Talinn

I feel as though a vote of censure against Trump by congress is neither too little nor too much. It could strike the right balance.

Surely new national thought on gender roles is more agreeable than actually taking somebody's life. Pay attention to what you're writing. What's insane is that people quote the 99% vs. 1% dilemma. Yet based on the way they react, I do say that they may as well feel that transgenders are 99% of the population, and cisgenders are only 1%, gauging by their fears of gender norms changing to any degree. Maybe not here, but I've repeatedly seen this strange conception that transgenders breed like rabbits and are planning on taking over society. This 99 versus 1% rhetoric is often just gaslighting to say that we're scared of the transgenders breeding like rabbits, and don't want to afford them any rights whatsoever. Yes this is a hop skip and a jump over to over-generalizations and demonization of the right, yet the U.S. doesn't have the greatest record when dealing with minorities does it? No country on earth quite does, yet.

I agree, however your first post seems to imply that we ought to criticize communism more. Communism is already criticized heavily in today's society, and there is virtually no risk of it being implemented on a mass scale due to the backlash you mentioned. So what more do you want? Even if we talk about socialism, the current democrats in Congress are not even really advocating for that yet, on a really large scale. Call the pessimism for what it is -- fear. Let's say we have two potential problems: the threat of massive [gun] violence, and climate change. (We do have these two threats, as it happens). Your average right winger is much less likely to resort to any other option other than radicalizing further, and buying more "guns" to "protect his family." He is more likely to double down on the fact that he needs more guns, more ammo, and more angry FB posts to defend himself. The average left winger will probably still eat meat, still drive a car wherever he wants, the difference is that there's more of a chance he feels guilty and stops eating meat. There's more of a chance he does more things to address climate change. You can look at a gun to say it's just a useful tool to defend yourself, but that's not how many people see it. What I mean is that it goes further than that. They are married to their gun. At least the leftist will reconsider his approach to life more often than the right winger, who will 9/10 out of times just look at getting better guns or better locks. Believe it or not, there's people out there that are legitimately concerned about where they can go to the bathroom. These people don't simply view it as a "Twitter discussion topic" but something that impacts their day-to-day existence and mental health. I would not underemphasize minorities' rights, neither would I say that it's something the average person should devote hours every day to uphold.

I don't have any idea of how you can live in America and be scared of communism. Capitalism is everywhere. It's in the walls, it's in the air, it has suffused the country for generations and penetrated every aspect of society. What makes you have any notion that we are about to become communist? Sure, abrupt turns in societies are possible, yet the ingredients for such a shift to communism simply don't exist. On the other hand fascism can and does piggy back much more readily off the backs of capitalism/individualism. Does a 2nd ammendment bumper sticker that says "GOT LEAD" really exude better vibes than a "SAVE the Planet" bumper sticker?

I myself work at night and it got me to thinking, you'd probably expect a decrease in the numbers of people working in night shift if you had a more conscious society, and yet, reality seems to resist uniformity and the real world is unpredictable and shaded in many colors. You can help lots of people during the night, such as in the hospital helping people with sleep-disorders, yet even in this act most shift workers are usually compromising your own health at least slightly. Something like 5,6, or 7% of workers in the U.S. frequently work night shift, and this is causing lots of issues vis-à-vis lack of sleep, but it's not like you can legislate people into falling asleep at 10 p.m., even in ancient days there were people working the night shift in military camps to warn against invaders. For sectors like manufacturing it seems a clear cut to drastically cut down or eliminate night shift work in this sector, but what about other areas? When I look at a lot sectors it seems like these occupations are coming from a stage Orange or below, and yet in the real world it probably would never happen that everyone is asleep by a reasonable time, at least not any time soon. Yet I could imagine in a fully Turquoise world, there would be *much* more people going to sleep on time. I don't have a specific question but does anyone have any thoughts about this?

The only person that can change you is yourself, not some (presumable) corporation. Assuming you can't get the materials to transhumanize yourself, a corporation probably wouldn't even know how to augment and improve even one person in a healthy, conscious, significant way, much less do it at scale. Every person must help themselves, while we try to improve society to make the path have less societal resistance, as well as for society to have more helpful road signs along the way.

I mislike that the martial arts programs would not service kids in special education, increasing the disparity between these kids and the kids in general education. You'd barely see students who are physically and mentally capable ( with some extra help) get serviced, even if they are lagging behind just a little. No, they'd largely be dumped in with the physically disabled populations, and those populations maybe feel that much worse for not being able to participate. You can to an extent create programs specifically for kids in special education, yet that is a tricky road to follow. What I am saying is to consider all parts of the education system, not just general education. Otherwise, yeah, it's a good idea.

I remember when I was 8 or 9 and I hopped on The Immotality Institute's online forums, argued with them some, and called them all stupid and got banned. :* I didnt know why I didn't like it so much, it wasn't even from a christian angle. They just annoyed me While I don't think that is the best way to talk to them, my distaste for transhumanism and life extension has been refined and sharpened. Viewed from the lens of spiral dynamics, it is definitely a detrimental idea from stage orange. Life extension and transhumanism is just vastly inferior to being a philosopher .

www.focusonthefamily.com

All of your other concerns are valid, but let's get this straight. The Supreme Court will not invalidate the 2020 election and give it to Trump. As bad as SCOTUS is , it has enough wisdom to not play Trump's games.

Did a little bit of research on VeggieTales, the Christian kids show that teaches lessons about the Bible. Also I read a bit about Phil Vischer, its creator. I'm sure Europeans aren't as familiar with it but it was quite prevalent in America and was distributed to a lot of people. Here's a video of the story of Noah's Ark: From some skimming of this video as well as my memory of watching this show, we have one conversation about why Noah is building the ark at 10:40. For the remaining 98%~~ of the video we have cute images and positive messaging around God's plan with none of the horrid implications that comes from him flooding the entire Earth. Even the conversation at 10:40 is pretty quick. Even though it's propaganda, I would not say that the author intended to be malicious or negatively impact society in the way that Breitbart or these other sites do. What I mean is that the creator has a much better heart and probably wanted to just see kids laugh while teaching what he thought was the truth. In numerous other VeggieTales episodes, such as King George with the Ducky episode which teaches good moral lessons. These shows positively impacted many people in some ways while brainwashing them to the Biblical worldview as children --which comes with its own riplle effect. Taking a look at Phil Vischer's last posts on Twitter is pretty encouraging despite the moral obfuscation that takes place in some of the VeggieTales episodes. It's a reminder that not all Christians seem to be in line with Trump (or at least his followers). This is just from brief research into the guy but it seems to be in line with reality -- that not all Christians are into Trump...which is an important reminder.

Yes

Words are contaminated all the time, this is nothing new.

States in the northeast and west coast tend to be more even more highly concentrated in cities than the rest of the country, and they are populous. They have a more diverse population whereas almost every person you see in Wyoming for example is white. They have more wealth and are more highly educated, with better schools, etc. than in places like South Dakota or Alabama. There are other factors. When you are in a sparesly populated region of the country, you want to own a gun because it makes you better feel like you own all the land that your eye can see. If you are a big tech high executive in a Silicon Valley firm you are probably to busy to care to go to the firing range to practice to shoot. In the particular case of Wyoming, when I visited there it is extremely understandable why people vote Republicans. The issue of "climate" change for example is so ethereal and foreign to them, since the state is just too beautiful already, and they're ignorant to what's happening in other parts of the world because it is so sparse. It is a gorgeous state, just too gorgeous at the moment..

This should be a no brainer because any time you spend 1 minute on X you lose the potentional to spend that 1 minute on Y, Z, V, and R. And you have a finite time with your body. You invested some part of yourself into anything that you tried for that 1 minute, making you ever so slightly less invested in that other thing you could try. But other than that I don't think there's really a correlation.

There's still some quality posts here but in some regards this thread is becoming indistinguishable from any Trump bashing thread. We can celebrate a little longer But let's be careful about monitoring or criticizing everything Trump does for the rest of the winter. Although the damage done and his breaking of norms is unprecedented, and the news is important, the most likely scenario is that the institutions that be will remove him from the presidency, at which point the county will have to pick up the pieces. And that's all there is to it. Gloating helps manifest a spirit of disunity.

Brendan Keefe on Twitter is covering the Georgia elections.

Cyberbullying confirmed =( I tried...

I thought Pennsylvania would finish counting tomorrow @Preety_India?

Well Arizona has 11 electoral votes so that's probably it. One side calls it for Biden, the other considers it a battleground state.

I must say that I enjoy seeing the results come in from Arizona, I really hope we stay blue. People really liked John McCain here and Trump insulting him probably swung the state.

I really think lots of people voted for Trump primarily because of the "free speech" issue. Also it's much harder to lift 330 million people towards more healthy forms of thinking than what you'd see in the Nordic countries for example. And it feels like that democracy is barely sustainable for large population sizes in practice, obviously it's fragile in multiple senses as well...but we are heading to the point where it feels like elections almost do more harm than good. (But primal dictatorships isn't a good option either...)

“Without music, life would be a mistake” ― Friedrich Nietzsche I write this, listening to music

My main critique is that I'm unconvinced it takes this long to deconstruct science. You did a good job in the first 1-2 hours, there was no need to drag it past that in my opinion. I'll watch the other videos, but I believe they will just beat a dead horse.

People misinterpret the rioting and looting as an act of hatred against the country that seem to have descended upon the country out of nowhere. It is as if they believe that as an evil spirit that came completely out of left field (pun intended :] ) -- and a few hardcore Christians actually precisely believe this. Treat it like it is -- an often times desperate explosion of anger perceived as a last resort for an undending pattern of oppression. Yes some bad apples climb into the movement and seem to spoil it for outsiders, but by and large the Black Lives Matter movement does not come from an inherent desire to burn the country down. America has a horrible putrid history of racism and this was only amplified by concepts like states rights, where the "laboratories of democracy" allowed racism to incubate and isolate itself from the larger country, causing it to fester and simmer for centuries. Conservatives never believe there is a need for reconcilliation or healing because they are terrified of anything that implies America is not perfect. Implying America is not perfect would start to open a Pandora's Box of questions that the Republicans would rather ignore. As for Trump being in favor of free speech, it really doesn't feel that way when he is trying to discourage people from voting in multiple ways and he and his allies are saying, if you don't vote for me you will destroy this country