What happened Tuesday night can be explained in two words:

Atlas Shrugged.

'nuff said.

 

Or, it could also be something like, "Okay Media, we hear what you are saying, but WE NO LONGER BELIEVE A WORD THAT YOU ARE SAYING!!"

 

Pat caddell has a much more elegant explanation: the uprising of the american people.

 

What happened Tuesday night can be explained in two words:

Atlas Shrugged.

'nuff said.

No. In order for Atlas to have shrugged, the productive would need to reject the "sanction of the victim" and accept the immorality of altruism.

 

Could just be that the lesser of two evils was chosen.

Society as a whole seems to both hate and yet want to be the rich so given that a ultra rich businessman who pretty much does as he pleases and doesn't pay for things he feels are not up to his standards was taken as the better choice to run or country for a while really say a lot about just how much worse the other person was seen as being.

 

Oddly enough this stick figure guy ain't too far off

Both the right wing forums as well as the left wing forums in my experience. Not that I frequent any of them it's just I always check out the comments when someone posts some radical "news" on some clearly biased sites.

The dialect on those sites that only advocate one or the other are pure demented bile most of the time.

It starts at about the 3rd minute.

 

That's insightful. It made me contemplate the difference caused by the internet as a vector for idea germs. We all celebrate the great things the internet has done for us - here we are in a forum that was unimaginable in the first few decades of my life - but I do think the internet has had plenty of negative impacts on us as well. It's clearly an unavoidable time-waster for many. The ideas in this video show there may be more subtle effects on how we process ideas.

Reminds me of the lead poisoning in Roman times.

 

What happened Tuesday night can be explained in two words:

Atlas Shrugged.

'nuff said.

A better analogy would be, "Atlas farted".

 

This entire election cycle, for me, is little more than one more bit of evidence in support of a theorem I have believed in since high school: Civilization is a self-defeating concept.

In a country of 300+ million people, this is the best we could come up with? And I'm going beyond just the two major-party candidates, but also including the overwhelming majority of the primary candidates from both parties in not only the presidential, but also the congressional races plus most of the third-party candidates as well. With a few exceptions here and there, we have reached a point where two things generally prevail -- truly good candidates stand little chance of winning if they do run and truly good candidates are not so power-hungry that they are willing to put themselves and those close to them through the wringer in order to try to win something that is so tilted against them.

I don't see that changing any time soon, if ever, in any country that reaches this point.

 

This entire election cycle, for me, is little more than one more bit of evidence in support of a theorem I have believed in since high school: Civilization is a self-defeating concept.

I think "Civilization" will be fine. The rarity of good leaders has been a historical fact since the dawn of human civilization. Civilization has always been part guile, hypocrisy, envy, and avarice. The destruction of good Culture that can survive bad leaders seems a more pressing problem today.

 

Note that I'm not referring to all-inclusive "human civilization", but rather more to nation-specific civilization, such as "Greek Civilization" or "Roman Civilization". Perhaps that is similar to what you are referring to by "culture".

 

Oddly enough this stick figure guy ain't too far off

Both the right wing forums as well as the left wing forums in my experience. Not that I frequent any of them it's just I always check out the comments when someone posts some radical "news" on some clearly biased sites.

The dialect on those sites that only advocate one or the other are pure demented bile most of the time.

It starts at about the 3rd minute.

Very interesting video... the way I see it, it explains in logic steps how people arrive at the classic "us vs them" attitude, and turn it into a vicious cycle.

 

Very interesting video... the way I see it, it explains in logic steps how people arrive at the classic "us vs them" attitude, and turn it into a vicious cycle.

It kind of does. It made something that I had thought about from time to time but never gone to this much depth myself very clear.

And I'm sure that most people have thought so too but it gets forgotten in the traffic of life

 

Could just be that the lesser of two evils was chosen.

Society as a whole seems to both hate and yet want to be the rich so given that a ultra rich businessman who pretty much does as he pleases and doesn't pay for things he feels are not up to his standards was taken as the better choice to run or country for a while really say a lot about just how much worse the other person was seen as being.

Exactly my point as well. Or maybe the society opted for something different? Or wants change this time?

 

Note that I'm not referring to all-inclusive "human civilization", but rather more to nation-specific civilization, such as "Greek Civilization" or "Roman Civilization". Perhaps that is similar to what you are referring to by "culture".

I just think that Civilization in general has more to do with organisation, technology and the relationships of humans to maintain a certain structural level of living. Germany in 1939-45 was an advanced Civilization for that period in time but the culture of Germany had degenerated into a nightmare for humanity.

They also wanted to change the cultural landscape: to return the country to traditional “German” and “Nordic” values, to excise or circumscribe Jewish, “foreign,” and “degenerate” influences, and to shape a racial community (Volksgemeinschaft) which aligned with Nazi ideals.
...
The efforts of Nazi authorities to regulate, direct, and censor German arts and letters corresponded to what the late German historian George Mosse called an effort “toward a total culture.” That effort also reached down to those lower levels of culture which punctuated the everyday lives of ordinary Germans. The Nazi leadership, which hoped to dominate Germany through political power and terror, but also by winning the “hearts and minds” of the population, utilized this coordination of culture, high and low, to influence at the most basic level the lives and actions of its citizens.

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007519

 

Germany in 1939-45 was an advanced Civilization for that period in time but the culture of Germany had degenerated into a nightmare for humanity.

That is because it was based on a principle of exclusion, instead of inclusion.... at least that is my opinion.

 

That is because it was based on a principle of exclusion, instead of inclusion.... at least that is my opinion.

IMO it was based more on superiority with exclusion as a tactic to express and reinforce the belief. This superiority was first expressed in the cultural shaming of groups by the use of badges and terms to make them into deplorable's to later soften up the population to exclusion and extermination later.

 

IMO it was based more on superiority...

Actually, eugenics. Or, as the libbies like to say, science.

The eugenics movement became negatively associated with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust when many of the defendants at the Nuremberg trials attempted to justify their human rights abuses by claiming there was little difference between the Nazi eugenics programs and the US eugenics programs.

 

IMO it was based more on superiority with exclusion as a tactic to express and reinforce the belief. This superiority was first expressed in the cultural shaming of groups by the use of badges and terms to make them into deplorable's to later soften up the population to exclusion and extermination later.

I am well aware of their eugenic approach to politics, and how it enabled them to (after some struggle) grasp on ultimate power. In addition to what you've just mentioned, I'd only add that the phenomenon was not something that happened all of a sudden. When you read history, you realize that that bigoted approach to the value of european civilization began festering well before the middle of the 19th century, culminating in Nietzsche and finally coming to fruition in the Nazi party.
I think that what we're witnessing now is not something that was brewed overnight either. It will be interesting to see what happens in the American political landscape in the next 10 years...

 

darn! Joey beat me to the use of that word! ... and here I thought that I was sounding clever ...