It's up to Tiff what she puts on the page and she has a good record, so let's not go off-topic on this and move on, please.

Been reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Now I know who Trump is basing his presidency on, it's the character of Johnny Gentle, the unlikely President of the USA in the book ("This is Johnny Gentle, né Joyner, lounge singer turned teenybopper throb turned B-movie mainstay, for two long-past decades known unkindly as the 'Cleanest Man in Entertainment’ (the man’s a world-class retentive, the late-Howard-Hughes kind, the really severe kind, the kind with the paralyzing fear of free-floating contamination..)"

--------

Mario’s openly jejune version of his late father’s take on the rise of O.N.A.N. and U.S. Experialism unfolds in little diffracted bits of real news and fake news and privately-conceived dialogue between the architects and hard-choice-makers of a new millennial era:

...

GENTLE: So we’re sympatico on the gradual and subtle but inexorable disarmament and dissolution of NATO as a system of mutual-defense agreements.

P.M. CAN. [Less muffled than last scene because his surgical mask gets to have a prandial hole]: We are side by side and behind you on this thing. Let the EEC [The EU] pay for their oown defendings henceforth I say. Let them foot some defensive budgets and then try to subsidize their farmers into undercutting NAFTA. Let them eat butter and guns for their oown for once in a change. Hey?

GENTLE: You said more than a mouthful right there, J.J. Now maybe we can all direct some cool-headed attention to our own infraternal affairs. Our own internal quality of life. Refocusing priorities back to this crazy continent we call home. Am I being dug?

P.M. CAN: John, I am kilometers ahead of you. I happen to have my Term-In-Office-At-A-Glance book right with me here. Now that the big frappeurs are being put doown, we are wondering what is the date I can be pencilling in for the removals of NATO ICBM frappeurs from Manitoba.
...
Nobody who wasn’t actually there at the 16 January meeting knows just what was said when or by whom, the Gentle administration being of the position that extant Oval Office recording equipment was a veritable petri dish of organisms.
-----

But that's the Daily Fail for you. To recast the complex, and usually irresolvable problems of the family courts as feminist conspiracy. Read a better journal. — unenlightened

:clap:

You can't fully trust any media, and you need to do your own research if you're really interested in as objective a viewpoint as possible, but there has to be some nuance and recognition of degree when judging media outlets. The BBC are non-profit and held accountable by independent regulating bodies, which are required to rationally debate issues of bias and can impose punitive measures for any bias discovered. Not a perfect system, but it's one that tends to produce stories that are tied to fact and when they are not consequences ensue. Alex Jones, on the other hand, competes in the "market place of ideas" but as you more or less pointed out yourself can therefore say anything that helps sell his vitamin pills* as long as it doesn't contravene YouTube's terms of service. There is a huge market in the market place of ideas for fantastical ideas such as Pizza Gate, Birtherism etc. posing as truths partly just because they are more exciting than reality. Fox News and CNN fall somewhere in the middle. They exhibit obvious Pro and anti-Trump bias and package and sell that to Republicans and Democrats respectively. But they are still required to base their biased reporting to a large extent on the real world** as they are mainstream media and expected to show some degree of accuracy.

*(Just as an addendum, it's in Alex Jones' interest to maintain a gullible audience with regard to his content not just because the content is popularly fantastical but because a gullible audience are exactly the type of people who are likely to buy his fake pills. With his business model, he literally can't not run stupid stories without attracting people who won't buy his products and driving away those who will.)

**Hannity and Pirro are notable exceptions to this and not much of a step up from Jones.

He was directed by the FBI not to answer those questions, which they determined compromised the investigation (your opinion on their import isn't relevant here) and consulted his lawyers when he was asked, as is his right, which was confirmed by members of the congress at the hearing.

I agree he's a nobody and this is a distraction, but my point is that speculation about him getting life in prison as the video title suggests (basically for not liking Donald Trump) is beyond the realms of rational consideration. And no, you can't draw an equivalency with all news agencies. The BBC does not equal Alex Jones, and CNN, for all its faults, is not the same as Jeanine Pirro, who is the media equivalent of WWE.

How are the text messages evidence he lied under oath?

Define "define".

So apart from some silly entertainment videos, where is your evidence he did either of those two things? Give a proper source.

I suppose anything goes in the lounge but "Judge" Jeanine Pirro does entertainment and Trump PR not news. Will you be posting Hannity videos next? How low are you going to go, Agu?

Moving on to men, Agu, what makes you think the number would be higher in the US than elsewhere? The US is one of the most religious and socially conservative of the advanced democracies. If you're right, increased levels of religion and social conservatism would seem to turn men into relatively rabid sex maniacs. I just don't know what you're trying to argue.

So, largely drunk young women in nightclubs being chatted up by men and then on your presumption being taken away for sex equate to a random sample of women from the general population being stopped in the street? Let's try again, of those women you know well who did not join your friend's birthday party to cavort around while you bravely fought against the imposition of sexual immorality on your person, have you seen more than fifty percent of them get spirited away for sex with random strangers on a first meeting, or do you just presume that would be the case? And if so based on what?

Or tell us how many American or western women do you know well? What's their background and what leads you to believe they could be so easily convinced into having sex with a celebrity on first meeting?

See, that's insane to me, but it does help us to contextualize your world view. I'll say this, I know at least ten western women well (and I have no evidence to suggest American women, whom I've met many of, are significantly different in the realm of sexual mores) and I'm sure none of them would accept a random offer of sex on the street from anyone, but would find it creepy and disgusting. So my answer would be roughly zero. The question then arises as to who the hell you have been hanging out with of the fairer sex? Do you spend your days in houses of ill-repute, go-go bars or randomly creeping around docklands areas in the wee hours? Are these the only women you know?

And if you ran the experiment on women? What's your answer. I'm all ears...

Dude, the point is you are burdened with a caricature of the being called "American woman". There are American women on this very forum. Why don't you ask them how willing they would be to drop their knickers for a handsome celebrity on first meeting? Then after you get the shit verbally slapped out of you recognize they are people with mostly some moral integrity and not walking pussies waiting to be fucked by Brad Pitt. Please...

If we did an experiment, and Brad Pitt walked up to a randomly picked woman on the street, and asked her for sex, out of 10 women, how many do you reckon would say no in the US of A? Or Angelina Jolie walked up to 10 men and asked them for sex... how many you reckon would say no there? — Agustino

If AJ walked up to me in the street and asked me for sex (again, she really needs to stop doing that), I'd be like "Angelina baby, you gots to stop listening to Agustino. He's been sniffing powdered holy books and really needs to get out and meet some real live humans that don't just exist in his fevered sex-addled imagination fuelled by watching too many Russian porno vids starring Donald Trump, urine, and assorted women of ill-repute". And then I would bless myself and walk away knowing I had made the world a better place.

Sorry, don't have specific numbers for you. On the general point, we're not under siege but there's enough work to keep us ticking over. I probably delete a couple of OPs a week and then there's PMs and dealing with feedback and discussions in the mod forum, and so on. Definitely not under siege but we can't afford to be too complacent either. Seems to be less spam though since we got the filter up and running.

Haven't got round to watching the video yet. Adams might be worth listening to. I find Dave Rubin to be lazy and clueless though so it puts me off a bit.

Oh, didn't know about that one.

Absolutely, Trump has managed to turn many of his supporters into mindless parrots for his talking points, and they are, with regard to him, incapable of any form of critical thought or even basic reasoning. As in, for example, when he tells hundreds of apparent lies, they'll deny any of them are actually lies. Or when he says words that mean things that are obvious in context, they'll deny that's what he actually meant because it makes him look bad. And so on.

Even Putin says he's not a friend of the United States. I think his exact words were, and I quote, "We are not your friend." Apparently, that's not clear enough.

Good article on Trump by a solid intelligent conservative, George F. Will.

"What, precisely, did President Trump say about the diametrically opposed statements by U.S. intelligence agencies (and the Senate Intelligence Committee) and by Putin concerning Russia and the 2016 U.S. elections? Precision is not part of Trump’s repertoire: He speaks English as though it is a second language that he learned from someone who learned English last week. So, it is usually difficult to sift meanings from Trump’s word salads. But in Helsinki he was, for him, crystal clear about feeling no allegiance to the intelligence institutions that work at his direction and under leaders he chose.
...
The explanation is in doubt; what needs to be explained — his compliance — is not. Granted, Trump has a weak man’s banal fascination with strong men whose disdain for him is evidently unimaginable to him. And, yes, he only perfunctorily pretends to have priorities beyond personal aggrandizement. But just as astronomers inferred, from anomalies in the orbits of the planet Uranus, the existence of Neptune before actually seeing it, Mueller might infer, and then find, still-hidden sources of the behavior of this sad, embarrassing wreck of a man."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-sad-embarrassing-wreck-of-a-man/2018/07/17/d06de8ea-89e8-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html?utm_term=.e985d7892512

(To get past the paywall and read the full article on mobile, disable javascript, and on a PC press stop loading as quickly as possible).

There is a kind of extreme loyalty among his base that makes rational conversation impossible. You might as well be talking to a North Korean about Kim Jong Un. It's impossible for them to say anything negative about him even when the negatives are obvious.

But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she spoke with Trump who said he was "saying 'no' to answering questions" and not to the reporter's question itself.." — Michael

That's a lie. And by a 'lie' I mean a 'banana', obviously.

There's no doubt some hyperbole on both sides, but you can also apply this "syndrome" to both sides: Obama derangement syndrome (Birtherism etc.), Hillary derangement syndrome (Lock her up/emails etc). In fact, Trump's own deranged efforts to throw dirt at others seem less well-founded and have attracted much less bipartisanship than the criticisms of him. So, it seems like nothing more than a snappy one liner to feed to his base. I don't see it as having any legs beyond that.

On the policy issue, it's much more about branding and personality than policy in the US. There is plenty of evidence out there (and plenty of depressing videos) to show that Americans in general know little or nothing about the policy differences between candidates of their own party in the primaries and have only a very basic idea about policy differences among the candidates of different parties in the general (it's not just America either, policy ignorance and focus on personality is a global problem). The fact that Trump had great name recognition and had been on TV, was a businessman, and came across as much more relatable and non-political than most politicians was why he was voted in. His policy platfrom (apart from immigration where he was a bit more specific "Ban Muslims/Build a wall") was always a mess and contradictory. I mean, his policy on healthcare was "we'll get everyone great healthcare" and on the military was "we'll have a great military" and wasn't any clearer than that, and didn't need to be.

Can you deal with the point about retributive punishment and recidivism and stop going on about the fact that Norway is different from the US? Forget Norway if it makes you happy. How do you think you can reduce your sky-high recidivism rates?

:halo:

When you become a rich elite and book your spot in Trump tower, I will come gunning for you with my socialist ressentiment... and several requests for material goods I covet. :up:

Up to you. Anyone can start a discussion at any time. If you want a significantly different result though I only suggest you make it significantly different.

I think Hanover quoted the OP. So, can you use that as a basis, rewrite it and run it by me first by PM please.

(Edit: Actually it was Benkei.)

Well, wouldn't a more constructive approach be to try to rewrite the OP to make it more obviously philosophical? My impression was that you wrote what you loved about Trump which is the point as you outlined above. But you didn't seem to be asking for that to be discussed in the ensuing discussion but instead simply asking other posters to write what they loved about Trump as you did. That's where I thought the major weakness in the OP was. Maybe there's some misunderstanding about your intention but there's no reason for to believe StreetlightX was afraid of your idea.

Totally agree. My other major point was about retributive punishment and recidivism rates. That we should aim for lower recidivism rates as Nordic countries do because the ones who suffer most from high recidivism rates are the extra victims of the extra crimes of reoffenders. In other words, I would support better conditions in prisons even if that meant prisoners had an easier time there if they could at the same time be weaned off crime instead of schooled on how to do more because I'm less interested in hurting them than lowering the overall crime rate which is driven by re-offenders.

There's not only one place to talk about Trump. I did already tell you that. Anyone including you can start a new Trump discussion if they want. What matters is the quality of the OP not the topic. If it's something like you put up asking people to write what they love about Trump and it's going to attract duplicate posts with the other discussion, it will probably be merged. If it's something more specific or more philosophical it's more likely to be left separate.

Anti-Trump is not anti-American, it's pro-American as far as I'm concerned especially after recent events. But we're off-topic. Going back to the prison system. Do you think your prison system could be improved? If so, how?

Put it another way, if you can't recognize your own country's or your own leader's faults because you are stuck with some kind of patriotic block, you're doomed. You'll never progress or achieve anything and will continue to make the same mistakes over and over. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case here but it's something to be aware of and resist.

That was a somewhat ironic joke considering my traditional lack of patriotic fervour, but the points of substance I made stand. It's not just a claim that things like recidivism rates and healthcare outcomes are better in Europe. A lot of that is empirically measurable. And on those measures we do it better at least in Northern and Western Europe (I'm sure your sons will confirm that with you). My beef with Hanover is he doesn't believe in the US's ability to catch up on those measures. I do. So, I'm not really trying to tease anyone on this. It's not us vs. them. It's a matter of being constructive. I'm more than happy for Europe to steal the good ideas you have, and you should do the same with us.

I don't know what your specific suggestion is here, but we moderate on the basis of the guidelines and there's also the check and balance of the mod forum.



At least this post is better than some of the crap you've been writing in the Shoutbox lately. Keep up the good work. :strong: :100:

OK, I think I got the right comments. If not, let me know.

Haven't got time to watch that yet, but the media is selling division on both sides and it is getting worse and worse. Yet another reason to make regulated state run media dominant. The profit motive of media most perniciously taken advantage of by Rupert Murdoch is a big player in this polarization (along with the ridiculous anti-democratic two-party system) and as long as that's the case I don't see things getting any better. I'll watch this later too though.

You need to lay off the Guinness. You sound like you just emerged from a bog caked in mud never having spoken to another human being in your life. So, the problem does (partly) lie in prisons. Higher recidivism rates = more crime, and crime is the major problem here, right? You are at about 70% and Norway at about 20%. So, don't you think this might go some way to explaining why their hardest streets are only partially aroused (to use your amusingly implicative Freudian lingo :100: )? Because they know how to reduce crime rates and they use their prison system to do it? Your reason then for not using changes in prison policy to reduce crime rates boils down to "because crime rates are high". See the problem.

Emotionally, I admit I'm all for the type of retributive punishment you primarily dish out over there, but I know that it doesn't work and it punishes the unnecessary victims of repeated crime as much as the prisoners it's aimed at. And even if it did work, you still lock up too many people in conditions that end up being schools for crime. And then your solution is to build more prisons because there's more crime. Or in your case, your solution is to pretend the problem lies exclusively elsewhere in some cultural no man's land you have no clue how to access let alone deal with.

That's at best defeatist. Yes, there are other reasons for crime including lack of investment in inner cities, lack of opportunity, poor schooling, shitty individual choices, etc. but if you want to solve it, you take a multi-pronged approach, and that includes prisons. And high crime rates are more not less reason to get on that and not accept the status quo. You keep telling us how great America is, so why do you accept failure so easily? I'm starting to feel I'm more American than you and you really do belong in that quiet corner of the Irish bog you've just emerged from with only potatoes and sheep and some various works by Sigmund Freud for company.