Right or wrong I think these people had a lot more commitment, not just the banging of drums and chanting.

The most powerful nation in the world is falling apart right now because a 75-year old man baby couldn't accept that he lost. — Mr Bee

The first part is true. Getting rid of Trump won’t change it. America is dysfunctional.

Okay. I just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page.

Is there any possible action that would not fall under this example of freedom and duty?

I don’t get the connection.

How?

The guy in the red hat took the photo.

That’s not the cops taking selfies.

Poor Brett is dazed and confused. — hypericin

What’s “this country”? — Brett

Is it the country blacks live in? Is it the country the unemployed live in, or the homeless, or the minimum wage worker, or drug addicts die in high numbers? Is it the country where 1% own most of the wealth? Is it the country that has such a poor health system that the Covid runs amok.

profess love for this country, — hypericin

What’s “this country”?

The President of the US is being moderated and banned on a website. How ridiculous is that. — Hanover

What about this part? I’m not sure where you stand.

I vote for a preemptive ban here. — Hanover

What do you mean?

But what is wrong with it? Simply the heightened risk of being killed or catastrophically injured in an otherwise minor accident of the sort motorcycles are subject to, at a cost the victim cannot himself bear. That is, he, usually a he, hurts everyone, and some greatly. — tim wood

I went back to the beginning of the OP to see where this started. I’m assuming the example you gave is about freedom without duty, or what some just call freedom, When you say the motorcyclist hurts “ everyone, and some greatly” how do you mean that?

I had a look at that but it’s all pretty shallow to me.

Seconded — Kenosha Kid

Why?

It seems that there is tension between the corporate, conservative right on one hand and the extreme populist right on the other hand. What a leftist can do to help is to accentuate the differences between these two groups in order to force them into conflict with each other. — Garth

Nothing will happen if that’s how the left regard the right. It’s far too simplistic to put it down to two factions as you have, with nothing in between,

Well why shouldn’t you have your opinion? Who wants to sit on the sidelines?

Though to be fair, Baden, you don’t punish people for disagreeing. And this OP is very heated, so we either enter or stay out if we don’t like it.

I imagine we want the same things. You want to know what I want from pressure on politicians?: integrity, honesty, true representation, commitment to the welfare of the people. You know those things we support.

So this Baden guy is actually an admin on this site and all he does is insult people who have different views than him? Starting to wonder if I've wasted my time here. — Garth

Well certainly not moderator.

To do what? — frank

Is this going to go on long?

You and NOS think you've achieved something. That's who you are. Live with it. — Baden

I’m really baffled by your attitude. Moderator and administrator?

What do you want to see happening next? — frank

More pressure on politicians.

while worms like you sit on the sidelines smiling about it.
27 minutes ago — Baden

But not you, eh?

Who's side are you on? — frank

Obviously the people. These people shook up the system. I don’t have to like them to see that.

Don't compare a scumbag like Trump who used a bunch of violent gullible morons as a proxy for his ego to any serious uprising against political oppression. — Baden

You don’t know how many people silently support these “morons”, nor who they may be. You also exaggerate my statement so as to attack it. I didn’t compare Trump to anyone, you took that upon yourself. I was talking about disenfranchised people. Are the yellow shirts any different, are the student protests of the sixties any different, are the people of Hong King any different. How can one use the system for change when it’s stacked against them, as, for example, your ideas on systemic racism in the US?

↪Tobias Are you an American? — frank

I know this is about the US right now, but it’s not just an American condition, it’s happening in many different ways across the world. Left or right it’s the people against a heartless system.

Yes, politicians should get right behind destroying democracy while worms like you sit on the sidelines smiling about it. — Baden

Really, is that what I said? And I’m a “ worm”. But I expected that, it’s part of the “conversation” these days.

Do you feel, the election aside, that people feel like the politicians not only ignore them but treat them with total disrespect, all over the world. I’m assuming from your posts you’re no happier than anyone else with the state of the world. Whoever wins elections is not going to make any difference to that situation. So the system is stacked against change, otherwise you would have seen it by now.

Do you really think, whatever side of politics you’re on, that the system is going to accept change. What was your anger at racism directed at, who can change that, who has the power and does nothing except use those tensions to their advantage?

Edit: as someone said, many of the Trump supporters and Sanders supporters are against the same thing but the politics divides them.

Irish foreign minister calls out human shitstain.

Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney: "We must call this out for what it is: a deliberate assault on democracy by a sitting President and his supporters, attempting to overturn a free and fair election." — Baden

The one thing all politicians fear: the people asserting themselves. They all have that fear and they all know their lines.

admiration because they have the courage of their convictions so rarely seen. — StreetlightX

I agree with you here. It’s also interesting that they didn’t harass citizens or destroy private property but went straight to the source who hide from the citizens. For once the real criminals felt a little fear.

It's surprising how conditioned we become: it didn't even occur to me that consuming animal products might cause suffering, until a few years ago. — Down The Rabbit Hole

That’s an interesting observation. So called animal ethics vary all over the world from culture to culture. I’ve seen the treatment of animals in India that I found appalling and yet no one blinked at it, as if they were oblivious to the suffering. But then they can turn a blind eye to the suffering of people right in front of them.

In most developing countries I think animals have a hard time. They’re there for work or transport or food. It’s an interesting study in disconnect how we treat animals as a food source, and being bred for food is a pretty shocking concept to me, and live with our pets who get the best care, the best food and pampered like children. We’re repelled by certain eating habits in parts of the world. Does our outrage make us more ethical. It’s a luxury of the west to sit around discussing the ethics of rearing animals to eat and meanwhile thousands of animals are killed so we can buy a Big Mac.

I mean really, what sort of ethics are we talking about? If you think it’s justified to kill lambs and calfs then what are your ethics? Even if we can’t get out of our meat consumption why must it be veal or lamb? Nor do I think “ eating the whole animal” and “respecting” the animal or personally killing the animal you eat cuts it. Until we evolve past this sort of cold view of life we’ll never amount to being more than savages.

That's to say, goodness is a mark of a rational mind — TheMadFool

Yes, because we can imagine consequences, something happening in the future.

I have a bit of a problem with how we may have known what good was. Is good the result of morality, or is morality the result of goodness?

For morality I see it as when faced with an ethical decision about what one should do then the answer is the morality.

One of these, goodness or morality, contributed to our wellbeing and success as a community. Unless you think they’re the same.

I like this post very much. Thanks for persevering. I have one thing I need to clarify.

Perhaps the answer is "no" - knowledge doesn't always lead to goodness - and thus the need to mention goodness (omnibenevolence) over and above knowledge (omniscience) — TheMadFool

This is because the wisest choice is to say goodness exists and must be added to God’s omniscience, because what other than goodness would benefit us? So we must chose goodness.

Or by adding goodness to God’s knowledge we then determine that goodness, being an attribute of God knowledge, must be a truth to live by.

“Religious people” is pretty vague I think. I don’t know how many are against secularism. Do they fear it or do they think that the state doesn’t care enough about people and they themselves are marginalised in terms of input?

Okay, maybe this will make it easier. Imagine there’s an election, which candidate would you chose to make a better future?

For this exercise/game just substitute a philosophical position for the candidate. Which would you choose if you were given the chance for it to be a truth and to see it happen and consequently create a better future?

And what is this assumption of yours that a perfect morality or wisdom or higher power would necessarily result in a “better future”? You have given some hints as to what your idea of this better future is, but that is all—just bare bones with no flesh. — Todd Martin

Because I can’t state what a better future is for everyone. But I assume you have some idea of what you would like for the future, so that’s what you would like to work towards. My intention is not to define a better future, which is why you find it to be just bare bones.

how can a higher power or a perfect morality insure that we avoid natural disaster? It would seem rather that that higher power either allowed disaster to occur or was impotent to prevent it... — Todd Martin

Read my posts. I said an objective morality would only have an affect on suffering caused by others, not acts of god. How could a higher power insure we avoid disaster? Because a higher power, if it existed, would be perfect, there would be no reason for such a world of suffering to exist.

The theory of wisdom is that no one would see any value in war. Logically it would make no sense. Therefore there would be no invasion to fend off. I’m not just talking about wisdom existing in your street.

Maybe your idea of god and morality are incomplete and limited, or prejudiced, because it certainly doesn’t correspond to the world I am familiar with. — Todd Martin

Of course they’re incomplete or limited. But if you have all the answers then pass them on.

Edit: by the way, read my posts a little more carefully. For a better future I referred to more that your “liberal propaganda”. I included an end to suffering caused by others, better government, better laws and justice, more care of communities, and a better response to disasters. Would you be against any of those. Or did you just cherry pick my posts to serve your vague purpose? What was that anyway?

None of the cruelty would occur if people were not buying the animal products.

Considering the amount of animal products consumed over one's lifetime, surely it would be better not to do so, and avoid all of the cruelty that comes as a consequence. — Down The Rabbit Hole

It sounds to me like you’re really against the idea of killing for food. Which I understand. The only way around that is for us to produce synthetic good or become vegans. Which would mean an end to all leather products, which is possible.

Animals are an easy source of protein for us. It’s responsible for our evolutionary success. But maybe it’s time to end it. It seems to me that farming is just an unthinking continuation of hunting for food. Do we really need that source of protein? Is there really no other way? It all looks a bit savage and primitive to me.

Surely one should stop purchasing it, thus eliminating any suffering that was resulting from you doing so. — Down The Rabbit Hole

If, suddenly for whatever reason, more and more people stopped buying factory farmed animals and instead turned to ethically farmed animals, with a rising demand for ethically farmed animals how long do you think those ethical farms would be able to keep up the demand for their product without putting pressure on their ethical practices? That seems to me a very work intensive way to produce the same amount of product the factory farms produced. How would they manage it?

What say you? — TheMadFool

What say I? Total agreement.

As for how morality, for a better world I suppose, relates to wisdom all that seems permissible is to assert is a negative statement viz. a wise person won't make a moral blunder or, if you feel that's hyperbole, a wise person won't commit serious moral offenses. — TheMadFool

This is the crux of the OP. The thing chosen, being wisdom in this case, will address all questions or dilemmas in this state of mind. Why would wisdom chose to hurt others, why would it ignore a set of morals that contribute to the wellbeing of others, why would wisdom go to war, why would wisdom destroy the environment? Those with wisdom would

handle/tackle anything and everything in the best way possible and what I mean by that a person who has wisdom can, given any circumstance, always make the right/best decision and choose the best course of action as allowed by the constraints and freedoms present therein. — TheMadFool

And that being so then all decisions made in this state of mind contribute to a better future. What else could be the consequences be?

Maybe we could turn the whole idea around and find the perfect answer, then work out what question must have been asked in order to elicit this answer, — Garth

How would you do that?