Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

[Higgenbotham]

When I went to college working towards an advanced engineering degree, I did expect to be paid well. This is part of the way America works and should work. You object? You don’t think people who work hard to be able to do things others can’t shouldn’t be well paid? Have you tried working?

And did you notice Putin and Trump as buddies? There is an autocratic tendency in the conservative movement. I think of Putin, Xi and Trump surrounding themselves with yes men and making disastrous decisions as made of the same cloth. Calling progressives commie is ironic. Find an appropriate insult.

Where do I cheer a corrupt legal system? You are making up lies without evidence. As I said, one flaw with the US court system is conservative hatred of minorities and making up evidence against them. Some of what you covered is spot on. What I have called the ghetto mindset is real. Law enforcement sometimes sees it and will create a false case rather than doing their jobs. In many ways I’m with you. In other ways you are just distracting from the real base causes.

But the key question is whether you really believe Trump should be pursued for his alleged crimes. Should someone be trying to prove he took documents, created fake electors, interfered with a constitutional function, etc? If so, should he be locked up, or do you want him above the law? If the court system were perfect, would they not be doing much as they have been with regard to Trump, except they did it too slowly? The trials should have come before the primaries? They shouldn’t have given him the chance to delay, delay, delay?

I'm unsure how to proceed. I will make a list of things I am considering and have considered in the past.

First, I read all your comments and don't feel compelled to comment on most of it. I agree with perhaps 20 percent of it. I did, however, feel compelled to comment on the kangaroo court aspect.

As far as the rest of it, you know, for example, how I feel about Trump. In the big picture, he's just another liberal. In several hundred years, Trump will only matter in the sense that the path taken to the bottom of the new dark age will be slightly different than if Trump had never existed. In the here and now, Trump will make more difference than that, but, like I said, Trump is just the figurehead who leads the movement, he is not the movement itself, and he even admitted that. The figurehead is of minor importance; it is the movement that is noteworthy. If Trump were to be jailed or killed, the movement will continue after some sputtering and another figurehead, probably a stronger and more ruthless one, will emerge, just because things are generally on the decline. Same with Putin. I don't feel compelled to comment on any of the other issues you brought up either.

Also, I don't want to impede your freedom or desire to put out what you feel like putting out in your little corner of this site. I would acknowledge that too much of me jumping in here and commenting on every issue you bring up has the potential to distract and be negative.

[Bob Butler]

The thing I find interesting is your comment that things are generally in decline. I get a feeling that this is a common attitude here. I see a crisis as a difficult but positive time. After a struggle and conflict, a solution is found and old values replaced by new. There is a new birth of freedom. If black lives do matter, if women control their own bodies, if war is seen less as cost effective, if insurrection is seen as a bad thing, if fighting death by disease is seen as wise, is not the world a better place?

As George III, Jefferson Davis and Hitler were not followed up by copycats, I don’t see Trump being followed either. If you fail miserably, you aren’t copied. After you solve the problem of the crisis, the methods used are reinforced in the high. As an S&H fan, I see a repeat of the prior American crises pattern continuing.

But I’ll leave the other issues alone for now.

While I still visit your pages occasionally, I don't see myself instigating more than quick comments.

[Higgenbotham]

The thing I find interesting is your comment that things are generally in decline. I get a feeling that this is a common attitude here. I see a crisis as a difficult but positive time. After a struggle and conflict, a solution is found and old values replaced by new. There is a new birth of freedom. If black lives do matter, if women control their own bodies, if war is seen less as cost effective, if insurrection is seen as a bad thing, if fighting death by disease is seen as wise, is not the world a better place?

As George III, Jefferson Davis and Hitler were not followed up by copycats, I don’t see Trump being followed either. If you fail miserably, you aren’t copied. After you solve the problem of the crisis, the methods used are reinforced in the high. As an S&H fan, I see a repeat of the prior American crises pattern continuing.

But I’ll leave the other issues alone for now.

While I still visit your pages occasionally, I don't see myself instigating more than quick comments.

One of the questions I addressed post 2011 after I concluded that the world had entered a new dark age was how the crisis period would look versus how the crisis period would look if the world hadn't entered a new dark age. In my opinion, this is the first crisis period there has been since the world entered a new dark age and this is how I outlined what that might look like (back in 2012):

I would expect the beginning phases of a descent into a Dark Age to be milder than if an actual cleansing and regenerative process were to occur instead. In a descent into a Dark Age, one way to look at it is we continue to borrow more from the future instead of stopping at some point and replenishing the future. That is what clearly continues to happen, as we can see. There are many symptoms of that, but an obvious one is the failure to have enough children to replenish the population and we see that across all of the Western societies with Japan taking the lead. As Peter Drucker has commented, this is unprecedented. Tying that into what you said, many of those parents who have that one precious child instead of three or four as in the past are not going to want to send that one child off to war to die. So in terms of an organized nation state versus nation state version of warfare as has been seen in the past, I don't see it under a Dark Age descent scenario. Instead, I can imagine something like rogue or surreptitious releases of killer viruses, limited release of nuclear material, limited power grid failures and so on tailored to hit certain genetic groups or limited geographical areas where the source of the attack is difficult to trace. This type of warfare would probably not be terribly effective and would be more of a wearing down process that is not regenerative like a typical fourth turning "total war" would be; in other words, Dresden would not be rebuilt to a higher standard than previously, as an example. Chernobyl, the Twin Towers, Katrina, and Fukushima come to mind as harbingers of things that have not yet been reconstructed to a higher standard and perhaps can't or won't be (though the replacement of the Twin Towers is due to be complete by 2013).

[Bob Butler]

I’m not seeing a new dark age. I am seeing a new age, the Information Age. The innovations triggering it include are nukes, proxy war, computers, and renewable energy. But of the list you quoted, only Chernobyl and Fukushima aren’t being rebuilt, and that due to radiation not economics. The lifestyle is pretty much the same as before. In certain fields such as rockets, electric vehicles and computing significant advancements are being made, and in other industries progress plods along. In certain areas such as Gaza and Ukraine they are learning the hard way that war isn’t cost effective. Yes, disaster, but that is not a global trend. Compared to prior crises, the conflicts are small.

But I would agree this is the first crisis of the new age, even if we perceive the new age differently.

[jdcpapa]

If after 60 court cases, 91 indictments and the attorney general telling him so, you would think it would get through. If you think it didn’t, well, that’s you, not Trump.

I am reporting on the evidence you provided to support your perspective. What I think, based on my understanding of the 60 court cases, is that the court did not hear the evidence in the subject cases. All 60 cases were dismissed for lack of standing. So, in my mind, if Trump believed the 2020 presidential election was not legitimate before filing suit in the 60 cases; how is the dismissal of all 60 cases for lack of standing going to convince him that the election was legitimate?

As far as the 91 indictments, according to the Washington Post poll the preponderance of evidence has caused 37% (and growing) of Americans to conclude the 2020 presidential election was not legitimate.

The attorney general did tell Trump the election was legitimate. Partisans want to prove Trump knew he lost the 2020 presidential election legitimately because it would support their cases against him. As far as I know, Trump has not conceded the 2020 presidential election.

Courts deal with legal truths. They deal with witnesses, evidence, oaths, juries and such like. Constitutions are amended, laws passed and appeals generated. There is no question this is a different flavor of truth. There is no question that Trump and you do not respect it.

Yes, this is a different flavor of truth. It is the "strategic use of legal proceedings to intimidate or hinder an opponent". Partisan DAs promised to get Trump by using " lawfare" if they were elected. It will be interesting to see how it "plays out". I respect the law.

To me, what is important is resolved through the legal procedures. To you it seems to be that what you wish is so.

Projection. Talk about the "pot calling the kettle black"!

[Bob Butler]

https://campaignlegal.org/results-lawsu ... -elections

As usual when absurd claims are being made, I goggled for an appropriate article. This time I searched on something like ‘Trump 60 lawsuits standing’. What I came up with was a partial list of the court cases. Indeed, the courts did find there was no standing for several of the cases, but ruled on the merits anyway. Like in other cases they found heresy, no evidence of fraud, and some courts issued sanctions on Trump’s lawyers. Obviously, with a unanimous set of findings, there was no bias between Republican and Democratic nominated judges.

In short, you made up lies which do not reflect the results of the court cases.

There is a link to all 60 cases in the article. You could try following that.

Again, the justice system is not based on polls. No, Trump did admit he ‘lost to this (expletive deleted) guy’.

https://www.axios.com/2022/06/19/trump- ... yssa-farah

[Bob Butler]

In recent discussion, it seem the distinction is between optimistic and pessimistic expectations. In looking at prior crises of the American sequence, there are a couple of issues per crisis. With the Revolution it was colonial imperialism and noble privilege. With the Civil War there was slavery and giving power to the robber barons to enable the Industrial Revolution and western expansion. In FDR’s time it was government regulation of the economy and containing autocratic expansion. In each case, the progressive solutions to the problem were resisted by a conservative attempt to maintain the problems.

This crisis there seem to be more issues but not as central. There is bigotry, efforts to minimize the effects of minority voting power, attempts to use the government to impose religious beliefs, the rich having too much influence in government, attempts to arm the insane and spree killers, and the willingness to use modern medicine to resist pandemics and help women make family plans. From my point of view, these are attempts by progressives to solve obvious flaws, opposed by conservative attempts to maintain them.

I suspect the right of women to shape their own families will be dominant. Every time a variant of this question is put on the ballot, a woman’t right to choose has dominated. If this holds true going on, the Republicans will have to reverse their position or lose Congress.

But the key question is the decision between easing a flaw or maintaining it, between an optimistic result in solving the problem, and a pessimistic result in its continuing. Even with the question of anticipating nuclear war, there seem to be many anticipating it is coming.

How to impress that the American character is optimistic, that they will attempt to solve problems? I am becoming convinced again that changes in worldview grow out of the pitiful failure of the earlier worldview. Conservatives will not admit that the culture can solve a given problem until they have seen the problem solved, until the values which solved the problem are hammered home in the following high.

[Bob Butler]

I had one other thought. Several Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. At least one person was forbidden from holding office as he was at Congress on January 6 and thus participated in an insurrection. What if the Supreme Court resolving the 14th Amendment Section Three case rules this was not an insurrection? Would this be grounds for overturning the previous cases? Would they have to find grounds for overturning the prior cases?

Just another twist.

[FullMoon]

A quick google on food prices came up with a 10% change in food prices in recent years. The bump is a hump which is now going down, 2020 - 2023, a large part due to the Covid impacts. In the same time a Covid hump hit the housing market, bringing the average price up from $370,000 to $553,000, before heading right back to the point they were pre Covid.

How are we going to find common ground when one side makes up lies to prevent it?

10% inflation? NO WAY.

Bob only believes leftist government statistics.

He lives by lies.

If he knew communists, he would listen to Alexander Solzhenitsyn and he would see that he supports the second movement of communism, but this time, in the USA. It's not a wonder that Alexander was hated after his Harvard commencement address, where he exposed the madness of communism - but it had come already to the US in the 1960s and it grasped Bish's soul and since that time, he has spread the lies of the Protocols of the Elders, the sick media and porn industry, and the banking cartel used to debase all the common people while they debased the money and stole the jobs for slave labor overseas. Yes, that included "Republicans" here and there.

He has no clue about any of it.

You both live by lies and haven't a clue. But in this case you are more correct than the other.
The Forum is getting sabotaged into a social justice warrior battle ground again. The end is nigh and the time for petty squabbling is past. Let's move this crap to another thread so that people will want to post interesting things. I might try.

[Guest]

10% inflation? NO WAY.

Bob only believes leftist government statistics.

He lives by lies.

If he knew communists, he would listen to Alexander Solzhenitsyn and he would see that he supports the second movement of communism, but this time, in the USA. It's not a wonder that Alexander was hated after his Harvard commencement address, where he exposed the madness of communism - but it had come already to the US in the 1960s and it grasped Bish's soul and since that time, he has spread the lies of the Protocols of the Elders, the sick media and porn industry, and the banking cartel used to debase all the common people while they debased the money and stole the jobs for slave labor overseas. Yes, that included "Republicans" here and there.

He has no clue about any of it.

You both live by lies and haven't a clue. But in this case you are more correct than the other.
The Forum is getting sabotaged into a social justice warrior battle ground again. The end is nigh and the time for petty squabbling is past. Let's move this crap to another thread so that people will want to post interesting things. I might try.

The SJW here is BB.