Weird People, Wierder America

In high school I was in a debate club, I never participated in competitions but I did enjoy argumentation and of course winning. Later I'd abandon this niche for something a bit more broad; business but I later rediscovered the joy I get from debates when I started studying politics and religion. At a certain point this hobby of mine takes my time as with any fun hobby. I ended up researching stuff I really didn't have in some cases the time to research.

Winning arguments and forming axioms consequently led me on the idea of studying US government history to more depth. Doing this I found that my logic worked best throughout American history with the likes of Benjamin Franklin. I call myself a Jeffersonian only because Ben wasn't a President so he never had a chance to codify a lasting mandate.

This ideology of Jeffersonianism took several hits from both the left and right of it, eventually being tied to slavery and Jacksonianism. In truth it was about individual rights but history of the victors has a way of playing with the truth. For example Democrats today and leftist historians revised thoroughly the history and motivations therein of the civil war. If you listen to them they would concede that yes the South (rather than democratic party) had slaves and that Republicans over the 70's would become the party of plantation owners and old money.

If you listened to their Republican rightist counterparts you would hear that the Republicans of the 1800s were anti-slavery. No they weren't in truth the North had slaves as well, probably more people in the North had slaves, the difference being they named them house keepers, field workers and so on. In the south the name of this class of people was just slave... the south got the shaft for their honesty. I again state that the civil war was as much about slavery or the ending of as it was about climate change. But these rightist historians would have you believe the modern Democratic party is the southern Democrat...

I submit instead that ideologies endured certainly but the paradigms either side presents are aberrant reflections of each other.

The truth as it were is not something anyone can ween from the facts presented, what we have are of course just and right facts, and so I will share another perspective using them.

Words matter so I'll begin with defining words so we can be on the same page here:

1. Nazism used as it is today carries two connotations with many contexts. However the usage of it as a short cut to describe someone else can be attributed to a desired intention; rather than a helpful way to understand as the short hand usage might suggest.

The classical short hand use of Nazism is to refer to the state or a political group's usage of force to silence various ethnic groups and ideologies.

The neoclassical use of Nazism assigns motivation and states that pathos or a lack of ethos or both is in play.

One definition of Nazism aims to define action and the other aims to define thought.

Asserting now that the individuals at the woman's march (the all of them) and the other example of the Berkeley violent riot hold the neoclassical definition true or at least employ the method to some degree many things become acceptable or even expected as a result.

For example microaggression, it is a part of the definition of neoclassical Nazism refined and distilled into its core precept. That the opposite of your view is motivated by pathos. The logical question of a person who follows that mode of thought is of course "then what?"

If a person is led to believe that an argument formed and-or is argued from a position of pathos is by default invalid what is left behind is the question on how to fix it.

All of these things are very methodical and rely on several fallacies about human nature. As humans we want solutions, we also have an ego that implicates itself in our mental and physical endurance. We could see the consequences and attribute them to our actions but not see the mistakes involved and certainly not the ignorance; how can we know what we don't know?

A quick digression to answer that last question would normally be education, but this time I'd suggest self-education on matters of human nature, history and civics.

To continue... there is a level of manipulation going on however as complex as life is this could just be a set of consequences that have more greatly led to unfavorable outcomes against civil discourse and learning.

The seeking of how to correct a person who is now established as using pathos to argue leads to the most worrying part for me personally. It's one thing to see for example an Albanian man who outs his cigarette on a child's face because his skin complexion is many shades browner than his as sinister. But if a person says Afro-Americans shouldn't have more or less rights than any other American is being viewed as sinister then we have a shutting down of communication and an ending to debate because of what happens next... the solution. 

And it isn't so much what is being said, the distinction between the Albanian example and the Afro-American example is one involved physical injury and the other dealt with words.

The solution no matter the names used over history for when diplomacy and debate fail is war... it can either be a one sided affair or something prolonged. The Jews for example were at war with the Nazi party, a war which the Nazi won with little resistance until Allied forces responded.

The solution for those who follow this idea of microaggression is macro-aggression; the use of evil to combat evil and make no mistake war is evil. A person who believes in microaggression actually believes that they have been assaulted, in a normal world the savvy observer would say that person then cranks it up to 11 which is the use of physical violence, intimidation and well... some pretty evil stuff to silence dissent or opposition.

If this observation is true and the debate is over then it would have only have been if the perspective I am presenting holds any truth that both definitions of Nazism are held to be true at the same time. It may be that the reason people can believe in neoclassical Nazism is out of concern of classical Nazism.

In other words the ones destroying a Starbucks in the name of Anarchism or the ones burning a Berkeley building are the result of a layer cake of weird incentives, noble but weird intentions and weirder values.

Underpinned: Trump

I think there are two types of Anarchisms, constructive Anarchism for example and destructive Anarchism.

I think most people want constructive Anarchism but the devil is in the details, it then becomes destructive very quickly. This isn’t to say that Anarchism in itself is inherently destructive; it’s actually that most present systems are so involved in society that it’s scandalous.

Case in point: Even something simple like protecting our border; we have roughly 92 million people of working age that are unemployed. The leader of Ecuador decided to weigh in on our President-elects call for mass deportation of violent criminal illegals in a way that was on the American lefts political talking point bulletin board. He conflated illegal immigrants which should be deported as well in my view with what Trump intends to do. Now I don’t know why or to whom he was speaking but it was obviously meant for the ears of the American people as well. He then said Americans economically rely on illegals to function financially. The reality is that we have possibly six times the amount of unemployed citizens as we do illegals. Even if we deported all the working illegals and employed all the unemployed citizens we’d still have a real number of about 16% unemployment rate. That’s assuming the number of illegals working is near 15 million.

The whole issue in the case above has now spun out whack anyway since those people have put roots into America. They’ve dropped seeds as well and those seeds have taken root as well. There is a right answer but no easy answer and of course there is a wrong answer that has very real long term problems that can aptly be described as scandalous.

I can honestly say I chose well to throw my chips in on the right side of politics, I disagree with much of the Rights social programming, this idea that porn is denigrating and stigmatizing precludes said denigration and causes stigmatization. Now I’m not advocating porn, the same thing is applied to violent movies and games, the thing the political left did was get ahead on these topics to redefine what “progressive” can be interpreted as. The reality is that the ideology just doesn’t sell well. It’s too pro-elitism. In fact the reason they lost this election so badly and everyone before it for the last 6 years is because of *drumroll* arrogance. It’s the same arrogance that they capitalized on when the right had gone after the culture back in the 80’s. It wasn’t that the left simply had the wrong message and it wasn’t that they thought people were interested in the message. No it’s simply that they didn’t think it mattered, they had an agenda, and said to the electorate; deal with it.

The culture always defeats policy is what I’m learning, culture is very important but business is what makes culture and government can augment business… it’s a cycle fueled by unpredictable consequences, the only good thing I can note is the irony that’s usually involved.

Case in point the government invests tax dollars into research for driver less cars… okay now companies are putting out driver less cars… that will remove actual drivers who pay taxes from the work force, it’s delicious.

To be fair about it though, driving was one of the last I could say real jobs out there, anyone could get into it and you get back what you put in.  I think the immense pain this “investment of tax dollars” will bring is a direct result of both arrogance and ignorance.

I talk to cabbies who are vehemently pro-Obama , I wonder if they will blame Trump when the replacements start? Actually no I know they will.

Finally, I'm not sure if anyone protested Obama's inauguration, I'm sure someone somewhere did... anyway it appears to me one of two things are true.

1. The protestors are very fringe but have a very large microphone.

or

2. The fringe of the left is very popular.

To those sympathetic to either I say... pick your poison wisely.

In the end I'm left wondering why this whole situation feels familiar... I feel like I'm watching a national level moment of good parenting. On one hand you have a parent leading the family along and you have two good children one reluctant but going about her own business, the other eager and willing and the last being totally childish; kicking and screaming and falling to the ground forcing the parent to pick him up.

I'm beginning to think that not only is Trump attempting to fix politics by getting rid of the processes that leads to an "establishment". Not only is he attempting to "make America great again" (and all that means) for the American people. But he's also scolding entities that for too long have gotten away with the same old games.

These issues I am reading about; the potential first amendment struggles various bruised news outlets, their proxies and backers are expecting is really just bellyaching that the tools they used to win every argument before seem largely ineffective. From Beyonce to not giving air time to people they libel when they request to be interviewed and have an opportunity to defend themselves; nothing seems to work against a parent who has put his foot down.

The DNC Introspects And Finds Russia

As a fan of some pretty prolific writers and debaters I have some experience in language and the accompanying tools under my belt. With much of this Russian Hacking flag waving nearly everyone seems to agree that there is no argument about the question being asked, and in fact the divide seems to be about the answers. Below you will find a conversation between me and the talking points of others in a normal assembly of how the conversation breaks down. Mind you this is a synopsis as normally the conversation collapses to baser content and some self-evidentiary use of red herrings, ad hominem and/or ad populous.

Myself (M) – “Wow, Trump won.”

Concerned Citizen (CC) – “Yea, but the Russians hacked and tried to influence our election.”

M – “Oh? That’s pretty big, did it succeed?”

CC – “I don’t know, but they did it to get Trump elected.”

M - “That’s a pretty bold statement considering you don’t know, but why don’t you know?”

CC – “Well it’s obvious they hacked, look at the DNC and the Podesta e-mails, those were what caused it.”

M – “Yes, okay but if it’s obvious then what don’t you know?”

CC – “There is some top secret stuff that can’t be revealed to the public, the intelligence community would have to burn its sources which is why the Russians are denying the hacking; to get them to do that.”

M – “Okay, but regardless of the source was the information true?”

CC – “That really isn’t the point though, the Russians hacked American data and that information by default is illegally got.”

M – “So has the DNC or Podesta come out to denounce the information on veracity?”

CC – “Like I said it doesn’t matter the information was bad because of how it was claimed.”

M – “But you said you don’t know the motive, there could have been information there that was flattering to the DNC and/or Podesta but there wasn’t; is that the fault of the Russians?”

CC – “You’re missing the point, the Russians hacked out data, that’s why the President responded the way he did with sanctions and kicking out their ambassadors.”

M – “The Chinese hacked about 20 million Americans for information used to black mail some of them, shut down our White House computers and have been generally nasty for a while now, other groups do it too… so why now start a new policy to something so minor as telling the truth?”

That is the conversation generally… as I said no one I talked to lasted that long, usually the conversation gets derailed into another topic but the totality of the conversations I’ve had with different people sounds like that.

No one argues the question on: “is the information truthful?” They argue a separate question: “Where did the information come from?” It seems to be the answer to the question I pose (Is the information truthful?) that people have an issue with is why the conversation goes everywhere else. Since if the information is truthful then two points must logically be made.

One – The source and the method doesn’t matter, unless we no longer protect source identity.

Two – The voters were accurately educated before making their decision.

The only reason  for reluctance to recognize that answer as a possibility is because the arguments against it sound infantile, boiling down to: “why me?” – A perfectly legitimate question, the answer to which is deep and varied; from a heavy baggage carrying candidate that had to defend arguable policies to yes, informed voters.