I’m not sure how that is possible in a progressive tax system. The tax-rate increases the higher the income bracket. — NOS4A2

But you have to be not exempt in order to be liable for taxes. If you have money, you cannot only buy laws to provide exemptions, you can have rates lowered.

Like I said, people do not know where the sum total of their money goes. This is because the government, not themselves, get to decide what to do with it. They cannot know whether it goes to feed someone in dire need or to droning some family on foreign soil. — NOS4A2

I wonder why? Because that tool, that machine has mens rea; it's living, thinking, sentient being, running live through the lives of people, all by itself, undirected?





NOS, I'm just singling out Musk because he's high profile. They are 700 billionaires in the U.S. who don't pay shit and many many more multimillionaires. And guess what! They don't have the real power. The real power is in the oil and other corporate powers that lobby Congress and the Executive for largess and get it.

Libertarians should know that a multimillionaire coal baron who takes money from Exxon and gets his rocks off sabotaging climate legislation whist sitting as chairman on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is on their side. So is the person who had sorting machines destroyed to delay the pre-election mail and owns obscene amounts of stock in private shipping companies while sitting as Postmaster General. He too is on your side. Government is full of people who agree with libertarians. They want libertarians to hate the government they work for. In fact, they are making government work for libertarians by trying to keep government from working for the people at all. Libertarians are not the people.

giving the state wealth and power could not be considered an act of help or compassion — NOS4A2

The problem is, many of the wealthiest that benefit the most don't give the state anything. They just buy the legislature and the executive players so they don't have to pay the government taxes. But, as to those who do pay their taxes, what reasons did you state that preclude help or compassion as a motivation? I'm sorry, but I must have missed that.

We humans are immoral because we can't tolerate boredom/stasis. — Nils Loc

:100: But boy are we good at it. We even spin it, from the insecurity it really is, to a positive called "curiosity." We aren't curious. We're just tired of having ourselves around. Rather than satisfaction with what is, we try to makes things what they are not.

I don't know about "immoral" but:

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt

Different minds are bored by different things.

You can defend the existence of the state without accepting some libertarian’s equating of the state with socialism. — Srap Tasmaner

:100:

You can also defend socialism, but it’s opposed to libertarianism only insofar as it is one way of organizing the state. — Srap Tasmaner

:100:

I think socialism is opposed to libertarianism, as are any other manifestations of the state. I know that some might like to nuance the definition of some terms (and rightly so), but I think the arguments that have been made by NOS, to which I have stipulated for the purposes of our argument, have done away with the nuance and reduced themselves to government vs the absence of government. This stems, I think, from my futile search for an alternative. Somehow "we" are to afford rights without responsibilities. However, the simple use of the word "we" will not permit that. Unless someone has an idea that has yet to be expressed.

The libertarian position is only one step removed from a simple cynicism that does nothing but throw stones from the street.

:100: :up:

FEMA is not the greatest example. — NOS4A2

What is a better example? (And remember, you don't want to use a government example without shooting yourself in the foot.) How about no response at all?

t has gone through more reforms due to its failing responses than it has had successes. — NOS4A2

What successes? I didn't think they could have any?

He's considerably worse than Trump as a person. — Manuel

So you are saying the bar can indeed go lower? Don't tempt Trump. It may be a pissing contest and he might feel he has to up his game. Of course they are both bitches compared to Putin.

I didn't think it was strange. Putin is precisely the kind of charismatic, unconstrained 'strong man' Trump would see himself as aspiring to be. Since Trump scorned most conventional Western democratic politics, where else would he go for models? — Tom Storm

I also wondered about that guy from Brazil. Was he emulating Trump, Putin, or was he just his own version of them? I think there were some others. We had our own little Adolf/Benito/Tojo thing starting up.

If you could show that there is a performative contradiction in espousing libertarianism
— Srap Tasmaner

I did.
— James Riley

I don’t think you did, at least not here. — Srap Tasmaner

In fact, it is the big guy intimidating the little guy. Libertarians are socialists who hate themselves for it, because they want an autonomy that comes with being a big guy, and they can't have it because they aren't big guys. They rely on the state to protect them from big guys and they hate it. Colonel Colt helped, but he can't make a libertarian hate themselves less. — James Riley

And that is only part. You'd have to go up and cut and paste all the other times I showed the performative contradiction espousing libertarianism. NOS and I have a long history.

I think it is true that the state can guarantee your ability to advocate for there being no state, — Srap Tasmaner

It can. But you can bet it gets a metric shit-ton of help from those who advocate for that. You know, the ones with the money.

and I think it’s true that providing such guarantees is one of the reasons people accept the necessity of state authority. — Srap Tasmaner

I just wish they would stipulate to that; admit to the necessity, instead of fantasying about some world where they live free from the necessity, and yet still have all the benefits of it. That is precisely the nut that we all have to get back to, before we can go forward with our respective arguments for truth. Or, if we want to deny that premise, then let's go back until we can find one we can agree upon. Like maybe there is away to live without the state and still have all that we want to keep. But so far, crickets.

Otherwise, only the strong have free speech. — Srap Tasmaner

Everyone has free speech. You can stand in the square and scream until you are blue in the face. What matters is being heard. Money gets heard. Speech against it gets marginalized by it.

Is that the same thing as socialism? — Srap Tasmaner

No. It's self-interest without enlightenment.

It doesn’t work like that. — NOS4A2

Yes, it does work like that.

All we can be sure of is that they’ll take our money, they’ll spend it, but we don’t know whether it’s “helping others” or buying a politician’s neck-ties. — NOS4A2

Look around at all you, personally, benefit from. Try being grateful for all you have, instead of taking it for granted. And recall that it was brought to you in spite of the aforementioned powers that seek to undermine the efforts to line their own pockets.

And if they change directives, spend all their money on this or that program inimical to othe citizen’s interests, we have no choice in the matter. — NOS4A2

That would be due to those who have convinced the people that government is the problem. It would not be due to government.

Worse, every time we give the government the power to do something for us we give them the corresponding power to do something to us. Much better to skip the middle-man entirely, in my opinion. — NOS4A2

Then just give your money to those who already have it. They are pulling the levers of government and getting you to blame government. Maybe if government no longer existed you would have to, finally, point your finger where it should have been pointing all along.

Every state thus far—liberal, fascist, socialist, Islamist—has been organized monopoly and exploitation. One thing is clear to me: as government consolidates and strengthens, the power of independent moral judgment in the citizenry weakens. So it isn’t long before statists of all types beg for more government wherever their own morality is waning. — NOS4A2

Monopoly, yes. Exploitation: only to the extent government is blamed instead of the people you should be blaming. You know, the people who want autonomy to milk you like a cow and who use your government to do it.

The independent moral judgement of the citizenry has weakened when they blame themselves instead of those who stole their government right out from under them, and with their help.

So it isn’t long before statists of all types beg for more government wherever their own morality is waning. — NOS4A2

Bingo! See Trump.

This ‘genealogical’ critique specifically doesn’t speak to whether libertarianism is a sound political philosophy. — Srap Tasmaner

It does so speak, when it is not taken out of the balance of the post. Libertarianism is not a sound political philosophy for the reasons stated.

If you could show that the ideas of socialism are implicit in the ideas of libertarianism, that would be interesting. — Srap Tasmaner

I can't show it because they are not. That was my point. The fact that libertarians benefit from socialism does not make the ideas of socialism implicit in the ideas of libertarianism. Rather, it points out libertarian hypocrisy.

If you could show that there is a performative contradiction in espousing libertarianism — Srap Tasmaner

I did.

that you cannot do so without an unacknowledged commitment to socialism — that would be interesting. — Srap Tasmaner

Again, I can't. It can't be done. Well, unless you understand what I already said about the libertarian enjoying the benefits of socialism without admitting it. It is the failure to admit that makes it impossible. It's that myth of an autonomy that does not now and never has existed. I can't prove out their fantasy for them.

One problem with this sort of ‘analysis’ is that it invites more of the same: how hard would it be for me to pass right over whatever you’re saying and instead ‘diagnose’ your attraction to this sort of critique? — Srap Tasmaner

Not hard at all. That's what NOS has been doing since I first came here. It's what I used to do when I was a young man.

Would you find that a satisfying way for me to engage what you have to say about libertarians? — Srap Tasmaner

That is a good question. Why do I keep engaging NOS? Am I a glutton for punishment? Maybe it's that deep seated desire to help those who don't want help. Or maybe it's a desire to keep them occupied while the rest of society tries to move forward, knowing someone else is doing the dirty work of keeping them occupied. So the answer would be, I guess, that you should do as I have done and engage on the merits, cut to the nut and admit that you benefit (greatly) from socialism as you (NOS) define it. Then, and only then, will we have agreed upon a premise from which we can advance in argument.

Even when grounded in a thorough historical reconstruction, this sort of thing only makes sense if truth is off the table. — Srap Tasmaner

Truth is off the table when we, hand in hand, refuse to go backward in argument until we find a premise upon which we can both agree. Then we can march forward in our search for truth.

It is seductive but dangerous, and we’d be better off if Nietzsche had never thought of it. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree: failure to find that premise and proceeding anyway is dangerous to the search for truth. I can't speak to Nietzsche.

You say you want to help others then delegate some government official to do it for you. — NOS4A2

I don't want to help others. I pay government to do that for me. Otherwise, I'd parse libertarians/parasites out as ineligible for help. But government lets them avail themselves of big government help too. Luckily for them.

But even then, erecting a bureaucracy is helping no one, so no help arrives at all, just more machine. — NOS4A2

See, I told you a libertarian could not fathom it. It's beyond their imagination. They can't even see all the help they have received. Are they ungrateful? I'm guessing it's like a parasite. Does a parasite even know what it's doing? Or does it just do what parasites do? Lot's of people have been helped. That, again, is why there are 7+ billion of us.

By all means, help others with help, but none of what you provide or do can be considered “help”. — NOS4A2

Again, you prove you cannot fathom it. It has literally helped, and is helping billions.

Rather, it’s an escape from having to help others. — NOS4A2

It's not an escape. It's delegation to a better, more objective, more effective big guy that I (ostensibly) have some control over via the vote and rule of law. I say "ostensibly" because we all know that people who support their oppressors have turned over the reigns of power to their oppressors. They think the oppressor is their government when, in reality, the oppressor is the people who have convinced them the oppressor is government. That's not hard to do because, like I said, they can't fathom that anyone would use the most effect tool to help others. Since the person is ungrateful and can't fathom it, he blames the wrong entity. The oppressor absolutely LOVES it when the people blame government for their loss of their fantasy autonomy. It would be funny if it weren't such an indictment of people.

Socialism is state monopoly and power-grubbing, nothing besides. It has only ever served asa means to dupe entire masses into giving up their autonomy. — NOS4A2

That's not just socialism. That is every form of government ever. In fact, it is the big guy intimidating the little guy. Libertarians are socialists who hate themselves for it, because they want an autonomy that comes with being a big guy, and they can't have it because they aren't big guys. They rely on the state to protect them from big guys and they hate it. Colonel Colt helped, but he can't make a libertarian hate themselves less.

One thing that you (and one other I am thinking about right now but who will remain unnamed) can't possibly fathom (no, seriously, you cannot even imagine it) is that someone somewhere might actually want to help others, and that someone might honestly believe the best way to do that is with help. You can't imagine that they find it, and that there is a group of people trying to help people and that they participate in government to do it.

But there is one thing you *can* imagine, and that is me. You can imagine groups of people like me coming to get you. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

No. Wait. You don't have to be afraid. You just have to quit using our shit without paying for it.

They are socialists to me. — NOS4A2

Everyone is a socialist to you. Because, if anyone were a non-socialist, they'd be dead.

So-called “social” legislation and other mollycoddling adopted by governments these days are but the successive steps to a socialist regime, if they’re not there already. — NOS4A2

Oh, we're there already. We've been there since the first group of 30 took care of that old person, that baby, that wounded person.

Let’s just swallow the pill already, name and all. — NOS4A2

It's not a pill. It's a flag and humanity waives it proudly. That's why there are 7+ billion of us. DOH!

Socialism is being social. Civil. Caring. Loving. Except toward assholes.

Whenever I listened to debates or discussions about trade agreements (over the last 40 years or so) the proponent always (always) said "Well, there are going to be winners and losers."

That was their token bone tossed to the other side, making it sound like "These things have been taken into account." As if the losers would be taken care of. But the best they ever offered on that point was some weak BS about retraining and retooling the losers for some new tech.

But the most shameful thing about these debates was, the "opposition" always let the "winners and losers" comment slide, and both parties moved on to other, sexier aspects of the debate.

Shame, shame, shame.

If there is a debate at all, that means the losers have some cards left to play. Otherwise, the trade agreement would just go forward. What we need to make sure the loser's boats don't sink as the tide rises for some slaves over seas, is to make sure the losers don't lose. You know how to do that? You let them in on the profits. Not some; not a nickel here or a dime there: you make them equal partners. For ever penny to be made by the huckster who's trying to sell this shit, the losers get a penny too. They all become winners.

But the losers are losers because they are losers. They don't get off their losing fucking asses and vote. Or if they do, they vote for the proposals and people that winners tell them to vote for. Which again, makes them losers. You kind of don't even want to help them if they are that stupid. Fuck them. But if you are a better person than that, you try to help them.

At then end of the day, you don't say "Hey, look at it this way: you may lose your job, but you'll be able to afford the cheap pieces of plastic Chinese shit they sell at Wally World. And when it breaks, you can return it and get another one. Look around! The tide is lifting your boat with cheap pieces of plastic Chinese shit! Why, my parents didn't have cheap pieces of plastic Chinese shit! So our collective standard of living has risen!"

There is nothing wrong with globalization. Just don't tell the losers they are going to be winners and don't sweep them under the rug with a patronizing comment. Make them winners by paying them off with an equal portion of the gargantuan profits you will be pulling in as you take your tax free money out of America and invest in emerging markets overseas.

Oh, and if buying what you need to make your venture work will sink it, then I guess it wasn't a viable business model in the first fucking place, now was it? And you should not be getting big government to help you get it off the ground, now should you? Pay a fucking tax you parasite!

End rant.

The state is a tool, true, but more of a machine. Its sole purpose is the exploitation of one class by another, and to secure its interests from insurrection from within and without. It doesn’t matter who wields it or pulls its levers, it goes on doing what it always has, in fact, what all states were created to do. If you were to man the state with a flock of honorable men, what exactly would change? Extortion, robbery, exploitation, coercion, mendacity, hypocrisy, rent-seeking, corruption—all of it would go on, simply because no state was formed for any other purpose. — NOS4A2

A machine is a tool. The purpose is determined by he/she/they who build it and wield it. One purpose is indeed to prevent insurrection from anywhere. It does matter greatly who wields it and pulls its levers.

If I were to man the state with a flock of honorable people, nothing would change. That is why neither I nor any other individual should be charged with manning it. Nor should I decide who is honorable and who is not. The people at large, constrained by a Constitution designed to protect against a tyranny of the majority, and acting pursuant to the rule of law, should make such decisions and they should do so periodically, again as set forth in law.

They should also keep money from making the decisions and they should tax every swinging dick and tit under their sovereign jurisdiction; more so those who benefit the most from the machine.

Those who want the machine to seize up and stop working will, of course, seek to deprive it of oil and grease. They will instead grease palms. With money. They are insurgents from within and without. They are enemies of the people. They are the reason the state does not work for the people.

Sometimes money keeps the machine running to do dirty work against the people. Money will keep the machine around as a punching bag for those so stupid as to blame the machine instead of the money that pulls the levers. But yeah, gerrymander, buy up the 4th estate, dole out enough bread and circuses to keep the guillotine at bay, man the levers with hacks, and convince the sheep that the machine is their oppressor. But never let the people get the levers.

The right of the people to keep and bear levers has been infringed. Now money has them. But don't blame the levers. Keep and bear them. Or in this case, take them back. Legally.

I could go on but you're smart enough to beat this analogy out to it's obvious conclusion.

Excellent, but, alas, I am a poor man. The nearer to god I be - - lol!! — boagie

You're in good company.

If aliens visited Earth, they would hob-nob with the intelligent life (rocks, plants and animals), have a good laugh about the hairless, toothless, two-legged dummies, and then mosey on their way.

If anyone other than the government acted like the government, handcuffed people and locked them in a cell, they’d be rightfully called a criminal. That’s why it’s difficult to distinguish the government from any other criminal class. — Michael

:100: Bingo. And the list goes on. Who is government to stop me from dumping metric shit-tons of hazardous waste into the air or the river? And then fining me for it!

If anyone other than the government acted like the government, took wealth as they did, they’d be rightfully called a criminall. That’s why it’s difficult to distinguish the government from any other criminal class. — NOS4A2

You are right. And those who aren't deluded DO call them criminals. And it is hard to distinguish. That's part of the plan. Let me tell you how it works:

Like many a person I've argued with before, there is a fundamental failure to distinguish between the government and those who wield it. Let me try and help you: Government is not the living, breathing, sentient, conscious, evil monster that some deluded people think it is. Sure, if you are telling stories around the campfire, to gullible little kids, that works.

But government is really just a tool. Like a hammer, or a gun. It does not hurt you or steal from you or make you it's bitch. It is the people behind the government that do that. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. Government does not take wealth as a criminal. Criminals take wealth as criminals. When you hold a hammer, the whole looks like a nail. When you hold lots of money, those who hold little look like chumps. So you take even more and the chumps line up to help you. The chumps love to hear the stories about money and they go to bed at night with visions of money dancing in their sweet little heads.

So, now all you have to do is follow the money. Guess what? The trail emphatically does lead back to the people who you think "created" wealth with brawn or brains, bootstrapping themselves up with risk-taking daring-do and personal responsibility. Those who have you thinking they came by it honestly are the very thieves you are looking for.

Now I'm not so stupid as to think what I just said didn't fall on deaf ears. I know it did. But I can speak truth anyway. Futile though it may be. Those who can't distinguish don't distinguish. They listen to the fairy tales and believe them.

[edited to delete the NOT]

I don’t care who it’s for. It’s done because others have given them the power to do it. — NOS4A2

Or they took it. Maybe even paid money for it. Hmmm. Wonder where they got the money. Must have "created wealth." :rofl:

Yeah, let's just tax more, like the 90% marginal rate I heard we had when the U.S. was in it's prime. Of course there was a raft of exemptions but it doesn't help when we reduce the rate and leave the exemptions. Also, one question I've always had is this: If defense spending can be defended because it creates jobs, doesn't welfare spending create jobs too? I mean, either way we are giving money away. But bombs disappear, whereas welfare spending gets spent, and also pays the wages of all those who dole it out. Kind of a trickle up idea, instead of a trickle down. That way those at the top actually have to work to get some of it.

But in the end, I hear deficit spending doesn't mean shit so long as the petrodollar/dollar is the world's currency. Sure, if the world switched to a PetroEuro or Wan or whatever, we'd be a third world country over night. But we still have the bombs, right?

I have no theory as to what caused the Great Depression. — NOS4A2

Same thing that caused the tank in the 1890s.

It’s amazing how fast an institution can spend other people’s money. — NOS4A2

Not fast enough, apparently. Musk made some $36 billion in one day. Only a sap would think it was "his" money and that the markets and invisible hand really exist.

There is so much government intervention in the way that no one could ever know. — NOS4A2

That government intervention is done at the behest of the 1%, the corporations, the MIC, and the capitalists who use it to limit competition and line their pockets. If they would only pay true cost like a real capitalist would, then we'd at least have a handle on it. But they've convinced their sheep that they did it all in spite of government, instead of through the ownership thereof.

Speaking of neoliberalism, the debt-ridden, big government policies that led to it are now occurring once again. Stagflation? — NOS4A2

Yeah, $7 trillion/ten-year defense budges will do that to you. Anyway, no matter how high inflation gets, do you think we will ever pay true cost for anything? Wouldn't that be nice.

Probably the 1% are not the evil power elite, they are too visible. — boagie

There does seem to be a certain restraint exercised by Gates, Musk, Buffet, Bezos, et al. They have the money to hire the best advisors on how the game is really played, and they then seem to mind their manners.

This leads me to believe that money, while providing access to power, is not power itself. I think intelligence is power and, while money can buy some intelligence, the important intelligence is being withheld. Nation-states and the power-elite (no, not politicians; they are puppets) that control them (big oil) are where the real power is. They know something.

I've said this before, but it also seems that (with the exception of Donald Trump) every POTUS that I've ever seen walks out of the swearing-in ceremony a more docile and restrained man than when he walked in. It's not the gravity of the new responsibility finally coming home to him. I suspect someone whispers something in his ear. Trump probably got the whisper too, but he's so full of himself he didn't hear it. He probably just answers directly to Putin so the message got through that way.

I'm going to start my own version of Q if I get enough positive feedback. Send me your money. :strong: :death: :party:

These aren't problems, they are nice to haves. Give me whatever big asshole is available to keep the welfare state viable in the Netherlands, instead of austerity, and I'll vote for him. — Benkei

As long as you don't pretend to be against that stuff like a good little Christian evangelical, then yeah, go for it. But he could, literally, shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, even one of his own, and his base would not care. He could pay for abortions and wipe his ass with a bible and his base would make some Q story up for him. He's a god. They worship him.

Or basically, you can't play hardball when you're the least popular faction in government, which progressives are in polling, in votes, and in seats. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think similar assessments were had for the Tea Party. But I'm no expert on these things. I'm on the outside looking in, thinking that a house divided against itself cannot stand. The husband is a wife beater and the wife is subordinate, even if she brings home a larger check. The teen daughter is flexing while the teen son is playing video games.

Anyway, I'd like to see Liz Cheney run and split the ticket. I can just see the debates where Trumps asks why she's running if she voted with him 97% of the time. And she just says "Because I actually believe that stuff and you are a dishonorable coward and a liar."

Then I woke up.

Mmm, which is I suppose why you and your ilk unconditionally flag carry for one of the most agressive foreign policy war hawks to have ever breathed oxygen. — StreetlightX

:roll: I thought of another analogy: I am talking about how the gun is manufactured and how it is operated. Then you come in with your irrelevant agenda and complain about what the gun is being used for. For all you know, others may be in total agreement with you on the misuse of the gun. But you always shoot yourself in your foot when you shoot off your mouth, not knowing that no one was talking about shooting.

It's fundamental nature is killing poor people for American corporations. I'd say it stands for exactly what the right does. And so too what passes for 'the left' in America too frankly. — StreetlightX

That's because you are incapable of understanding the truth of the matter asserted (the reason for which the argument was made) and are hell-bent on seeing everything through your ignorant anti-American lens. If you understood socialism, and how the U.S. military fits four-square within that assessment, then you would see that it isnot inconsistent with your view of how that military is used abroad. Let me dumb it down for you: What you say is true. That has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with what I said.

Trump had no policies and no ideology. — Xtrix

:100: Not even the evangelical Christian right was so stupid as to think Trump actually gave a rat's ass about fetuses. They just sold their soul (and their vote) to a devil who promised to execute in their favor. A devil who cheats on his wife, grabs pussy, cusses and generally carries on in away that would have once set these people's hair on fire with righteous fury. But they will roll with the devil if he plays their game. And he takes them for a ride.

You're probably right but it's funny to see someone call an institution of war criminals and murderers that preys on the poor a socialist institution. — StreetlightX

It's just another irony in America. Kind of like bootstrapping, personal responsibility and other myths. Our military is exalted beyond all measure by the right, but it's fundamental nature is the ass-opposite of everything the right stands for. Talk about big government, cooperative, communal, etc.

But the right knows it's hypocrisy and that is why it has been trying to do to the military what it did to the U.S. Post Office: start privatizing it; and I mean way more than the traditional gun boat service to big oil.

AOC would be the front runner now IMHO. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agreed. I just see her like Mr. Smith goes to Washington and question her (or anyone's) ability to remain pure after getting kicked around by the conniving professionals like McConnel, Pelosi, etc. Not everyone can be a Bernie. Hopefully AOC can get better with age.

identity plays a core role in ideology. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Where a house divided against itself cannot stand, we're going to have to start picking sides. I'll identify with her before I'd give the time of day to her opposition.

Lmao the US military are mall cops of oil corporations. — StreetlightX

Which adds absolutely nothing to the conversation or the analogy I was making. Another opportunity for you to try and get your stupid and irrelevant argument in. It's like the girl you wish you wouldn't have started a conversation with on SNL.

In retrospect, it probably would have been in the best interest of the progressive caucus to blink on the infrastructure bill before their party lost the Virginia governor's seat and almost losing New Jersey. Based on the narrow margins, it could easily have made the difference. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Screw VA and NJ. Burn the house down. Vote against the BBB, against the infrastructure bill, against raising the debt limit in December. Teach the Democrats a lesson. Manchin and Sinema and the conservative (no, they are not "moderate") Democrats don't hold the Trump cards they think they do. Everyone is starting to play a zero sum game so the left needs to play by those rules. They will, eventually, win. They just need to be prepared to not only tax, but to claw back, and prevent the rats from taking their shit when they jump the ship. Let the rats go into those cold international waters without the life jacket paid for by Americans.

There is no better way to absolve man of his failings than to devise a state program to cover for him. — NOS4A2

Sure there is. We don't need a state program to put up a blue wall, a green wall, or any other kind of wall. Groups of people can do great good, and great bad, but It is natural for people to look the other way when a comrade does wrong. That guy who just saved your life gets a pass, even if he is a racist POS who beats his wife or is otherwise an asshole. People want to fit in and don't want to be seen as a rat.

Take one of the most socialist institutions in the world: The U.S. military. When it comes down to it, you aren't fighting for ideals, country, etc.: you are fighting for the person on your left and your right. The state is irrelevant.

Human beings are engaged in one huge open conspiracy to fuck the planet and do whatever is in their own best interest regardless of the form of government that exercises power over them. Only the benefit of objectivity from 10k feet can pretend to look at the long game, and again, the long game can be good or bad; individual or group. But that is where you try to temper greed with enlightened self interest. You regulate, you legislate, you impose collective will on the individual.

; however, the latter seems, by far, more probable than the former. — 180 Proof

:100: :up:

It’s funny we should be talking about the philosophers, philosophy, Stephen Hawking, technology, the technologist, science and scientists. Why just the other day I was looking upon a layer, a stratum, not unlike the K-T Boundary which was laid down just the other day. Only the one I saw, I was actually a part of, and contributed to. It was thicker, surrounded the whole planet, and was made of more durable stuff.

But there it was, itself gone a short time later. Sedimentary in nature, it had taken a dive, become metamorphic, some even igneous only to rise again, dive again, several times over until the layer was no more. It seems like only yesterday. Because it was. Toss in a few meteorites to stir the goop and I’ve nothing left to consider. Not even that piece on the Moon, Mars, other planets and places, hurtling off into inter-stellar (hell, even intergalactic, by now) space. Nothing. Nothing. Never was.

And still time for something else to do it all over again; many, many times. Just like the ones before us.

I thought that was Conan the Barbarian. :lol: — Xtrix

They stole it from the original. 1210, if I recollect correct. Not that I was there, but I saw it on t-shirt attributed to the Khan. :grin:

P.S. Just found this: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5272307.Genghis_Khan