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Escaping the Echo Chamber

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Thu 02 Jan , 2020 4:24 pm
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Admittedly, I'm agnostic and don't believe in any god, thus unlikely to be offended by someone's opinions and challenges to orthodox Christianity, but I found this article had some interesting and unorthodox ideas about religion (though it does reveal its own blind spots and biases in some places). :
https://www.politicalorphans.com/religi ... -be-toxic/
Quote:
Religion Doesn’t Have to Be Toxic
Quote:
If the only religion you understand is white evangelical Christianity, it’s reasonable to conclude that religion is inherently dangerous. That conclusion is spreading, but is it accurate? Is there any meaningful distinction between healthy and unhealthy religion, or is religion always an obstacle to human progress?

America’s fastest growing religious affiliation is “none.” Church attendance is in steep, accelerating decline, even among evangelicals. For the first time in our history, we are raising a generation in which Christians are a minority....

Our growing urge to resist religion in any organized form comes with a cost. Just as conservatives limit our horizons by their uncritical and thoughtless anti-government reflex, liberals dent our futures with an uncritical rejection of faith. There is a difference between faith which feeds the soul, and that which feeds on souls. Religion itself is not the problem.....
Quote:
There’s a powerful, if perhaps subtle difference between believing in a set of unprovable, transcendent concepts like Karma or God, and denying the evidence of our senses, common sense or science. One might conclude from rational thought that there’s no such thing as Nirvana or Heaven, but you can’t run an experiment to prove it. They are concepts, ideas that guide one’s values, not disprovable statements of material fact. One might believe that Karma operates in a manner that influences material existence without ignoring reality.

Christianity, however, is unique in being a belief-driven religion, insisting that adherents publicly accept a set of plainly fantastic assertions. This is unusual. At the core of Judaism is the Shema, a statement that there is one God. Jews need not believe that Moses was a real person who, on a given Wednesday, performed a particular miracle, in order to be authentically Jewish. Islam is based on the Five Pillars, a set of values and practices that define the faith. Nowhere among them is a statement that a certain unbelievable thing occurred one day in the real world. Hinduism and Buddhism are built around a set of philosophies and practices. Their traditions include miracle stories and legends of gods, but one need not ignore any material realities to practice those faiths.

At the core of Christian adherence, expressed most succinctly in the Apostles’ Creed, is a statement of belief in a set of things that didn’t happen. All the things Jesus did and said as an expression of his values are deprioritized by these beliefs, weighted down by enforced unreality. ..
Quote:
Even among Christians, there are degrees of investment in these plainly unreal concepts. Most Christians accept the more patently unreal elements of their faith in the abstract without giving them much thought or concern. Pressed to take a position, many if not most would assign some philosophical or metaphorical significance to these beliefs rather than digging in, insisting that these fantastic events literally occurred. The literalists ruin things for everybody by insisting that everyone bend around their delusions....
Quote:
In its finest expression, faith gives us our capacity to cooperate with one another. Every form of human trust is built on a form of faith. We reinforce that faith through rituals. In small human bands, we could build trust through simple acts of reciprocity. Those rites evolved into more formal ceremonies that remind us of our mortality and transcendence, a shared human identity. Faith grants us the power to work together toward objectives we cannot see or understand, and perhaps never will in a lifetime. Through this capacity for trust and faith, we can cooperate in projects far larger than our own individual consciousness.

Religion is a powerful and dangerous instinct. We can use it to construct monuments or horrors.

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Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Wed 08 Jan , 2020 4:48 pm
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The previous article was a trivial thought-experiment. This one is on something important and I think it would be a good one for many people to read and consider. You may or may not agree with her proposed solutions, but it's a far more reasonable article than the nonsense that dominates the usual climate change discourse in the media:

https://quillette.com/2020/01/08/lesson ... -rhetoric/
Quote:
Lessons from Australia’s Bushfires: We Need More Science, Less Rhetoric
Quote:
Over the last two weeks, the Royal Australian Navy has been evacuating thousands of residents fleeing uncontrollable bushfires in the south-eastern part of my country. Amid scenes of desperate Australians being rescued from beaches, national-security writer Craig Hooper has called the operation a “mini-Dunkirk.”...

But what exactly is causing this year’s extreme fire season? Climate change? Arson? Drought? In fact, it’s all of the above.

In 2019, short-term weather fluctuations in the Indian Ocean—the Indian Ocean Dipole, as scientists call it—pushed moist ocean air away from Australia’s shores, causing a severe drought, and drying out the leaves, sticks and soil on the bush floor.

This has come in tandem with unusually strong and sustained winds associated with a separate phenomenon known as the Antarctic Oscillation, which have pushed fires in all directions, turning isolated local crises into regional disasters. And of course all of this comes amid a steady increase in average temperatures across Australia, a phenomenon that climate scientists have warned us about for decades. They also have correctly predicted that long-term climate-change trends will increasingly interact disastrously with short-term climate phenomena in a way that catalyses and exacerbates extreme weather events.

Unfortunately, successive Australian governments have failed to adequately heed these warnings. ... as has been the case in other nations, climate policy in Australia has been mired in partisan politics, with both sides using the issue to score points instead of implementing sensible and pragmatic policies....
Quote:
So what are Australians to do? Firstly, we need to depoliticise the issue of climate change. It should not be considered a “left-wing” issue, and the overwhelming evidence indicating the reality of anthropogenic climate change needs to be decoupled from moral arguments in favour of proposed solutions. It should be recognized that fair-minded and reasonable people can agree with the reality of climate change, while disagreeing about the best way to tackle it.

In some cases, ideological inflexibility has obstructed incremental measures that were at one point politically feasible....

Secondly, we need to talk about solutions to climate change that go beyond reducing consumption. Anyone who can read a graph knows that emission reductions made in rich countries are easily cancelled out by increases in emissions from developing countries.

Unless rich countries want to start forcing poorer countries to stop improving their living standards, we’re not going to be able to deindustrialise our way out of this problem....



Another article I found interesting, including the comments/discussion, in spite of the unpromising title:
https://quillette.com/2020/01/04/build- ... ual-oasis/
Quote:
Two years ago I started an experiment I would like to recommend to you. At the urging of my best friend, concerned not just about my happiness but my mental health, I went dark. ...

I’ve enjoyed a four-decade long career as an engineer, entrepreneur, and venture capital investor working with many others to help build the digital world in which we now live. As the years passed I became more of an “activist,” devoting increasing amounts of time, money, and attention to various issues and causes impacting the body politic....

...[instead] I began a course of directed reading mostly centered around history, philosophy, religion, and psychology—all the stuff I missed as an engineering student in college and never had enough time to dig deeply into during my career. ... Oddly enough for a guy that has always been supremely sure of himself, the more I read the less I feel certain I know....

The experiment was not just about looking inward. I reached out to dear old friends that life had scattered across the planet, scheduling regular “Virtual Cocktail Hours” over Skype where we would gather in small groups to chew the fat. Most importantly, and getting to the title of this column, I invited a select group of friends and colleagues, amounting to some fifty people out of the 10,000 contacts I had accumulated in my personal rolodex, to join me in a private email discussion group for the purpose of engaging in civil discourse on important issues....

These fifty people represent a wide variety of world views including liberals, conservatives, and libertarians, God believers, agnostics, and atheists, global warming alarmists and skeptics. The group includes teachers, scientists, lawyers, engineers, entrepreneurs, doctors, writers, economists, and investors, septuagenarians and twenty-somethings, multi-millionaires, middle class salarymen, poor students, and retirees living on fixed incomes. My objective was to collect a group of people, all known to me though not necessarily to each other, with diverse backgrounds and perspectives who I believed were capable of engaging in intelligent and well-informed civil discourse....
Most of us don't have the enormous range of contacts this person had, but it's an interesting idea. I've seen some political messageboards with the same idea. The trouble is, the reasonable discussions there tend to get hijacked by arguments between idiot extremist partisans from both sides, especially lately. But once in a while, a small group of people with diverse opinions will settle down and discuss something and it's quite interesting. (At least, until the usual suspects find the thread and start beating at the topic and each other, and everyone else leaves.)





btw, I never watch awards shows but I'm sorry I missed this - it sound like a British comedian did a good job of skewering Hollywood's hypocrisy and smugness. https://quillette.com/2020/01/06/ricky- ... he-people/ Apparently, it's on YouTube somewhere.

Of course, the basic issue is just that anyone pays attention to what a bunch of actors and other celebrities say, as if they were some sort of experts and brilliant thinkers.

I might have to pay more attention to Gervais. And I can't wait until he does something equally pointed to the conservatives who didn't quite get the point. Some of them are enormously outraged (or pretending to be) because a speaker at Soleimani's funeral said that, if they could get a dollar from each Iranian citizen, they could put a $80 million bounty on Trump's head (I assume this was an attempt to suggest that depth of outrage among Iranian citizens) - and a comic later quipped "We'll do it for half." It seems that, for some people, comedy is now funny only if it's directed at the other side.

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Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Thu 09 Jan , 2020 8:29 am
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Quote:
It should not be considered a “left-wing” issue, and the overwhelming evidence indicating the reality of anthropogenic climate change needs to be decoupled from moral arguments in favour of proposed solutions.
Ah, so it's a moral argument that's a problem and not, for a random example, that powerful people and groups are determined to squeeze every last cent from fossil fuels?

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Thu 09 Jan , 2020 2:34 pm
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Frelga wrote:
Quote:
It should not be considered a “left-wing” issue, and the overwhelming evidence indicating the reality of anthropogenic climate change needs to be decoupled from moral arguments in favour of proposed solutions.
Ah, so it's a moral argument that's a problem and not, for a random example, that powerful people and groups are determined to squeeze every last cent from fossil fuels?
Frelga, among other things, I think she's talking about this sort of thing regarding climate change-related "moral arguments" in Australian politics.
From the article:
Quote:
When a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was introduced by a majority centre-left Labor government in 2009, the plan attracted the support of Australia’s centre-right Liberal Party, then under the leadership of Malcolm Turnbull. But it was the Greens who blocked the measure for not going far enough. The country has lacked a proactive policy ever since.

Today, Green MPs tweet about bushfires being directly caused by particular politicians, and fantasise about “climate trials,” at which their political opponents are tried (and presumably convicted). All this does is inflame conservatives, who feel that the climate-change issue is exaggerated and exploited for partisan reasons.
I'm certainly seeing a "we're more moral than you are" phenomenon among some of the climate activists. As one example, a group in Germany apparently released a song by a youth group that pretty much vilified the older generation for all the problems. Something about grandmas driving SUVs, etc. Supposedly tongue in cheek (But IMO that's sort of like Trump's "oh, I was joking" after he makes a nasty remark.) I don't think that sort of thing is helpful.


Also, it's likely that you reacted hastily to the words "moral arguments." The complete phrase was "moral arguments in favor of proposed solutions." She's saying that the reality of climate change needs to be decoupled from that. As I understand it, her basic argument is:
Science says climate change is real and everyone needs to accept that as a starting point because of the science and not because it's the moral/right thing to do or because your political tribe supports/opposes it.
Climate change is an important problem to address and instead people are bickering and playing politics.
Now let's work on figuring out how to respond, without demonizing people with solutions other than our favorite one.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Thu 09 Jan , 2020 5:42 pm
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The reason any real action on climate change is getting stalled is that short-term profits of a small minority are more important than long-term well-being of everyone. Until that's decoupled, we aren't getting anywhere, no matter how nice or reasonable we are about it.

I've seen Australian social media calling BS on the narrative blaming the Greens for the delayed action on the fires, but I don't know Australian politics well enough to judge which is right. I do know that in Australia as in California, fire prevention can only go so far in the face of vast areas covered in tinder dry stands of highly flammable tree species, as temperatures rise and dry season gets longer.

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Fri 10 Jan , 2020 5:00 pm
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Quote:
The reason any real action on climate change is getting stalled is that short-term profits of a small minority are more important than long-term well-being of everyone. Until that's decoupled, we aren't getting anywhere, no matter how nice or reasonable we are about it.
Frelga, if you read the article carefully, you'll find that particular section of her essay, with the following parts I didn't quote, is not aimed at those who try to convince people that climate change is real, but mostly at those on the right who think it's a "leftist" position and so don't want to support it. She's actually on your side and you seem to be working to find fault with her.

And not being nice or reasonable is exactly what has gotten us into the current mess of partisan politics and the disaster that's Congress right now. Yeah, I know politics has always been partisan, but these days the American far left and far right seem to be screaming at each other across the void (egged on by media amplification), with the rest of us more-or-less in the middle, with a range of positions on different subjects, and sick of them both.

Back in the 80s, there was an environmental group that put metal spikes in forests so loggers would be randomly injured if they tried to cut down the trees, on the premise that "the greater good" justified the extremes. They did not do environmentalists any favors and they often came up in discussions when you tried to convince people that clear-cutting was out of control. Too much of the extreme stuff and that's what the average person hears. So I welcome moderate voices that work to persuade, like that editorial, and detest the activists that go to extremes and become counterproductive.

(I'm not actually sure how often they actually spiked the trees vs. just threatening to do it, but the overall effect on public opinion was the same.)

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Fri 17 Jan , 2020 1:56 pm
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Interesting shift, coming from a very liberal source:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ie-sanders
Quote:
'Believe women' is being cheapened to score political points. That will backfire
Quote:
...the phrase “Believe Women” emerged from the larger #MeToo movement, and it has inspired serious investigations into the statistics of false reporting, which are lower than commonly thought, and has provided much needed push back against smear campaigns against accusers in high profile cases.

But now “Believe Women” is getting thrown around by political strategists and official opinion-havers to support the Elizabeth Warren’s claim that Bernie Sanders told her, in a private meeting with no witnesses and no evidentiary support, that a woman could not win the presidency in 2020. This is not only a grotesque distortion of what “believe women” is supposed to mean, it undermines the good work the phrase’s use was doing.

The term “believe women” was never supposed to mean, believe everything that women say and don’t bother to investigate their claims. The simplicity of the message has irked many – including this writer – in its ability to be misused and misappropriated since its inception, but many activists have taken it up in good faith to say believing women and believing victims is only the start of a process toward justice. But in the last couple days after Warren’s campaign first made the accusation and then double-downed at Tuesday’s debate (with an unfair and obviously biased assist from debate moderator Abby Johnson), many are using it to try to shut down any debate, investigation, or dissent....

I'm a little surprised at her naivete. This isn't new. Some men's careers have been destroyed by "believe women," in cases where there wasn't any real evidence to support either side, for quite a while. And there were some news stories about attempts to snare male politicians with set-ups that failed.

I don't have any trouble believing that the phrase "believe women" was introduced in good faith. But IMO it was appropriated as a blunt cudgel by some quite early in the MeToo movement. And those of us (men and women) who said that was wrong were told to sit down and shut up, by most of the voices getting media attention.

I guess that all changes when it's your side that's the target.



The editorial also criticizes the use of the term gaslighting in political discussions. Apparently, that was originally "a term for one person lying to their romantic partner so effectively and consistently that they start to question their version of reality." But I think that ship has already sailed - gaslighting seems to be a common term in online arguments and political discussions.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Fri 17 Jan , 2020 8:05 pm
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Is there any reason to doubt that Sanders said that?

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Fri 17 Jan , 2020 9:06 pm
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Of course there is. He has a long history of supporting women for political office and, in fact, suggested Elizabeth Warren as a presidential candidate long ago (2014? 2012? something like that). Do an internet search and the articles/ news are easy to find.

And I can't see any logical reason for him to have said this in the past, then they go on being friendly rivals, and now suddenly Warren is terribly upset about it and refusing even to shake his hand after the debates? That was, to be blunt, pretty obviously a show for the cameras (and it sounded like Sanders was taken by surprise). No politician does anything like that without calculating whether it's to his/her advantage.

I don't particularly want Sanders as the candidate (among other things, he has a long history of crusading against corruption and corporations, including as mayor of Burlington, and both left and right political influencers would unite to scuttle his chances, behind the scenes, and let Trump win). But, as far as I know, he's been fairly ethical and consistent for a politician.

Warren, on the other hand, has a long history of twisting the truth. She's also seen a drop in her polling numbers and has good reason to try to give her campaign a boost this way. As I see it, she did a rather clever little move, having her senior staffers release this gossip, where she could later claim she misunderstood what Sanders said, if that was politically most advantageous.

And I don't see any reason to view women as more ethical or truthful than men, or incapable of manipulation and political machinations. That, to me, is a form of sexism, assuming we're not capable of the same sort of things as a man.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Fri 17 Jan , 2020 9:20 pm
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I feel like that's a situation where each person's reaction is likely to be influenced by how they feel about the candidates. I much prefer Warren, for the record.

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Fri 17 Jan , 2020 9:49 pm
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Some people I know liked her too, at first. After looking closely at her, though, one ended up endorsing Amy Klobuchar instead, as more pragmatic and realistic. Another couple, registered Democrats who lean very liberal, turned against Warren during the debate before the last one, over what they saw as arrogance (they said it was "my way or the highway" though I don't know the details) and are looking seriously at voting for Yang.

I don't like Warren, though that doesn't really influence what I think about this episode. It's trivial and unimportant and will soon be forgotten, and no different than what other politicians do.

I started generally positive about her, with some misgivings about how she'd handle tough situations - she handled the bullying by Trump over her Native American claims very poorly IMO. But the more I see of her, the less I like her. Whenever there's a valid criticism of the details in her policies - and there are plenty - her campaign responds with something snarky like a mug for billionaires or chart for billionaires, as if no one could possibly question her. And the news that she'd consulted some Harvard professors for an opinion and decided she'd immediately forgive nearly all student debt, by executive order via the Education Department, was the last straw for me. I don't want the liberal version of King Donald, v 2.0, and that's how that strikes me . Not to mention that I have strong doubts that her huge slew of expensive plans will even work - the evil billionaires will pay for everything is, IMO, pie in the sky nonsense.
(Ditto on the last for Sanders, though he does have a history of being far more pragmatic than his rhetoric and I think he might actually make an OK president. But the socialist label will sink him in any general election, even if other things don't.).

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Fri 17 Jan , 2020 11:43 pm
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I like Klobuchar, but she has a "who?" factor against her.

Unless by some miracle we get a Democratic Senate, the only way any Democratic president is going to do anything is by executive order.

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Sat 18 Jan , 2020 3:58 pm
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I agree about Klobuchar. I've mostly liked what I heard about her, but you don't hear much. Or Yang, for that matter. The media is focused on Warren, Biden and Sanders, though Buttigieg (my personal favorite but unlikely to win) has, surprisingly, worked his way to the top tier. Steyer intrigued me a little, the little I heard about the last debate . He also caught some attention when he was waiting to shake Warren's and Sanders' hands and probably overheard what they said. I was impressed that he was tactful and didn't take his chance for the limelight. Don't know much about him otherwise.

I count on Congress to moderate the campaign promises of presidential candidates and provide some balance. That's how I looked at Warren's promises at first.

I actually think we might be surprised and see a little more cooperation between conservatives and liberals after Trump. I'm sure the more moderate members of Congress realize that people are sick to death of the extremes and the paralysis, and they risk their seats if this continues. (about the only thing likely to influence a politician IMO :) ) And the Republicans would have to be blind not to see that they're losing the more moderate members of their party. They started doing that when they decided to embrace a far right anti-environmental approach, accelerated it with the evangelicals, Tea party influence, etc. and put it it in overdrive with their blind embrace of Trump. I don't know whether the reasonable conservatives will take back their party or a new conservative party will form, but I think something has to happen or they're dust. And I'd hate to see that happen, because I think we do need something to balance the Democrats.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Sat 18 Jan , 2020 6:18 pm
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My son likes Buttigieg, who came to speak at his university. As did Yang, whom my son also liked. We had to have a conversation about charisma and how someone who can accurately describe a problem is not necessarily someone who can come up with a solution, let alone implement one.

It's a shame Booker's campaign never got traction. Media continues to focus on old and white to the exclusion of everything else.

In some ways, Republican party stepped on its own balls. Their course is so extremely reactionary and with Trump, so blatantly corrupt, that they are indeed losing members, especially fiscal conservatives who are not bound by Evangelical religious values. But that only means that more extreme candidates are winning the primaries and they get elected, thanks in no small part to gerrymandering and voter suppression.

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Tue 21 Jan , 2020 2:30 pm
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Or maybe Booker just couldn't inspire enough people to vote for him. Race is a good angle to get media clicks for a story about a candidate who lost, but not always true. Last I saw, Booker had the support of 2% of African Americans vs something like 50% for Biden. I doubt that's just media exposure.

Buttigieg started as a long-shot nobody and I expected him to disappear within months. But people liked what they heard from him and he's done surprisingly well. The media started paying attention to him after he rose in popularity. What I've actually observed in the liberal-leaning news media this time is that they're promoting women, people of color and far left ideas in this race and seem reluctant to run positive stories on "old white men" like Biden.
Quote:
We had to have a conversation about charisma and how someone who can accurately describe a problem is not necessarily someone who can come up with a solution, let alone implement one.
To some extent I agree. But someone who is intelligent and can accurately describe the problem can also consult experts and evaluate the options. Warren seems to think she has all the answers, which is both good and bad. Good, because she's spent some time thinking about them (though I wonder how much she just copied from Sanders). Bad, because it's rigid. Good politicians listen to other opinions and compromise to at least some extent. Anything else is detrimental to the democratic system in the long term.


btw, Yang seems to be trying to work on his image as a serious candidate. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... gn/605056/ Don't ask me how well that will work, but he is still in the race. :D


I actually think the political influencers at the DNC have chosen Warren as the candidate, unless she does too badly to be selected by the superdelegates and compromises. I'll be curious to see if my prediction comes true.
(Though I think they're probably hoping Hillary Clinton shuts up. Seriously, that woman has no self-awareness if she thinks things like this won't give Sanders a boost.* https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... k-with-him )

I have misgivings about how a choice of Warren will go. She's not one to appeal to moderates in either party or to cross-over Republicans.



But I was really just here to post this. Agree with it or not, it's a different perspective:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... cs/605212/
Quote:
Many college-educated people think they are deeply engaged in politics. They follow the news—reading articles like this one—and debate the latest developments on social media... Mostly, they consume political information as a way of satisfying their own emotional and intellectual needs. These people are political hobbyists. ...

For Querys Matias, politics isn’t just a hobby. Matias is a 63-year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic..... Matias is a leader of a group called the Latino Coalition in Haverhill, bringing together the Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Central Americans who together make up about 20 percent of the residents of the city. The coalition gets out the vote during elections, but it does much more than that....

Matias is engaging in politics—the methodical pursuit of power to influence how the government operates. ...Much as the civil-rights movement did, Matias is operating with clear goals and discipline, combining electoral strategies with policy advocacy.

Unlike organizers such as Matias, the political hobbyists are disproportionately college-educated white men. They learn about and talk about big important things. Their style of politics is a parlor game in which they debate the issues on their abstract merits. Media commentators and good-government reform groups have generally regarded this as a cleaner, more evolved, less self-interested version of politics compared with the kind of politics that Matias practices.

In reality, political hobbyists have harmed American democracy and would do better by redirecting their political energy toward serving the material and emotional needs of their neighbors. People who have a personal stake in the outcome of politics often have a better understanding of how power can and should be exercised—not just at the polls, once every four years, but person to person, day in and day out....

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Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Thu 23 Jan , 2020 7:46 pm
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Regarding Hillary Clinton's comment about Bernie Sanders, from my previous post (https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... k-with-him
Quote:
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Tuesday, reporter Lacey Rose read a quote Clinton gave filmmakers for the as-yet-unreleased Hulu documentary exploring the 2016 campaign, in which Clinton targeted Sanders's Senate record.

"In the doc, you're brutally honest on Sanders: 'He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it,'" Rose said, quoting Clinton. "That assessment still hold?"

"Yes, it does," Clinton responded....


I was pretty sure I remembered something about Sanders being pretty well liked by his colleagues and here's one article from 2015 on him. I read much the same thing about when he was mayor of Burlington VT. Even people who disagreed with him liked him.
Except the zealots, I expect (Sanders was also known for bringing hamburgers to eat in front of one of his fellow socialists who disapproved of people if they weren't vegan like herself.)

And, obviously, Hillary Clinton. ;)

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ay/450597/
Quote:
...But rather than earning the frustration and ire of his peers in the vein of other Senate hard-liners such as Sen. Ted Cruz, Sanders has managed to be respected — even liked — by much of the chamber, according to members on both sides of the aisle. The Vermont independent actually has much more in common with Sen. Tom Coburn, the now-retired "Dr. No," whose hard-line opposition killed many bills in the Senate but also earned him the respect of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

Sanders also has been able to work well with his colleagues. He's passed bipartisan legislation and forged strong relationships with members of both parties in nearly 25 years on Capitol Hill. But most of all, members say, even when Sanders is ideologically an outlier, he lets others know where he stands. He's not the type to suddenly stab a colleague in the back. And that's earned him respect both on and off the Hill....
Or there's Sanders' own response to Clinton's comment: "On a good day, my wife likes me..."
:)

One reason I rather like Sanders, his self-deprecating wit.


This might have been the article I read about him years ago.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18806/t ... ington-mir
Quote:
How Bernie Sanders Put Socialism to Work in Burlington: A Profile from 1983

Sanders sailed to reelection as mayor of Burlington after transforming supposedly conservative issues into left victories, and helping democratize city government. In this 1983 profile, Sanders delves into why he believes “the word ‘socialism’ has value” and “politics is not dissimilar to art.”
Quote:
Written in March of 1983 by In These Times veteran reporter David Moberg—soon after Sanders’ first reelection as mayor of Burlington, Vermont—this never-before-published-online article offers a detailed look at Sanders' first mayoral term, and how, with the help a broad coalition, he was able to overcome fierce opposition from the city's political establishment to implement a progressive agenda. This profile offers perspective on what a democratic socialist-led government could look like, and how his political success in Burlington—from outsider to contender—mirrors his rise nationally.

And one from the New York Times in 2015
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/us/p ... ialist.html
Quote:
As Mayor, Bernie Sanders Was More Pragmatist Than Socialist
Quote:
When Bernie Sanders, a self-declared socialist, served as mayor here in the 1980s, he often complained that the United States had its priorities wrong, that it should be diverting money from the military to domestic needs like housing and health care.

So when dozens of antiwar activists blocked the entrance to the local General Electric plant because it was manufacturing Gatling guns to fight the socialists in Central America, the protesters expected the mayor’s full support.

Instead, he lined up with union officials and watched as the police made arrests, saying later that in blocking the plant, the activists were keeping workers from their jobs. It was a classic example of how Mr. Sanders governed — as a pragmatist. ...

The mayor who was quick to condemn millionaires also imposed fiscal discipline here in this laid-back blue-collar university town of 38,000 residents. He used a budget surplus not to experiment with a socialist concept like redistributing wealth but to fix the city’s deteriorating streets. And he oversaw the revitalization of downtown, often working with big business....

“Even though he talks revolution, he’s an incrementalist,” said Richard Sugarman, a longtime friend and a professor of religion at the University of Vermont. “He knows that things will only be changed little by little, one by one.
Of course, this sort of thing is likely to earn the ire of some Democrats in these days of party over all.
Quote:
Back then, the Democrats were considered the old guard, his adversaries; in many cases, Mr. Sanders aligned himself with Republicans to get things done.

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Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Fri 24 Jan , 2020 3:01 am
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I do think that one's reaction to this depends on how you already feel about a candidate. I don't like Sanders so I don't think Hilary was over the line.

I don't hesitate to admit that these preferences are not always objective. I have zero problems with Klobuchar but she has these facial ticks that I just can't stand. -shrug-

But this is all for the primaries. I'll vote for anyone, even Bloomberg.

Besides, as I said on HoF, this is what matters.
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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Fri 24 Jan , 2020 6:16 pm
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Frelga wrote:
I do think that one's reaction to this depends on how you already feel about a candidate. I don't like Sanders so I don't think Hilary was over the line.
Frelga, one's reaction? Yes, you're probably right.
One's judgement of whether someone is telling the truth? No. I don’t judge an incident by my emotional response but on what evidence and logic say.

I'm even capable of disliking some aspects of a person’s character while considering them an effective and maybe even admirable leader. As far as I’m concerned, a president can commit adultery 5 times a week and devil worship in his/her spare time. It’s how they act when doing their job, and that they're trustworthy there, that I care about.

And it’s entirely possible to admire Mrs. Clinton for what she has accomplished in her life – and that’s a lot - without being blind to her flaws.

In this case, she said something that is clearly not true. She knew it was not true (she was in the Senate and Secretary of State, and she obviously knew the inner workings of Congress). And she doubled down on it.



As far as my reaction/opinion:

If she said it in the heat of the moment, I’d give her a pass. Especially if she later clarified it to the reporter as “well, I don’t like him and I know plenty of people who don’t like him, but, sure, some of his colleagues like him.”

But she didn’t. She said it in a film about why she lost the 2016 election. I’m not sure whether it was said in bitterness right after she lost, or filmed later. If it’s the latter, then it’s worse, because she had time to think about it and could probably have changed it (unless the filmmakers’ goal was to stir up controversy, of course). Then she repeated it in another interview, after she had plenty of time to think about it.



What I actually think is more interesting is “Why did she say it?”

Is she a pathological liar? No, I’ve seen no evidence for it and would be very surprised if she was. I'm sure she's lied as a politician. But I also suspect most of those those lies were strategic and for a goal.

Does she truly believe it? Maybe, but if so she's surrounded herself with quite the bubble of like-minded people. And even 10 seconds worth of reflection should have made her realize it isn't true before she repeated it the second time.

Did she say it because she’s bitter and blaming everyone else for her loss? That seems a definite possibility – we’ve seen a lot of that from her since the election. She’s not the first to lose - not even the first to win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote - but I don’t remember any other candidates talking publicly for years about how the election was stolen from them (though some of their supporters did, of course). Then again, if they did, maybe the media didn't amplify it like they do with Clinton.

Did she say it to bring down Bernie Sanders and promote Elizabeth Warren, his main “progressive” opponent? That also seems possible but entirely speculative.
One thing in favor is that HULU is bringing out this documentary about why Clinton lost in 2016. It’s interesting timing. And I sure as hell don’t see too many people clamoring for it - if there’s any bipartisan agreement I’ve seen, it’s that most people wish she’d shut up about her loss and why it happened.
Ultimately, I’ll have to see what the documentary says. Is it a puff piece that ignores the damage the revelations about DNC shenanigans did to Clinton, and the fact that many people simply didn’t like her? (I’ve heard 2016 described by many people as a race where they had a choice of the lesser of 2 evils.) Or is it an unbiased analysis of what happened?


Overall, I think Mrs. Clinton is a bitter woman who badly wanted to go down in history as the first female president, instead of a footnote as the candidate who lost twice, once to Barack Obama in a primary election, and once to Donald Trump, a sleazeball moron, in the general election. And I don’t think she has the grace and self-awareness to realize she’s doing her image no favors with her recent behavior.

Quote:
But this is all for the primaries. I'll vote for anyone, even Bloomberg.
Yeah, I know. Though I really hope it's not Bloomberg. I don't mind Steyer, in spite of the media always having to put "billionaire" in front of his name as if the others are all paupers.( I'm sure that none of them is hurting for money, and I expect they all have more in common with each other - including many members of the other party - than with us ordinary humans.) Normally, I’m fairly cynical about the candidates for major offices, though of course I prefer some to others. But Trump is just a disaster in all ways. Except maybe to those zealots who love conservative judges so much and/or have such a overwhelming anti-abortion agenda that they willingly blind themselves to everything else. I just plain want him gone while there's still a shred of an effective government and/or he hasn't managed to muck up international affairs beyond recovery.

At least I have the luxury of being able to vote third party if I really dislike the Democratic candidate (I might reach that point with Warren. I've really lost faith in her judgement, some of the things she's said and done lately). I live in one of those blue state that always goes for the Democratic candidate. We pretty much get ignored by both sides. I could vote for our cat and it wouldn't make the slightest impact.



Nice that they put aside their rivalry at the MLK event, btw.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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Frelga
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Fri 24 Jan , 2020 9:14 pm
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The Clinton comment has been discussed in HoF, where Voronwë made some informed points, so I'm not going to rediscuss it here.

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aninkling
Post subject: Re: Escaping the Echo Chamber
Posted: Fri 24 Jan , 2020 9:35 pm
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Fair enough. We've discussed enough politics. Probably more than enough.
(I will freely admit I'm just a "political hobbyist" myself, these days, as per that article, and not terribly invested in most of it. :) If the shoe fits...)

btw, I looked out of curiosity, since you mentioned that Voronwe made some "informed points" and I thought there might be something I hadn't heard. I hope you also noted yovargas's and elengil's well-reasoned rebuttals of Voronwe's argument that no one like Sanders because only one senator has endorsed Sanders (so far). I found them quite logical and convincing and backed up with evidence, i.e., most of the other candidates also have only one or no endorsements, besides Biden who had 4 or 5. And I'm afraid the published article in The Atlantic is more convincing to me than someone on the internet who's not a politician or DC insider (as far as I know) but claims he's never heard anyone in Congress but Elizabeth Warren say anything nice about Sanders.

_________________

Society can and does execute its own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. ― John Stuart Mill


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