Leo Gura

The problem for radicalized Republicans now is that they are so wrong that it's too painful for their egos to admit it. There needs to be an admission by Republicans that Republicans were deeply wrong about Trump. But that is too painful for them to do. So they double-down with denial and scapegoating the left. In their minds they think the left is the problem, but it's them that's the problem and they need to acknowledge that publicly. But that's the last thing they will ever do.

Malcolm Nance is a former CIA counter-terrorist agent. He has really good, sober and stark analysis of such issues:

I hope I am wrong. But better safe than left with our pants down like last time. The MAGA people are crazy enough to try to stage a full-blown coup or simply lash out in vengance and rage. Assassination attempts likely.

Of course Left is objectively less hateful and intolerant. Left and right are not to equal but opposite sides as the right would like to believe.

Absolutely. Terrorism is coming. National guard should be deployed in every state over the next few weeks. Every government leader needs to have bodygaurds now.

Also don't forget that the IRS now expect a cut of all your Bitcoin profits. So don't get yourself caught not paying tax. They are tracking you. After this huge bull run IRS will be cracking down on all the cheaters. The problem with BitCoin is that it attracts the lowest scum on the planet like flies on shit. That is the company you've chosen to keep.

Yeah, but who actually does that vs its opposite? Of course I am not advocating for suppressing your emotions in some macho fashion. That will obviously backfire.

Absolutely. But you also have to consider: Green hippies and SJWs are not suitable for serving in a SWAT team. Law enforcement people must be hardened people given the animals they deal with on a regular basis. Law enforcement's job is largely to deal with stage Red -- who tend to be ruthless nutjobs. It is foolish to hold law enforcement types to the same standards as Echkart Tolle. When you tell a law enforcement type to be an Eckhart Tolle type, that's like feeding your dog tofu.

The thing is, slavery also works. It's very pragmatic. But at what cost? The problem with capitalism is its ruthless pragmatism. All of life has a dollar sign attached to it and nothing more.

To create massive value you must develop yourself and build the necessary knowledge, expertise, wisdom, and skills. Just because you make some easy cash fast does not mean you have a clue as to how to use it to create massive value. In fact there will be an inverse relationship there because if you were serious about creating massive value you would not be chasing easy money in the first place. I'm not saying don't invest your money. But recognize the difference between prudent investing vs gambling and hoping to get rich for nothing. The truth is that nobody knows the real value of crypto. So you're just gambling. Just because you get lucky does not make it not gambling. Be careful not to fool yourself that you know things which you don't really know. It's very easy to fool yourself with investing, especially when you're chasing some craze like crypto. You buy into social media hype and get so excited you stop thinking straight.

Be careful hyping this stuff up here. It could end up burning a lot of people. Gambling, speculation, and riding crazes is not really in the spirit of our work here -- even if it manages to make you some money.

This situation is so nuts that MAGA is now even turning on Brietbart and calling it fake news for censoring them and not telling them what they want to hear. Read the comments here of MAGA turning on Brietbart for not being right-wing enough for them! Lol https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/01/11/mike-pence-and-donald-trump-patch-up-relationship-in-white-house-meeting/#disqus_thread This is truly going off the rails. Even the far right-wing media leaders will soon lose control of this MAGA movement as it devolves into pure rage and insanity. When you tell these MAGA any fact that contradicts their narrow paranoid worldview, they just interpret it as you being part of the globalist conspiracy against them. At this point these MAGA are too nuts for even FoxNews. They have created a Frankenstein and now he has broken loose and turned on his master.

I don't understand how it's hard for people to understand that the police are not a monolith. Out of 500 police, yeah, 20 might be sympathetic to MAGA. This is not a condemnation of the police. It's just a natural statistical outcome. The police are not fucking Rococop (and even Robocop had emotional conflicts of interest). They are real humans with emotions, egos, beliefs, religions, ideologies, biases, blindspots, weaknesses, etc. This is not an error. It just requires professionalism and oversight to manage. Remember, in the end, we are policing ourselves. No magical gods nor droid army is policing us.

Yes, life is hard.

Of course Of course. And I don't say you should isolate yourselves. I don't deny the social connection needs. I have them myself. What I said was, I try not to burden others with my emotional problems. But, hey, I'm a crazy guy. I know how much you girls (and guys) love to offload your emotions onto others as a coping mechanism If that survival strategy works for you, have at it, but don't expect me to partake in such games. Believe it or not it is possible to socialize with others without using them as emotional tampons. But hey, that's just my masculine POV, I'm sure you feel differently about it. I was just throwing some crazy ideas around.

Lol Of course you'll say that. Because it's not favorable to your ideology and you refuse to let it go. You're stuck in stage Blue/Orange and reasoning with you is hopeless at this point. You've been parroting the same talking points on here for years and it's getting old. Like a broken record.

It's obvious that when the center of gravity of a society is, let's say Blue/Orange, there will be a natural bias to increase security for threats coming from enemies who are from stage Green vs from stage Blue/Orange. Just like you would have more security against strangers at your home vs family members even through the strangers could be nice people while your family members could be psychopaths who want to murder you. It's always harder to defend against a threat which is closest to you. Which is why it's virtually impossible to defense against the corruption of your own mind, because it is so close to you that it's you. How do you defend against the devil when you are him? A floor lamp illuminates the whole room except the very floor it's standing on. That's the natural blindspot. You should note that dynamic this will also occur with stage Green. Progressives will also make this mistake and have a blindspot towards leftist violence. For example, if a crowd of rabid socialists stormed the Capitol to start a socialist revolution against capitalism, progressives in the media would be much more sympathetic to their violence than they are to right-wing violence. Nothing surprising here. It's not racism. It's deeper than that. We saw this with the BLM riots in the summer. Stage Green is much more understanding of leftist violence and will make excuses for it. Don't forget, leftist violence is possible, although it is less likely. The left is generally more conscious, but they are still deeply unconscious and they are not beyond the possibility of some kind of revolutionary movement once they get pissed off enough about the evils of capitalism. It's extremely easy to denounce and demonize the other side when it goes too far. What's really hard is to denounce your side when it goes too far.

@Shane Hanlon Thanks for the thoughtful ideas. But I am not really interested in going mainstream because what I teach will never be mainstream. And the core of my work is serious epistemology. I don't do the practical stuff to be more popular, I do it because I know it's needed to help people burn through their karma to maybe one day understand my serious epistemic work.

@Aturban Of course, but don't fool yourself by conflating relative and absolute domains. The reason you want to be better, is because you're God

You are never going to logically convince MAGA people no matter how much evidence you provide. That's like trying to dissuade Bin Laden by providing him and his people with scientific facts. All election fraud cases were thrown out by courts and judges because they were pure bullshit. Election fraud in America virtually does not exist.

That could be explained by systemic ethnocentric biases and blindspots of management.

I think Sam's analysis here is very good overall. Yes, he did leave out the factor that the management of the Capitol Police may have had some nationalistic biases or even explicit instructions from the Trump admin. But overall I agree with Sam. I would not call the Capitol Police racist. The simple explanation is that they were outnumbered and caught off-guard. A few of them, individually, were likely sympathetic to the MAGA agenda, but those few are not the majority. The majority of police are professionals, not racists. And systemic racial biases should not blamed on all individual cops.

First of all, there is no obligation to give others happiness. You can't really make others happy anyway. Secondly, God needs nothing at all. Yet God gives everyone everything. This is otherwise known as True Love. Follow God's example

It's very easy for your trip to go sideways if one of those 150 people start acting out and doing something weird. Their freakout will freak you out, and so forth. If you are meditating in a group, that's one thing -- it is dead calm. But tripping with a group of 150 is another thing.

Imagine almighty God nailed to a cross