Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

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Bob Butler
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Legalizing Drugs

Post by Bob Butler »

John wrote:
Sat Jan 07, 2023 10:16 pm
I don't have any evidence for this, but the only explanation that makes sense to me is that the cartels are donating hundreds of millions of dollars to the Democrats and their crony organizations . The money comes from the trafficking on the completely open southern border, and may also be supplied by the Chinese.
To me, the core is that you can’t eliminate something the people want by outlawing it. The attempt at a war on drugs is a repeat of the alcohol prohibition. By making things illegal, you are opening the door for criminals to profit. Trying to solve it by rule of law didn't work then, and isn't apt to work now. Legalizing pot and some of the safer recreational drugs might be a start. I can’t see where it goes from there. As is, we are messing up South and Central America, not to mention ourselves, and far worsening the immigration problem.

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Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

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You can be accused of attempting to destroy the forum sometimes. This is a valid criticism.
You're doing better recently. Emotions get the better of your posts and diminish your efforts. In the search for truth, Left and Right are quite close in the chaos of change enveloping us

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Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

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Children in politics

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Personally, I'm kind of suspicious when family members take advantage of a government official being in high places. Trump had adult children in the White House and Hunter got himself hired likely to influence his father. Sure, the rival political party should investigate it given any cause. Was Hunter blatant enough to get caught? Did all of the Democratic investigations hit home? Some obviously did. Anyway, they might investigate away as far as I'm concerned. We'll see what comes out of it...

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Left and Right close?

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FullMoon wrote:
Sun Jan 08, 2023 12:13 am
You can be accused of attempting to destroy the forum sometimes. This is a valid criticism.
You're doing better recently. Emotions get the better of your posts and diminish your efforts. In the search for truth, Left and Right are quite close in the chaos of change enveloping us
People can accuse freely. What I have done is silence positions that can’t be defended. If people think that the purpose of the site is to put out undefendable positions, sure, accuse.

I’m not so sure the left and right are so close. The Democrats are focusing on bread and butter issues. The Republicans want to retaliate for the Trump investigations. I’m not sure if the retaliation investigations are going to hit home. The Big Lie resulted in lots of possible felony charges. The stolen documents, the tax fraud of the Trump business, the attempts to manipulate the vote, the fake electors, the insurrection…. Those are all asking for felony convictions. If you are going to out investigate somebody, the first step might be to do nothing worth investigating. Trump was just too used to not being investigated. He would violate the law expecting nothing to happen. He would have done better not to have drawn attention to himself. His delay and distract tactics don’t seem to be working with the focus he generated.

If a few moderate Republicans vote with the Democrats for bread and butter issues and the interests of the people, we might have both a working government and investigations. Otherwise, the Republicans go into 2024 illustrating that they don’t care for the people. Some big Republicans are trying to get rid of MAGA influence. Wise of them. The midterms illustrated that the people are tired of much of it, of conspiracy theories without evidence. Losers. The Republicans are going to have to push out MAGA if they are going to have a viable party. Alas, to win a Republican primary you need the MAGA vote in many places. The question of whether to seek the MAGA primary victories looks to remain open at least until 2024.

But meanwhile there is containment. This seems to be much more up this sites purpose. It seems to be working in Ukraine. NATO just has more resources to commit than Putin. Meanwhile, Xi has a bunch of other problems. We’ll have to see.

But a chaos of change? Progressives seek changes to fix obvious problems. Conservative wish things to remain as they are. During the crisis peak, the problems get solved, the progressives come out ahead. The demographics are changing. Whites no longer are the automatic majority, able to impose their culture at will. Having the minority vote becoming worth losing the white supremacy vote. The woman's vote is worth losing the religious fanatic vote. The people's vote for bread and butter stuff is worth losing some elite money.

Welcome to the Industrial Age.

Edit: They recently found some classified document's in Biden's out of power office. I guess how those got handled will illustrate the difference. Biden's lawyers called the White House council who called the National Archives within the hour. The next morning the documents were back in archives hands. No resistance to the turnover, though why resist when you are president? Just correct the mistake. MSNBC quoted the relevant law, and this mentioned the willful keeping of the document and not responding to any request to return one. Compliance with the law is just a good way to avoid ugly investigations. The Republicans just have a problem with their base being associated with an habitual criminal,

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Will a Kiev do?

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Bob Butler wrote:
Sun Jan 15, 2023 11:48 pm
I do feel it is clear. At the peak of the crisis, you go with this time's equivalent of Washington, Lincoln and FDR, rather than George III, Davis and Hitler. The conservative efforts collapse. If you anticipate Putin, Xi and Trump will come out of this well, sigh, I'll mutter my prophecies to the contrary, snicker, and wait a few years. Warping your views of things like medicine, science, war, law and prejudice to fit your political views doesn't allow much clarity. You fit your political views to hard reality, not the other way around.

I think someone here said that predicting a Chinese collapse was no significant achievement. I think that reasonably true of Putin and Trump too. If Trump is overly relying on his delay and distract tactics, are Xi and Putin doing much more? All three have painted themselves into corners by past bad decisions. The failure of old ideas in a crisis period is easy to predict. Turning theory just underlines the historical tendency. American crises have solved the major problems around which the crisis is based. If you want to be the problem, it is best to get off the tracks before the proverbial freight train arrives.

So I'll stand on this and wait few more years.
The above gives a progressive view on things. It might suggest a crisis is a time when major shift takes place. This would be especially true of a civilization which is on an age boundary. The basic pattern of civilization which held true for a long time might not hold through a crisis on an age cusp.

Might.

But such a shift is not inevitable. Only a few things might change in any given crisis for any given civilization. Slavery remained essentially intact during the American Revolution. The containment value did not appear in the US Civil War. A conservative thinker of prior crisis time could make the argument that almost all civilizations were ruled by kings, or used slaves, or participated in conquest. What always was might well be judged as something permanent, to be expected, to always be there.

But a crisis is a time when something which was permanent might change, but only if that something permanent is a driving issue of the crisis. For example, slavery was not a driving issue of the Revolution, but was of the Civil War. Kings or emperors almost always ruled before the American Revolution, but democracy has spread since.

This becomes a big deal in the difference between conservative and progressive thought. ‘This has how it has always been, thus how it always must be’ takes on ‘this must not be accepted and must be changed.’ I have always said that worldviews do not change without a very fatal disproof of the worldview’s failure. Atlanta in 1864 and Hiroshima in 1945 are the most blatant examples. Otherwise the idea that ‘this is how it as always been’ will hold. If a big change of this crisis is no more crisis war, containment makes it a very bad idea, will there be no more Atlantas or Hiroshimas? The remaining flaws in the culture are inevitable and permanent?
spottybrowncow wrote:
Mon Jan 16, 2023 9:24 am
If you want to be believed, start by saying something believable.
When have words changed worldviews? Oh, a few ears may be open, but it generally takes a demonstration to kill an obsolete worldview. If there will be no more Atalantas or Hiroshimas, will a Kiev do? Will you spend your culture's production on ghost cities like Xi? Will you attract attention by committing crimes like Trump?

Does the whole idea that crises advance cultures by inserting new values depend on decisive crisis war climaxes? I'd like to think not, that people can learn without cities reduced to ash.

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Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by John »

Monday, January 16th, 2023

just to be clear, Trump has committed no crimes whatsoever. as usual, you're completely full of crap. your purposely lying, knowing that what you're claiming is a lie. You're just like those assholes Homeland security Secretary Alejandro mayorkas and Adam Schiff. you people are all alike. you people are all alike.

Biden, by contrast has committed numerous crimes, including, most recently uncovered, stealing, classified secret and top secret documents from the Obama administration and scattering them all around in multiple unsecured locations, including locations accessible by Chinese spies and hunters drug dealing friends.

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You will be assimilated...

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John wrote:
Mon Jan 16, 2023 4:08 pm
your purposely lying, knowing that what you're claiming is a lie.
Purposely lying? Why have so many Trump appointed judges rejected his absurd claim? Why if the 2020 election was fraudulent, has no evidence at all of this been presented? Why didn’t anyone counter the January 6 Committee’s presentation? All the evidence is that Trump is full of it.

I have this little thought experiment. Iwo Jima, February 1945. The Japanese are dug in on the island. On the horizon, a large American fleet is approaching. Did I say large? Anyway, large. But much closer, a single rowboat approaches the island. The mission is to logically, rationally, verbally, convince the inhabitants of the island that the Japanese worldview will shift radically within a few years. They would become pacifists. They would throw their energy into competing economically. They have no reason to throw away their lives defending an obsolete way of looking at things. The rowboat’s occupant would not quite use the approach of Star Trek’s Borg. “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” But close enough.

My boss had a brother with a gift for languages. He could do accents totally, and pass completely as a native. One year he did a ski vacation in Germany, and made a bunch of local friends. One German comment stuck. “We should have killed more Jews when we had the chance.”

You cannot anticipate they will be convinced by logic and verbal arguments. They will cling to their worldviews well beyond reason. Rather than listen they will drive their culture into the ground. Convincing this site is as likely as convincing those on Iwo, or the Confederates before Atlanta. Conquest, slavery and prejudice are fine things, to be defended with one's life. The worldview of the conservative faction is virtually unshakeable, at least until shaken. Shaken a lot. Shaken hard.

Who is deliberately lying?

And truth makes for a better argument anyway. It is harder to contradict. People tend to revert to silence or launch personal attacks when confronted with the truth. Anything but admit they can't argue...

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Re: Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

Post by John »

Monday, January 16th, 2023

you seem to be hallucinating, in addition to your other problems. you go on that ridiculous rant, but you don't identify a single crime that Trump has supposedly committed.

first, there was the Russia conspiracy hoax, based on a phony dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton. that ended with nothing.

next, there wa the 3-year investigation by Robert Mueller and his 25 Trump hating Democrat lawyers, which came up with absolutely nothing.

next were the two phony impeachments, both of which came up with nothing. by the way, I watched the second impeachment live, all five public sessions, and it was obvious to me that the whole thing was a hoax, and that Adam Schiff could not say a word without lying. lying. he was completely full of crap as many Democrats are.

then there was the January 6th hearing, populated entirely by Trump haters. it came up with absolutely nothing, as was shown by the fact that it withdrew its subpoena for Trump on December 30th. it was just another forest.

now, the desperate Democrats are hoping that the document scandal scandal will end up with Trump going to jail, even though it's clear that no crime was committed. and if there ever was a chance of finding Trump guilty, that's become practically impossible in the last week because of biden's far worse crimes.

as for your anecdotes about imojima or your multi language friend, I don't even know what you're talking about or what they have to do with Trump . The two anecdotes appear to be simply meaningless word salad.

it's clear that Trump has committed no crime.
if you're going to accuse Trump of being a criminal, then at least start by naming a specific crime.

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Obsolete worldviews believed

Post by Bob Butler »

John

The January 6 Committee came up with a considerable list of crimes. Trump was part of the fake elector scheme, a felony. There was the phone call where he tried to change votes in Georgia and elsewhere, again felony. There was the Tax Fraud in New York which recently convicted the corporation. The Impeachments were silly. They should have known the Republican Senate members would ignore their oaths of office. Leave alone organizing the insurrection. I could go on, but that is enough.

Now this is common knowledge by anyone who has followed the news recently. Do you think your contradicting common knowledge gets you a favorable reputation? I acknowledge your conservative bias, but throw Generational Dynamics away by making this biased opinion obvious? You wonder why you aren’t taken seriously?

Iwo Jima and the German anti Jewish antagonism show how worldviews can be absolutely wrong and absolutely believed. People will follow them to their death. Is that what happened here? Do you actually believe the falsehoods you spout? I accept that the Japanese, Germans and Confederates wholly believed, many of them. Conquest, prejudice, slavery and a willingness to give one’s life for one’s country’s greed were a big thing once upon a time. Past cultures were a mess, today’s less so, but there remain flaws to be corrected. Claiming or pretending these flaws don’t exist is an indication that you are messed up. Insisting that obvious flaws don’t exist?

But some refuse to see it. I’m perfectly ready to believe some have these deplorable visions of other groups. I am having a hard time believing you do as well. You have enough knowledge of history to know better. Is your irrational bias against progressives twisting what you allow yourself to know? Do you really believe what you say?

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