As a child I wasn't sure that goblins (fiends from hell) didn't exist. I feared that monsters were lurking in the unlit coal bin in the barn when it was my turn to fill up buckets of coal to bring to the house. Eventually, (around age 50--just joking) I stopped fearing monsters. However: our brains are prone to fears of neo-monsters in adulthood. As adults, we can suppress or dissolve these fears--most of the time. When we can't suppress or dissolve, we might start seeing monsters in the sky -- drones, flying saucers, human-abducting aliens, communists doing subversion, white supremacists plotting coups, (oh wait, that one might be true) the whole weird garbage heap.

Our irrational fears may be underscored by sensible fears. I fear the widespread use of drones for package delivery because they will be annoying, intrusive, and unavoidable. People have similar fears about infrastructure projects -- freeways, big airports, super-tall billionaire residential towers, etc. There is clearly a lot more sky traffic over New Jersey than there is over me, and I don't envy them.

There is also the power of suggestion. If actual alien abductions had been witnessed 10 times, but had never been mentioned to anyone at any time, rumors of these weird events would not have propagated.

A hungry bear will just eat her alive. Nothing to worry about.

One of the things I find annoying about the drone business in New Jersey is the dismissal of observations reported by ordinary people. I live relatively close to a large airport in a metropolitan area. There's also a military air base operation. I've never had difficulty identifying what was overhead from sound alone -- prop planes, jets, and helicopters of various sizes make different kinds of noises, and they move in distinctive ways. In the day time one can see them, too, of course.

True enough, a large passenger plane taking off at night can seem like it is hovering at certain points in its flight, but this is a very short-lived phenomena. Within a minute or two the impression of hovering ceases aas the plane picks up speed and climbs. By the time a plane is overhead it is unmistakably a plane--not a bird, not Superman, not a drone.

My guess is that people in New Jersey have some idea about what they are seeing that is reasonably accurate. Helicopters make distinctive noise, and if they are hovering, it's a pain in the neck to listen to them. My understanding is that drones don't make helicopter-type sounds; instead it's a whine. How far away one can hear a large drone whining, don't know.

I have no idea whether the Koreans or Iranians or Australians might be hiding a nuclear bomb or two, smuggled into the country. It's not a far-fetched idea. What better way to stage a decapitation event as part of a war?

Perhaps Santa Claus is testing out drones as a humane alternative to forcing reindeer to fly thousands and thousands of miles in one night. Or maybe Santa is looking for gains in delivery efficiency. This business of landing on roofs, slithering down a narrow dirty (and possibly hot) chimney (if there even is one) with a bag has to be a nightmare of wasted time and motion. If they capture a drone, it is likely to be "manned" by elves. Or, maybe Santa needs more data about who's been bad or good, and the old Christmas surveillance methods just aren't sufficient any more.

Back in the 1970s, one Saturday on University of Minnesota Radio, I heard speeches at a conference on extraterrestrial life. Ashley Montague, an anthropologist, asked the question "What would we do if we encountered a superior civilization?" Well, he said, we would wipe them out as soon as possible -- as we had done already on our own planet, as people have encountered superior civilizations -- or at least successful, happy civilizations that were 'different' than us.

So, I either read -- or heard on YouTube -- a proposal that the drones over New York and New Jersey were probably US military drones looking for nuclear radiation emissions. Why?

The story said there have been a couple of radiation spikes detected previously in the NY / NJ area which were not explained. This source said that there are fears that North Korea might over time smuggle the various parts for a complete atomic bomb into the country, then assemble it and use it at their convenience.

Of course, WE don't know where THEY put the bomb parts (or bomb) so scanning is covering a large area, looking for abnormal radiation emissions. (I don't know how much radiation a nuclear core would emit, just sitting there on someone's coffee table.).

This scenario is the sort of thing the government would be secretive about, lest people fear the worse and suddenly act on their fears in mass panic. If I thought there was a surreptitious nuclear bomb in my neighborhood, I'd be worried.

This seems like a far more plausible scenario than aliens from a long ways away. Earthlings have always been able to out-alienate everybody else in the galaxy.

EDIT:

I DIDN'T READ THIS ON REDDIT, BUT SOMEBODY ELSE...

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1heg8ot/could_the_drones_be_looking_for_a_suspected_nuke/

I don't believe there are aliens flying around, and I don't spend time thinking about it. I prefer to get my fix of aliens visiting earth (or earthlings being the aliens on some other planet) from well crafted science fiction. Reading takes time, and not everybody has the leisure. Plus, a lot of sci-fi stories are disappointing duds.

You've heard of Fermi's Paradox? "If intelligent life is plentiful in the universe, then where is everybody? We should have been visited."

In my universe, beings who have spent light years getting here would not spend decades playing hide and seek games. They would fly over, land on the ground or hover over it, and it would be crystal clear to everyone that THEY were here. Then they would come out of their ships and demand tribute in the form of kitchen and laundry appliances which Americans worked very hard to get (according to @Hanover). Chinese and French appliances are of no interest to them.

In order to make us understand how serious they were, they would probably blow Manhattan to smithereens with one shot.

After America had been fleeced of every Maytag, Ikea chair, and Miele dishwasher worth having, with all the loot loaded up, they'd leave and go back to XZV4739b and sell their plunder to eager homeowners there. Will they be back? Depends on fashion trends out there in the various galactic arms.

a final plan to take the hard earned belongings and freedoms from average Americans — Hanover

I just don't understand why aliens from distant planets want my used appliances and furniture. They could at least offer to trade something -- maybe their old orgazmatron couch, or some nice floor covering?

We are all going to die and be dead for eternity. — Jack Cummins

A good reason to stay alive while we can!

What next, after all the striving and attaining? That place you’re in is what existential philosophers call “the existential vacuum”, where the old meanings have dried up, and the activities that once filled your life no longer sustain you.

I like that. Great term--existential vacuum.

I've experienced that a few times -- major goals which took years to reach, then achieved, then "now what?" Or, foundational beliefs play out and new foundational beliefs have to be found and set in place. James Russel Lowell (New England poet, Romantic era) said in a poem that "Time makes ancient good uncouth". But one doesn't want an existential vacuum of values--too much of that going around.

I stumbled when I encountered my first vacuum. I had finished a degree, worked in a peace-corps type program a couple of years, did some more school, then got a job at a college. After 3 or 4 years, the 10 year plan was over. Now what? It took me years to fill the vacuum but I did, several times over.

I've lived with chronic depression for decades (under control, thanks to medicine) but have never felt more than a twinge of suicidal thinking. We must be careful how we talk to ourselves: if a lot of our internal dialogue is about the pointless, meaninglessness of life, suicide as a solution, and so on -- we are -- at the very least -- sowing the seeds of more unhappiness, if not our death.

I think you enjoy shooting down suggestions the way New Jerseyans would like to shoot down all these drones flying around.

For an increasing number of people, the struggling and the striving isn't a matter of too much ambition, but a matter of bare survival. — baker

:up:

it seems like a lot of more people nowadays are simply dissatisfied with work itself — L'éléphant

:up:

Now back to suicide.

Hold on, hold on. Not every baby boomer retired on Golden Pond with ample resources from their financial planning for retirement. Maybe 20% of boomers have comfortable retirements. I was not and am not in that group. I did plenty of struggling to survive low pay, bad jobs, roach infested housing, disability, bad public transit, homophobia and other impediments to the good life. I retired early not because I was well fixed, but because I couldn't stand the thought of looking for yet another job at 62.

Agreed, though; as a group, the post WWII birth cohort were lucky--what with a 25 year growth period, generous government programs, full employment, and so on. If subsequent generations find it difficult to retire (a pattern that prevailed before the 20th century), there are several guilty parties to blame: The administration of the government has not been as good a steward of Social Security and Medicare funds as they could have been. Wealthy people have worked hard to avoid being taxed at a level where entitlement programs could be properly and fully financed. Antigovernment politicians have worked to hobble agencies, like the IRS which gathers in what the government needs; they'd like to do away with social security / medicare / medicaid altogether. Fucking bastards!

Fortunately or unfortunately, people tend to live longer now than when Social Security was set up. Longevity uses up more reserved funds.

I have a great deal of empathy for younger people who are starting out or are at mid career, or heading toward retirement age. Short of major reform (nothing revolutionary is required), millions of old workers are going to have a tough time. 20% of younger people -- those professionally employed at good salaries -- will do fine. The rest, no so much.

BTW, it isn't just Social Security. Many state managed retirement funds are in very bad shape. Generous promises were made to the state employees, but not nearly enough cash was collected to actually fund the promises.

So, spoken like a retired baby boomer or not, I'll stick to my advice to Darkneos.

Interesting fact: prior to the social security expansion act and other social program actions in the mid 1960s, poverty among the elderly was around 35%.

Concern, anxiety, worry, fear, etc. with respect to something that seems abnormal (and may or may not be) is infectious--not just on social media, but in social settings. People get wound up.

IF the drones actually are harmless commercial vehicles, I would be happier if the government had a clear grasp of how many of these things are flying around, who owns them, how they are identified, and how they are policed--if they are. I'm pretty sure the government isn't keeping track. Free enterprise is once again doing its thing and running amok.

Amok: behave uncontrollably and disruptively from the Malay word, mengamok, meaning to make a furious and desperate charge.

I want my beer and pizza delivered by a hot handsome guy, not a whirring machine. Delivery drones are just another way of eliminating jobs. A drone would be a good way to deliver frozen vaccines to isolated clinics in Africa which are otherwise very hard to reach while maintaining the cold chain.

The way I see it if there is no greater reason to meaning to life then there isn’t really a reason to keep going. Not reason to really struggle and fight for a place in the world. No reason to really pursue anything. One can just end their life and be done with the pursuit and struggle. — Darkneos

As far as I know the cosmos does not supply ready-made meaning for us. You are certainly NOT the first person to discover that life may be, can be, may seem to be... meaningless. Get used to it and move on. That's what people do.

Struggling? Fighting, Pursuing? Suicide is a possible solution but the most obvious alternative to the unsatisfactory rat race of striving, struggling, and all that is to stop striving, stop struggling. Try to be more in the present moment rather than being busy trying to accomplish something in the future, or fretting over something not done in the past, because "now" is where you live.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) said,

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers

We are way too busy striving which leaves us depleted, deflated, depressed. Step one: stop it.

Avoid perseveration. What's that? spending a lot of time chewing over the same idea (like, life has no meaning, nothing matters, I might as well be dead).

What should you do if you are perseverating? In a nutshell, stop it, at once! Stop it because it's a giant waste of time going in mental circles and wearing a rut in your mind.

At the very least, hold off planning your suicide until you have a really good reason to do it, like developing Huntington's disease, terribly painful terminal cancer, or some other mortal threat. As for discovering that life is meaningless, well...pfffft.

I don't get it either as to why what certainly seems like a problem is being treated as nothing. I don't understand why a military would tolerate being surveilled by drones; they generally have fences around bases to keep prying eyes out.

Without going into conspiracy territory, it does make one wonder why the government is so casual about it.

Crazy people?

Unfortunately, BC doesn't have a clue about the drones. Zip. Zero. Equally (or worse) unfortunate is that nobody else seems to have a clue either, or they aren't saying.

Hobbyist and commercial drones usually are not designed to travel very far. How far depends on battery power, weight, design quality, and environmental conditions. Military drones can travel a long way -- 1000+ km. As far as I know (not much) a low-flying drone might evade radar.

So, it's possible that the drones could originate from a ship somewhere on the ocean. That would be quite worrisome, imho. Foreign powers harassing innocent New Jerseyans? Don't know.

I have been against drones from the get go because I hate the idea of a lot of machinery flying at low altitude over neighborhoods. Granted, they have some utility, but they are also just more clutter and junk. I don't like Elon Musk's low-orbit flocks of small satellites fucking up the night sky, either.

Supposedly, drones have been spotted over Minnesota. True? Or copycat? Don't know.

There have been reports for quite some time of people interfering with aviation by using lasers directed at plane cockpit windows. The lasers are capable of blinding a pilot. Another interference, more recently, has been people shooting airplanes. Why? Don't know. Are the aviation harassers related to the drones? Could be but don't know.

Satellites enable countries to surveil the world in pretty fine detail. It doesn't seem like a foreign power would need drones for that purpose. Attack planning? Don't know.

Are the drones interfering with commercial aviation? If so, the sky should be cleared. There are reliable devices which could be used for this purpose.

The government's limp-dick response to this is similar to its erectile dysfunctional response to the unidentified balloon floating over the country.

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum! As of December 14, you have not posted for 6 days. My guess is that, after asking a very good question, you were perhaps overwhelmed by the many complicated good responses which maybe exceeded your expectations.

But take heart: you started a good thread (discussion). Good credit to you!

My advice is to aim for simple and down to earth, as you think about the topic "How to Define Good". As time goes on, you will see where you can be more nuanced.

People, being what we are, tend to mix a lot of sentimental claptrap into their otherwise serious religion. Combine sentimental claptrap with a secular holiday (which Thanksgiving is) and you get low quality results.

It's not surprising that there are a lot of trivial prayers sent heavenward on behalf of one's lottery ticket, the home team, or the potentially great date with so and so. God is supposed to have his eye on the sparrow, and surely this lottery ticket is more important than some bird. So, God, how about a big win here?

Following the Lord's Prayer formula, the basics of prayer are:

a) acknowledgement of the Holy (hallowed be your name)
b) acknowledgement of God's rule (thy will be done)
c) simple requests (our daily bread)
d) confession (forgive us our sins...)
e) a plea to be spared the great test (lead us not into temptation)
f) acknowledgement of the Holy (for the kingdom, the power...)

The Lord's Prayer isn't a rigid model that has to be followed, but it does suggest how to pray to God, and it isn't all "I need this", "give me that", "make that team lose and mine win" etc.

Based on my very close relationship with God, and hints I've picked up from high ranking personnel up there, God doesn't give a rat's ass about who wins the big game, or whether your lottery ticket will pay off.

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum.

For many people, the time when they were "warriors" in the military was their most meaningful period of time. It may have been a good experience, or it may have been horrible, but it was memorable. They keep returning to those memories, alone and with others.

The 'military industrial complex' has a vested interest in maintaining a positive public image of the military and its fighting men. Should the view of the public change significantly, it might mean no more new fighter jets, no more new missiles, no more new aircraft carriers.

Most people in most societies are engaged in peaceful activities which maintain the stability of societies. Collectively, farmers, truck drivers, machinists, factory workers, medical workers, teachers, and so on are the force which makes societies strong. The fact that 90% of adults are working class and literally produce society seems to have gotten lost. It isn't the military that makes us strong,

We devote one day recognizing the people who make life possible (Labor Day here, May 1 in most countries). Wars, battles, generals, victories and all that are regularly commemorated -- defeats, not so much. A number of our wars didn't end with a victory celebrations, like Vietnam.

Countries are free, and they are peaceful (internally, at least) because ordinary people make it so. Wars are launched elsewhere, but the people at home manage to live peacefully and freely, most of the time. Well, yes, there was the Civil War when we ripped ourselves apart.

Rather than teach history as a series of battles in a series of war, we could more easily teach children and youth the glorious history of peaceful accomplishments. Oh, say, photography, radio, the airplane, the auto, x-rays, discoveries in science, great artistic achievements, agricultural achievements, etc.

No, I don't consider you a neoconservative bonehead hawk - a bonehead perhaps, but not a neoconservative. — T Clark

I'd really hate being thought of as a neoconservative! Ugh, disgusting.

started the ISIS insurgency — T Clark

As Billy Joel said, "We didn't start the fire".

My view at the time was that our invasion of Iraq was a bad idea because we (Washington policy makers, military planners, etc.) do not have sufficient expertise to take apart and then put back together a complex middle eastern nation. It wasn't thought through nearly far enough. What happens after "shock and awe"? Iraq wasn't in great shape to start with (economically) and making a battlefield of the place didn't improve things. Perhaps we (people in the Beltway) couldn't tell shit from shinola when it came to the local politics of Iraq.

We didn't create the ISIS insurgency. That is an opportunistic infection in the body politic. We created the wound in which the infection fulminated. The US didn't create its own fundamentalist Christian Nationalist wing nuts that have crazy plans, and I'm not sure that anybody knows precisely what to do with them. Maybe El Salvador's approach to gangs? Just round them all up and put them in well guarded prisons? But then what? They aren't going to turn into gentle lambs in there.

I've sort of forgotten what the lines in the sand were all about back in Obama's administration.

I do deeply and earnestly hope that we do not decide to take apart and rebuild Syria. It may be a mess; it may be the victim of insane politics; but... Our leaders, less now than before, do not have the facts, insight, long-range policy capacity, and more besides to intervene in Syria. It might very well be a shit hole, but that doesn't mean we know how to fix it.

Whether or not mutually voluntary incest is morally wrong depends on the various codes societies create, defining which behaviors are good, bad, or indifferent -- for whatever reason. In our (broadly defined society) a close blood relationship has been defined as wrongful, whether children are produced or not. It could be redefined as morally indifferent or as good, but there is not movement in that direction as far as I know.

Aside from it being 'right' or 'wrong' one might want to consider whether there is anything about incest that makes such relationships problematic. Do two closely related people in sexual relationships have the same, greater, or fewer problems arising in their relationship than people who are not related?

Even if incestuous relationships were unusually happy doesn't mean society would necessarily change the moral code.

Offspring of incestuous relationships are not invariably penalized genetically, though the rate of unfortunate consequences are fairly high:

Children of incest

P A Baird, B McGillivray
PMID: 7131177 DOI: 10.1016/s0022-3476(82)80347-8
Abstract

Twenty-nine children of brother-sister or father-daughter matings were studied. Twenty-one were ascertained because of the history of incest, eight because of signs or symptoms in the child. In the first group of 21 children, 12 had abnormalities, which were severe in nine (43%). In one of these the disorder was autosomal recessive. All eight of the group referred with signs or symptoms had abnormalities, three from recessive disorders. The high empiric risk for severe problems in the children of such close consanguineous matings should be borne in mind, as most of these infants are relinquished for adoption.

Similar articles

A study of children of incestuous matings.
Seemanová E.
Hum Hered. 1971;21(2):108-28. doi: 10.1159/000152391.
PMID: 5127404 No abstract available.
Incest and mental handicap.
Jancar J, Johnston SJ.
J Ment Defic Res. 1990 Dec;34 ( Pt 6):483-90. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2788.1990.tb01560.x.
PMID: 2077135
[Children of siblings].
Busa M, Méhes K.
Orv Hetil. 1978 Sep 17;119(38):2321-2.
PMID: 693036 Hungarian. No abstract available.
Inborn errors of morphogenesis. A review of localized hereditary malformations.
Holmes LB.
N Engl J Med. 1974 Oct 10;291(15):763-73. doi: 10.1056/NEJM197410102911505.
PMID: 4137724 Review. No abstract available.
Congenital and acquired disorders presenting as psychosis in children and young adults.
Benjamin S, Lauterbach MD, Stanislawski AL.
Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am. 2013 Oct;22(4):581-608. doi: 10.1016/j.chc.2013.04.004. Epub 2013 Jul 3.
PMID: 24012075 Review.

How do people believe this kind of lunacy?

Why do people believe this kind of lunacy? — ssu

It's a conundrum.

"I will protect American Jobs and American families" and similar luminous words, are positive sounding non-inferential statements which, while meaningless, sound like something good. There isn't any way the hearer can know what the statement means in real terms. People hear the words, hear the applause, and feel just a little glow of warmth. It's like a benediction. "May the Lord make His face to shine upon you." Freedom, flags, liberty, loyalty, faith, guns... a whole batch of nice words. The man speaking the words must be OK.

Deporting 10 million people is, for starters, not a simple task, and we have no recent experience in rapidly rounding up millions of people and moving them to the next street over, let alone across national borders. The logistics are unspeakable and likely far more expensive than imagined. Unless one pauses to think in detail about what deporting 10 million people would actually mean, it has little reality.

The famous Austrian who got rid of 6 million+ people he didn't want around, established annihilation as a high priority national objective. There was census data stored on punch cards (and other records) that facilitated identification and location of subjects. A large bureaucracy was created to execute the annihilation, and a lot of money was spent on it. The appalling atrocities were completed.

Is the orange-tinted Real Estate Agent prepared to engage in the intensely detailed and strenuous planning process that would bring about his goal? Does he really expect 330 million Americans to quietly ignore the military trucks loaded with Mexicans and Venezuelans and others rumbling through town stopping to drive ever more onto the transports?

But the average person isn't reflecting on the details any more than Trump is, and it doesn't have much reality for them.

Whatever he does, I call a plague down on his head, his minions, and his plans.

The world needs an emperor. Not exactly like a Dune emperor, but similar. — frank

The Dune Universe had the Bene Gesserit breeding program and Paul Atreides. What have we got? Donald Trump. .

What are your thoughts on the matter? — Shawn

Over the decades we have seen a revolving door which roughly alternates Democratic and Republican administrations. Same for control of congress, state legislatures, and governorships. It isn't altogether predictable who will be ushered in at the next election, but it is going to be one party or the other.

Sometimes there is a clear shift -- an unpopular war like Vietnam can favor the party not in power. Picking a candidate that is too far from the mainstream like McGovern was, may help an otherwise unpopular incumbent stay in power.

Had Biden bowed out of the race in January 2024, thus enabling the Democratic Party to conduct the proper process of candidate selection, the results might have been in the Dem's favor, campaign spending staying the same all round.

At any rate, the equal concern of the Republicans and Democrats is to stay in power. If the party in power can solve problems, great. If they didn't improve life for Americans, they will still want to maintain their hold on power.

Voters are left to guess who will do the most good and the least harm. Often the evidence is nothing better than specious campaign promises and specious campaign attacks mixed in with a little factual information,

Thanks for highlighting Milwaukee! Milwaukee's history is most interesting; The Making of Milwaukee is a 5 part series which is available as a disc set or streaming from Milwaukee Public Television. There are some short excerpts on YouTube. Madison, Wisconsin is unlike the rest of the state, given the dominance of the University of Wisconsin's politically progressive student body.

Minnesota and North Dakota also had socialists in government. The Farmer Labor Party in MN was leftist. (They merged into the present Democratic Farmer Labor Party) which alternates with Republicans for political control.)

Minneapolis was home to several small socialist parties between the 1960s and 1990s--emphasis on 'small'.

I wish socialist political activism was present and capable of electoral success, but at this point, it is not. And despite the presence of active socialist politics in the past, midwesterners are not now receptive to socialist politics, at least in my experience,. Still, there is a strong liberal politics which is worth having.

However, I blame Twitter most of all for the downturn against the left wing. — kudos

One can reasonably blame Twitter, and several other social media sites, for animosity towards the left and for polarization. The algorithms encourage whatever gains the most eyeballs (to sell to advertisers) something that quiet, reasoned discourse doesn't do. And, of course, people respond to outrage by supplying more fodder to feed the hungry algorithms.

As a longtime midwestern leftist, I have never found most fellow midwesterners all that receptive to leftist ideas. It isn't that "the people" are all troglodytes or rednecks. Most people just hold mainstream values, which some leftists sneer at. Socialism (as they misunderstand it) just isn't attractive for most people. Their family is the center of their lives; they're not interested in radical social experiments. Bread and butter issues (like whether they can afford good bread, meat, milk, fruits and vegetables, clothing, transportation, health care, and all that) are the most important thing to we working people, and we are roughly 90% of the population.

Senator Sanders was emphatic that the people Democrats need to serve are working class people--none of whom, by definition, belong to an 'elite'. Address and legislate working class concerns--things like a $17 federal minimum wage; inflation (to which people living paycheck to paycheck are very sensitive); the high cost of renting or buying a home; and so on.

Men, women, straights, GLBT, hispanics, asians, whites, Blacks, etc. are almost all working class. Yes, the working class has some layering by wealth, but as a group, none of us has much wealth. As a group, we have to get a regularly and reliable paycheck to make ends meet. That's what Democrats need to focus on--so say Bernie and me.

The National Health Care System in Britain is suffering under austerity budgets, apparently. Why? Brexit, for one; austerity-preferring conservative governments for another. Decent public services require a reasonably robust economy, and commitment.

Trump wants to shrink government. Since WWII, the percent of citizens who work for the government has fallen. The population has increased by roughly 200 million people over that time. Cutting the budget by 1/3 (Musk's plan) will be impossible (and is a very bad idea) because most government programs have important constituencies within every congressional district.

We may not have the most equitable health care system; we may have the most expensive health care system; our health care system leaves out some people. With careless management it could get a lot worse.

chances are you have some moral indecency in you — kudos

We are prone to sinning (whatever the list of sins may contain). Many nice people--decent, honest, cooperative, civiic minded--have people "chained to the walls in the dungeons of their mind". I've had to expand dungeon space at times, convert it to archival storage at other times. There's nobody down there right now. Over time the former inhabitants shriveled, dried up, crumbled, and blew away. Various science fiction and phantasy novels, plots, and characters (like from Herbert and Tolkien) were moved into that space.

Sometimes we must acknowledge that harm must come to others as a formal cost of being... — kudos

A New York Times editorialist said that "Democrats must learn to say no." Some people's interests have to be turned aside. Should the public be asked to pay for prisoners' and immigrants' "gender affirming" therapy and surgery? It may be a burning issue for several hundred or a couple thousand individuals, but elevating it to a public policy was a mistake. There are millions of illegal immigrants in the US. I don't think Trump will have the wherewithal to round up all of them and send them back. But they aren't entitled to be here. Admitting that isn't xenophobia or racism.

I didn't expect that someone claiming that Mary was born of Elizabeth would be persuasively misleading — Leontiskos

Thank you for pointing out my error. Oh, God forbid! I confused St. Anne and St. Elizabeth. Mea culpa maxima culpa!!! The shame.

Being ambivalent at best, and ever prone to error, I should leave theological topics alone.

Trump & Biden: I voted for Biden, but I said in 2020 that he was too old. Biden should not have needed armtwisting to forego his run for a second term. He should have announced in January that he would not run again -- thus giving his party 10 months to select the best possible candidate an to run a proper campaign. Who thought that Harris was the ideal candidate? She was the handiest, not the most ideal candidate. I voted for Harris/Walz--better than Trump.

Trump is a livelier corpse than Biden, but will likely run a far worse administration. Should Trump succumb to the grave, I expect nothing better from Vance.

It seems like it will be a while before Democrats will have another chance to prove to the working class that they are the best party for working people. It could easily be at least 4 years. Never mind better rhetoric. They need to burn to pass legislation that directly benefits working people in a substantial and enduring way. They could, for instance, pass laws (and fund their enforcement) removing barriers to unionization efforts. They could raise the federal minimum wage ($7.25 since 2009) substantially. They could regulate for better wages, working conditions, and benefits (the capitalists will howl in agony). The workers who most need a helping hand are the less educated, less skilled. What these people need are actual jobs, many of which were shipped off to Asia or Mexico.

I'm a long-standing member of the GLBTQ++ "community". We are not such a large constituency of the Democratic Party that we should be the focus of party policy. WHAT? Yes. The group that gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, and queers ++ belong to is first and foremost, working class. As deviant as we might or might not be, we have to do what everybody else has to do -- work for a living. Drop the identity focus. Whatever race, ethnic group, religion, or sexual predilection we are, we have deep common interests and needs AS WORKERS.

And another thing: Find and cultivate young talent, young leadership. and younger candidates. Enough with geriatrics already. (I'm 78; so is T Clark. Brilliant as we are, we're too old to be president, so don't look at us).

Many Christians probably believe that the resurrection was a corporeal, cellular regeneration of Jesus' body. He was literally dead; then he was literally alive again -- like Lazarus, raised from the dead. Presumably these Christians also believe in the immaculate conception (Elizabeth's conception of Mary), the Holy Spirit's impregnation of Mary, the virgin birth (after which she remained a virgin, even though she bore more children--Jesus' four brothers, James, Joses, Simon, and Jude. The Gospels also mention unnamed sisters.

There are various miracles which don't involve the dead coming back to life, but which are not explainable--turning water into wine, walking on water, casting out demons, restoring sight to the blind, and so on. There are various supernatural events in the Gospels, like the temptation of Christ, or the transfiguration.

If one can believe in the other supernatural pieces of Jesus' story, then Jesus' resurrection shouldn't present any problems.

I don't know how many supernatural strands in the life of Jesus St. Paul was aware of--after all, he had never met Jesus (except Jesus' ghost on the road to Damascus), and the Gospels hadn't even been written yet when Paul was busy founding Christianity. The death and alleged resurrection of Jesus seemed to be the part of Jesus' story that Paul had, and could have had, access to.

So, for Paul accepting the resurrection was an all-or-nothing choice.

I'm not absolutely sure, but I don't remember Jesus taking St. Paul's approach with the Disciples -- a group who disappointed Jesus on a number of occasions -- they would miss the big point of the daily lesson, fall asleep, or something else--slice off an ear, say, or "Jesus who?"

Question: By whose power was Jesus resurrected--his own, or God's? Just wondering. Somebody here probably knows. Assuming that the Gospels are not the gospel truth (they were, after all, edited) were Jesus' statements about the resurrection back written into the Gospels to conform to what was later believed?

@Vera Mont One of the points Snyder made in a recent NPR appearance was that a number of incumbent governments have been voted out since Covid, the UK, for instance.

I'm worried about fascism — Vera Mont

So am I. One of Timothy Snyder's latest books is The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America 2019, with an updated preface. Snyder has studied fascism for a long time. He thinks Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have significant commonalities in their personalities and plans. One of Snyder's ideas is that fascism is perhaps more readily identified by its methods more than by its ideology. Chaos and disorder is one of its methods. Contrary to popular belief, the trains did not run on time in Mussolini's fascist Italy. Whether the disorder of Trumps last administration was a mark of fascistic tendencies or unfamiliarity with the function of government, I don't know. We'll find out.

Trump didn't say all those horrible things about immigrants just to piss off the liberals; it always got big cheers. He got elected on paranoia and misdirected anger — Vera Mont

The urge to piss off liberals is normal and healthy, if it doesn't become a compulsion.

Trumps anti-immigrant rhetoric got cheers for a reason: Many in the working class audiences compete with low-wage immigrants for jobs in the former industrial heartlands (and elsewhere) which were hollowed out by Reagan's NAFTA plan, and previous/later de-industrialization programs sponsored by the financial elites. The millions of jobs lost were those held by less-skilled working class people. Who is an employer going to hire first: a less skilled immigrant (legal or not) who will work for $6 or $7 per hour, or a less skilled native worker who will work for $10 or more per hour?

Someone is paying the price for 11,000,000 undocumented immigrants in the US, and it isn't the liberal elites.

"America First" rhetoric may sound good to working people, but deporting millions and erecting high tariff walls is not going to help workers very much. Why not? Because the economic elite isn't running the country for the benefit of workers. It's run for their own benefit. So, workers get fucked over.

OK, sorry for mentioning the basket of deplorables.

A mainstay of socialist party thinking is that neither of the ruling class parties, whatever state they are in at the moment, intend to seriously upset the status quo. The voters slosh back and forth between relative liberals and relative conservatives, whoever appears to have the lesser of evils. And, honestly, sometimes it is hard to tell. Clinton seemed reliably liberal, but he's the one who ended "welfare as we know it". At the time, Nixon was the liberal nightmare, but in retrospect his administration wasn't that bad (most of the time). He started the Environment Protection Agency, for instance, and his drug policy was reasonably progressive.

The problem here is that it's unclear if immigration is appropriately thought of as a "civil right" of sorts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Tricky. How does a society extend rights to people who do not yet, and may never, live there? Do people in Austria, France, Russia, Mexico, Venezuela, or China have a "civil right" to come to the United States, Australia, UK, Spain, etc.? I'm pretty sure I don't have a civil right to take up residence in Australia or Canada, just because I might want to.

It seems like the way immigration is supposed to work is that "you can ask to come here; we might say yes, but no means no." In reality, a lot of immigrants just walk right in, sit right down, and have anchor babies.

“Why is it that the ‘winners’ in the prevailing order seem so eager to associate themselves with the marginalized and disadvantaged in society?” is its key question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yascha Mounk in his book, "The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time" traces the elite's interest in the marginalized and disadvantaged to the history of postmodernism and identitarian politics that has developed over the last 50 years (Michel Foucault's crowd). The elites profess a preferential option for the minority / marginalized / disadvantaged in society. Elite rhetoric doesn't mean that they intend, or are even able, to do much about it.

But could Democrats even pivot on this? I sort of doubt it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree; it's doubtful. At any rate, "toxic masculinity" is a phrase I'm tired of hearing.

As an old American, I'm plenty disturbed about the politics of this country. I loathe Trump but, the majority of Americans (working class) are suffering. Costs of housing, transportation, food, insurance, and clothing (never mind saving for retirement) make it difficult for many a lot of steadily employed people to make ends meet.

Like as not, Trump will do little to make life better for workers, but he did manage to make a connection with more working class people than Democrats have managed to do. You are worried about xenophobia; most workers are not. Xenophobia is one of our liberal bogeymen. Sorry, bogeypersons--pronouns are they, them, theirs.

Most working people are not prioritizing gay, bisexual, and trans rights; there isn't any compelling reason for them to be pro-Palestinian; no reason for them to be pro-immigrant--legal or otherwise. Even if their forebears came from Eastern Europe, they may not be grateful for us sending $64 billion to Ukraine. We have spent $150 billion on Israel since they were founded in 1948. Maybe the average worker doesn't care about Israel that much. (I'm a pro-Israel gentile).

I'm not a typical working class guy -- I'm gay, have a graduate degree, have belonged to socialist organizations, read widely, etc. In many respects I align with liberal elites. I may loathe Trump, but I don't think Democrats have done a great job meeting run-of-the-mill working class needs, plus there's the "basket of deplorables" and "garbage" problem. The "leftist agenda" which developed out of post-modernism and identitarian politics is of no help to 90% of Americans. It isn't much help, for that matter, to the preferred "marginalized oppressed people" that the left concerns itself with. It's mostly an irrelevancy.

Are we heading toward collapse? Civil War? A fascist dictatorship? I don't think so. What I am more afraid of is 4 years of seriously incompetent and corrupt management of the government, and an altogether failing effort to deal with basic problems ike Social Security funding, environmental protection, global warming, health care costs, etc.

Speaking of the Will and the power of boredom, one is reminded of Pascal's summary, "All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone".

What is one attains 'enlightenment'? Is life bleak then? — I like sushi

Not sure about 'enlightenment', but a sound moral education can do much to alleviate the harms inherent in human nature. It isn't that we are 'evil', it's that we have natural 'animal' urges powered by an unusual level of intelligence. Ethics and morality help us manage ourselves better.

Life is not so bleak in a decent and orderly society. When we descend to indecent disorder, such as prevails in Sudan at this point, it becomes very bleak. Life is bleak in Gaza and getting bleaker in Ukraine, Lebanon, Venezuela, et al. Everybody has periods of indecent disorder, at one point or another, usually collectively but sometimes individually.

Self-awareness is key in moral education. We have to know what dangers lurk in our personal natures, and then do something about it. No guarantees of goodness in that, but sometimes we try.

Speaking of grim topics, the facts of life about human nature are pretty dark, revealing their...

Isn't there a button that just stops this Bambi discussion?

It's been a VERY LONG TIME since I saw Bambi, if I ever did. I did have a little picture book about Bambi. My impression of Bambi is that it is a cloying saccharine story. A couple of years ago the New Yorker ran a piece, "“Bambi” Is Even Bleaker Than You Thought.

The film in question is, of course, the 1942 Walt Disney classic “Bambi.” Perhaps more than any other movie made for children, it is remembered chiefly for its moments of terror: not only the killing of the hero’s mother but the forest fire that threatens all the main characters with annihilation. Stephen King called “Bambi” the first horror movie he ever saw, and Pauline Kael, the longtime film critic for this magazine, claimed that she had never known children to be as frightened by supposedly scary grownup movies as they were by “Bambi.”

Clearly my memory has been manipulated by unknown agents!

The 1942 movie is based on a 1922 novel, Bambi: A Life in the Woods by the Austrian Felix Salten. (He often hunted deer.) The book is grimmer still, I hear.

The fact that we know Bambi can burn means something? — schopenhauer1

Yes. But.

I was being silly and didn't intend to subject Bambi to the further suffering of existential analysis. I also don't want to suffer by being forced to think more deeply about Bambi. In the last five minutes I've tripled the size of the Bambi case file, and most of the New Yorker article remains to be read.