Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Isn't it pretty to think so? I'm not engaging in this beyond pointing out he tried to steal an election and then start an insurrection and has already stated if he gets back in he will change stuff so he doesn't have to bother doing it again next time.

One should be concerned about his most ardent cult member followers. But the belief he can make himself a dictator is beyond overwrought.

But if the Democrats truly do believe that he can become a dictator, the strategy of cornering him so he has no choice but to run is an enormously dangerous one.

A Trump Biden rematch is the thing that scares me. Whoever wins that, the polarization in its wake is terminal. His conviction or banning from the ballot via 14th Amendment will also create terminal polarization.

He needs to be offered an off ramp he can’t refuse and openly accepts, throwing his endorsement to a normal candidate, and that takes bipartisanship.

Or the CIA needs to kill him.

(By all this, I mean, it’s the very race in which Biden and Trump are engaged that will damage the republic irreparably. Worrying about what Trump would do if he won is a secondary concern. The cancer becomes incurable the minute these two become nominees.)

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It's the most lurid example of authoritarian behavior by the right and left. Abortion could be used just as well, but it's one sided, the right being the sole authoritarian. Speech involves the extremes of each of the parties.

Intolerance, actually, manifesting itself as authoritarianism.

You're not really talking about authoritarianism at all, you're just making hyperbolic claims about it to set up your usual beefs about free speech.

Taking them apart and laddering them in regard to wrongness avoids the essential binding element - the problem: A desire by significant numbers of people to not be confronted with views that don't fit the way they insist the world is or should be. "I want the world to be what I want it to be and I'm done with having anyone challenge me!" The mindset is this warped belief, similar to the fabulist view that one can will himself to success, that if one simply shuts out inconvenient facts, they disappear.

I don't think that's a very good description of what's motivating the people on either side about whom you're talking, but you're doing your hyperbole think. Complaining about accuracy here is like complaining that Dali isn't a realist.

The zero sum game is the effort, by the likes of DeSantis, to shut the mouths of those with whom one disagrees. Make them disappear. DeSantis passed that unconstitutional "don't say gay" bill and has banned LGBTQ books because he knows - a large voting bloc doesn't want to entertain views about sexuality or gender that deviate from their views. They instead want to shut down those views entirely. If that isn't Orwellian, what is?

I think you are using lazy versions of the terms "zero sum" and "Orwellian," and I choose to honor Orwell's memory by asking for more precision and care in politics and the English language. Hi Hank!

You know what I'm talking about. We all know it. We've all got friends in the C Suite or on boards. You can bust them about the extreme DEI and ESG pieties and they'll in very, very private confines admit to thinking it's moral panic, a religion, or a bullshit scam for consultants to make money. But they sure as fuck aren't going to say that out loud to any friends. To even challenge it is to put one's career at risk.

No, that's hyperbole, and isn't responding to my point.

You have me exactly backwards. I want people to stop telling other people that they may not challenge certain things, that they may not credibly critique certain things without being pilloried or professionally ruined. CRT in schools? By all means. Expose kids to every imaginable idea and let them see if they buy it. Vaccine denialism? Let it rip. There is no greater rebuttal to RFK Jr. than to hear the man's incoherent lunacy on vaccines. Hunter's laptop? Jordan Peterson's shtick? 1619 Project? Transitioning children? All totally fine with me. My view is let it all rip, and - and - let everyone who wants to call bullshit on any of these things rip them to fucking shreds. And any sorts who want to buy into them? Do so. Good for you!

You're not even talking about laws. You just want to live in a world where there are no consequences for what you say?

Extreme ESG/DEI is not a thing among the 60% of businesses in the US that are small businesses. And a huge percentage of those who work in large corporations don't give a fuck about these things.

It's not really much of a thing anywhere, tbh. The story is that it doesn't actually change much of anything.

The majority of the country is in the middle. They'd prefer people stop telling each other what they can and cannot read and fighting about trans people, who make up .0005% of society.

We don't give a fuck about people's strong emotions about their pet issues, or those people, even. But we very much don't like twits telling us we can't drink Bud Light (I wouldn't anyway) because a cross dresser did an ad for it. And we don't want to be told we have to listen to claptrap about inclusion if we don't feel like it.

Sure. Meanwhile, politically, the fraction of the country that feels differently has taken over the GOP as the wedge for its grievances.

The authoritarianism from the left is Huxley - subtle, nudging. From the right, it's Orwell. Statutory, enforced.

I think you keep using the term "authoritarianism" to get a rise out of me. A-ha! Subtle authoritarianism! The kind no one notices! Like Mussolini, but nudging the trains imperceptibly in the direction of being on time.

A venn diagram of the mindset those kids at the US Open and Trump would be a circle in this essential regard... Both live in their own realities. And they insist the rest of us do so as well.

The urge for false equivalence is so strong in you. One cannot imagine Trump every doing what the kids at the US Open did, for so many reasons, but here you insist that they have the same "mindset."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'd make the case he is organically deranged, if not insane. And I think he clearly is. I'd argue this guy is so fucked up, obviously, he really cannot believe it when he loses at anything. And I'd have forty years of media clippings to prove that case.

He's a narcissist and a consummate bullshit artists who says whatever he wants to say in the moment to get what he wants. Not sure why you believe that he believes what he says -- that seems like an obvious category error, like you haven't been paying attention for seven years.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I read a few articles about that. My view is Willis has a template - she's done RICOs before - and she's defaulting to it. Smith could've done something similar, but I think he more wisely chose to narrow his focus. One of the two is going to try a case in the near term. And it won't be Willis.

Smith wants to get a trial before the election. Willis can be less worried about that, in part because there's nobody to pardon Trump for her charges.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

No one is protesting to change minds.

OK, I give up. It's their date night?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

iPod?

Yeah, I used the wrong spelling of beets.

According to my docs, I've now outlived my life expectancy on three occasions - six months ago I was given a diagnosis that gave me an 80% chance of being gone in 6 months. But when I'm doing infusions the drugs mess me up on such things all the time, so fuck spelling. And if they'd bring back the i-pod, yeah, I'd happily eat the beats. Sunsetting the ipod is the craziest product decision evah. I still have an operative 120.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Yeah, I used the wrong spelling of beets.

According to my docs, I've now outlived my life expectancy on three occasions - six months ago I was given a diagnosis that gave me an 80% chance of being gone in 6 months. But when I'm doing infusions the drugs mess me up on such things all the time, so fuck spelling. And if they'd bring back the i-pod, yeah, I'd happily eat the beats. Sunsetting the ipod is the craziest product decision evah. I still have an operative 120.

So glad you're still here.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Yeah, I used the wrong spelling of beets.

According to my docs, I've now outlived my life expectancy on three occasions - six months ago I was given a diagnosis that gave me an 80% chance of being gone in 6 months. But when I'm doing infusions the drugs mess me up on such things all the time, so fuck spelling. And if they'd bring back the i-pod, yeah, I'd happily eat the beats. Sunsetting the ipod is the craziest product decision evah. I still have an operative 120.

Do not get the decision, other than Steve died and whoever has the wheel ain’t Steve? I run every day with a shuffle.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

So glad you're still here.

Thanks.

You all should know you're part of the support network that makes it happen. A big piece of fighting this stuff is staying engaged and vital, and frankly while I joke about it getting called out on spelling goofs caring about that stuff and mixing it up over trump or bush or whatever is part of staying vital. So thanks for giving me shit.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Yeah, I used the wrong spelling of beets.

According to my docs, I've now outlived my life expectancy on three occasions - six months ago I was given a diagnosis that gave me an 80% chance of being gone in 6 months. But when I'm doing infusions the drugs mess me up on such things all the time, so fuck spelling. And if they'd bring back the i-pod, yeah, I'd happily eat the beats. Sunsetting the ipod is the craziest product decision evah. I still have an operative 120.

Please keep proving them wrong.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

He's a narcissist and a consummate bullshit artists who says whatever he wants to say in the moment to get what he wants. Not sure why you believe that he believes what he says -- that seems like an obvious category error, like you haven't been paying attention for seven years.

These aren't mutually exclusive things. You credit him more agency than I would. He is not right upstairs. The DSM-IV will be expanded in the future when assessment of his behaviors is fully studied.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Smith wants to get a trial before the election. Willis can be less worried about that, in part because there's nobody to pardon Trump for her charges.

If you think that Trump will face a criminal trial in GA if he's elected President, you're daft.

Lawyers like to think the code of the law is paramount. It isn't. It's at its best an attempt to put all men on equal footing, a leveler against the organic and ever present law of power. At its worst, which it more frequently is, the law is an enabler of those who seek to use the law of power without suffering the opprobrium or risk that comes with its traditional brute applications. (That's why the federal law in this country favors property rights above all else.)

I don't know how the law of GA will knuckle under to the law of power in the event Trump should win, but it will. Maybe it'll be a delay of the case until his term is done, a defunding of Willis, Smith losing on appeal to SCOTUS and Willis' case being deemed double jeopardy... It may be novel, or it may be a boring. But the President will not be subjected to trial by a state prosecutor while in office. Ain't gonna happen. Too destabilizing and too many constitutional crises in such a thing. Power will be brought down at state and fed level and Willis will either drop or delay.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

[QUOTE=Tyrone Slothrop;533921]

You're not really talking about authoritarianism at all, you're just making hyperbolic claims about it to set up your usual beefs about free speech.

These are interwoven. Just this week, the 5th Circuit ruled that the Biden admin was likely violating the First Amendment by leaning on social media companies to squelch certain speech. In the case of what DeSantis is doing in FL, there is no doubt - he is acting as an authoritarian, banning free expression.

I don't think that's a very good description of what's motivating the people on either side about whom you're talking, but you're doing your hyperbole think. Complaining about accuracy here is like complaining that Dali isn't a realist.

I think it absolutely is because what I see at the extreme poles is delusion, religion. MAGA thinks they're in a fight for the soul of America. Their counterparts on the extreme left believe that the country must be reinvented down to its plankings. Neither is at all realistic or living in anything close to reality.

I think you are using lazy versions of the terms "zero sum" and "Orwellian," and I choose to honor Orwell's memory by asking for more precision and care in politics and the English language. Hi Hank!

When you seek to create a society in which there is correct-think and wrongthink and wrongthink is banished, you're in Orwellian waters. And that is a zero sum game, as it insists on the opponent not having a voice.

The first rule of Authoritarian Club: Stifle dissent.

No, that's hyperbole, and isn't responding to my point.

It is absolutely not hyperbole. Behind the scenes, most people roll their eyes at the ESG and DEI compliance nonsense, and all the idiot virtue signaling of corporate America. They think it's a fad. And they'll tell you so over drinks. But they genuflect dutifully because he who does not can get himself in a career pickle.

You're not even talking about laws. You just want to live in a world where there are no consequences for what you say?

No. I want to live in a world with reverence for facts. Where people who offer facts are not pilloried, from either side. Where kids in FL or anywhere can read and learn about LGBTQ issues. Where a person can assert as we all now know that a virus started in a lab and not be silenced or ludicrously deemed, by a coven of narrative-fixers in govt and media, as a racist.

I do not defend the sorts like Alex Jones. Those people should be mocked and abused for stating the grotesquely false. But if you don't find the squashing of the Hunter laptop story disturbing, or worse, the letter, offered with knowledge of its falsity, by 50 ex-intel officials, calling it Russian propaganda, you don't really care much about freedom of expression.

It's not really much of a thing anywhere, tbh. The story is that it doesn't actually change much of anything.

That's just not true. These things have created a society in which certain silly pieties are compelled to be observed. And if you think I'm wrong, look up how lucrative DEI consulting has become in the past decade. And this ESG nonsense has cost real people real money, and burdened the bottom lines of corporations for no defensible reason.

ETA: A school I attended just lost a bunch of money over "inclusion" policies. Donors got into a battle, pitted themselves at the extremes of right and left, nobody in the middle was heard, and who lost? The kids.

Sure. Meanwhile, politically, the fraction of the country that feels differently has taken over the GOP as the wedge for its grievances.

As have their doppelgangers on the left in the Democratic party.

I think you keep using the term "authoritarianism" to get a rise out of me. A-ha! Subtle authoritarianism! The kind no one notices! Like Mussolini, but nudging the trains imperceptibly in the direction of being on time.

Were it only so nudging, Mr. Sunstein. But it's not. It's a silly new form of religion, just like MAGA.

The urge for false equivalence is so strong in you. One cannot imagine Trump every doing what the kids at the US Open did, for so many reasons, but here you insist that they have the same "mindset."

I can. I saw him do it on January 6, and many times before and after. There are about 500 hours of him throwing tantrums and insisting someone hear his grievances about his election loss and how he was treated in office. Yes, climate change is real, and Trump's claims of election theft are false, but a tantrum is a tantrum.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

By the way, if you really want to scare the daylights out of your healthcare provider, eat beats before giving the stool sample.

I am sorry, folks, I did not think that one through.

Since I am allergic to beets, red velvet cake will have to do.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Yeah, I used the wrong spelling of beets.

According to my docs, I've now outlived my life expectancy on three occasions - six months ago I was given a diagnosis that gave me an 80% chance of being gone in 6 months. But when I'm doing infusions the drugs mess me up on such things all the time, so fuck spelling. And if they'd bring back the i-pod, yeah, I'd happily eat the beats. Sunsetting the ipod is the craziest product decision evah. I still have an operative 120.

Praying for you, bud.

OAN I have an iPod classic still sealed in the box. Waiting for it to attain some value.