I understand what you are attempting to communicate here, Baden...but I disagree with your first sentence so completely, that the remainder of the comment pales. — Frank Apisa

Ok, who decided to make the word "fuck" (for example) offensive and when? And who would be the "we" that could suddenly decide to designate it as unoffensive, and in what contexts, and how would we control the visceral reactions of others to that word in particular contexts? And what form would this collective decision make? How would it be enforced? Do you believe everyone has the power to consciously switch on and off their negative reactions to offensive words at will? Do you believe people would voluntarily do this on the basis of some democratic mandate or referendum to designate words differently?

BUT WHY? — Frank Apisa

We didn't decide to make words objectionable. Words make themselves objectionable by filling possibilities in the discourse. One of which is the possibility to be offended. You may as well ask why we 'made' some words more intense versions of others. For example, why do we have 'overjoyed' and not just 'happy'? Answer, because it expresses a possibility in the discourse which in turn fills in a human emotion (or a shade of one) that can be usefully expressed. Being offended is just another such affective state. And as long as it is, a word will fill in that space.

Don't waste your time on him. Future stupidities will meet an appropriate mod response.

Average people will come away with more faith in the ability of democratic systems to represent their interests, and they'll be invigorated to see that they can still participate in what is not yet a dead system. — VagabondSpectre

Excuse the delayed (and brief) reply. Anyhow, I'm less optimistic. I guess about a third will take the view you outlined, about a third will consider it a witch-hunt, and about a third will shrug their shoulders. Hyper-polarisation in effect.

Pelosi dragging her feet about impeachment disturbs me to no end, as if for expediency she wants to keep him in office to use as a shoehorn for a democratic candidate in 2020. I see it as a necessary catalyst to trigger reform. — VagabondSpectre

And here she demonstrates why strategic interests will continue to dominate over all else and justifies some of the paranoia of the opposition.

Guns make it easy and convenient to kill, quickly and efficiently, in anger, before one has the time for sober consideration. — Pattern-chaser

Didn't notice this point before. More or less what I said.



An increasingly dumbed-down population + dangerous weapons to play with = :fire: :death:

The first graph sums it up fairly well. The more dangerous the weapon, the more magnified the effect of the aggression involved. That's why 'dangerous' weapons like guns are so-called. I sometimes resent having to make these obvious points, but it seems they must be made.

Go ahead, remove the guns and watch people go back to swinging pipes and bats and knives; they'll die just as often. — Shamshir

No, they won't. The simple fact borne out by empirical evidence is that the more powerful the weapon the more enhanced the affects of aggression applied to it. Someone with a bat may expend all their aggression hitting you with it once, which may harm but not kill you, but the same level of aggression expressed through pressing the trigger of a gun much more easily will. That's why we don't allow people to buy grenades and rocket launchers. Because we know that they are too dangerous to be put in the hands of regular humans who are prone to sudden fits of pique. So, the principle is accepted everywhere, including in America, that people will die more the more dangerous weapons are available. It's just that in America, which is already awash with guns, people don't feel safe enough to give theirs up and don't fully appreciate the advantages in security of an environment where everyone has.

A Google Scholar search using the terms 'Nietzsche' and 'Lamarck' brings up some results. Have you access to a uni library search engine? That would also help.

Trump's lies are a satirical mirror to the nature of politics itself. He's showing us what we already are and we're relieved to find nothing new. That's why we don't, on the whole, care. There's a cathartic moment to be found there, but not a renaissance of what never was. If you don't like strawberry cancer, you just go back to vanilla.

More stuff will come out. It's not getting any better for him. Although it's probably not getting all that worse either considering what we already know. In any case, the Dem leadership will be thinking strategy not morality. Expect it to drag on a while.

They shouldn't impeach until it becomes politically impossible not to. Otherwise they risk feeding the witch-hunt narrative which Trump will milk for all it's worth. Having some Dems clamouring for impeachment while the leadership appears to resist is about the right strategy for now. When the dam breaks, you want the water to drown your target not buoy him.

Mark Fisher - The Weird and the Eerie

So good 2.

See you that and raise you this:

Polls can be expected to be wrong by a few percentage points sometimes. If they weren't then something strange would really be afoot. There might be some discussion to be had as to why they are wrong in particular instances, but there's nothing particularly strange about the Australian election. It was always predicted to be a close result and it was.

Embracing your tribe? — ssu

There isn't a tribe in the world absent of members who can't fire their poison arrows straight, but when they hit the target, I'll applaud. Just highlighting some hypocrisy really.

Here's how American media reported the incident: — ssu

"Hitmen" is hyperbole but that did look considerably more traumatic than a milkshake in the groin. :brow:

But the protesters are anti-democratic. Whereas Farage and co. who lied their way to a narrow victory for a cause the most destructive version of which they are now pursuing with gusto against the will of the majority of both Parliament and the public are... Where was I going with this?

So saying that political violence isn't OK means... that I find it more objectionable than selling arms to Saudi Arabia??? — ssu

That claim was more of a general critique.

Sorry, have to go to sleep. Working day today. — ssu

Me too. Good night!

You're asking far too much... — ssu

I should learn not to try to give people homework. :razz:

I had edited to 'by' rather than 'between' above btw as the original was a bit misleading wrt my intention. I'll take what you said on board anyhow and let you respond to @fdrake.

@ssu Here's another claim: The overwrought objections to antifa's moderate levels of extralegal activity are based on said group's lack of political power not on any solid ethical grounds. You'd have to be suffering from some degree of mental illness (at least I didn't say 'you'd have to be bonkers'!) to argue that kicking a few fascist arses (shock/horror!) is more morally objectionable to, random example, selling arms to Saudi Arabia to bomb Yemeni civilians (business as usual...).

What about violence by "justice" states?

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

"A preventive war is a war or military action initiated to prevent a belligerent or neutral party from acquiring a capability for attacking. The party being attacked has either a latent threat capability or has shown through its posturing that it intends to follow through with a future attack."

What's your position on that? Ok for massive military campaigns but not for neutralizing fascist bullies on the streets? Or no?

Let's not mention the systemic violence the prevailing ideologies of "justice" states inflict all over the developing world.

My claim is that you don't have a coherent ethical position on violence. Show me I'm wrong.

Now you're adding qualifications to what was a sweeping statement. Keep adding a few more and we may get to agreement. I'm saying forget the "politics" for a moment and ask yourself, could an antifa member be seriously ethically engaged? Is that possible? Notice the asymmetry in that it doesn't even make sense to ask that of the fascists who make no pretence to be.

No idea what you're talking about. But putting everyone who uses violence on the same ethical terms is madness. And yes, the FR were the "terrorists".

Like the French Resistance and the Nazis? Ok, odd ethical position to take...

Seriously???? You start to remind me of the calls for arming teachers when there is a school shooting.

No, the real way is for the police simply to treat these groups seriously and separate them and preserve order. — ssu

My point here is that not even being able to countenance the fact that some illegal antifa actions/assaults might be ethically justified makes you the one not ethically engaged, not them. It's just too easy to outsource everything without qualification to the police. Again, that doesn't justify any particular action but the argument that "it's illegal" isn't on its own terms convincing.

Also, putting anti-fascists on a par with fascists in terms of the language used to describe them is hardly ideologically neutral.

[Edit: Cross-posted with fdrake's (much more comprehensive) take above.]

Mark Fisher - Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

:up: :up:

@ssu To deny yourself extra-legal options is not a prerequisite to being ethically engaged. That doesn't imply that the obverse positioning justifies any particular action, but it does imply that efforts to maintain an appearance of virtue can cloak a simple inability to read beyond conditions deliberately designed to obscure right action, or worse, cowardice in the face of them.

But if there had been enough antifa to beat the living shit out of those guys and prevent the killing, they'd have been labelled a terrorist threat. Makes ya wonder.

f you think that to be a vigilante is totally OK or that the police cannot handle some small fringe cabal of neonazis, then I have to disagree. — ssu

Like the small fringe cabal of fine neo-nazis that murdered Heather Heyer in Charlottesvile? The police clearly handled that great.

And if your opponent takes their gloves off? — fdrake

They never had any gloves to begin with. Makes handling the levers of power a bit fiddly.

I don't want to peddle representations poetically, I want to be able to do alchemy with them. — fdrake

Yes. This.

Feel free to run anything you want by me btw (either here or by PM) for an opinion FWIW. I don't often read poems I see here more then once but I've read yours several times so there's some there there for me.

Really appreciate your interest. You would probably see more than I consciously intended. It came out in bursts and seemed right and I'm aware of certain connections and meanings and it was kind of cathartic. Anyway, glad you got something from it.

Oh cheers, it's as much poetic prose/thinly disguised slice of autobiography as poem. A lot of wordplay and fun with sounds. :smile:

Yes, sure:

Whale burps noisily along, patter of footsteps and the stink of his brain, unhappy alliance…

…Take me down to the underground…

An old song, memory’s reject, the underground, wisp of bounce, uncoiled spring crawls up leg, welcome thought, welcome thought, freshening of the grey.

Slide in an’ out, hedge-baked souls, a dark plethora, a fixed movement to every step, first this way and then that, as if in a dream predicted and the whole lot rearranging forms, human mud through which he must glide. Dance, dance and through. The mud must not stick, the soul a-sheen working its way through, shining soul a-bounce with the glow of otherness.

To the underground where none but the living be!

Now Whale was fresh with the bargy see? Had spent a month out at sea, so to speak, a clearing of the waves, and when all had settled a zeroing in, the streets parted afore, every bric-a-brac knick knack flotsam and jetsam form motionless in his sights, enough to shift, he might have been a gymnast, off the floor, but you wouldn’t know it, looking at him now coming towards, another shape shadow early evening glowed, stop a minute though.

Stop here and watch and there’s something strange, in the slow glitter of his step, a coordination of all from top to toe, if you could see his eyes you’d know. But you can’t with that hood up and head down it’s a wonder he can see at all and what’s he looking at anyway? Picking his way along the path, avoiding the cracks, what?

The air’s a warm mull, a slow ablution, if you’re the air you can be inside out. But you’re out and he’s in and as he passes you now like the warm drag of a cig there’s a whoosh through your lungs and a heady feeling that must be just the time of day, move on, the clock has spoken, he’s gone and up there on the bright screen above the square your attention caught, the colors and the clock, get along, get along, home, home, the fires of the warm screen bray.

What’s home for Whale? Well where he’s going in the mulled warm air, wine to his cosy heart, the future’s a drink that makes the present sweet, hoe and hoe, step by step.

I didn't get the intent of the format but it struck me as 'right' anyhow. And as I said I find that difficult. For example, I have a written version of the below (the first part of a longer poem) for which I've tried various formats none of which seem to work as well as just going at it verbally.

The rhythm works better for me at the start than towards to the end. But I'm mostly impressed with some of the imagery like the photograph/pictogram bit, which I find provocative, and the experiment with format, which type of thing I find difficult and usually just end up disregarding as a layer.

:up:

Ironically, this OP originally got caught in the spam filter. I haven't seen anything else there though or in the change log where mod edits are stored.

*Washes hands and leaves the scene.*

As long as it's not Heineken. :vomit: :wink:

I just rolled a die. The laws of probability told me there was an over 80% likelihood that a 6 wouldn't show up. But it did. So, excuse me for not taking the laws of probability too seriously.

See the problem.

As it happens, the average of polls panned out within the margin of error. And Clinton won the popular vote as expected. What the polls didn't correctly predict was the electoral college win because she won in the wrong places. Less chance of that with Biden and if the RCP national average still has him up by 8% (outside the margin of error) on election night, he wins and wins big, or I eat my die.

The question is will he get there (win the primary) and maintain that advantage. It's a long campaign.