The Democratic Party's Slide Into Irrelevance

You're right about one thing. The desire to protect children is innate and uncontrollable. It's a fact that I want to control the aspects of people's behavior which represents a threat to children and future generations.

Cool. I may or may not believe you but who cares ... but I have no issue with respecting that for argument's sake. Just pick a ****ing lane and roll with it, Holmes. I really don't want to sift through AOC's green new deal or more FDR next week if we are going to chat. Do that **** somewhere else.

My lane has been consistent throughout,

I've had some time to reflect about my inner experience and how to connect my innate drive to my political prescriptions.

I'm a man with protective impulses. The Buddhist bias to reduce suffering in the world resonates with me. The notion of killing as being sinful resonates with me.

I don't expect everyone to join me in the belief that we are passing environmental tipping points which will result in negative changes in global survival outlook which can be considered comparable to murder. But that is where my review of the evidence leads.

We present live in and embrace living in a society which gives itself the authority to outlaw murder. That is a form of authoritarianism which we find appropriate.

It feels like a binary situation. If the government doesn't have the authority to stop murder, then the people have the authority to commit murder. I don't see a middle ground. In our idealized version of the world, where should that authority reside ?

We're in a difficult moment in history. Our educational systems and media are failing to teach the public about the dangers of the status quo. Survival requires adaptation and the elites are standing in the way.

Is that quote from Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot*?

*Or Trump

It's from the decision makers from every functional group in the animal kingdom, including humans. The only alternative to a cooperative society is anarchy and that's never been an effective model of group organization.

The Ten Commandments is authoritarian and provides boundaries which prohibit things like murder and theft. Cooperation involves not stealing and killing.

So rather than try and pivot to dark associations with historical despots who practiced mass murder, do you think it wise to have leadership which demands that we cooperate in refraining from murder ? Do you think it's wise to have leadership which has the will and the authority to disable the killers as it does today with respect to the killing of fellow citizens ?

It's interesting how people want to paint my aims as monstrous when my aims are to remove the freedom to kill.

This is a norm which we readily embrace as a society already.

It scares the crap out of people to lose the freedom to add unlimited toxic pollutants to a shared environment which is far more delicate than most understand and are too lazy to learn about. The preference for an unregulated environment is an example of mass insanity that Jung warned about.

You stoke fear of authoritarianism when it is the only decision making model which has ever worked. Is history littered with examples of leaders who have abused that authority ? Absolutely !! And that kind of abuse must be guarded against. But the bigger fear s/b lack of authority. History has zero examples of anarchy being successful.

I think you missed my point.

The statement, "Nobody willing to cooperate need be subject to discipline" is equally true for benevolent leaders and despots alike.

I once said to a friend of mine a quote I had recently heard, "Teamwork makes a dreamwork!" He at once shot back with, "That's what Hitler said!" (My friend is a professional Comic-Magician.)

That is to say, both statements are literally true but not helpful in terms of moral clarity.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

(Learned that one from d2_e4)

The Soviets said the same thing.

The scariest thing is that today we have a society in which authority is vested not in human judgement, but in the gravitational force of money.

Society has been hijacked by a mind virus in which accumulation of money has been deemed the apex value due to its historical association with survival. We live in a world in which we procure our needs and desires with money. Money has achieved a status so great that it is considered the benchmark of masculinity.

Anyone who steps back and looks at things clearly from a distance can see this gravitational force in effect. Money is concentrating in fewer and fewer people's hands and the appetite for that concentration is insatiable. We are in the process of being consumed by greed, fear and consumptive appetite.

Humans excel at denial. We tell ourselves a story of our superior intelligence when we are anything but.

A lion is not so stupid as to kill all the zebras and put them in a refrigerator. It may not be intentional, but a lion has the natural intelligence to allow some zebras to survive so that there is a continuous supply of meals for the future. Human intelligence leads to fear. Fear leads to a desire to control the future which is meant to be ensured by a big balance sheet.

We are currently living through a spiral of fear which is taking us all to the bottom together. Money will not save us. We are enslaved to money.

What's your net worth?

The Soviets were preceded by czars and succeeded by petrol mafia headed by Putin.

Rulers have a tendency and a necessity to be ruthless. In Game of Thrones, there is an apt quote " all rulers are either butchers or meat".

Good leadership will always be ruthless. It's just a matter of which sort of ruthlessness you prefer.

I am not important. If lucky, I will live for 100 years in a 14 billion year old universe. I am a temporary, tiny and inconsequential spec of dust in the vast space of that universe. My death is certain.

Steve Jobs had a ton of money but lamented the reality that he couldn't use it to hire someone to carry his disease.

I prefer a sense of faith to financial assets.

I am an inheritor of a survival legacy which dates back 4 billion years to single celled creatures that accumulated enough DNA instructions to divide via mitosis. I am programmed to struggle to survive and try to live in harmony with that programming. My being alive at an advanced age (60+) is a result of human advances in science in recent centuries. So, I'm living in bonus time.

I lean toward buddhist principles which provide guidance in the direction of minimizing suffering. Part of the eightfold path is the ethical guidance to not kill.

In the largest scheme of things, my net worth is nothing. We humans will eventually go extinct regardless of my efforts. But my DNA tells me to struggle, so that's what I do.

Life is short. I measure wealth in experience, not dollars. I have had a life rich in experience, love and loss.

Do you by any chance wear a fedora.

No. A dear friend crocheted me a beanie which I am partial to.

I'm a hippie.

I'm interested in math and the obscure places it leads.

How many years does it take for the plastic concentration in our brains to double ?

What is the percentage increase in hydrogen in concentration in the ocean as its pH has declined by 0.1 - 0.15 in the last 50 years?

How fast are Earth temperatures increasing ?

How many millions of years has it been since we had a troposphere this saturated with heat trapping gases ?

What is the maximum gini coefficient in a stable society ?

How much more water is being extracted from the Colorado River system than being added to it ?

The world is a fascinating place when we get beyond the gravitational force of the self. Our destinies are all intertwined. If we prefer a survivable future for our children, we need to cooperate.

The lane has at least taken you in circles but w/e.

The issue here, regardless of good faith or not, is that your ideas on how the world should be ran has no chance of either reducing the effects of climate change or helping the kiddos - i think the fdr intros certainly do but that doesnt last long.

You're just expressing bitterness or ignorance at this point. Being a grinch is not compulsory, 72.

I encourage you to tap into some romantic sensibilities in which life is purposeful and adventurous. The prospects vis a vis climate change are indeed dark ..... but that just increases the opportunity to participate in accomplishing something amazing. To participate in solving the biggest problem in human history is not an opportunity that comes along for every generation.

Tap into some joie de vivre. Allow yourself some romantic imagination.

Helping the kiddos is the essence of our existence. To struggle for life to go on is what we were designed for. Stop fighting your nature and submit to it. Go with the flow.

What is it about my message that you fear 72 ?

Authentic conversations require us to articulate our fears.

I'm human. I have fears too. I fear the experience associated with giving up the impulse to struggle for something better. I fear an existence with no purpose or meaning. I fear God and my conscience. I fear the sensory experience of not being able to breathe.

you are certainly fun to talk to. I will ive you that.

The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.

Life could be worse than having someone fun to talk to as a leader.

If I was a leader, I would try to bring back the equivalent of FDR's fireside chats. I wouldn't hire a talking head to be press secretary. I would do it myself.

And I wouldn't delegate the question asking to multi-millionaire anchors working for billionaire media owners. I would ask communities to nominate local citizens to ask the questions which are important to them. Average citizens should have a voice in a democratic conversation.

I'm not a natural authoritarian. I'd prefer a life which involves a lot of wearing pajamas, playing ping pong, smoking weed and making love to a woman who has powerful orgasms.

Being responsible for billions is people is the kind of thing which would make someone age pretty quickly. But someone has to do it and I don't see anyone with the balls to stand up to the status quo. In truth, I would rather goad someone else into doing it.

I think you should post more like this and chill out a little.

...but rhe "average citizens should have a voice in a democratic conversation is doing a lot of work with many of the things youve posited.