who is stupid?

[Griff]

Not stupid.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts...and-back-rerun

[tw]

Originally Posted by sexobon

Worst case of psychological projection I ever saw.

Your 30 second attention span is showing again.

[sexobon]

That's just all you're worth.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Griff

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts...and-back-rerun

That discussion demonstrated how easily a moderate can be enticed or even consumed by the dark side of the force.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

The people who consider truth to vary with the fashion of the year...
...Leave me uncomfortable with their whims.

The people who kid themselves that they are maturing and growing, and vary with fashion thereby, are even worse. When they are moved to action, people without self-awareness commit great atrocities.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Flint

. . . and they're socialists, and they're communists, and those things are bad. Because that's what they told me in third grade.

Flint, darling -- have you since third grade seen any good things come out of socialism and communism? I doubt you have, since third grade or any other grade.

I also doubt you've ever been past the borders of the United States. I have. This allowed me to see what's out there; to put boots on the ground on the soil of despotic countries.

Cuba, for instance, has the most Potëmkin healthcare system pesos can buy. Sufficient to hoodwink the likes of Michael Moore -- I'm too wise to view his movies, and I seek understanding elsewhere. Fact is, there isn't a nationalized healthcare system that's worth a damn -- it always turns to rationing of both care and death. Overreach much? You can lower taxes honestly by not overreaching at all. That is anathema to those with an appetite to rule. (Otherwise, they'd have to make do with HOA's.)

People spend their last bolivars for a bus ticket to the borders of Venezuela -- then get off the bus and hike across the border afoot, destitute -- into another third world country. They have some notion they could make a new start.

People defect away from socialism; those socialist countries are not as popular to break into as the capitalist, freemarket United States. I mind me of a guy I just randomly met in a quiet Paris café years before the Berlin Wall came down -- the waiter might have thought it was good to seat the foreigners together, or perhaps figured he could have just one table to clear when we were done with lunch. We got to chatting, in French. Turns out this guy was from East Germany and had slipped across some border or other into the Free World, without the blessing of law. So he broke out, not in. Which point he didn't mind mentioning in public in 1980s Paris.

It's not exactly an abstraction when you've discussed it with a living example.

[Griff]

Yet the path of moderate Social Democrats isn't being largely fled. Totalitarian states should be brought down or fled. Those who seek totalitarianism should be opposed early enough in their process to halt them. Understanding when one's truth serves the totalitarian's objectives is the difficulty.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Griff

Yet the path of moderate Social Democrats isn't being largely fled. Totalitarian states should be brought down or fled. Those who seek totalitarianism should be opposed early enough in their process to halt them. Understanding when one's truth serves the totalitarian's objectives is the difficulty.

Which is why -- critical thinking in play -- I bring down the ones that say to us, "Hell, yeah, we'll take your AR-15!" as the sine qua non of totalitarianism. Sure, they don't confess their totalitarianism -- but then, would you?

The last sentence in your post is... addled. "One's truth?" Keeping the AR-15 disserves the totalitarian's objectives.

Mighty few of you lot have genuinely found a totalitarian in The Annoying Orange -- he certainly does annoy some of the piggies in their starched white shirts -- as mighty few of you have bought AR-15s, or ammunition, or helmets -- or anything. You lot have for four years coddled your prejudices, and you've puled. That's not "resistance to totalitarianism." What it is is a big nothing.

Being the soul of nonprejudice, I walk a good path. And keep a rifle and something to feed it.

Did you know, the last time I fully supported the Democratic Presidential candidate, I was a third-grader? (LBJ, that was)

[Griff]

If your weapon serves a totalitarian mindset you are anti-freedom.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Griff

If your weapon serves a totalitarian mindset you are anti-freedom.

That would be true -- if. Mine does not -- it should be noted that totalitarians cannot and do not afford a Second Amendment. They'd die, shortening their careers dramatically. Despotisms live by disarming populations, not so?

Shortening is how we'd want it. I'm not here to steer you wrong either, Griff. You and me both keeping guns actively does much to prevent successful totalitarianism. And one of us can tell the other one he's being a slacker.

[Flint]

Sorry, should have said, IF half of the country is mentally challenged..
I don't need to make that supposition, our culture is steeped in it.

I overheard a co-worker using the phrase "let that sink in" --out loud, in a conversation.
Using the "meme language" that never convinced anybody of anything, to not convince some poor co-worker of something.

I don't need to tell you half of the country is stupid, it' the entire basis of our politics.
But IF half of us are stupid, there has to be some criteria for determining which half it is, right?

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Ibby

[more good stuff]

Keep posting, please. Your thoughts are interesting. I don't go on social media or listen to any form of news anymore, so it's nice to see some fresh content.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Flint

Keep posting, please. Your thoughts are interesting. I don't go on social media or listen to any form of news anymore, so it's nice to see some fresh content.

Absolutely