Statement about Solway and Trump

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Dan Rowden
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

Post by Dan Rowden »

Kevin Solway wrote:
Dan Rowden wrote:Gamergate - nerd soap opera.
Insulting people is never going to win people over to your side. It has never worked, and never will.
It's my honest assessment of the dynamic. But I think your reaction to my assessment speaks to your attachment to it.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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Dan Rowden wrote:But I think your reaction to my assessment speaks to your attachment to it.
Could you explain how some degree of involvement or even defending that activity against degrading assessments ("nerd" and "opera" clearly trying to classify it as superficial and immature) would prove attachment? David wrote earlier about obsession and trauma because of what I suspect would be humiliation. Perhaps some resentments building up. But it's hard to make that case really, when someone seems just passionate and active, and it's tempting to read things into it. True attachment would be something different: the inability to let go when it's not appropriate any more to hold on to some activity or when it clearly has become meaningless. Is there any indication of that or were you just throwing around a term because it could hurt, like: sinner!
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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To go back to the point about what the job of journalists actually is - Dan committed a strawman when he claimed that my position is that reporting the truth and analysing the truth are somehow mutually exclusive. Here's a link to an article which doesn't report any facts, but nevertheless contains a much more truthful analysis of the political situation in the US than anything you will read in the MSM:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/17/ ... m-is-dead/

And it's from a decidedly *left-leaning* (OMG!) alternative media website. I have two major criticisms: a) the author inappropriately invokes Nietzsche and b) he is unfair to Trump and the Republicans on a few points, but that's to be expected.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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jupiviv wrote:Here's a link to an article which doesn't report any facts, but nevertheless contains a much more truthful analysis of the political situation in the US than anything you will read in the MSM:
A philosophy professor linking his interpretation of Nietzsche to social analysis has little to do with journalism. The fact that papers publish such things is unrelated to the discussion of "mainstream reporting". Although I did enjoy reading it as it does relate to the topic of Trump's role of changing the political landscape. But I think the dear professor has misunderstood how Nietzsche linked "God" as well to the horizon of meaning itself, which will keep fragmenting. The political systems have been as some religious support system to keep things together, like nationalism can be: a poor man's religion, postponing the inevitable by increasingly enshrining certain things. The death of God meant always spiritual poverty to Nietzsche but poverty can become a gateway to greater things too. The link between God and the pinnacle of modern Western democracy is interesting to raise.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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Dan Rowden wrote:It's my honest assessment of the dynamic.
Yes, and it was Hilary Clinton's honest assessment that Trump supporters are "deplorable and irredeemable", and that didn't go very well for her. Such assessments of large and diverse groups of people comes across as extremely condescending.

David dismissively said that Gamergate was about "young men". I can assure you that the many women in the Gamergate movement don't appreciate being referred to as young men, and the many people in the movement who are older than forty or fifty will be sure that David has no idea at all what he's talking about.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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I've never seen Kevin care so much about appealing to the public. Now I'm sure I've entered the Twilight Zone.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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I am pretty much in total agreement with David, Eric and Dan on this thread (and possibly others...sorry I haven't read the whole entire thread, I'm late to the party).

The rest of you are making some good points, but I think having a president whose only values are getting more rich and more famous is too big of a drawback for any kind of improvements in free speech that may result (which I don't think is likely at all...in fact, the opposite will probably happen). If he's putting us on the fast track to the end of the human race through environmental destruction and nuclear war, I don't think free speech is really going to matter.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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Hi Matt. I actually remember you! So tell me, when you say you are in total agreement with David etc., does that mean you think that Trump and Putin are evil geniuses who want to take over the world? Do you also believe that Trump is incomparably more materialistic and belligerent in terms of foreign policy than all the politicians in the Democrat party?
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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Matt Gregory wrote:I've never seen Kevin care so much about appealing to the public. Now I'm sure I've entered the Twilight Zone.
You and me both, brother. If I was into conspiracy theories, I would think that aliens have been abducting people and sending back reprogrammed clones in their place. That seems to be the only explanation which can account for it. The whole thing is so very, very bizarre.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Matt Gregory wrote:I've never seen Kevin care so much about appealing to the public. Now I'm sure I've entered the Twilight Zone.
That's because it's pretty invisible and you need special decoder glasses to see such care. All I see, and it's in the first post, was David and Dan caring about their "reputation" because of Kevin's online activism elsewhere, doing something.

Now that's a twilight zone to break one's balls over.
Matt Gregory wrote:I think having a president whose only values are getting more rich and more famous is too big of a drawback for any kind of improvements in free speech that may result If he's putting us on the fast track to the end of the human race through environmental destruction and nuclear war, I don't think free speech is really going to matter.
Trump was not running on any "free speech" imperative if I recall correctly. He was actually mostly known for libel cases against people speaking freely and had his open war on the "free" media going. But the various social justice groups are pretty upset overall and people who felt repressed or attacked by such groups, mostly by packs of civil rights activists online, piling on preferences, word usage or voiced thoughts on gender issues or gender changes, will feel some relieve perhaps. Then again, reverting federal laws on transgender toilets, pushing it back to state level, is not exactly meaningful "anti-PC" reform of any kind.

It's hard for me to contemplate on environmental destruction and nuclear war having become a real possibility just since January 2017. That sounds all a tad hysterical considering the actual environmental destructions and nuclear stand-offs of the last 75 years.
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David Quinn
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

Post by David Quinn »

Going back to an exchange that happened between Kevin and jimhaz a few days ago.....
Kevin Solway wrote:
jimhaz wrote:
Kevin Solway wrote:I don't believe that Trump is in any way a remedy for the SJWs, but I do believe he is a hindrance to them, and that his presidency gives time for the anti-SJWs to rally and organize themselves, and for the wind to naturally go out of the sails of the SJWs
The wind wont go out of the SJW’s. What they do is based on their personalities. You might get a few years where they become less demanding, but it will be back to the norm soon enough. It's an outcome of the emancipation of women.
Very probably, in which case something will need to be done soon.
Kevin Solway wrote:
jimhaz wrote:Will men’s work places change, will women be allowed to be aggressive, will women be turned off academia… things like that.
I expect there to gradually be more separation between men and women. For example, in the future there will probably be separate male and female universities.
I would like to hear more about what the anti-SJW people actually envisage when it comes to this issue.

Given that the Trump rebellion is essentially an exercise in trying to wind things back towards the Middle Ages again, and given that, as Jim says, the nature of the SJWs and indeed women more generally is unlikely to change very much in the foreseeable future, what exactly is the plan here? Are we going to be forcibly separating men and women? Are we going to be revoking women’s rights? Are we going to be using old-school macho force?

The reason I ask is that it is noticeable just how much the conservative movement in the West is starting to mimic the conservative Islamic movement. Conservative Muslims have long been seeking to make Islam great again by winding things back to the 8th century. They have long shown themselves to be anti-science, anti-liberal, anti-minorities, pro-law and order, pro-authoritarian rule, etc - i.e. the very things which sum up the Trump agenda.

It also should be noted that the very male-orientated society of traditional Islam, with its mode of completely hiding women away as much as possible, has not produced a culture that is interesting, refined or enlightening in any way, at least not in modern times. Indeed, from all appearances, life in a conservative Muslim country looks impoverished and oppressive. Whenever you see a conservative Muslim, you see someone who is angry and joyless, as though their heads were perpetually shrouded in a dark cloud. Much like the conservatives and right-wing people in the West, in fact.

So what's the plan? Any ideas?
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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Kevin Solway wrote:
Dan Rowden wrote:Gamergate - nerd soap opera.
Insulting people is never going to win people over to your side. It has never worked, and never will.
You wouldn't want to read this book, then:
  • Christians are like spiders, who spin their sticky and tangled webs upon the cross, using it as a convenient support. Within a few years, the webs build up, until the cross is no longer visible - a dark and dirty shadow. Here the spiders lay in wait - to trap unsuspecting passers-by.

    "Woe to you, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering." (Luke 11:52)

    Just as a spider has no chance of ever fathoming the profound philosophic meaning of the cross, nor does a Christian have the slightest hope. Such creatures are not even fit to be taught about spirituality, let alone practice it! They take every priceless gem of religious teaching and totally distort it to suit their own egos.

    Christians claim to worship an infinite God, but they instead worship a finite one, and of their own making (either Jesus himself as God, or a grandfather figure, or some other necessarily limited conceptual form). To worship the finite in the name of the infinite is the worst kind of idolatry, and is truly using God's name in vain.

    Are not Christians also like cannibals? - for they live by eating the man who died for them.

    Christians not only use the teachings of Jesus as a crutch (or a stretcher) for their egos; they actually live off it. They make cunning and protracted plans to make the teachings their primary source of sustenance for the rest of their lives. At least ordinary cannibals get the job over with quickly!
What made the author think he was qualified to say such insulting things?

Kevin Solway wrote:
Dan Rowden wrote:I'm surprised the MSM gave a damn about any of it.
They gave a damn about it because they saw how damaging it was to themselves.
As someone who led an ordinary life during those years and read the news daily, but in a causal fashion, I never heard a single word about the issue - ever. Nor did I ever come across anyone who talked about it.
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Matt Gregory
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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Hey Jupiviv,
jupiviv wrote:Hi Matt. I actually remember you! So tell me, when you say you are in total agreement with David etc., does that mean you think that Trump and Putin are evil geniuses who want to take over the world?
Yeah, I think that's pretty inescapable. Power is a rush and an addiction and Trump definitely has it and shows no signs of stopping or restraint of any kind. He says that our military is falling apart so he can increase military spending, even though there are no imminent threats to our country. So he's probably increasing it so he can make money investing in that industry. More war will justify even more military spending and therefore more profits. It sickens me to think about how stupid, yet how likely it is.
Do you also believe that Trump is incomparably more materialistic and belligerent in terms of foreign policy than all the politicians in the Democrat party?
Oh yeah, Trump is terrible. His treatment of Mexico is utterly shameful. Australia, too. And whoever else, I've lost track. My worst fear is that he'll destabilize the Mideast so much that some large scale nuclear exchange will happen over there, which could spell the end of the human race very quickly.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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Kevin Solway wrote:
Dan Rowden wrote:It's my honest assessment of the dynamic.
Yes, and it was Hilary Clinton's honest assessment that Trump supporters are "deplorable and irredeemable", and that didn't go very well for her. Such assessments of large and diverse groups of people comes across as extremely condescending.
That's exactly what 99% of people who have seen QRS philosophy have always said about it. So I've guess we've been wrong all this time.

You need to read more closely, Kevin. I explicitly said it was my assessment of the dynamic. I'm not here to convince others to my view of it so I literally don't care if they find that assessment insulting, or for that matter, if you do. It's not the whole story, of course, there were/are important cultural themes running through and underpinning Gamergate, ostensibly the libertarian/authoritarian divide, and Gamergate might be said to be symbolic and/or indicative of those broader cultural themes, but it is not central to them nor their genesis. And I don't see how anyone could describe the subsequent schism of the Youtube atheist 'community' as anything but soap opera.

Oh and 'nerd' is not a pejorative term and hasn't been for, oh, maybe 20 years. We're all nerds here.

Btw, have you ever, one single time, directed this chastisement and advice regarding 'insult' to Milo?
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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David Quinn wrote:
Matt Gregory wrote:I've never seen Kevin care so much about appealing to the public. Now I'm sure I've entered the Twilight Zone.
You and me both, brother. If I was into conspiracy theories, I would think that aliens have been abducting people and sending back reprogrammed clones in their place. That seems to be the only explanation which can account for it. The whole thing is so very, very bizarre.
I'm thinking with all the technological advances in data collection, statistics and machine learning, the news agencies have figured out how to trigger people's emotions so precisely with media that they've finally figured out mass mind control. The things they are discovering about machine learning is pretty crazy and it would be pretty dumb for the media to not use it. They are in the business of selling audiences to other businesses, so it's naturally the next step.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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David Quinn wrote:
Kevin Solway wrote:
Dan Rowden wrote:I'm surprised the MSM gave a damn about any of it.
They gave a damn about it because they saw how damaging it was to themselves.
As someone who led an ordinary life during those years and read the news daily, but in a causal fashion, I never heard a single word about the issue - ever. Nor did I ever come across anyone who talked about it.
We're really talking here about the 'specialist' media, David, something akin to the journalism of the finance sector. In that sector many journalists reporting on the gaming world were falling hook, line and sinker for the SJW rhetoric - and gamers pushed back (and rightly so I hasten to add).

Apparently it is valid to extrapolate from that specific industry failing - the scope of which is highly debatable in itself - to the idea that all of the MSM, save 5% - which probably means Brietbart - is evil and corrupt and fake.

And just to put it on the record, I am 90% behind the gamers in the whole matter. They are on the right side of the argument for me, other than when their behaviour sinks so low it ironically makes the argument of the SJWs (i.e. in regard to sexism and violence in gaming and its purveyors).
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
Matt Gregory wrote:I've never seen Kevin care so much about appealing to the public. Now I'm sure I've entered the Twilight Zone.
That's because it's pretty invisible and you need special decoder glasses to see such care. All I see, and it's in the first post, was David and Dan caring about their "reputation" because of Kevin's online activism elsewhere, doing something.
Yeah, I originally had "you guys" in there but changed it to "Kevin" at the last minute because I couldn't find the posts that originally made me say that. It is in fact all three of them. I'm not really judging them, I just think it's curious.

Edit: Ah, I see you and David already went over this over a month ago.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
Matt Gregory wrote:I think having a president whose only values are getting more rich and more famous is too big of a drawback for any kind of improvements in free speech that may result If he's putting us on the fast track to the end of the human race through environmental destruction and nuclear war, I don't think free speech is really going to matter.
Trump was not running on any "free speech" imperative if I recall correctly.
No, I was thinking of why Kevin would be in favor of Trump, and that's because of the feminist academics censoring his ideas on the internet. I get the impression that that's his biggest concern.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:He was actually mostly known for libel cases against people speaking freely and had his open war on the "free" media going. But the various social justice groups are pretty upset overall and people who felt repressed or attacked by such groups, mostly by packs of civil rights activists online, piling on preferences, word usage or voiced thoughts on gender issues or gender changes, will feel some relieve perhaps. Then again, reverting federal laws on transgender toilets, pushing it back to state level, is not exactly meaningful "anti-PC" reform of any kind.
Well, maybe it's a relief just not having Clinton in office to do whatever feminist thing she could do to suppress free speech. I'm not even sure what that could be.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:It's hard for me to contemplate on environmental destruction and nuclear war having become a real possibility just since January 2017. That sounds all a tad hysterical considering the actual environmental destructions and nuclear stand-offs of the last 75 years.
I would think the last 75 years would confirm that it's a real danger and now Trump is a whole new level of bravado. The boundaries barely held 50 years ago, are they are now going to be pushed a lot harder. I don't think it's hysterical given the stakes, but hopefully it is.
Last edited by Matt Gregory on Sun Mar 19, 2017 12:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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Dan Rowden wrote:We're really talking here about the 'specialist' media, David, something akin to the journalism of the finance sector. In that sector many journalists reporting on the gaming world were falling hook, line and sinker for the SJW rhetoric - and gamers pushed back (and rightly so I hasten to add).

Apparently it is valid to extrapolate from that specific industry failing - the scope of which is highly debatable in itself - to the idea that all of the MSM, save 5% - which probably means Brietbart - is evil and corrupt and fake.
That seems to be what's happening, yes.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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Matt Gregory wrote: Oh yeah, Trump is terrible. His treatment of Mexico is utterly shameful. Australia, too. And whoever else, I've lost track.
We can add Germany and Britain to that list, just from the past couple of days. Trump is seriously embarrassing America in front of the world and I just don't see how this is sustainable. I can't imagine there are many Americans, either Democrat or Republican, who are happy about it. The Republicans are keeping quiet about it at the moment, but how long can that continue? Something has to give.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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My assessment is that the only reason David started this thread is so he can push his political ideology.

The problem is that David's views are not philosophical truths, which could be proven absolutely using logic, but are mere subjective speculations which can be entirely false. And clearly I don't find David's views to be at all persuasive, and I believe them to be false. Such matters as David raises are subjective, and are not absolute.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

Post by jupiviv »

Matt Gregory wrote:Hey Jupiviv,
jupiviv wrote:Hi Matt. I actually remember you! So tell me, when you say you are in total agreement with David etc., does that mean you think that Trump and Putin are evil geniuses who want to take over the world?
Yeah, I think that's pretty inescapable. Power is a rush and an addiction and Trump definitely has it and shows no signs of stopping or restraint of any kind. He says that our military is falling apart so he can increase military spending, even though there are no imminent threats to our country. So he's probably increasing it so he can make money investing in that industry. More war will justify even more military spending and therefore more profits. It sickens me to think about how stupid, yet how likely it is.
Trump's position on military spending is asinine, but not because it will start wars. It's supposed to act as stimulation to the economy and not war. Assuming the money even exists (it doesn't), the economy won't improve because military hardware/installations don't generate revenue or increase productivity. It's basically a stimulus package for military contractors.

This idea is valid in a universe where only leftist bad ideas don't work. As such, it only serves as elevator music while Trump continues achieving nothing whatsoever. What is ironic however, is that such an idea has a perfect complement in the liberal belief in a universe where only rightist bad ideas don't work.
Do you also believe that Trump is incomparably more materialistic and belligerent in terms of foreign policy than all the politicians in the Democrat party?
Oh yeah, Trump is terrible. His treatment of Mexico is utterly shameful. Australia, too. And whoever else, I've lost track. My worst fear is that he'll destabilize the Mideast so much that some large scale nuclear exchange will happen over there, which could spell the end of the human race very quickly.
I am baffled every time I read this stupid argument about how the world will end because Trump will start one or more unspecified wars. The premise is that for some - again, unspecified - reason, Trump's wars are going to be much worse than the ones started or maintained by his predecessors. Unless you *hate* Trump, there is no reason why you should think that.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

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Kevin Solway wrote:My assessment is that the only reason David started this thread is so he can push his political ideology.

The problem is that David's views are not philosophical truths, which could be proven absolutely using logic, but are mere subjective speculations which can be entirely false. And clearly I don't find David's views to be at all persuasive, and I believe them to be false. Such matters as David raises are subjective, and are not absolute.
It is true that we are not dealing with absolute truths here. The whole thread concerns the empirical realm and thus things like one’s subjectivity, one's values and one’s experience comes into play. There is also the uncertainty and limitation of the senses to consider as well. All of this is perfectly understood.

But this is not a political thread. Not at all. At least not from my perspective. What we are really addressing here is spiritual behaviour. How should a wise person behave in this world? What is the best way to promote wisdom? What is the most rational course of action?

Nietzsche once observed, “To the swine all things become swinish”. I think that you have spent so much time over the past few years immersed in politics that you now automatically come to see everything from a political perspective. Everything is now filtered through the prism of politics. The idea of being apolitical no longer has any meaning for you. It has become instinctive and subconscious.

We often hear about young Muslims who visit jihadist sites and become radicalized, and who then travel to other countries in order to fight the infidels. I think a similar sort of thing has happened to you. You have become so involved in the SJW issue over the past few years that it has radicalized you. Now everyone you meet is either a colleague or an infidel; now you happily cheer on a suicide bomber like Trump because he promises to blow up the system of the infidels; now you don’t care if the world comes crashing down as long as it takes down as many infidels as possible. Victory over the infidels has become the only thing that matters to you.

You have become radicalized and it has caused you to forget who you are.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Matt Gregory wrote:
David Quinn wrote:
Matt Gregory wrote:I've never seen Kevin care so much about appealing to the public. Now I'm sure I've entered the Twilight Zone.
You and me both, brother. If I was into conspiracy theories, I would think that aliens have been abducting people and sending back reprogrammed clones in their place. That seems to be the only explanation which can account for it. The whole thing is so very, very bizarre.
I'm thinking with all the technological advances in data collection, statistics and machine learning, the news agencies have figured out how to trigger people's emotions so precisely with media that they've finally figured out mass mind control. The things they are discovering about machine learning is pretty crazy and it would be pretty dumb for the media to not use it. They are in the business of selling audiences to other businesses, so it's naturally the next step.
It's quite possible this was indeed one of the underlying success factors of Trump's campaign, and not his personality. Dan posted something about "'psychographic" data of Cambridge Analytica before. Although I'm pretty sure all big campaigns use them in the same way: Trump just had the biggest and best one, of course. When Geert Wilders last week before our elections appeared in the news about him adopting shelter cats and appearing in gossipy magazines relating to his marriage and privacy (note: being forced to hide in safe houses for 11 years, since he lives in one of the most free country in the world where you can say all you want), there clearly was something being used here which smelled like big data profiling.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

Post by jupiviv »

David Quinn wrote:Nietzsche once observed, “To the swine all things become swinish”. I think that you have spent so much time over the past few years immersed in politics that you now automatically come to see everything from a political perspective. Everything is now filtered through the prism of politics. The idea of being apolitical no longer has any meaning for you. It has become instinctive and subconscious.
I agree that Kevin has spent too much time in political movements, but I don't see any evidence that doing so has made him more irrational. He was clearly capable of recognising Trump's flaws when I pointed them out to him. On the other hand, you want him to unconditionally agree with all the stupid and irrational things you say about Trump, conservatives, alt rightists etc.

I've speculated that the motivation behind this thread was personal rather than political. Now with Trump in office, the personal has become the political (if it wasn't already) for many people in the west, including you. Since Kevin is your friend and mentor, you want to believe that he will be in general agreement with you on political matters. That's true in a sense, since logically speaking two completely rational people should agree even on political issues unless there is a case of mistaken identity.

In this case, the problem is irrationality rather than mistaken identity. For one thing, all that you (and Dan) seem to care about is that Kevin disagrees with you. There isn't any indication that you are prepared to admit your own irrationality, because every reason you have given for Kevin's disagreement involves Kevin's irrationality.
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Re: Statement about Solway and Trump

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Matt Gregory wrote:Hey Jupiviv,
jupiviv wrote:Hi Matt. I actually remember you! So tell me, when you say you are in total agreement with David etc., does that mean you think that Trump and Putin are evil geniuses who want to take over the world?
Yeah, I think that's pretty inescapable. Power is a rush and an addiction and Trump definitely has it and shows no signs of stopping or restraint of any kind. He says that our military is falling apart so he can increase military spending, even though there are no imminent threats to our country. So he's probably increasing it so he can make money investing in that industry. More war will justify even more military spending and therefore more profits. It sickens me to think about how stupid, yet how likely it is.
It's not even Trump's vision: it's mostly the military asking for the extra spending on maintenance ("rebuilding") and Trump clearly and openly leans for his overall strategy more on the military than for example Obama did. Then again the budget hike is hardly unusual historically [NYT fact check] and does not even include war budgeting. It does also suggest to raise veteran care, one of the things Trump actually did run on. Plus he probably won't find approval for the proposal and lets not talk Obama, who was out-budgetting G.W. Bush when it came to the military. But I guess he didn't want to start any new wars (cough-Libya).
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