The boo-hurrah school tend to go a bit further than the coding of Bentham and say there’s nothing more to morality than this sort of emotional noise. Of course there is - and knowing (and telling) the difference between mere noise and signal is another means of distinguishing friend from enemy.
You are an interesting fellow Kenaz, and this is a piece worth anyone’s time. Well said.
No matter how fast the Republicans sink the Democrats manage to plummet farther and faster.
The historic Democratic icons FDR, and JFK would laugh at what passes for policy in their own beloved party. Although they were upper class they understood that victory for their party depended on appealing to working class voters. Current party leaders distain the “deplorable” and “racist” members of the working class.
A laundry list of things for Democrats to keep and to dump if they ever want to win again nationwide.
Keep a woman’s right to choose for the first trimester.
Dump abortion until birth unless the mother’s health is at risk or the fetus is not viable.
Keep a concern for climate change and the environment and grow nuclear power.
Dump intermittent, unreliable renewable energy that requires backup continuous generating capacity which is then used intermittently. A ridiculously expensive approach. Even more important, realize that the stifling maze of environmental procedures that now must be followed to build anything has raised the price of necessities like mass transit and housing that the working class needs to survive. Figure out how to build stuff quickly.
Keep and develop new effective vaccines.
Dump vaccine mandates.
Keep equality of opportunity for all. Dump equity of results based on discriminating against men, whites and Asians in a futile attempt to compensate for past discrimination against women and blacks. Recognize that D.E.I. Is unconstitutional.
Keep the protection of gay and lesbian rights.
Dump men in women’s sports, private spaces and prisons. Oh, and mutilating children who might grow up to be gay.
Keep an opportunity for selective high value immigration.
Dump sanctuary cities and open borders.
Keep helping the homeless find jobs and a place to live.
Dump camping in cities, shitting in the streets and allowing open drug use.
Keep a concern for due process in criminal justice.
Dump letting shoplifters and other petty thieves off the hook and releasing predators back on the streets without bail to kill and maim again.
Keep support for unions and fair wages
Dump “free trade” policies that have devastated our manufacturing sector.
Do all of the above and start governing like you know what the fuck you’re doing and you might just find your way back to power.
The big mistake the Democratic Party made was that it started mistaking social media for what the base actually believed. Social media rewards extreme statements and ragebait. It also favors the terminally online. And so the Dems started shaping their policies around the temper tantrums of 16-year-olds Discord refugees and the unemployable mentally ill.
Most Americans couldn't care less what consenting adults do in private, but they draw a hard line at "consenting" and "adult." Even most Catholics would hold their noses and accept legal 1st trimester abortion. And despite some bumpy patches. interracial relations in America are stronger than ever. It's telling that most of the setbacks in these areas have come from people who behaved in a deliberately provocative manner so they could set themselves up as persecuted classes, or who took the most shrill and fringe ideas and tried shoving them down the public's throat by brute force.
The big mistake the Republicans have made is their fetishization of Muh Free Trade and Muh Globalism. They are now the party of the working man rather than the party of the wealthy. Toward that end, they have to start behaving more like Jacksonian Democrats. If they're seen as the tough on crime party, they'll make further inroads with the non-white working classes. Most of the Dems who want to defund the police and coddle immigrants live in gated communities where they are isolated from the consequences of their actions.
If we're going to rebuild the American manufacturing sector, and we should, we are also going to have to rebuild America's once-proud unions. While they certainly had their shortcomings, we've seen firsthand what serfdom under multinational conditions looks like.
A very interesting overview. There is a specific detail as to the particular period in which the "American society" finds itself, which is unknown to the very society at large, but happens throughout history in different places and different societies. Namely, the "American Dream" is dead, and as this is dawning ever more in the minds of those who believed in it, the result is an increase in friction and then some. At the end of the day, the "American society" (if something like that actually even exists) is simply frustrated because the quality of life (under specific criteria of standards) is rapidly deteriorating. There is immense hypocrisy behind the curtain. It is not really that the various shenanigans that the Empire is doing abroad all the time really bothers the mass crowd. No. What bothers and subconsciously frightens them is that the shenanigans abroad are not bringing the benefits to the crowd as they did some decades ago. Add to this the irony of destiny, the "chicken come home to roost" syndrome. The shenanigans are practiced at home (for quite a while but the clever method of gradualism being used did not make it obvious). The boiling frog comes to one's mind. The "Jacuzzi" was quite comfortable, but now it starts to boil. What comes next is panic.
As the American Dream continues to decompose, we're likely to see more efforts to find someone who can bear the blame. But no matter how much blood we shed trying to defeat those imaginary enemies, we aren't going to bring the prosperity back. And the time we spend chasing scapegoats will be time we're not spending on preserving what we can and rebuilding a new world out of the old one's rubble.
Yes. Happens all the time, many places, the very same thing. The real problems start then when the reality really "sinks in". One can compare the situation with a Casino situation. A person lost in the Casino and still has some money to get home decently. But NO, instead of accepting the loss (and move on), the GAMBLER doubles, triples down. The gambler could have saved himself but did not want to accept own responsibility for having gambled in the first place. We do have that wisdom in those jokes about Las Vegas... the visitors come with a car (their car) and leave with planes (someone paid the ticket, the car was lost as the house and the rest while gambling).
I accidentally removed this comment in an effort to remove a comment of my own. It contained a link to https://tritorch.com/folly/ , which is an excellent piece by Out Here on the Perimeter. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Excellent piece! The hysteria around COVID-19 showed the US government how quickly citizens will give up their freedoms and turn in dissenters if only you scare them enough. The only silver lining in that cloud is that they overplayed their hand and wound up burning away much of the trust 2019 Americans had for their democracy and its leaders.
Excellent work.
The boo-hurrah school tend to go a bit further than the coding of Bentham and say there’s nothing more to morality than this sort of emotional noise. Of course there is - and knowing (and telling) the difference between mere noise and signal is another means of distinguishing friend from enemy.
You are an interesting fellow Kenaz, and this is a piece worth anyone’s time. Well said.
For the entirety of the 20th century the Republicans and Democrats were a leftist uniparty. Thank goodness that might now be changing.
No matter how fast the Republicans sink the Democrats manage to plummet farther and faster.
The historic Democratic icons FDR, and JFK would laugh at what passes for policy in their own beloved party. Although they were upper class they understood that victory for their party depended on appealing to working class voters. Current party leaders distain the “deplorable” and “racist” members of the working class.
A laundry list of things for Democrats to keep and to dump if they ever want to win again nationwide.
Keep a woman’s right to choose for the first trimester.
Dump abortion until birth unless the mother’s health is at risk or the fetus is not viable.
Keep a concern for climate change and the environment and grow nuclear power.
Dump intermittent, unreliable renewable energy that requires backup continuous generating capacity which is then used intermittently. A ridiculously expensive approach. Even more important, realize that the stifling maze of environmental procedures that now must be followed to build anything has raised the price of necessities like mass transit and housing that the working class needs to survive. Figure out how to build stuff quickly.
Keep and develop new effective vaccines.
Dump vaccine mandates.
Keep equality of opportunity for all. Dump equity of results based on discriminating against men, whites and Asians in a futile attempt to compensate for past discrimination against women and blacks. Recognize that D.E.I. Is unconstitutional.
Keep the protection of gay and lesbian rights.
Dump men in women’s sports, private spaces and prisons. Oh, and mutilating children who might grow up to be gay.
Keep an opportunity for selective high value immigration.
Dump sanctuary cities and open borders.
Keep helping the homeless find jobs and a place to live.
Dump camping in cities, shitting in the streets and allowing open drug use.
Keep a concern for due process in criminal justice.
Dump letting shoplifters and other petty thieves off the hook and releasing predators back on the streets without bail to kill and maim again.
Keep support for unions and fair wages
Dump “free trade” policies that have devastated our manufacturing sector.
Do all of the above and start governing like you know what the fuck you’re doing and you might just find your way back to power.
The big mistake the Democratic Party made was that it started mistaking social media for what the base actually believed. Social media rewards extreme statements and ragebait. It also favors the terminally online. And so the Dems started shaping their policies around the temper tantrums of 16-year-olds Discord refugees and the unemployable mentally ill.
Most Americans couldn't care less what consenting adults do in private, but they draw a hard line at "consenting" and "adult." Even most Catholics would hold their noses and accept legal 1st trimester abortion. And despite some bumpy patches. interracial relations in America are stronger than ever. It's telling that most of the setbacks in these areas have come from people who behaved in a deliberately provocative manner so they could set themselves up as persecuted classes, or who took the most shrill and fringe ideas and tried shoving them down the public's throat by brute force.
The big mistake the Republicans have made is their fetishization of Muh Free Trade and Muh Globalism. They are now the party of the working man rather than the party of the wealthy. Toward that end, they have to start behaving more like Jacksonian Democrats. If they're seen as the tough on crime party, they'll make further inroads with the non-white working classes. Most of the Dems who want to defund the police and coddle immigrants live in gated communities where they are isolated from the consequences of their actions.
If we're going to rebuild the American manufacturing sector, and we should, we are also going to have to rebuild America's once-proud unions. While they certainly had their shortcomings, we've seen firsthand what serfdom under multinational conditions looks like.
A very interesting overview. There is a specific detail as to the particular period in which the "American society" finds itself, which is unknown to the very society at large, but happens throughout history in different places and different societies. Namely, the "American Dream" is dead, and as this is dawning ever more in the minds of those who believed in it, the result is an increase in friction and then some. At the end of the day, the "American society" (if something like that actually even exists) is simply frustrated because the quality of life (under specific criteria of standards) is rapidly deteriorating. There is immense hypocrisy behind the curtain. It is not really that the various shenanigans that the Empire is doing abroad all the time really bothers the mass crowd. No. What bothers and subconsciously frightens them is that the shenanigans abroad are not bringing the benefits to the crowd as they did some decades ago. Add to this the irony of destiny, the "chicken come home to roost" syndrome. The shenanigans are practiced at home (for quite a while but the clever method of gradualism being used did not make it obvious). The boiling frog comes to one's mind. The "Jacuzzi" was quite comfortable, but now it starts to boil. What comes next is panic.
As the American Dream continues to decompose, we're likely to see more efforts to find someone who can bear the blame. But no matter how much blood we shed trying to defeat those imaginary enemies, we aren't going to bring the prosperity back. And the time we spend chasing scapegoats will be time we're not spending on preserving what we can and rebuilding a new world out of the old one's rubble.
Yes. Happens all the time, many places, the very same thing. The real problems start then when the reality really "sinks in". One can compare the situation with a Casino situation. A person lost in the Casino and still has some money to get home decently. But NO, instead of accepting the loss (and move on), the GAMBLER doubles, triples down. The gambler could have saved himself but did not want to accept own responsibility for having gambled in the first place. We do have that wisdom in those jokes about Las Vegas... the visitors come with a car (their car) and leave with planes (someone paid the ticket, the car was lost as the house and the rest while gambling).
Accurate. The Human species is exceptionally susceptible to delusions.
I accidentally removed this comment in an effort to remove a comment of my own. It contained a link to https://tritorch.com/folly/ , which is an excellent piece by Out Here on the Perimeter. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Excellent piece! The hysteria around COVID-19 showed the US government how quickly citizens will give up their freedoms and turn in dissenters if only you scare them enough. The only silver lining in that cloud is that they overplayed their hand and wound up burning away much of the trust 2019 Americans had for their democracy and its leaders.