Objectively intelligent.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

You have more faith than I that there will be another election in 4 years if he's re-elected. I think that's a realistic risk.

He won't survive a second term. I saw some of his news conference on Monday. He's exhausted and running on the fumes of old hatred and rejections. It's lousy fuel. Existentially, he must be dealing with the reality that the only things he values - his virility, money, notoriety, and power - are past their sell by date. He may very well get another four years, but even if he does, that's it for Donald. He's old, and he's getting frail, and he's in the home stretch, a nihilist realizing that when all you live for is to be winning in the moment, the high of being famous, those last few years of the winter of your life, when you've got nothing left but to find satisfaction in connection with others, are pretty fucking lonely. If he's as physically and mentally fragile as he ought to be, and has been suggested, he can't go another four.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

No offense, but that's silly.

It can happen in Russia and Belarus and Hungary and (probably) Brazil, but it can't happen here. Gotcha.

I'm not saying it's likely, but I am saying it is within the realm of possibility. A big factor against it is that this particular crime family is unbelievably inept.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I agree. But I think a silver lining is that people are now looking around and saying what you just wrote. Trump caused people to examine the problems with our democratic republic, and in doing so, astute people have realized we live in a quasi-oligarchy, and what existed before Trump was elected was not much different economically than what has existed since. Pre-Trump and post-Trump worlds aren't much different for the poor and middle class except as to those adversely or positively impacted by his trade polices. The "rigged" economy Trump promised to fix remains largely "rigged." Only some of the beneficiaries have changed. It was a neoliberal world before and it remains one today, regardless of our PT Barnum POTUS's populist posturing. (How about that for alliteration?)

That's some serious alliteration.

Again, did anyone really see it as legitimate?

Yes. Not always. But for most people other than yourself, usually. Trump is delegitimizing things that people saw as essentially legitimate.

Our adversarial system is capricious, political, and biased, and its penalties are medieval. It needs to crash and be not only be rebooted but rebuilt.

Building a legal system with legitimacy is really hard, which is one reason why the tend to evolve instead of getting burned down and replaced. It doesn't "need to crash." That's nonsense. It needs reform. You sound like a fat man saying he's going to keep eating ice cream until he's really obese, because that's the kick in the pants he needs to get in shape.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

It can happen in Russia and Belarus and Hungary and (probably) Brazil, but it can't happen here. Gotcha.

I'm not saying it's likely, but I am saying it is within the realm of possibility. A big factor against it is that this particular crime family is unbelievably inept.

Belarus just had an election. So do these other countries. The threat is that elections are less democratic, either because people can't vote or because the system is unfair, or possibly because the results are rigged or ignored. We already have a system that discriminates against people in the first two ways (voter suppression, the Electoral College). There's a real danger that those problems will get worse. I'm more worried about that than about rigged or ignored results. But all of those things are bigger problems than the prospect that we won't have an election in four years.

Was I supposed to take you seriously but not literally?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Belarus just had an election. So do these other countries. The threat is that elections are less democratic, either because people can't vote or because the system is unfair, or possibly because the results are rigged or ignored. We already have a system that discriminates against people in the first two ways (voter suppression, the Electoral College). There's a real danger that those problems will get worse. I'm more worried about that than about rigged or ignored results. But all of those things are bigger problems than the prospect that we won't have an election in four years.

Was I supposed to take you seriously but not literally?

NO ONE with an IQ above 110 and who doesn't live in TX, NY or Cali thinks the electoral college is "unfair."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

NO ONE with an IQ above 110 and who doesn't live in TX, NY or Cali thinks the electoral college is "unfair."

It is objectively unfair. The votes of different citizens have very different weights, depending on which states they live in. What you mean is that people who benefit from that differential treatment like it.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

It is objectively unfair. The votes of different citizens have very different weights, depending on which states they live in. What you mean is that people who benefit from that differential treatment like it.

Liberals complain that rich people have outsize influence based upon what they can do for a politician. People in NY TX Nd Cali ignore that if there was no electoral college they’d be rich people with outsized influence. Sad. Predictable but sad.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Liberals complain that rich people have outsize influence based upon what they can do for a politician. People in NY TX Nd Cali ignore that if there was no electoral college they’d be rich people with outsized influence. Sad. Predictable but sad.

You don't play dumb very well.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

You don't play dumb very well.

they say that to judge a high IQ you need to have a higher one. I get that. So to judge someone “playing dumb” I guess you have to be dumb?

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Not only is it ridiculous for any law office to demand people come in to work, but it's counterproductive.

I can get done in surf shorts and a t-shirt in my home office the same amount of work I'd complete commuting to and from an office in half of the time. I had two offices at one point, and I never went to either except to meet with people, and even then I found that to be a waste of time.

I get the sales component of offices and in-person meetings. I'm told I'm pretty, I can speak convincingly, and I know how to close. I get that shit. People want to see and hear what they're buying. But after I'm done glad handing, Let Me Leave. Making me stay and hang out behind a desk saps my fucking soul.

I don't want to be in a fucking office with a bunch of people, sitting in artificial light, feeling like I have to get things done while I'm there. On my own schedule, I might work for a couple hours, then do a twenty minute erg piece, work again for an hour, then ride the bike a bit. This keeps the mind calm and allows creative solutions to complex issues to emerge in one's brain.

If I had a twenty for every time the solution to a complex legal question popped into my head while running on the elipitcal machine, I could buy several closets full of the highest quality corporate casual clothes people are compelled against their will to purchase to go to an office and hang out with old divorced dickheads and social invalids who have No Other Place To Be.

We aren't wired to live and die within office towers, artificially cleaved to people we'd never even look at, let alone speak to, but for a shared commercial endeavor. The lonely old men need to understand this. They need to grasp that some of us have internalized the rule that no one ever died wishing he'd spent more time at the office... and that it's a sad rule that no one should have to internalize.

We all perform so much better when left to work at our own pace. Particularly A Personalities, which, though I'd love to claim I wasn't, I unfortunately am. I've been up since 7 and already knocked off four of the eight things I needed to do today. Why the fuck do I need to get dressed, hop in a car, burn gas driving to work, wasting at least an hour of time, and then get arranged behind my desk, talk to a bunch of people I don't want to talk to, and do all of it within a building with an atrocious fossil fuel footprint?

My pet theory on offices is that people who like to avoid having metrics applied to them love to be in offices. They can act important at meetings, make political allegiances, gossip, and find ways to climb the ladder while the rest of us who actually create the dollars do the real work.

This attitude, along with intentional acts (refusing partnership and completely shifting careers/practice areas a few times), has cost me millions. I understand that. But it's also cost my employers. Had they allowed me to work as I felt like working, they'd have gotten a lot more out of me. Instead, they always want you to make it your life - make you do it the way they did it.*

I'd rather die.

________
* There's a hazing element to it. Old fucks demanding the kids suffer as they did. Well, count me out of that shit. I never hazed anyone when I was in a fraternity, and as I recall it, the guys who got off on doing that shit were always the biggest tools and losers. Maybe I'm nuts. It just seems that anyone who wants to make anyone else act a certain way, or exert power over another person, is somewhere between deeply strange and sociopathic.

Really good stuff.

While I see the attraction of canceling all my work, and just strutting around the office for face-time and doing lunches being that my office was a slightly smaller superspreader event than Sturgis, gonna have to pass.

It's all a power thing. The milenial paralegals have left in droves and the ones who havent quit have refused coming into the office. So what do you do of you if you need someone to bully? You hunt for the weak and the old. You send emails like "You need to file the original documents in the files".

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

NO ONE with an IQ above 110 and who doesn't live in TX, NY or Cali thinks the electoral college is "unfair."

Man, Hank, I know you're not the smartest among us, but I thought you at least hung out among people with IQs north of 110. Those imaginary dorms at Harvard and Yale have really gone down hill.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

O.K., fine. Not everything you say is completely wrong.

What about riding the elliptical? That offends me.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

NO ONE with an IQ above 110 and who doesn't live in TX, NY or Cali thinks the electoral college is "unfair."

The electoral college is manifestly unfair.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Belarus just had an election. So do these other countries. The threat is that elections are less democratic, either because people can't vote or because the system is unfair, or possibly because the results are rigged or ignored. We already have a system that discriminates against people in the first two ways (voter suppression, the Electoral College). There's a real danger that those problems will get worse. I'm more worried about that than about rigged or ignored results. But all of those things are bigger problems than the prospect that we won't have an election in four years.

Was I supposed to take you seriously but not literally?

There’s gotta be a word for when you jail your opponents and make up the results, but “election” isn’t it.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

What about riding the elliptical? That offends me.

Wreck a knee in a violent skiing accident and get back to me on that, Viking.