Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? — WB Yeats
Although I guess it can amount to the same thing, mutatis mutandis. — Jamal
Jumbled in the common box
Of their dark stupidity,
Orchid, swan, and Caesar lie;
Time that tires of everyone
Has corroded all the locks,
Thrown away the key for fun.
In its cleft the torrent mocks
Prophets who in day gone by
Made a profit on each cry,
Persona grata now with none;
And a jackass language shocks
Poets who can only pun.
Silence settles on the clocks;
Nursing mothers point a sly
Index finger at a sky,
Crimson with the setting sun;
In the valley of the fox
Gleams the barrel of a gun.
Once we could have made the docks,
Now it is too late to fly;
Once too often you and I
Did what we should not have done;
Round the rampant rugged rocks
Rude and ragged rascals run. — WH Auden, 55, January, 1941
And you take their statements at face value??On a separate vein, some time ago I saw interviews with Trump supporters. Most of them said they would vote for him again because of his significant achievements and his great policies. — Tom Storm
People usually vote for those they like anyway.Not one of them could name any. They just liked him.
Have you considered the possibility that they actually want what they are supporting and voting for? That this is about their actual values and desires?Is this because they are dumb, or has the American system (education/media/corporate influence) failed people, making them rubes and willing victims of a demagogue? We can't use CBT for political stupidity can we?
And you take their statements at face value??
Or are you just playing games? — baker
Have you considered the possibility that they actually want what they are supporting and voting for? — baker
And you don't think the way you speak about Trump's supporters is abrasive?Are you just playing games or are you really as abrasive as your response seems?
I think the people they interviewed were clueless and just following a demagogue who had the right enemies - intellectuals, liberals, do gooders, Marxists, unAmericans, politicians - the usual shit. — Tom Storm
So? What does that mean for you?And on the evidence of their bereft replies, they want to support hatred and conspiracy.
Although I guess it can amount to the same thing, mutatis mutandis. — Jamal
Prejudices are what fools use for reason. — Voltaire
Really, Tom, really, this is what you see in my comment? — baker
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. — baker
A pervasive refusal to try to learn. — fdrake
I think this is a good sense of culpable stupidity. Is all stupidity culpable? — Leontiskos
Maybe? Can you think of an example which isn't culpable? — fdrake
What do you think? — fdrake
That's what the bad faith in which you tend to approach communication makes you see.What I see is someone who indulges in regular put downs of others, who is persistently cynical about people's motivations, then somewhat hypocritically likes to take a critical stance towards members for their perceived adverse perspectives. — Tom Storm
Critics of Trump & co. often become exactly like those they criticize. Don't you see the danger in that?He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.
— baker
Why the Nietzsche?
I'm actually expecting you to empathize with the Trumpistas.Now, if you want to construct an entirely seperate, speculative narrative about behind the scenes at media interviews and suggest that in some way journalism misrepresented the Trump people, I'm not interested, since you cannot demonstrate this to be the case and you seem to be asserting it entirely for rhetorical effect.
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