Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

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Bob Butler
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The walls came tumbling down

Post by Bob Butler »

Joshua fought the battle of Jericho Jericho Jericho;
Joshua fought the battle of Jericho
And the walls came tumbling down.


Somebody said 2023 looks crazy, I doubt the following is what he has in mind, but some predictions for the New Year…

Trump indictments will start rolling in and the court cases rolling on, but not before the new Speaker of the House sells his soul to MAGA. He will prove more interested in Hunter’s laptop than running the country, and thus turn off voters big time. Like, enough of this already? Next, please? The Republicans will finally decide it is safe to disclaim MAGA, but their speaker will already be MAGA. Putin is starting to wobble. He has begun to talk about negotiations, but Ukraine threw that back in its face. Xi is wobbling too. The wobbles become loud crashing noises?

All that happens? I find it hard to hope for it, but it could? If it does Pelosi and Biden will suddenly look like geniuses. I have a real problem nominating Biden for grey champion. Really? Biden? But he has been quietly setting up for the crisis climax. It might come sooner than we think.

What could possibly go wrong? Go wrong? Go wrong?

Beware of falling walls.

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A crisis corrects flaws.

Post by Bob Butler »

Guest wrote:
Mon Jan 02, 2023 11:53 pm
The US was worth saving in the 90s; there was a collective culture that evolved as the country progressed, but which was unmistakably a continuation of the values of the previous generations.

Now societal norms are set by tiny minorities of untouchable special interest activists who openly express that this country was created by nothing but sin.
The Agricultural Age and early Industrial Age had many flaws. Many were canceled by progressive values in the various crises. Flaws removed included noble privilege, being on the wrong side of colonial imperialism, slavery, a lack of regulation of the economy and containment of autocratic military expansion. While in each crisis a progressive idea or two was added to the culture, there distinctly was a conservative effort to continue the best existing values of America. While if America is going to progress you need progressives, there is a place for conservative go preserve past virtues.

These flaws erased in past crises do have parallels in this crisis. A criminal president who faked electors, tried to manipulate voting officials and out and out insurrection. Putin’s autocratic attempt at expansion running into NATO containment. Prejudice against minorities. Attempts to impose religious douctrines on those of who do not share the beliefs. All of these are flaws to be corrected, with the solutions suggesting new values to be forever American.

These flaws are all nothing but sin, short sighted attempts at immediate selfish gain running into rather impressive values. In a way they all do represent special interest activists: elites, criminals, bigots, zelots.

In a crisis, those who see the obvious flaws in a culture have their inning. The other three turnings, not so much. A crisis is the time America grows.

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Conflict not cost effective

Post by Bob Butler »

FullMoon wrote:
Wed Jan 04, 2023 10:43 am
In the Clash of Civilizations, which has begun and will define the conflict, the fault lines lie with the Liberalized West and the Autocratic dictatorship. What happens afterwards is speculation bordering on science fiction, we can see the trend towards greater levels of conflict and know, in general, what will happen when it gets out of control. If it's only as bad as WW2 then all of our fears will have been much inflated.
I mix my view of history between Ages, Turnings and Civilizations. For one, there are a lot more than two Civilizations. The west and communism are not civilizations. For another, nukes and sanctions have very much changed how cost effective war is in the Information Age. Lessons learned in earlier ages are suspect, need to be confirmed.

For me at least, Putin has confirmed that defensive alliances of superior technological cultures have made war much less cost effective. Still, FDR added more foresight to containment than invented it. Throughout the Industrial Age defensive alliances overcame the threat of military cultures. This trend only became stronger as time progressed.

You seem to have missed the Age boundary. If nukes, sanctions, computers and containment had not greatly redefined conflict, you’d be accurate enough.

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Trounced?

Post by Bob Butler »

Cool Breeze wrote:
Thu Jan 05, 2023 10:28 pm
The issue with BB is that he doesn't even realize that because of his errors in discernment, he can't even use language properly. It's like he doesn't understand that the political ideas he follows have intentionally obfuscated if not totally manipulated others (or attempted to) by changing language. We've been through the thousands of examples already, but he'll act like I'm just making claims again, even though you rightly trounced all the nonsense ideas of his in your last post.
Trounced? Lied, more like.

The major lesson of World War II was containment. You have to stop autocratic conquerers from expanding early. Thus, Churchill's Iron Curtain speech. Thus, progressives worked against Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China by creating alliances such as NATO, by fighting wars such as Korea and Vietnam. Progressives do not love communism.

And they do not worship demons or eat babies. That is a QAnon lie that has no evidence to back it up.

But John has an absurdly irrational dislike for progressives. He will refuse to admit the purpose of NATO and back hateful propaganda that is supported by zero evidence. This habit means his Generational Dynamics can not be taken seriously. He seems obviously incorrect in his knowledge of history and quotes highly dubious stuff. I can give honor to some of the things that the conservatives have right, but John is extremely irrational about what he says about progressives. Any progressive would see the obvious lies and propaganda and label him an internet partisan, not taking his better thought out stuff seriously.

Which is too bad in a way. There are solid aspects of Generational Dynamics. John shouldn’t discredit it so persistently.
Last edited by Bob Butler on Fri Jan 06, 2023 3:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Trounced?

Post by Bob Butler »

Bob Butler wrote:
Fri Jan 06, 2023 1:23 am
Trounced? Lied, more like.
Censorship. Figures.

One thing I didn't include is that if lies were his primary defense, he could not reply without them. He did not have a real way to counter my argument.

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Re: Trounced?

Post by John »

Friday, January 6th, 2023

this is so typical of you. you make up some crime or perversion and accuse me or other forum members of it, of it, and then criticize me for not responding. as I've said before, your only real objective is to destroy this forum by flooding it with word salad bynonsense, which so far you have failed to do.

I may have an absurdly irrational dislike for you, but I don't dislike any other progresses. some of my best friends are progressives.

in fact, I don't even know what what progressive is. I doubt that you do either, as cool breeze has pointed out. I tend to equate the word progressive with left wing or democrat or socialist. so I don't dislike progresses, but I do dislike some of their policies.

for example, Democrats and progressives are using the teachers unions to promote such nonsense as gender fluidity and gender change to first and second graders. I view this as promoting pedophilia and perversion. you may not like that and I really don't care but that's how I view it. and as I pointed out in the past, progressives are wildly enthusiastic about a violent cereal rapist and his wife. there seems to be no perversion that the Democrats don't embrace.

as for refusing to admit the purpose of NATO, I can't even recall writing anything about the purpose of NATO , though I probably have in some of the over 6,000 articles that I posted on my website and in the form. The only thing I can recall writing about recently is that when Russia invaded, Ukraine, I wrote about how the generational theory regeneracy concept applies to the countries of Europe and NATO.

as I've said any number of times in the past, your only objective is to try to destroy this forum, by flooding it with word salad nonsense like the above quote. other than that, I don't even know why you're in this forum since everyone thinks you're an idiot.

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Re: Trounced?

Post by Bob Butler »

John wrote:
Fri Jan 06, 2023 5:18 pm
As I've said any number of times in the past, your only objective is to try to destroy this forum, by flooding it with word salad nonsense like the above quote. other than that, I don't even know why you're in this forum since everyone thinks you're an idiot.
So rational of you. In one sentence you claim some best friends are progressives, in the next you claim to not know what a progressive is. Well, from my perspective a progressives sees flaws in the culture which he desires to fix. I suppose the opposite view was parodied in Descartes’s and Broadway’s Pippin. 'This is the best of all possible worlds' the heroine sings through the rape scene. Not my view. There are flaws that need to be fixed.

I am not one to promote unusual gender roles, but I dislike people trying to change others, to deny their personal choice. Too often people are all crazy for traditional cultures and try to force their own cultures on others. I favor freedom. Allowing people to be what they want to be would be fine. Forcing them to abide by some norm would not be.

My objective is to sharpen my own worldview and put it at conflict with different worldviews. I can and do visit other forums where progressive views dominate. People to a great degree agree with me. How can I learn much from that?

Learning to refine my ability to communicate with people with radically different worldviews is more the objective. Sometimes they respond with personal attacks. Sometimes they fall silent, abandoning their argument when they can no longer justify it. Sometimes they spout irrelevant and obvious lies. Every once in a while they make a valid point and I learn from it. That happens more here than elsewhere.

Does this constitute destroying the forum? Making people abandon undefendable beliefs? Perhaps.

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Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by Cool Breeze »

You don't make any sense when you write, because words don't mean anything to you. For the 20th time.

If that's "progressive" then that's reason no. 1000 none of us want anything to do with it

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Progressive...

Post by Bob Butler »

Cool Breeze wrote:
Fri Jan 06, 2023 10:46 pm
You don't make any sense when you write, because words don't mean anything to you. For the 20th time.

If that's "progressive" then that's reason no. 1000 none of us want anything to do with it
With John, I can quote Descartes and expect he can follow. For you I'd have to dumb down, and why bother? Of course you have no desire to fix anything. You live in the best of all possible worlds. You don't have the imagination to worry about being the victim of prejudice, invasion, rape, insurrection, or any of that, or the sympathy to try help others. I'd like to think this isn't true of all of you. Some of you claim to be Christian. Some claim to care about government, whose function is to help the people.

"Ask not what your country can do for you..."

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Recess

Post by Bob Butler »

Before she retired, one of my sisters used to teach first grade. She tells many stories. Among them was one day she was trying to get her class out to recess. She made the mistake of telling the lingerers that the boys had already gone outside. Mistake. One very literal little girl pointed out that one boy hadn’t. Sure enough, there was one kid who even at that age was hanging out with the girls.

Was it her job to choose his friends for him? Should she enforce some societal norm on him? Or should she allow him to choose his own friends, to do what he wanted at recess. She chose the latter.

After the year ended she didn’t interact with him much, but she saw him years later at a town parade, on a gay pride float. She still didn’t try to tell him what float he should make his own.

I concur. One should not encourage and champion non traditional life styles, but neither should one get in the way of other people’s choices.

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