I am a stable genius

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Expand view Topic review: I am a stable genius

Re: I am a stable genius

by Jeff Kuta » Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:38 pm

Trump thinks any country that wouldn't want a Trump Hotel is a shithole.

It's all about what he can get from them. There has never been and never will be any whiff of "public service" while he is in office.

Re: I am a stable genius

by Octavious » Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:36 pm

You really think everything Obama said there was straight forward honesty? I think we may have stumbled across the answer to why you don't have a top 200 ghost rating ;)

Re: I am a stable genius

by Jamiet99uk » Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:07 pm

I am certain that President Obama, who was a dignified statesman who appeared to genuinely enjoy the diplomatic aspects of his role, honestly was pleased to welcome President Martelly.

I know you think honesty is over rated Oct. That's how you feel about truth and facts too, I've seen that. It seems to be a trend in modern Conservatism.

Re: I am a stable genius

by Octavious » Tue Jan 16, 2018 9:20 am

Trump's told his fair share or more of porkies, certainly, but he gets criticised just as much when he's being honest.

Take the subject of Haiti, for example, and compare and contrast Obama and Trump.

Obama said "It’s a great pleasure to welcome President Martelly of Haiti to the Oval Office. The bonds between our two peoples are extraordinarily strong, including the contributions made by Haitian Americans, who in all walks of life make enormous contributions to our own country."

Trump called Haiti a shithole

I would say that only one of those statements is particularly honest. I'd also say that honesty is overrated.

Re: I am a stable genius

by Jamiet99uk » Tue Jan 16, 2018 7:34 am

You can't deny that what Trump said was false.

Re: I am a stable genius

by CAPT Brad » Mon Jan 15, 2018 2:02 am

talking shit and spreading falsehoods

kinda like you, eh jamiet?

Re: I am a stable genius

by Jamiet99uk » Sun Jan 14, 2018 7:21 pm

The difference is the difference between Trump telling the truth, which he rarely does - and talking shit and spreading falsehoods, which he does all the time.

Re: I am a stable genius

by CAPT Brad » Fri Jan 12, 2018 10:09 pm

GWBush/Obama, what's the difference? Both supported the old way of thinking of Globalization over Americanization. To the dust heap with both, and add that jackass Clinton to the pile

Re: I am a stable genius

by Jamiet99uk » Fri Jan 12, 2018 7:54 pm

Trump's latest lie:

"Reason I canceled [sic] my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!"

The truth:

The deal to sell the London embassy and relocate it was approved during the administration of George W. Bush.

Re: I am a stable genius

by President Eden » Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:18 pm

ziran wrote:
Fri Jan 12, 2018 2:53 pm
i think most europeans during the renaissance didn't view them selves as all belonging to one monolithic european christian group. there was a shit-ton of religious and nationalist conflict, all the time. peace was an aberration. it is only within the past ~500 years that people began to see themselves as "white". before, they were catholic, protestant, orthodox, jewish or muslim and/or they were irish, basque, czech etc.

i agree that what president eden calls liberalism was the primary force that led to the destruction of these identities (i have at various points in my life called this force: capitalism, the state, civilisation, the planetary work-machine etc. what to call the thing that we all hate is often the most contentious topic for some reason). but i disagree that there is a way back to that (they imply this but don't state it outright).

does this mean we have to remain atomised individuals? no. what do we become instead? i don't know, but simply being "black" or "white" or whatever else is presented to us by this force, does not appeal to me.
I'm not saying they did view themselves as some pan-European family. They clearly didn't, no argument here.
What I am saying is that they did view themselves very clearly as whatever ethnicity and faith they held. They were inarguably Irish, Basque, Czech, and so forth (in the Renaissance example inarguably Venetian, Genoese, Florentine). I would say they were all one faith in the time of the Italian Renaissance, simply because that much is true (prior to Luther they were all Catholic, and most Italian states never felt a significant impact from the Reformation and remained Catholic), but my point isn't that all Europeans were the same. My point is that they had in common a strong national and religious identity, and when things did change that caused them to reevaluate that identity (for example, the Reformation's effect on Northern European states), they ultimately retained some strong, nation-defining identity in the end, even if it changed.

Re: I am a stable genius

by President Eden » Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:11 pm

Jeff Kuta wrote:
Fri Jan 12, 2018 3:57 pm
Harlem Renaissance

Surely a result of a monolithic culture in the United States, pre-1960s.
Nice goalpost shift.

You said:
And it can only do so with an influx of new viewpoints and ideas, hardly something that "societies with one dominant ethnicity and faith" exhibit.
Emphasis mine.

I gave you multiple examples of societies which evolved through the influx of new viewpoints and ideas which retained their dominant ethnicity and faith in the process.
You posting an example of a cultural trend that had some lasting impact on a dominant ethnicity that originated outside of that ethnicity doesn't prove your argument that this is the only way this can happen.
You made your burden not proving that it can happen this way (which I didn't dispute and which no reasonable person would) but proving it can only happen this way. Posting one example doesn't do that and is basically irrelevant toward meeting that goal.

Re: I am a stable genius

by Jeff Kuta » Fri Jan 12, 2018 3:57 pm

Harlem Renaissance

Surely a result of a monolithic culture in the United States, pre-1960s.

Re: I am a stable genius

by ziran » Fri Jan 12, 2018 2:53 pm

i think most europeans during the renaissance didn't view them selves as all belonging to one monolithic european christian group. there was a shit-ton of religious and nationalist conflict, all the time. peace was an aberration. it is only within the past ~500 years that people began to see themselves as "white". before, they were catholic, protestant, orthodox, jewish or muslim and/or they were irish, basque, czech etc.

i agree that what president eden calls liberalism was the primary force that led to the destruction of these identities (i have at various points in my life called this force: capitalism, the state, civilisation, the planetary work-machine etc. what to call the thing that we all hate is often the most contentious topic for some reason). but i disagree that there is a way back to that (they imply this but don't state it outright).

does this mean we have to remain atomised individuals? no. what do we become instead? i don't know, but simply being "black" or "white" or whatever else is presented to us by this force, does not appeal to me.

Re: I am a stable genius

by President Eden » Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:19 am

There's a lot for me to catch up on. Prado, I am going to get back to our exchange soon, sorry for making you wait.

This idea that a society with one dominant ethnicity and faith somehow can't have an influx of new ideas and viewpoints is pretty silly though, and quick to address, so I'll do that now.
You can still trade and accept some immigration in a society with one dominant identity. The United States of pre-1965 is a strong recent example of this. Up until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the United States was over 80% white, most of it from a few Northern European ethnicities (English, German, and Irish, mainly), and almost completely Christian (significantly Protestant). Due to the Cold War and the consequent spread of capitalism across the globe, the United States was the leading technological innovator in the world.
Hell, your own example of the Renaissance is a good one here, too. The Renaissance took off due to trade between Italian city-states and the Arab World, and the sheltering and resettling of Byzantine refugees after the fall of the Empire. These places weren't cosmopolitan secular havens, though; they were still ethnically distinct city-states (Venetians, Genoese, Sicilians, Florentines, and so forth), and each state was nearly 100% Catholic. The Italian cities didn't have to compromise their identity to reap the benefits of the Renaissance, and in fact, the Renaissance added an entirely new dimension that strengthened their self-identification: they claimed to be "heirs of Rome" in a sense, having first the land and now the ideas of the progenitor of European civilization.
And while you could argue that the various European states were fairly similar to each other culturally (relative to the divergence between them and the rest of the world), they were still very distinctly different societies that came up with and shared different ideas, one way or another. (Unfortunately for the inhabitants of early modern Europe, "sharing" these ideas would often come at the end of a blade. Liberalism deserves a lot of credit for the modern market economy, which has done a lot of work toward creating nonviolent means of sharing ideas.)

It's certainly true that states with weaker national identities are more likely to be open to newer ideas, and perhaps could be said to be more "innovative" depending on how we define the term. When you don't have a singular national ethos restraining your decision-making, you have more freedom to explore new ideas.
The reverse side of this is that some ideas are not only bad but plainly disastrous for the future of a people, and if you erode your national ethos in the name of individualism, you make it that much harder to cast off bad ideas, as you do not have a clear national identity to assert proactively against those bad ideas.
This brings me back to my original criticism of liberalism a couple of pages back. It is becoming quite clear, from the unabated march of the Marxist left in Western liberal states toward socialism, that liberalism is missing something in the ideological battle against Marxism. It does not have an affirmative identity to assert against the Marxists. Liberalism atomizes people down into the individual, which leaves it primed for the divide-and-conquer strategy that Marxists employ to pave the way for revolution. It has plenty of rational arguments, but no grand unifying vision of a liberal society -- and what we are learning above all, as our traditional barometers of the health of our republican society show us it is in danger of death (very low political participation rate, very low approval ratings for incumbents but no effort to unseat them, a complete lack of trust in the political establishment which cannot be converted into action due to its own inertia), is that rational argument is not enough. It works only with rational people, and there are very few (none?) of those.

Re: I am a stable genius

by Jeff Kuta » Fri Jan 12, 2018 7:20 am

And Croak, way to play the racial and religious victim cards for the majority. Must be a tough life.

Re: I am a stable genius

by Jeff Kuta » Fri Jan 12, 2018 7:17 am

That’s kind of why it’s called the Renaissance.

Re: I am a stable genius

by TrPrado » Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:22 am

The Renaissance doesn’t contradict his statement. It was a result of the reintroduction of old ideas, so separated from European life that they were essentially new ideas, from the Greeks, preserved by Muslim society.

Re: I am a stable genius

by CroakandDagger » Fri Jan 12, 2018 2:59 am

Of course it didn't. Nothing new and innovative ever came from white christians.

Re: I am a stable genius

by leon1122 » Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:55 am

Really? Are you saying that Europe didn't evolve and redefine itself as it transitioned from the feudal system to the Renaissance and to the Enlightenment?

Re: I am a stable genius

by Jeff Kuta » Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:11 am

"Society evolves and redefines itself on a constant basis, is the point I was making."

And it can only do so with an influx of new viewpoints and ideas, hardly something that "societies with one dominant ethnicity and faith" exhibit.

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