstep its bounds, also helped to institute meritocracy within government, cleaned up corruption, began conservation efforts, and ensured for the first time widely basic safety with food, buildings, etc.

Just stop. Nobody gives a rat's ass if you come to work and say a prayer. Trump Supporters get beaten up?! Yeah, it's almost like they're black in the South, or they're Muslims somewhere in the US. Oh poor white Christians! They've never had it so hard!

Absolutely ridiculous.

Just stop. Nobody is buying your BS.

bobknight33 said:

Liberals have been marching loudly past 30 years not tip towing.
So much so a Christian can not show faith at work, they are shamed in public. One could argue the opposite, Its time for Christian to stand up.

Also same to politics. Trump supporters get beaten up, insulted in public. One can't wear MEGA hat to events ( except Trumps) , or Starbucks.. That's not Liberals tip toeing around its full on frontal assault.

New Rule: The Good Sex Economy

heropsycho says...

MAGA isn't anything. It's as vague as "Hope and Change". It's a slogan.

Starting trade wars that wreck the economy is a bad thing. Deregulation that harms the economy is a bad thing. A lot of his policies are bad things.

And before you say, "well, the economy is doing great!" or "black unemployment is at an all time low", or whatever fact that completely ignores the macroeconomic phenomenon known as the business cycle, remember that national economic policy takes time to take effect. Instituted properly, it keeps the economic dips at recession level lows and duration, not 2008 level catastrophes. Aside from emergency measures such as those instituted during 2009, the federal government can't generally have immediate impacts. It'll take awhile.

I'll even go on record as saying that a recession under Trump is virtually inevitable even if he conducted good policy. The measure of his policies will turn into how bad the recession ends up being, and how well the damage is contained.

And that's the problem. Because of his tax cuts, he's put us into larger deficit spending mode in a time that we didn't need it. Macroeconomically, it was time to run surpluses. But he didn't care. In fact, he cared so little, he didn't even just keep deficit spending at where it was. He made it worse.

So when the other shoe drops, there won't be many mechanisms left to do other than lower interest rates when they're already low aside from sacrifice future economic growth when we have to deficit spend out the ass to stimulate the economy.

And the worst part is his poor decisions, when it's evident they were poor, reversing them won't help end a recession. If you realize a trade war screwed us, removing the tariffs doesn't in the short run increase consumer spending because people won't have jobs to buy those goods, and if the recession is globally felt (which it will be), Chinese people will have less money to buy American goods.

Taxing the rich more in the short run doesn't put more money into consumers' hands who would actually spend it. In fact, that reduces capital at a time when capital would help build new businesses to hire more people.

Not that any of this is surprising. Trump has no idea how macroeconomics work. He talks like he does, but he doesn't. Just says stuff that sounds obvious and easy to understand, and too many people fell for it.

But the reckoning is coming. It always does.

bobknight33 said:

So MAGA is a bad thing? How foolish!

Rotating bamboo sword challenge.

ayn rand and her stories of rapey heroes

heropsycho says...

I have the "gall" to admit it that she inspired me in high school. I know numerous people who were as well. None of them are antisocial assholes. I'm perhaps a bit anti-social in the respect that I'm very much an introvert, but people who know me generally don't describe me as an asshole.

It wasn't accidental. Advocating for reason, science, individual rights, critical thinking, trying to be good at what you do, being unafraid to think differently than others, none of that makes you automatically an asshole.

I don't think she was evil. I think her case is complicated as many philosophers were. There's good and bad to it. That's like saying Che Guevara is ipso facto being a fan or somehow on some plane similar or equivalent of being a fan of Stalin, and therefore it's offensive.

Just... no... that's just factually and logically not true.

vil said:

No no no, being inspired by her, by itself, is indeed less offensive than being inspired by Hitler, the consequences are less dire.

But having the gall to admit publicly that you are inspired by her unconditionally is equally as bad as .. substitute Adolf where applicable.

By doing either you admit to be a self-conscious antisocial asshole.

I understand that reading her book can accidentally shove you in a better direction than before, and that is very unlikely in the other scenario, I give you that.

I was inspired by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Che Guevara for what thats worth :-)

So a general all-encompassing nod to her is just like a general nod to any evil. And you dont get out of that by quantifying evil and making it relative.

ayn rand and her stories of rapey heroes

heropsycho says...

I completely disagree with you about being inspired by her is like being inspired by Hitler. Hitler's philosophy was a complete sham on every level, and contradicts itself numerous times. Objectivism's foundation works well on many levels. Personal aspiration, bettering yourself, valuing logic and knowledge over emotions, those types of things are valuable to an extent.

Objectivism is ultra-logical in the end, very much the same as Social Darwinism. Fundamentally, those ideas have value in some situations and settings. A business for example, in the end, if an employee is not doing his or her job, it's not necessarily the business's job to figure out why unless it's within their self-interest to do so, and they shouldn't have to think that stuff through in every single instance. They should have the flexibility to fire someone in that instance without a second thought about the social ramifications.

It ultimately is a societal problem though that this employee be taken care of as a member of society, which is where Objectivism falls on its face, among other areas. Another one is Objectivism really has terrible implications in many aspects of parenting, to put it mildly.

I was personally inspired by Ayn Rand in high school quite honestly. She made me care about philosophy, about achieving the most I could achieve via hard work and self-determination, to learn how to critically think and use reason, to be OK to not conform necessarily to group think, etc. Just like every ideology, it's not perfect, and following it to a T just doesn't work, just like any other ideology and philosophy we may encounter and blend into our own as we age and grow. But it made me want to learn more, achieve more, and think more.

You can do a lot worse than that, IMO, you know, like Fascism. :-)

vil said:

She was passionately in favor of her own ideas about capitalism, reason, science, and her own individual rights as opposed to a functioning society, philosophical debate, actual science and other peoples rights.

It is strange how people mention her as inspiration offhandedly, basically that is like saying "you know there is this rather clever idea in Mein Kampf" because her whole work is pointed in the direction of "being an asshole is good for you" (which is really pretty obvious, is it not?). A functional society should be able to contain or expel assholes. Ayn being taken seriously is a warning sign.

How Easy it is to Buy a AR-15 in South Carolina

heropsycho says...

Nope.

The only effective way is to practically eliminate the prevalence of guns beyond say a hunting rifle across the general population. Everything else is wack-a-mole, and won't solve the problem.

I'm a political moderate, and I generally gravitate towards moderate "common sense" effective regulations when needed. I don't see any point in regulations that don't do any good.

Universal background checks, banning assault rifles, three day waiting periods, banning bump stocks, stopping people who have been evaluated with psychiatric problems, all of it will insignificantly reduce gun violence.

I just don't see a way forward on this issue because what's needed is so politically impossible when people start declaring armed insurrection when a Democrat gets elected President.

harlequinn said:

But the next question is, will this stop criminal or crazy people from getting a gun?...

Don’t ever preach to me again!

heropsycho jokingly says...

You apparently don't understand what the rule of law is, either. Had Obama violated the Rule of Law when it came to immigration, it would mean that he should deport himself since he wasn't born in the US.

drradon said:

No, it makes them like the Democratic Party who don't have any problem simultaneously touting their position on women's rights and supporting Bill Clinton who was a serial groper and philanderer... in the same way that they condemn Trump for a lack of respect for the rule of law while they worshiped Barrack Obama who didn't feel it was necessary to enforce (or even recognize) immigration law or drug laws.

I don't really think either party has a monopoly on hypocrisy...

How the Alt-Right Trolls

Don Lemon is not having it

heropsycho says...

You can't possibly argue that the Pocahontas thing while at an event intending to honor Native Americans is acceptable behavior. If he thinks Warren is lying about her heritage, fine. Say she's lying about it some other time. Nobody put a gun to Trump's head and said he has to call her that. And on top of all that, at least have the courtesy to not do it at that event. Honoring World War II Native American veterans has jack shit nothing to do with Elizabeth Warren.

Even if you happen to think that there's nothing wrong with the Washington Redskins name, do you think it would be appropriate for the President of the United States to bust through the wall Kool Aid man style dressed head to toe in Redskins garb doing the Tomahawk Chop at an event intended to honor Native Americans? FFS!

What next? Meet with a Chinese delegation and walk in doing slant eyes and the ol' "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, *lift shirt* LOOK AT THESE!!!"

All he had to do was turn his "be a dick" switch off for a few hours to honor war veterans. Is that so hard? Apparently, it's impossible for him.

Watching this guy as President is just astounding to me. Every damn day seemingly he finds new ways to be a total dick when he completely doesn't have to be. Elizabeth Warren is going to be fine, I don't care he insulted her. But acting like an ass clown in a way that's very likely to offend actual war heroes in the process?! Zero justification, zero excuses.

Being President isn't supposed to be a 24/7 reality TV show where everything revolves around petty partisan/personal vendettas, including disregarding basic tenets of acting like a mature adult.

bobknight33 said:

What bull shit -- Typical leftest dribble.
Guess CNN is off the Russian collusion fake story for the night.

Message from the DNC - SNL

The Game that is pissing off the Alt Right

heropsycho says...

First they came for Castle Wolfenstein...

JustSaying said:

Maybe the alt-right idiots should move tro germany. The first Wolfenstein is banned (still) and all following games are heavily censored or outright banned as well. And it's not just for the violence. Since Return to Castle Wolfenstein all games have removed Nazi insignia so you don't kill Nazis anymore but other made up groups instead (in RtCW the Nazis were renamed into the Wolves IIRC). The New Colossus contains all the violence in germany but no swastikas or SS runes.
What a load of Bullshit.

How tax breaks help the rich

heropsycho says...

Getting soaked is a crock of BS. They're paying often times 20% effective tax rates.

And when income and wealth inequality is as bad as it is today, what you're pointing out points to how ridiculous the economic system is when almost half of Americans pay no federal income taxes and still see their effective income drop over the last four decades, while the rich have experienced steady income increases during that time.

IE, the inequality is so great, even if you literally don't have people pay taxes, it's still resulting in growing wealth inequality.

And I'm sure you're gonna claim that I'm suggesting pure income/wealth equality is what we want, which I'm not. However, it is absolutely essential to a functioning market economy that wealth and income inequality do not become too great, as that was one of the contributing factors to the Great Depression. If the economic lower class does not have money to purchase goods and services the businesses owned by the rich produce, those businesses will inevitably decline.

bobknight33 said:

The rich might get better value on their deductions but they still get soaked more in taxes overall.


The top-earning 1 percent of Americans will pay nearly half of the federal income taxes for 2014
Top 20% of Earners Pay 84% of Income Tax
And the bottom 20%? They get paid by Uncle Sam.

Why We Constantly Avoid Talking About Gun Control

heropsycho says...

I actually agree with you mostly, but you're not gonna like it.

One thing I will point out though - "I just don't connect gun regulations as an effective solution to mass murder."

We have data on this. Take Australia. In the 21 years leading up to Port Arthur and that massacre itself, which triggered the nation into heavily regulating guns, there were 16 mass murders of four or more people, totaling 137 murders. Since then, there have been 12, with a total of 76 murders. This despite there being population growth.

Violent crime rate has dropped from 1996 to now, mainly from reductions in robbery and a small drop in homicide rates.

There is very clear evidence that if most guns are removed from circulation, there are very real and likely benefits when it comes to reducing violent crime in general and murder.

I'm a political moderate and pragmatic. I go with what works. Don't care how liberal or conservative the solution is. I'm never in favor of regulation that is ineffective at solving problems.

And to that end, I'm against most gun control measures. I'm on board with banning assault weapons, fully automatic weapons, armor piercing bullets, but most gun control things like psychiatric evaluations, universal background checks? No.
Why? Because societal models we know that provided real progress on problems seemed to suggest one thing - it's the prevalence of guns that is the problem. If you make it marginally harder to buy guns by things like...

Three day waiting periods
Universal background checks
Psychiatric evaluations

They don't work. Banning guns works, though. It's worked time and time again. Australia, Britain, over and over and over, if guns lose prevalence, violence, murder, etc. decrease significantly.

At some point, society has to decide that giving up guns is worth it. But until that time, "common sense" gun control is a waste of time, and I quite frankly think it might do real effective gun control measures harm because when nothing gets better from these mild measures, they're going to point that out.

CaptainObvious said:

This was not the 500th mass shooting. You are using an unusable definition that shuts down debating anything on true mass shootings. Most people consider mass shooting to be the killing of innocent people indiscriminately - usually in a public place. Using such an overreaching definition just starts losing its intended meaning. It also shuts down dialog. I own guns. I support practical regulations. I just don't connect gun regulations as an effective solution to mass murder. I can see regulations and restrictions on guns - safety courses, etc on saving lives, but not preventing crime and murder.

Can Dieter punch a bear trap and get his hand out in time?

Bill Maher - Penn Jillette on Libertarianism

heropsycho says...

It depends on who the potential winning candidates are. If neither poses an apparent threat to democracy, the US, or the rest of the world, I have no problem with it.

When one candidate is a Trump or worse, I think it is completely irresponsible not to do everything you can to stop that candidate from winning, even if it's an epic nose holding if you really hate the other candidate.

And Trump is that bad. I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton. I trashed her on the email thing. And she doesn't take strong stands on things she absolutely should, like against big banks and what not. But she absolutely would not have emboldened racists and neo-nazis. She would not encourage hatred of the press and opponents to the point of dog whistling potential violence. I know that's a really low bar, but you can't have a functioning democracy without opposition that can feel free to oppose, a media that can resport basic facts without threats and being disbelieved simply because they report info contrary to what the President wants to be true, etc.

This was one of those elections that voting third party was simply not an ethical choice. Trump never hid what he was before he got elected. He was all these things in a very apparent way.

I am a moderate with no allegiance to any party. And I can say voting wise I did everything I could to stop Trump. I voted for the best chance against Trump in the primaries for my state, and I voted for Clinton in the general. I just wish more people did the same, because I think a year from now we are going to realize in a very big way how we really should have done everything we could to have stopped him from becoming president.

MilkmanDan said:

On the other hand, I think it is fine (honorable even?) to vote your conscious and vote for a third party candidate that has no actual chance of winning, even if you're in a tightly contested swing state.



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