Lol. Freudian slip. I guess I knew what you were really thinking.

The y'all comment is ever so slightly rude too. Why do you despise us Yanks so much? That was abundantly clear in your original post, and has been clear in hundreds of previous posts. Surely, you have some planks to remove from your own Canadian eyes first.

I don't despise all Yanks. I am, however, not overly fond of someone who would misquote me and then veer off into an irrelevant tirade in reference to my nationality.

Like "cowering wimps" was so much more civilized.

It is.
Good for you for finally getting it right.

Now let's move on to your understanding of what constitutes a "Freudian slip".
Parapraxis refers to what is in your unconscious mind (the speaker), not mine, no matter how clairvoyant you believe yourself to be.

Looks like the shows about to start :popcorn:

No. I'm done. It's silly.

The reference to "you" when used towards folks on the left can be applied to many of us, currently. In this country, we have often been wusses because of the American political system.

We think of ourselves (Americans) as being so damned accepting, but that's a big fat myth. The Left has been persecuted in the name of "democracy" many times in our history. In the past century, we've endured the 1920s-50s Red Scare (incl. anti-unionism, Communists being executed on faked treason charges), McCarthyism, Pro-Cuban Revolution citizens losing jobs and homes, peacefully protesting students shot and killed on a college campus in Ohio by US National Guardsmen (most students were just passing to classes-not even involved), voter registrants brutally killed in MS, on and on.

We (leftists) have every reason to be very cautious given the current political climate; however, a survey of history should give those believing us to be meek, proof that we are anything but.

As i mentioned ion a previous post, the US suicide rate has increased 30% since 2000:

Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.

The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.

The increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The rate rose by 2 percent a year starting in 2006, double the annual rise in the earlier period of the study. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999.

Yesterday i was on the Galveston Daily News website and i was reading the comments under a story on projected sea level rise, and 90% of commenters (most of whom can see the Gulf of Mexico from their houses) were calling climate change a liberal hoax perpetuated by money-hungry academics.

The reason US evangelicals are so rabid about Israel is because they need for the geopolitics of the situation to go a certain way so the apocalypse and rapture can hurry up and get here.

What i am saying is that the "dark cancer" is a death wish that has taken over about half of the population.

Our species as a whole is suicidal.

We've always had a suicide switch hiding inside of us-- you can see this in the apocalypse prophecies that feature in so many religions. Those are there because we know there has to be an ending to our story, because we also know, instinctively and subconsciously, that our existence is unsustainable-- just the mathematical fact of exponential population growth within a finite environment has a bad ending coded in from the beginning.

I think the suicide switch in our evolutionary makeup was triggered in 1945 when we dropped the first nuclear bomb. Our ending began that day-- as soon as it became possible for man to destroy life on earth, it also became inevitable on a long enough timeline. We know that, deep down, and we've been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since.

What's happening now is that more and more people are tired of the suspense and just want to get it over with.

That is why we have Trump/Brexit/Marine le Pen, Bolsnaro, etc. If enough countries slide off the rails and into nationalism, the cooperation we need to save ourselves becomes impossible.

Deep down, a lot of people want that. We can't save ourselves without some discomfort and a big slice of the population would rather we all die instead of cutting consumption of anything at all.

Its not Rs vs Ds, or progressives vs liberals-- it's Team Apocalypse vs Team Carry On-- except all of the infighting and purity testing we have in certain corners of Team Carry On makes me think the suicide bug has bit a lot of us, too. Like, let's take a decade-long time-out right here, with one minute to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, and throw a couple of elections so we can break the back of the two-party system.

A wrong turn
 

My jaw dropped when reading everything you wrote. OMG, where does one start?

The suicide stuff, omg, women, how tragic. I have read about suicide genes in simple organisms... Personally, have never felt suicidal, but am very aware of how things have changed from the time and in the way the Americans ended WWII - I would call it a a wrong turn - yes, indeed. It is the epitome of self-destruction.

As one see it (extensional awareness) this wrong turn has its own momentum, and events are moving in a way that cannot be reversed. Nothing one (or others who see it) could do or say will reverse this trend. There is a possibility of a new movement (one would call it a new seed) only in 200-300 years.

Personally, life protects me. One doesn't have to do a thing. Because of one side-effect of meditation, one observes with dispassionate indifference that the horrific tragedies that are impending with the resulting loss of millions of lives are inevitable.

One's one extensional awareness is such that one is wary to move, goodness in Canadians having dropped dramatically and exponentially. The movement away from the land to urban areas has greatly affected this drop.

There is also the fact that people do not realize that there is only one human brain, and like birds flying in a flock, they are moving in one direction. Even the more sentient fish, dolphins and whales, are beaching themselves - not to mention how so many animals are moving towards extinction.

Personally, one skips from rock to rock, along the stream of sorrow, which has become way to much to bear. Every time one rests (makes any kind of connection with someone involved in this dark trend) - even for a second, one senses the impending doom.

Such people have made everything involved in life an entertainment, an endless repetitive pleasure. (One would add that one has nothing against pleasure per se.)

One shudders in horror at the thought of even having someone like that come into close physical contact...

Not being into power, one is powerless, and can only observe. Enough said...

I actually heard a journalist use the phrase "late Capitalism" on the radio the other day. My mouth fell open. The leftist critique of Capitalism is going mainstream. I think because it's hard to deny anymore. The end result of Capitalism is that it consumes itself, destroying everything for short term gain.

I don't think Capitalism is an expression of some inherent human impulse although elements of it are. Early humans wiped out large mammals when we moved into new environments, and we wiped ourselves out in some places due to deforestation. But cooperation is also in our DNA. Think of bonobos. Even chimpanzee troops over time have as many cooperative peacemaker alphas as they do warrior Kings. Evolution makes sure there's always both to choose from. That doesn't mean we won't go extinct. We surely will at some point.

I honestly don't know if we'll survive on this planet. I don't care that much. I do know that the planet will survive anything we do to it. Some life will remain, and there will be a reboot. We'd have to completely burn the atmosphere off and boil the oceans to destroy 99 point whatever percent of life, and while we're fucking with them, we're not yet capable of that. (I googled, and even if all the nuclear weapons were detonated creating a long long nuclear Winter, scientists say only 75% of life on the planet would die. It's gonna take an asteroid to kill the planet until we invent something worse than nuclear weapons.) I think we'll kill ourselves long before we destroy the planet. I am not saying we won't cause a mass extinction. We already are. But life will go on.

I'm wandering. What I think we're seeing is the late stage of Capitalism. But something different will emerge. Even if inequality gets much worse, and the super rich arm themselves, etc., I think that something different and more egalitarian will emerge. There is too much information, there are too many smart people, for the one tenth of one percent to continue in power once our very lives are at risk (water rationing, for example).

But who knows? The Nazis were very successful where they ruled. Eighty percent of Germans supported them. Because the Nazis wiped out entire towns when there was resistance, resistance really was futile. The French resistance was meaningless. All resistance movements were except Tito's in what became Yugoslavia. A really determined Fascist regime, or group of regimes, could create some kind of temporary dystopia.

I agree it's not Republicans versus Democrats because liberals have been destroying our economies and the planet at a furious pace. It's the one tenth of one percent versus the rest of us. People who continue to support mainstream Dems, along with Republicans, remain blind to this and are part of the problem. The lesser of two evils will not save us from a nasty resolution to these global economic and evironmental changes.

I think we should split the country down the Mississippi River-eastern half-conservatives
western half-progressives..it's kinda happening already. I think they should be separate countries. The North & South tried it once but i think people may be more interested in it considering the political divide that exists now. I have heard California would like to be it's own country..I like the idea but they have one huge problem. Water.

If California wants to join up with Canada, we'll give them all the water they want.:welcome:

i really feel like the concepts we have of freedom and liberty, by now several centuries old, become less feasible as the population grows. There are just too many of us now for freedom to mean anything except the right to choices in consumption (capitalism) and the right to harm oneself/others/the planet without government interference (libertarianism.)

The planet is getting too full for everyone to just do what they want. It is too full for every nation to just do what they want. As we get more crowded, we have less freedom, and it gets harder to exercise the freedoms that remain without impacting everyone around you.

We have to redefine freedom as security, despite what Ben Franklin said ("Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.")

The first time i ever understood the difference between joy and happiness was when i read a negative definition of joy-- describing joy as the sense of well-being that arises from the removal of worry.

That is what freedom will mean in the 22nd century, for the 20% of humanity that remains. "Freedom" will mean "food, health, and housing security with sufficient opportunities for creating meaning."

your post reminded me of what happened after the plague...those that remained did enjoy more opportunity and more food...the upside of calamity...hm, food for thought:hangloose:

With all the environmental destruction, we'll be left with scarce resources. All the wild areas that have been opened for unconscientious hunting practices and exploitation of minerals and coal/oil, the turning back of fairly good environmental regulations, ice cap melting, and plastics in the ocean, etc. are signs of Capitalism decay.

One day we will have a Great Depression (1929) or Great Recession (2008) that cannot be resolved, a perfect opportunity for a Global Fascist takeover.

Individual countries need to be ready with an acceptable alternate form of government lest Fascism move in to fill the void. The most negative force will always invade and prevail like an untended lawn going to weed.

Well, Beto has declared. I like this Buttigieg guy. That meme of his reaction to the idea of Pence as President was a riot. And so real. It sounds like Biden's going to announce soon.

Tulsi Gabbard's apology/explanation for her homophobia did not strike me as heart felt. Who knows?

Dear Beto:

https://memebomb.net/wp-content/uplo...-no-meme-3.jpg

signed, someone who voted for you for Senate

I really like Mayor Pete! The CNN Town Hall he did on Sunday was amazing-- so intelligent, thoughtful, and authentic.

He said he has 85% of the donors he needs for the debate stage.

A Canadian POV: Read at your own risk :readfineprint:

Watching Beto in Iowa. Turns every question into a speech full of "anecdotes" of meeting this person or that; uses first name of his son Ulysses repeatedly. Sure is slick.

This Canadian much prefers Mayor Pete...no bombast, no arms waving, just thoughtful intelligent, often charming responses.And no two handed thumping handshakes.

I thought i was the only one that doesn’t care for Beto! The disjointed arm waving and spastic movements are unbearable to watch, and he manages to say nothing and still talk ceaselessly.

From what I have seen so far, we don’t have a winner among the bunch of candidates queuing up for the Democratic nomination...i’m starting to feel that beating Trump is going to take a miracle.

The Best Candidate for ...
 

I wonder whether those (on this site) who would like to see someone beat Trump are aware that the prospective Dem candidate must appeal to the average American (who may have voted for Trump in the past election), and not necessarily appeal to those here who are not at all the same as the average American ... said with the greatest respect, and obviously someone who I myself might not like either as the one who the Dems choose to run against Trump.

In our words, in this small little oasis, our povs may be counterproductive in terms of supporting the Dems winning.

I know we Americans appear to be incredibly stupid about our own political system, but we know that what WE (here on BFP) want is not a true sampling of what the dumbed down American public might vote for...dear God, do you have to be so patronizing?

Beto's arm movements
 

Trump made a similar denigrating comment about Beto's arm movements.

I watched the same coffee room intro and Q&A in Iowa as others did earlier today, and he did say something, actually quite a lot - about tariffs, about climate change, about teachers' salaries, even about accepting the "idea" of the new green deal, etc.

~
 

I have always practiced restraint when discussing another ctry's politics.

And, we could do this all day. I watched Beto at SXSW, and in speeches prior to that. I think he is disjointed, and spastic, and I don’t give a flying fuck if Trump said anything about anyone.

You are way off in your patronizing comments and lack of understanding of what I AM SAYING. So, go bother someone else with your comments about OUR politics and my opinion.

As i have mentioned (i always say that lately because i've been on here a loooong time and everything i say is a rerun, i feel) I read A LOT of science fiction.

One of my favorite authors, Cory Doctorow has written about "post-scarcity economies" and half-jokingly about "fully automated luxury space communism." He has also written about reputation economies.

Basically the principle is that increasing automation means scarcity will eventually be able to disappear, and won't continue to rule the economy unless we artificially maintain it (likely)

This is in line with AOC's comments the other day about how odd it is that we should have to fear automation.

As far as capitalism goes, i was pretty influenced by Max Weber, who said that the roots of capitalism lie in Judeo-Christian monotheism, and that it's spread was enabled by the Protestant Reformation and Calvinism (i know for a fact i ranted about this in the 2016 thread, as a lot of how Trump won has its roots in Calvinist ideas of wealth.) Definitely not an inherent human impulse.

Unfortunately, the lesser of two evils is the best we can hope for. Humanity has a "long tail." There will always be a broad spectrum of thought and only the middling ground is likely to achieve the critical mass that changes thought into action. We need extreme action, but the mainstream has the numbers.

If we dismiss everyone to the right of Bernie, we die.

We can't reject "the lesser of two evils." We have to colonize it.

This is why figures like Bernie and AOC are so important-- they are mainstreaming what was once an extreme, and making the lesser of two evils marginally less evil.

This is also why the condescension and aggression that leftists have sometimes expressed is so damaging. Every time we sneer at the centrists we shoot ourselves in the foot.

The right wing calls all non-right-wingers baby killers, says we are delusional and that our views are evidence of a mental disorder, and we feel like that makes it ok to police everybody's wokeness and gatekeep "woke" status against anyone of insufficient ideological purity.

AOC was widely quoted by the right-wing press for her comments at SXSW where she said:

“Stop trying to win people over, stop trying to enter a conversation thinking that you’re going to, like, ‘aha’ them into changing their minds. And so, I think, that, you know, we’ve kind of lost the art of conversation. So when I enter a conversation with someone I actually try to learn more about where they’re coming from, like I try — I actually use it as an experience to — like, let’s say, I’m talking to someone who’s saying something really racist and they don’t even realize that they’re saying something really racist, I — I asked some questions because I’m interested, I’m fascinated by that. How does that work, you know?”

“we have to learn to, like, really disarm ourselves in these conversations first of all, because we approach them with so much hostility and, like, they get mad and we get mad and all of these things and — and we have — so, part of it is, like, emotional work. And — and the second part of it is intention, like, what are you trying to get out of this conversation?”

"What are you trying to get out of this conversation?"

Indeed.

We need to remember that we are fighting to survive and the right wing is not. We can't afford the self-indulgence that they can.

For clarity, i am not calling out individuals here, but questioning decisions like the one to bar pro-life feminists from the Women's March.

Pro-life feminists are the lesser of two evils compared to Operation Rescue, and they do not have a pro-life legislative or judicial agenda. They are not a threat to us, but we decided we did not need their support.

I can't delude myself that mainstream Dems, liberals, are not as implicated in the systems that keep us hurling toward the precipice as Conservatives are.

I absolutely despise the neo-liberal politics of Clinton and Obama. The college admissions scandal is causing people everywhere to laugh at the meritocracy bullshit they've been hearing for so long.

Not only did liberals undermine unions, they allowed corporations to destroy industry. Jobs were not just exported when factories relocated, Dems, along with Republicans, applauded while the Bain Capitols of this world tore apart viable businesses and sold them for parts for short term profit.

Cannibalizing industry left them awash in cash which they invested in the financial instruments that collapsed our economy in 08.

Worker retraining programs were completely half assed and ineffective while Democrats endlessly endlessly blamed working people for not adjusting to the new global economy. Dems have been the kings of the meritocracy bullshit.

Then the unregulated and unethical financial industry took off because of the bound to fail mortgage backed securities. Corporations and the very rich had an even more difficult time finding places to put their wealth. So they tempted countries like Greece and Spain to take huge investments which could never be repaid. Everyone knew this, but it was the fucking establishment, like the neo-liberal World Bank, enabling it all.

After the crash, they forced austerity onto a number of countries. Literally tens of thousands of Greek children are now brain damaged from poor nutrition because of the worst years of austerity.

Every bullshit thing that was supposed to help working people in the US survive the depredations of the unregulated economy that Reagan and Clinton let loose on us was a lie. Almost no one was helped by Obama's programs to help people during the mortgage crisis. They didn't even spend the money initially allocated. Almost no one has been helped by the student debt forgiveness programs. And as I said, the retraining programs of the previous generation didn't make the tiniest dent.

And now they have come after public pensions and social security. The effort to destroy public employee unions and pilfer our pensions has been backed by Clintonite meritocracy liberals like Bill Gates.

On the issues that have led us to this place, where populism is appealing to people around the world, liberals are as guilty as conservatives. And voters know it. They know they've been lied to. The only thing that can combat fascist populism is the truth that comes from left-leaning populists like Bernie.

I believe that the liberal centre should and must hold. Without it we collapse into a chaotic gaping vacuum and the apocalyptic end that the extremes on both the Left and the Right seem so gleefully and confidently to predict becomes our fate.

The Centre IS Populst. That is where most of us are... in the middle, not wanting to be thrown into the flames of other people's extreme political and religious philosophies...the" Far This " and the " Far That ". The centre is a relative place, not fixed and it does move ( albeit slowly )to reasonable, agreeable positions.

I believe that the "liberal centre" is the well-spring of human and humane sanity.

A Clinton-era centrist Democrat explains why it’s time to give democratic socialists a chance

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ft-brad-delong

From a Washington Post editorial commenting on the above interview:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.60fd189140fd

So, simply put, the current political clime is fulfilling the prophesy prevalent in the 1980s, a time of recession and great fear as we had hostages held in Iran. Analysis of the minor political partys' results of 1980 is quite intriguing. Thus was my grad thesis in Marxist Studies/Political Philosophy.

On the Far Left were CP-USA, various Trotskyist parties, moving toward the top of a large circle was the Green Party moving to Dems with Jimmy Carter and across to Reps with Ronald Reagan. As the circle moves right and down one finds Lyndon LaRouche then David Duke. As the circle nears the very bottom, the Libertarian Party meets the right wing Anarchists-followed by the left Anarchists. This is where the circle meets.

The Right Wing was overwhelmingly extremist with KKK and conspiracy theorists like Lyndon LaRouche followed by the American Nazi Party with Right wing Anarchists backed up to the Left Anarchists with political positions almost imperceptibly different. Then up the curve were the Trotskyists and Stalinist Communist Parties.

The parties formed a political circle that comes together rather than the traditional line view of the political spectrum.

Coming election, it will be interesting and informative to look at the percentages these small "Alt-Right" and Libertarian. We could get a glimpse of what might be in store.

You're talking about Horseshoe Theory and there are very few two-word phrases that will get leftists online as riled up as that one.

I just feel like capitalism is totally fine when it comes to discretionary consumption items, but it never should have been applied to staple items, justice, health, education, warfighting, or politics.

And it seems willfully obtuse to insist capitalism has to be all or nothing. To insist that if we take profit out of life-or-death matters then the next thing you know we'll all have matching government haircuts and uniform scrubs, is disingenuous to the extreme, but we fall all over ourselves trying to disprove it..

The "mistake" of the mainstream dems (mistake in quotes because it is applied with the benefit of the doubt) was in believing that conservatives actually wanted the outcomes they claimed to want. Dems believed conservatives would work with them if they could get to a result that lay somewhere within the scope of what they could find tolerable.

This was never going to be the case, as conservatives don't actually want any of the things they talk about. They just want wealth and power. So dems compromised themselves making a good faith argument to a bad faith premise.

As i said, "mistake" gives the benefit of the doubt. Wealthy people are wealthy people first and foremost. To me it seems like the past 30 years have been "capitalism with patriarchy and white supremacy" vs "capitalism with ladies."

"Capitalism with ladies" is the lesser of two evils, by far (freedom from forced birth is still a pretty good deal), but neither party wants equality.

He got his 65,000. He'll be debating. A historic day.

And didn't I read that Jeb Bush is calling for Republicans to run? That would stir things up. I don't think it will happen. The base still really loves Trump.

Biden saying he has the most progressive record of anyone running --

I don't dislike him, but LOL.

Nobody wants the middle. Lol.

He is getting a lot of attention bc of the story about him learning Norwegian so he could finish a novel series in which only the first book had been translated, and for his response to Christchurch.

Honestly, we could do soooo much worse than nominating Mayor Pete. He's inexperienced, but he also has very little baggage. And they take half of your white card when you come out, so he still ticks the diversity box that so many centrist dems are insisting on.

And he honestly seems very thoughtful and he has that grace that gay people sometimes get when everybody disappoints you, early on, but you decide to love them anyway.

He does not seem to have a listening bone in his body. I just don't feel like you can tell him anything. He has that white-dude self-assurance that is completely certain that he has more to tell you than you could possibly tell him.

i like the middle..you stay warm and have a little of each..