The old child proverb “sticks and stones” still holds true, in my mind. — NOS4A2

So your trauma dates back to childhood. I’m sorry to hear that.

I see the attempts at insult and belittling as little more than group think and ideological back-patting, the basest form of propaganda. — NOS4A2

The fact that you work so hard at rationalizing practically screams your pain.

It’s okay, you can be yourself.

Use my words as your tea-leaves all you wish, but I’ll add trauma and pain to my list of swings and misses.

It’s OKAY, NOS.

Okay, so, perhaps I shouldn't have made the claim that you are insane.

What I am saying is that tim wood just compared you to a stray dog that has pissed on his living room carpet, which I imagine to be fairly dehumanizing. Though he does seem to be of a temperament that leads him to say such things on occasion, in your case, that he does seems to be fairly well received, if not encouraged or even celebrated. Given such circumstances, I would've abandoned Trumpism or left The Philosophy Forum by now. Were I to be a Trump supporter, the latter would probably be more likely.

Being said, there does seem to be a desire for you to remain here and to be fairly contrarian so as to inspired a certain repartee, and, so, perhaps, albeit distorted, there is a kind of symbiosis that I just haven't picked up on?

The content of any one of nos4's posts in this thread is on average outrageous, but underlying content is technique. Most simply, he simply ignores argument and facts, resurfacing again and again with variations on his themes in response to new posts, as if the old ones had never happened.

This why I compared him not to a dog that has soiled a rug, but rather to a dog that makes a career of soiling the rug.

We are all rude on occasion. Must of us repent of it, resolve to improve, and do improve. But the man who is endlessly, viciously rude is a different animal and an enemy. He lives by our general goodwill and tolerance, overlooking his offenses. But as offenses mount, good will and an averted gaze become a fault, a failure to recognize the nature of the pest.

And nos4 is no mere gadfly. Rather he is in essence a just, plain liar. Which is too bad because on the evidence of a few posts in other threads, if he confined himself to that, he would be subject to little if any justified criticism.

If you weigh up the profound suffering caused by positions held by people like NOS and then find that your concern inclines to some anonymous moron on the internet, then you need to revaluate your priorities. — StreetlightX

:100:

I offer the following for my left wing liberal brethren. What should have happened:

All former slave-owning real and personal property turned over to former slaves. As to former slave-owning families (and any true believers): The women and old men shipped off to reservations thousands of miles from home to become dependent wards of the state; All children sent to the Carlisle Bigot School in Pennsylvania to be deprogrammed from white supremacy; All men placed into indentured servitude of former slaves until such time as contrition was achieved.

Had this been done, many of the problems we face today would not exist (enemy flags, statues, systemic racism, riots, etc), and integration would be much further along.

It would also have demonstrated the appropriate honor and respect due to all American troops who fought and died for our country. This has not happened. It would also have cemented the honor of our heritage of killing enemy confederates, racists, and the champions of slavery. Reparations paid in blood then, instead of talk about money today. We have spit on our troops, and dishonored our own heritage.

The reasons this did not happen include the understandable weariness of war, and a desire to move along; let bygones be bygones, let it go, forget the past. However, white privilege explains a lot of it. Many a northern abolitionist would have balked at the ideas above. “Equal, yeah, but not *that* equal! Let ol' Billy Bob and Cletus have their land back. It'll work out.” In other words, many of the so-called enlightened ones are really just racists too.

Anyway, for all the touchy-feely liberal types who get all magnanimous and want to make nice after kicking an enemy in the rear, let history be a lesson to you. Future generations will have to suffer due to our failure to destroy the enemy’s will to fight. Sherman was on the right track but we didn't finish the job. Now we have . . . well, . . . what we have.

Can you imagine doing to WWII troops what we are doing to Civil War troops? Every time we let fascist racists raise their fking heads out from under the fridge, and give them oxygen on T.V., that is what we are doing. And for my Republican friends, every time you abide the belief that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend", you just got in bed with evil. You can't expect real Americans to entertain what might be your legitimate social or economic conservative ideas when you let racist fascist carry your political water for you. You best dump trump or you will lose your party for having lost your way. You wouldn't know a real leader (Cheney?) if it jumped up and slapped you in the face.

End rant.

While I am willing to concede that you have given a well articulated and reasoned defense of your having insulted NOS4A2 as such, to my limited experience, in the three or four threads that he has commented on, though he has made a conscious attempt to derail them so as to issue a particular set of right-wing points, which I found to be fairly manageable, he was not so distracting that I was not capable of continuing the conversation otherwise. On, at least, one occasion, I was even capable of engaging with him like a fairly normal human being. With this in mind, I am willing to put to question as to whether or not he has warranted the animosity expressed towards him on this forum.


Surely Pacifism is why racism persists in America to this very day.

Surely Pacifism is why racism persists in America to this very day. — thewonder

I didn't use the word "Pacifism" but if that's what you want to call it, then yeah, it is. Change my mind.

Regardless as to things like whether reparations could have been given following the end of the American Civil War or whether slavery could have been outlawed following the end of the American Revolution, what seems extraordinarily unlikely, to me, is that there were concrete plans for reparations being made that were abandoned in the name of maintaining peace between the North and South. You have made a highly speculative historical argument concerning the peace process at the end of the Civil War in order to slander an ethos that didn't really begin to take hold until the First World War and didn't become popularized until the Vietnam War. It's out of keeping with any historical reality. Though I am sure that the concept of reparations has existed in some way, shape, form, or another for as long as there has been an abolition movement, I also don't think that it came to be understood as it has until sometime in the Twentieth Century. If we are to look at history in chronological order, your synopsis of events contains some evident anachronisms.

The only thing that most Pacifists are in danger of is being ineffective. Pacifism came to be slandered as being somehow colonial or white supremacist sometime in the late 1960s in any number of attempts on the part of any number of political factions vying for power within the protest movement as a whole. The sum total of bosh that this has culminated in is contained within the Anarchist text, How Nonviolence Protects the State, an exemplary exercise in sloganeering, and repeatedly reiterated in the form of the "diversity of tactics" by the likes of Crimethinc. Though Malcom X's original theoretical strategy can be interpreted as technically precluding strict nonviolence, the text was actually written in a call for a broad-based collaboration of the protest movement as a whole.

Though I am sure that members of Students for a Democratic Society were not wholly absolved of every form of prejudice, it does seem implausible to me that they could meaningfully be compared to actual imperialists. I am suggesting that they were characterized as such so that quote unquote revolutionaries could conscript people into whatever cult it was that they were in the process of creating.

Pacifism, for whatever reason, is wildly unpopular in Anarchist circles these days, though, and, so, I am sure that you will assume that I am just a Liberal, which isn't actually true, but I don't take offense to.

whether slavery could have been outlawed following the end of the American Revolution, — thewonder

I never mentioned the American Revolution.

what seems extraordinarily unlikely, to me, is that there were concrete plans for reparations being made — thewonder

I never said there were.

You have made a highly speculative historical argument concerning the peace process at the end of the Civil War in order to slander an ethos that didn't really begin to take hold until the First World War and didn't become popularized until the Vietnam War. — thewonder

No, I did not.

It's out of keeping with any historical reality. — thewonder

Correct. That was the whole point. Doh!

If we are to look at history in chronological order, your synopsis of events contains some evident anachronisms. — thewonder

You say too much. Regardless, there was talk about giving plantations to slaves, but it ended up with 40 stupid acres and a mule. Why?

I also take issue with your use of the term "pacifism". Are you saying the abolitionists, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, et al were pacifists? You should get that term out of any discussion of the actual history of the civil war (it was a war), which you are pretending to hold me to in my patently hypothetical lesson to those who would tire, invoke white privilege, or otherwise not destroy the enemy's will to fight.

The only thing that most Pacifists are in danger of is being ineffective. — thewonder

That's why I stipped to your use of the term; ill-chosen as it was. All your history lesson on pacifism is irrelevant to a discussion on whether a life-line should be thrown to one who is in bed with, and has failed to reject alt.right nationalist racist people who have absconded with whatever credibility might have existed in conservative economic or social positions.

I never mentioned the American Revolution. — James Riley

I was providing another historically speculative example that could not be cited as evidence of that Pacifist sentiment is somehow colonial or white supremacist.

You say too much. Regardless, there was talk about giving plantations to slaves, but it ended up with 40 stupid acres and a mule. Why? — James Riley

I haven't been saying that there is no case for reparations. I do think that there is one. What I have been saying is that said case not having been made at said point in time has nothing to do with Pacifism.

I also take issue with your use of the term "pacifism". Are you saying the abolitionists, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, et al were pacifists? You should get that term out of any discussion of the actual history of the civil war (it was a war), which you are pretending to hold me to in my patently hypothetical lesson to those who would tire, invoke white privilege, or otherwise not destroy the enemy's will to fight. — James Riley

I am talking about the anti-war movement.

That's why I stipped to your use of the term; ill-chosen as it was. All your history lesson on pacifism is irrelevant to a discussion on whether a life-line should be thrown to one who is in bed with, and has failed to reject alt.right nationalist racist people who have absconded with whatever credibility might have existed in conservative economic or social positions. — James Riley

We have been talking at cross paths. I was reading into your writing and not thinking of it within its context. I am at fault for this confusion.

As it concerns NOS4A2, what I am saying is that it is just nihilistic to continue to have a go at him. We learn nothing from it and it is just distracting. Had he done something like threaten Black Lives Matter protesters with an AR-15, I wouldn't defend him. What I am saying is that people have had kind of an extensive go at him here when all he has done is derail this thread. The threads on the presidency go on forever and often get derailed, anyways.

As it concerns NOS4A2, what I am saying is that it is just nihilistic to continue to have a go at him. — thewonder

So stop already.

As it concerns NOS4A2, what I am saying is that it is just nihilistic to continue to have a go at him. We learn nothing from it and it is just distracting. Had he done something like threaten Black Lives Matter protesters with an AR-15, I wouldn't defend him. What I am saying is that people have had kind of an extensive go at him here when all he has done is derail this thread. The threads on the presidency go on forever and often get derailed, anyways. — thewonder

I agree with Wayfarer's last post.

On my thoughts, if you want to run interference for one who's opinions have found solace in the company of the man who's name heads this thread, and the people he aligns with, then I'd just as soon toss you in with them. After all, they are quick to toss anyone left of center onto a slippery slope to Pol Pot. So F them. If they wanted to step back from the edge and be reasonable, they'd file for divorce from Trump, the Republican Party, and all the fascists racists clap trap that comes with it. For they would have irreconcilable differences. But they don't. And you come to their aid and comfort. Hmmm.

As it concerns NOS4A2, what I am saying is that it is just nihilistic to continue to have a go at him. — thewonder

He's not God.

Wayfarer is correct to correct me for also making fun of him and he is correct to assume that I have decided to champion this cause because of my own fragile psyche.

I don't want to keep talking about this as I don't think it helps anything, either. I haven't come to the aid and comfort of the Republican Party as a whole. I have merely been attempting to play off an instance of internet bullying. I haven't done so well, and, so, here we are. I say that we wait for someone to post something that is actually relevant to this thread now and just carry on like nothing happened. That's what I'm going to do, anyways.

I say that we wait for someone to post something that is actually relevant to this thread now and just carry on like nothing happened. — thewonder

Trump isn’t completely irrelevant at this point, I suppose.

I have merely been attempting to play off an instance of internet bullying. — thewonder

You’re the first to claim insanity that I’ve seen. Good work :up:

I suppose that cultivating an inflated sense of superiority via psychological abuse is a sign of intellectual maturity.

Chill-out wonderer, I’m just bust’n balls. My new favorite pastime.

Well, okay. Easy it will be taken.

I got a comment published on today's NY Times story on Trump

Someone ought to raise the point that if Trump's GOP refuses to recognise the result of the 2020 election then they must forfeit the right to participate in the electoral cycle. Democracy is a system of rules, and not recognising the rules ought to warrant exclusion from the system.

This point needs to be raised - it's a meme that needs to go viral. Trump has no place in democratic culture, and there's no possibility of a 'good faith' defense of his actions on 6th Jan 2021.

You're a sunshine full of hope and optimism!
:halo: :starstruck: :love: :blush: :up: :hearts:

I like to think of myself as a realist :cool: .

Yay!!!!

You would have thought that with Trump’s defeat the crisis of Trump would be over. I did. Well, apparently not. As it transpires, Trump is still able to ‘flood the zone with shit’, as Stephen Bannon so memorably put it.

I think the feds ought to storm Mar-e-Lago, cuff him and haul him off for treason, sedition, and working to overthrow the rule of law. Unfortunately that is just fantasy at this time. Hope it changes.

Treason, sedition, nah.

I think that if he would be indicted for money laundering would be enough. Because what else were those Russian clients buying his real estate. You think the Trump people would use "due diligence" on looking at where the money came? Especially when normal financial institutions wouldn't lent him. After all, Trump declared that his financial dealings were "off limits".

We will never forget that time millions were easily duped into believing gossip and lies.

Secret Sharers: The Hidden Ties Between Private Spies and Journalists

Grand jury to consider Donald Trump charges

Lock that mf up. :party:

We've already learned grand juries are sham processes meant to cover the prosecutors ass.

Look what they have for sale over at Amazon:

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Trump Miss Me Yet T-Shirt