To anyone vaguely wondering if the OP is suggesting that both parties are virtually identical and therefore it matters not which one is in office... no. Of course not. There were obviously appreciable differences even before Frump and his horde of patri-idiotic revoloonies stormed the Capitol in search of souvenirs and selfies.

And the GOP is increasingly under the sway of Christian nationalism (which is arguably neither authentically Christian nor truly national). Goodness knows what laws they would enact if they had complete control. Citizens might be required to memorize Bible passages and look like Amish people (no offense to them).

All that aside for the moment (and it’s a lot), the two parties seem to be playing “good cop, bad cop” on a large scale. The Democrats usually play the sensitive and caring “good cop”. Except when it comes to taxes lol. Yes, taxes are too high. And the taxes are often mis-spent, when not completely stolen. Even those on the Left can see that. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the two parties would rather take their lumps from each other, if it guarantees them the penthouse.

It seems that this thread shows the relevance of this question in general, and as something to ask Prof. Chomsky when he visits here. And asking related questions, like “what do Progressives have to do to make an impact?”

Perhaps an expedient question to ask would be, when was the last time US party politics had a significant influence on matters that also greatly impacted the 'powers that be', ergo the BlackRocks and Vanguards, the large banks, the US military-industrial complex, etc.
— Tzeentch

No one?

If there are no examples of this, then the cynic in me is inclined to say US politics is little more than an inflammatory clownshow for the peasantry to squabble over, while the fat cats strike up the big bucks. — Tzeentch

So why not start to explain what initial steps YOU think are essential, towards creating a better political system. I am not suggesting that voicing dissent is pointless, it's still very important to voice dissent but what are YOUR suggestions for improving things. Are we just big wide empty vessels making loud noises? — universeness

Assuming for the moment that the point @Tzeentch makes about the power structures remaining unchanged despite elections is generally accurate. And that the promises of “change” are mere adverts. And that the vilification of the opposition that is essential to polarized politics is like starting a fire in a dry California forest. (ie a step away from civil war and chaos).

Basically, anything that gets us citizens to stop wasting time, energy, and lives fighting against each other is a helpful and huge step. First things first. We have been divided and conquered. We each have our team colors (red or blue) and we are trained (ie brainwashed) to be fierce warriors to do battle with our foe. “Trumpers” and socialists have more in common with each other, than with the power brokers.

If a significant percentage of people (not even a majority perhaps) were united in the general vision of a “just and free” society (despite other differences and disagreements), then real change and improvement could be at least theoretically possible.

Maybe. Maybe not. But we have nothing to lose, and much to gain, from freeing ourselves from the toxic and pervasive propaganda.

America would be radically different if Democrats had large majorities in Congress. Compared to what the Republicans would do with large majorities, the country would be almost unrecognizable. — RogueAI

Radically different better? Or worse? Or... ?

It’s a two-party system, the Ins and the Outs. Those who are in and want to stay in; those who are out but want to get in. — NOS4A2

Yes, good one. Which in itself might not be a problem, trying to get traction or influence. It’s part of evolution. The flower turns toward the sun etc. The sticking point is what is required to get elected, stay elected, and have sway while in office. Money is the gas, the goal, and the god. Any problem with politics amplifies our problems with money.

You can state your conviction in a few words not weird analogies, thanks. — invicta

I will try my best, Noble Cæsar. Oh wait... my quote in the previous post had zero analogies. Hmm, how about that? Well, I will delay you no longer. Fly onwards and upwards!

the analogy doesn’t fully describe US two party politics — invicta

Analogies and metaphors are not meant to “fully describe” anything.

Yes, for all practical purposes, the two parties form some kind of symbiosis of a status quo that (in its other symbiotic relationship: corporations, banks, etc) bizarrely needs increasingly large amounts of everything: money, resources, land, people, energy, blood... Of course the two parties are different. — 0 thru 9

This should sum up my views enough for the careful reader. This is “in a nutshell”. I will post in this thread my full manifesto concerning this issue as soon as humanly possible.

Conveniently, I have previously offered several posts in this thread that reflect my ideas on this very subject. My “joke” was that there was a fallacy typed within your post. Accidentally, one assumes.

Only intolerable of far-fetched ideas such as the one proposed in the OP, or more outlandish ones such as the Earth is flat, world is run by lizards, there’s microchips in vaccine and other such delusional craziness. — invicta

Hey Forum members! It’s time to play Name That Fallacy! :nerd:

The winner will receive a year’s supply of Turtle Wax. (And a supermodel of your choice to apply it every day).

In my unfailing and mysterious crystal ball, I see the coming of many strange and troubling things...

I behold the chilling vision that, as a result of the Monolithic entity controlling the USA (and its failure to deliver all that it promised), a large number of good and decent citizens will become extremely dissatisfied and restless. Their unrest will become so volcanically overwhelming that they will espouse (to them) a powerful manifesto of facts and beliefs. Neutral commenters may call it “mythological”. Detractors will label it whole affair “pathological delusions”. All will agree that the situation is explosive and impossible to ignore.

A leader will emerge who will personify this entire group’s anger. He will be a outsider who claims to be above the muck of the United Status Quo. He will lead the way with the Light of Righteousness in one hand, and the Sword of Divine Power in the other. (Or maybe it’ll just be a light saber in one hand lol).

He will lead an army of holy warriors!

This potentially bloody vision terrifies me. Gosh, it could never really happen in the USA! Right?

Yes, for all practical purposes, the two parties form some kind of symbiosis of a status quo that (in its other symbiotic relationship: corporations, banks, etc) bizarrely needs increasingly large amounts of everything: money, resources, land, people, energy, blood... Of course the two parties are different. They are like a married couple. The husband is a heartless gangster. The wife is friendly and elegant, but fully knows what is going on. Her charm makes the crimes more acceptable. She is the public relations, in effect.

If one eats nothing but ice cream for a week, even different flavors of the desert will all seem the same. Arguments of “but this ice cream is different! It’s ORGANIC CHOCOLATE MOCHA WITH HAZELNUTS!” will not persuade.

A few years ago, I started a similar thread with a poll attached. I asked if US politics was a monopoly. There were some questions about that choice of wording. But of the 17 people who voted, only one said the US system was NOT a “monopoly”.

I had to read the thread title 3 times before it sunk in, then I thought it might be a joke. But no. Wonderful guest! Hope I can come up with a real good question. I might need until June to do so lol.

Watching this, I literally peed myself. Well... almost virtually literally peed myself. :rofl:

A happy ending to the story! Happens once in a while.
What I don’t get is the hatred for sock puppets.

The world exists because there is a fundamental universal entity, principle or phenomenon with rules/or that is a rule, that involves change/transformation.

This is energy. Energy is not energy unless it does work. If energy is the only existant, then it can only "work on itself". Ie. Change the nature or characteristics of itself.

If this is a rule, then existence absolutely must exist/happen because:

energy =matter (e=mc2). And with both objects (matter-unfree/locked up energy) and actions (free energy) the universe can continue to "do stuff" and so does stuff.

And the stuff it did lead, through evolution (constant change due to persistence of change that continues over changes that don't/are dead ends), to more arrangements and interactions (new stuff). Emergent phenomena. Because nothing can stay the same as before (energy must do work) therefore emergence of novel existants is the only way forward.

Because the first stuff is simple. A single rule or premise. Then the only thing it can do is to complexify. More variations, more interactions, more options thus more complex and sophisticated interactions/systems - dynamics and relationships.

This emergent sophistication is what we call life, agency and awareness. Humans are great at obeying the law of change. Because imagination is a great way to conceive of, do and implement stuff (exert/manifest change).

Imagination is fast, spontaneous, effective and reformulatory in nature - the human equivalent of the "creative force" at work. New thoughts, new ideas, new songs, poetry, fictions, books, films, new emergent phenomena/existants.

We are just doing what energy has always done. Create from itself: reproduction, natural selection, invention, reinvention, change, culture, evolution, "improvement" of the changeable nature of energy. ( ... ) — Benj96

:up: Excellent! Thanks for writing and sharing that. Much food for thought.

If existence (e.g. "energy") has a Meaning / Purpose that we haven't created, then we are nothing but prostrate slaves before that alien Meaning/Purpose. I think our freedom as individual and collective agencies consist in us having to create, or make, our lives as meaningful / purposeful for ourselves and each other as we are able to day to day. Existence is a blank page or canvas; how will we fill it – with poetry, theorems, blueprints, musical scores, epic hero journeys, doodles, painted scenes, family histories & photos, philosophical treatises, pastoral sermons, political speeches, love letters, pornography, fashion designs, ambitious plans for explorations of distant planets & moons, or make intricate orgami figures ... or leave it blank? Or just splatter our brains all over it ... Non serviam, my friend. Amor fati.

:death: :flower: — 180 Proof

:up: Wonderfully and poetically put!

So we are slaves to the rules of physics.
— Benj96
No we're not. We as a species made those "rules". What do you think our scientific progress (i.e. paradigm shifts) consists in? We govern ourselves – exercise freedom – to the degree we live adaptively by the rules which we make. That's not "slavery"; it's principled and/or lawful responsibility. C'mon, man, you're just rationalizing nonsense. If you need some Meaning / Purpose From On High, then just say you're espousing a religious worldview and defend that explicitly. What you seem to be saying, however, is unwarranted and nonsensical outside of a religious context. :roll: — 180 Proof

Hmm...

“We as a species made those rules (of physics)”... you say? Well, ok. Perhaps in a kinda nitpicky (quibbling?) way of saying that humans wrote down (or “made”) the formulations etc of the phenomenon of gravity, for example.

I hope you are not saying humans made / created / invented gravity itself!
Say it isn’t so, Joe! lol.

That would be quite New Age-y, and something that even hardcore “New Agers” might quibble with. (Hardcore New Ager... is that a contradiction in terms? lol).

(I say this because I think this is what @Benj96 was getting at in that particular point. Please correct if mistaken!)

Assume there is no creator/purpose to the world:
Then why does this world even exist? You would assume that no God and no purpose implies no universe, nothing. No creator implies nothingness. Therefore, our world and our lives just sort of "dangle" without any rationale or justification. Life and the universe are then just some sort of anomaly. In other words, Occam's Razor dictates that without a God, nothing should exist, and yet here we are alive, in existence, discussing this very issue.. Something therefore seems wrong with this notion...

OTOH, assume life does have meaning:
Then what do our experiences mean? We all have one fleeting moment after another and then we simply die. Each moment exists for only a fraction of a second. Even a long 'chain' of moments disappears into nothingness. Therefore, under these circumstances, how do our lives have meaning, as whatever we find meaningful is fleeting and only exists for a fraction of a second? Even for yourself, look down the road at what the future holds; at some point, every single one of those moments will be gone and you will be gone as well. This is of course true for all of us. This implies that life is meaningless and seems like a scary proposition to me... — jasonm

Just an aside, but this post suggests Existentialism to me. I assume you’re familiar. Maybe a deep drive back into it. (after a beer or doobie lol).

Asking "what's the meaning of Life?" is as incoherent as asking "what's the meaning of Grammar?" — 180 Proof

Haha... and maybe as inevitable as a child asking why the sky is blue. Perhaps though instead of “incoherent” (with its connotations) one could substitute “incomprehensible” or “mind-boggling”.
Just a thought...

It seems to me that only individual lives, like particular word-uses, can have meaning, and that meanings are as finite and mortal as their bearers. — 180 Proof

“Have meaning” that one could even to begin grasping... with great difficulty. Like trying to eat a week’s worth of food in one bite. As incomprehensible as a novel is to a dog maybe.

Whenever I try to determine the exact meaning of even single a experience 10 years ago, I rarely can pin it down precisely. There usually are so many ramifications and consequences from EVEN ONE SINGLE EVENT that it soon overwhelms my mind. Total domino effect or ripple effect.

Your actual mileage may vary... (meaning that someone with more mental abilities might do quite easily what I find difficult lol).

:up: The wisdom of Solomon all around. Wonderful!

At least his new orange jumpsuit will match his lovely and so natural-looking skin tone.

Don’t confuse motion with progress. (As the saying goes).
Don’t confuse progress with improvement either. (One might add).
And don’t always believe that “improvement” is really what you are looking for in a particular situation. (Seeking the newest and latest cutting edge etc).

And don’t forget the stillness that underlies all this motion...
and the silence that surrounds all, eternally listening...

”Let a hundred philosophies bloom"
The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement, was a period from 1956 to 1957 in the People's Republic of China during which the Chinese Communist Party encouraged citizens to openly express their opinions of the Communist Party. ___Wikipedia — Gnomon

:100: Yes! Definitely! Let the Philosophies bloom, mingle, party, eat and drink, mate, and have many offspring. This also applies to the arts and music, writing, and science (especially the experimental and underfunded varieties. IE those that don’t directly lead to weapons and wealth).

He argues that, ' the postmodern condition can be described, in a nutshell, as a disillusionment with the great overreaching explanations of the world, including religion and science.' He argues that absolute truth has become questionable. — Jack Cummins

Well yes... that seems to be quite a tall order for anyone to expect one absolute truth that explains everything... and fits neatly into your pocket! Seems doomed to fall very short. Which might not be a problem, if one didn’t bet the house on it. Your mention of “bricolage” (tinkering and assembling) later is a much more realistic and practical approach. Trying to find some “key of ultimate knowledge” is perhaps understandable when a particular person wonders what everything is about. Where do we come from? Where are we going? You know... philosophical questions and dialogue.

But in the hands of those simply seeking to rule, and gain more power, control, and rewards... the search for the “key of knowledge” is more like wanting the “one ring of power”. CONQUER ALL! CONTROL ALL! CONSUME ALL! CRUSH ALL OPPOSITION! (They would say). That entity which rules us now seems less like a human or group. It’s more like a machine that issues commands like the fearsome Wizard of Oz which its servants (our “leaders”) follow unthinkingly. Or it is like a enormous devouring beast, kept in a cage and tended by high priests who maintain power with this beast.

One wonders: what is the ACTUAL philosophy of the decision-makers? Not the public relations version, but a record of actual practical philosophy or policy. Might make Machiavelli’s Prince look like St. Francis. Dystopian fiction might describe the overall situation better than sociology or other academic disciplines (though changing the details). Or for the more literal-minded and unimaginative: acceptance of even the most unlikely conspiracy theories as concrete fact.

If you haven’t read it already, I’d recommend Graeber and Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything. It is a critique of Darwinist progressive accounts of anthropological change as seen in Pinker, Diamond and Harari. Graeber shares your moralist individualism, asserting that each culture in each era of history makes valuative choices ( equality-inequality, hierarchy- nonhierarchy, statist- non statist) above and beyond geographical, technological and other material determinants. — Joshs

Excellent reading suggestion, thanks! :up: I’m part way through it now. Might have to renew the e-book a few more times. A long book isn’t a problem when it’s interesting... and digital books don’t weigh 20 lbs, lol.

Early in the book, the authors make a striking (to me) claim: that European contact with Native Americans heavily influenced, if not outright caused, the European Age of Enlightenment. Specifically, the interactions of English-speaking Natives and European settlers which were transcribed. In a nutshell, the fluent Natives proved to be so rational and intelligent, and most importantly, devastatingly critical of the European way of life (both in America and in Europe), that it influenced many who read it. And it spread from there. Some Natives visited Europe, of course, where they got a first hand view that repelled them. They thought the Europeans to be savages!

The authors also theorize that modern Westerners might actually be closer overall in thought to the Natives, with their ideas of freedom (equality is a more complicated thing, which the authors dwell on later). The rigid hierarchical society of Europe would seem stifling and bizarre to us (if I’m understanding their position).

The Mr Bone Jangles dancing skeleton video is even better watched with sped up video speed (2X)

This one always gets my foot tapping... and brings a smile. :grin:

This one speaks for itself. Well... writes for itself anyway. And some things you just can’t unread. :grin:

Talking porcupine! He’s got more personality than me probably, and is definitely cuter.
(make sure it’s in 720p hi-def)

Not sure which Tiktok video is better? That one or this:

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/tiktok-ft-billie-eilish/504389740

It’s time for Silly Songs with Larry!

Maybe more funny weird than Lol funny...

What Mr Adams did is inexcusable (ie, there’s no reasonable excuse and explanation to make it completely OK).

It is not unforgivable, though. IF... he would disavow his statements, and apologize SINCERELY (not a clever non-apology), perhaps we could all learn from this experience.

He refuses however. He’s cranked up the speakers playing Tom Petty’s song “I Won’t Back Down” waving a rattlesnake flag. He is a rock. He is an island.

Wonder if he’ll purge his music collection of anything influenced or performed by Blacks or other non-Whites. Might be slim pickings. He can keep his Schlager music albums thankfully! :cool:

I think I can help out on this one. There is a vast difference between the prejudice of the empowered and that of the disempowered. The very simplest illustration of this is the racist violence perpetrated by black police officers against a black man recently. — unenlightened

I tend to agree with this sentiment, that the “two racisms” are NOT exactly equal. Of course, any racism is best avoided... all things being equal (which they rarely are).

So distinguishing an apple from an orange is fruitism? :brow: — praxis

Not really, but it is quite fruit-tile (futile). If Adam and Eve had eaten an orange instead of an apple, we might all still be in paradise now. :wink: (sorry)

General question concerning this subject:

Does (non-violent) racism (dislike, mistrust, prejudice) in the minds of “white” people EQUAL the same type of racism in “black” people?

In other words:
(Does White racism = Black racism ? )