We’re storytelling apes all right.
And stories about a just world where you reap what you sow are indeed one of the ways that we built civilization.
But that’s not because they made the world fair, but because those stories reinforced social norms.

The march towards more fairness is started by people being revolted by the unfairness and rising up against it.

(non-narrans animals have a sense of fairness and unfairness too, btw)

Society *has* made significant progress over the generations, and there’s no reason to think that it will stop there.

In the long run we’re all dead and humanity probably disappears, but in the meantime we can make things better by our standards, and some of us find that worth living for #existentialism

I upvote this for the Randall Munroe reference.
(It’s easier than collecting graft!)

There are trends, though, and I’m pretty happy about most.
I enjoy participating in these.
You go and find what you enjoy, and do that! 🙂

Then hopefully (by my standards) society manages to persuade you to not do that or at least protect others from you.

And still, liberal values keeps spreading 🙂
Have a look at the progress on Millenium Development Goals and cheer up: things are getting consistently better!
https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/report-2013/2013_progress_english.pdf
(note that yellow is for progress too, just not as much as we hoped for)

Actually, what happened was the corrupt jerks who were running things set up a “false flag” candidate so that their handpicked choice for the next executive-in-chief would be certain to win, but everyone was so disgusted that the “false flag” candidate won instead. Now we’re seeing tremendous revolutions fomenting within both political parties, as well as increased interest in third parties.

Meanwhile that “false flag” candidate-turned-president is finding himself unable to actually DO anything other than say stupid things that piss people off because Congress won’t approve the funding. And more recently he discovered that people like him when he does populist things like signing the budget bill to provide emergency aid for hurricane victims before his own side could start negotiating and holding the emergency aid “hostage” to demand concessions.

Sorry, no.

Some people were fearful and uncertain.

A minority wanted (and still want) more wealth, power, and ability to oppress to get it.

Enough just voted the way they’ve always voted.

A crucial amount didn’t turn out because they saw little practical difference between the right and left buttocks of capital.

Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the spirit is what’s needed, not just pessimism.

>shrug< And, yet, it moves . . . .

You’re not wrong that things go back and forth. There are times in history that were pretty damn good, which then turned into pretty bad times. I wouldn’t have minded living in Wiemar Republic German, honestly. There was a lot of good going on there, along with the bad. And then came the Holocaust.

The Roman Republic turned into the Roman Empire, which was an autocracy. But even then, it turned into a force for freedom and stability on the ground, until it turned into a force for oppression.

The United States will fall at some point. It’s a mathematical historical certainty. But it may not happen within our lifetimes.

The thing is, things go back and forth. And that means that, even though they go back, half the time, they go forth. And that we, personally, aren’t COMPLETELY helpless in whether they’re going back or forth at any particular time.

That still left you with a choice. A bad one, but still a choice. You could swallow that bitter pill and vote for someone who would might put through the policies you’d like to see, you could abstain or you could vote for someone who stands for the opposite of everything you believe in. Do I condone what the DNC did? No. Did I particularly like Clinton as a candidate? No. But I’ll be damned if you can tell me with a straight face that she’d be worse than what we have right now. You can continue to bitch and moan about what might have been or you can work to change what could be.

Your claim that she’s a monster is interesting, but I still maintain I voted for the competent one (and with the amount of power presently lodged in the presidency in fact as opposed to Constitutional law, incompetence and whimsy are extremely dangerous). (Still, it doesn’t matter, since who I voted for had no effect on the _electoral_ college vote, after all…)

Agreed mostly (generally my problem was the campaign, in part with how her campaign went, yes; while I grumble about the electoral college (and am glad we now have direct election of senators, e.g.) as an ex-mathematician I’m aware that _no_ electoral system will accomplish reasonable representative goals, not absolutely optimally.)

Agreed, even if one of the main differences between the Constitution and the Articles was deliberately the -greater- concentration of Federal power in the former. (I’m referring to the Articles. The first 10 Amendments do not exist for the same reason as the Constitution itself- though their reason for existing is somewhat confusing to me, I admit, since the reason sometimes given (to convince New Yorkers to vote in favor of the Constitution) — well, I gather they already had 12 states down and even felt certain enough of New York passing before the Federalist Papers and Bill of Rights began being pen-to-papered… which makes me wonder whether maybe they were also doing it for themselves, for clarity… (a lot of work though!!!!!) – or – something. I really don’t know.

Tangentially, have you ever read any of the essays written by the “Anti-Feredalists” (who didn’t publish their essays in one contemporary book, afaik, but edited collections of their essays have been published. I’ve only read excerpts from them and not recently, but it was eye-opening (not surprisingly) to think about the issues that were up in the air then that haven’t – much – been since (… well, that’s not really true I guess. The consensus shifts in all sorts of ways. Just finished reading Beard’s Contemporary American History (1877-1913) and that, too, was fascinating- I knew some of what he writes about – thanks to having very good teachers in my high school days – but much in that book was new to me.)

Okay… first of all, if you’re going to start with the ad hominem attacks, at least learn proper punctuation and spelling – I can barely even understand what you’re trying to say here.

You want to talk about someone with poor ethics? How about the person who had the DNC and their pet media outlets work to help Trump get the nomination just to improve her chances of winning (which we KNOW she did because the whole “RUSSIA HACKED THE ELECTION!!!” hysteria boils down to “someone leaked DNC e-mails to wikileaks, and we’re going to keep claiming it was Russian agents to detract from all the many, many damning things those e-mails prove)? The one who made President Trump a possibility in the first place just so she could try to blackmail and guilt trip the voters with “either vote for me or America is destroyed” as her campaign platform? If she truly believed that Trump was that bad, then that makes her even worse than he is – because that would mean she deliberately encouraged the nomination of someone she truly believed would damage America for her own probable gain (not even definite gain, merely to improve the odds of her success).

Also, another thing to emphasize what a “wonderful and heroic” person Clinton is: In the last week, Bernie Sanders has been pushing a single payer “medicare for all” bill, and is making considerable inroads in that department. During this same week… Clinton has been promoting a book where she blames everyone except herself for losing the election, and complains on TV about how Sanders “hurt” her chances by not immediately bowing out of the primaries the moment she demanded it.

Like I said elsewhere, I would happily accept the “blame” for Clinton’s defeat (since I would consider it an accomplishment worthy of note), but… the only one to blame is the person blaming everyone else (including the people who did everything they could to help her win in spite of herself). She’s basically Cobra Commander from that silly but awesome animated movie from the 80s:

Golobulus: To raise a mighty army and to destroy this so called “human” civilization which had driven us into exile. You were my hope, Cobra Commander, and you failed me *miserably!*

Cobra Commander: I was betrayed! My troops lacked courage! It was not my fault!

(and here’s her response to all the many many many many accusations against her: http://ccletsitallout.ytmnd.com/ )

I considered Jill Stein to be merely not that bright, not actively a bad person… until the stuff she pulled after the election to bilk people out of millions of dollars for selective recounts that never wound up happening in 3 out of 4 states.

After she did that, I considered her not that bright, plus a bad person. Another person in Hillary Clinton’s pocket for political favors if she played ball. Not someone who believed in her ideals, which would have at least been something in her favor.

I consider Bernie Sanders’ socialist platform to not be particularly intelligent either (because I think socialism is a particularly horrible political system that leads to fascism or bankruptcy when it gets too big or sticks around too long), and he ignores what a mess socialism is every time it’s been implemented (claiming they just ‘didn’t do socialism right’ or some other idiocy) but at least Bernie believed in what he was saying. I have to give him points for being consistent. I just wish he didn’t believe in a system of government that has directly caused over 150 million non-combatant (not even arguably potential combatant) civilian deaths by their respective States with corrupt leaders in the 20th century alone – like Stalin (20+ million officially killed, 60 million if you include 1936-1952), Hitler (11 million killed), Mussolini (900,000 killed), Mao (40-70 million killed), Castro (144,000 killed), Kambanda (800,000 killed), Suharto (1 million killed), Menghistu (1 million killed), Tito (1.15 million killed), Pol Pot (4 million killed), Brezhnev (1 million killed), Kim Il Sung (5.6 million killed), etc. And of course people like Guevara who personally shot several hundred non-combatants.

So yeah, Bernie was mistaken, but more honest than Hillary or Jill Stein. That was probably the biggest advantage Sanders had, and I’m pretty sure he would have won if the DNC didnt put their foot on the scale to make sure Hillary won the primaries. If Jim Webb had been the Democratic candidate, I would have definitely voted for him.

I wasn’t even particularly thrilled about Gary Johnson, and I’ve been a libertarian since I started voting – in a lot of ways I consider him to not be particularly bright either, but I also think that he (like Sanders) at least believes the things he says and is trying to be genuine, even if his ignorance shows sometimes). Still, he was a better choice than the other three (Trump, Clinton, Stein). I would have loved if Austin Petersen had been the Libertarian candidate though – both intelligent AND genuine – a ‘classical liberal.’ Rare combo nowadays.

Yeah well… there’s no devolving into personal attacks. Makes it easier to disagree. But on that note, the US Postal Service and the US armed forces are not socialist. You may have fallen into a trap that people like Michael Moore have set up as the re-meaning of socialism, ignoring the actual meaning. Socialism is defined as one or more of the following:

1) any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods;

2a) a system of society or group living in which there is no private property.
2b) a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

3) a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.

That’s the majority of different ways that socialism have been defined in practice since its inception. What socialism is NOT is ‘when the government does ANYTHING.’ That’s a ridiculous expansion of the definiton of socialism to mean ‘anything that isn’t total anarchy (or at best anarchocapitalism).

The things that people like Michael Moore mistakenly consider proof that the US is already very socialist do not meet these criteria. They are what are known as ‘public goods’ (such as the CIA, FBI, police, military, courts, street lights, public monuments, roads, sewers, etc) – which are found in ALL manner of government (and the only way to claim they’re socialist is to say all government activity is socialist). The government doesn’t ban the use of private (and by privately owned publicly and commercially accessible) security, private military, private mail shipping services, private parks, private maintenance of monuments, private prisons, private creation of monuments, private roads, or private accessible intelligence agencies even.

It’s also worth noting that the Constitution specifically limits the government’s powr in these things which Moore and others describes wrongly as ‘socialism in America.’

The only things that remotely comes across as socialist at all are the IRS (income tax IS very socialist in nature), and welfare (which isnt quite socialist, but is redistributive in nature, because of the idiotic way in which it was designed with very little thought about payments decades into the future).

Bernie Sanders, whenever asked to define socialism, never actually gives a good answer because he can’t without looking at past failures or present cases which are on the road to eventual failure once it grows enough – like Venezuela, which years ago people were calling proof that socialism works. Or he defines it as ‘democratic socialism’ which is somehow different than ‘socialism.’ It’s not. Adding democratic before socialism does not make it no longer the same socialism that has failed time and time again. The nazis were democratic socialists. Not to mention it doesn’t acutally sanitize the concept – slavery used to be democratic, and was evil and wrong and not conducive to living in a society that encourages liberty. Same for socialism.

Felipe Moura Brasil did a good video on this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKhR9i5CGkA

Steven Crowder did a good video on it as well –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvF_D4tVfYU

This isn’t to say that I consider Sanders a bad person. I just find him very uninformed about his chosen political system. He’s better than the other two, so I will grant you that, but not as good as any of the Libertarians who had been running, or even Jill Stein (who I am not a fan of because of what she did after the election was over, not because of the Green Party itself). The only reason I could see to vote for Sanders would have been because his ideas are so anti-American in how socialism works in practice that he never would have gotten anything passed. And a do nothing president is better than a corrupt or evil president. Then again, I think stupid is better than evil because can be tricked into occasionally doing the right thing by smarter people.

“That would be the military and the post office, yes.”
1) No it would not be. I actually listed privatized alternatives. In fact, the post office itself didn’t start getting even partially good UNTIL there were private alternatives like UPS and Fed Ex. Like tracking numbers? That was Fed Ex… not the post office.

2) Like I said before, the government running one constitutionally allowed aspect is NOT the same as socialism, unless you define socialism as ‘whenever the government does ANYTHING.’ That’s not what socialism is. That’s what any government has to do with at least some element of the nation that it governs, unless it’s an anarchic or anarchocapitalist system. Both of which are EXTREMELY transitory states (the former being between governments, not a substitution for government).

“They completely ignored the very real benefits of transportation and storage provided by the “merchants” that Marx despised. The guys who make it possible to walk into a supermarket and buy all the food you want without having to go to the farms and orchards and ranches where it was produced). ”
Correct. Little thing that’s often unknown nowadays, since people tend to foget history. America did have socialism briefly. Actual socialism. It was called Jamestown. They tried a socialist system essentially – a communial system of grain and food and other goods that people would take from when they need, and put into the pot when they make their stuff or grow their stuff. It was a colossal failure. Some people started just taking without putting in. Then everyone started doing that. Within a year, the colony was on the brink of starvation, half the people had died, and they were resorting to eating rats and shoe leather to survive through the winter. Then the town founder did away with the system, and gave each person who survived a plot of land, and said they can use it to grow their own food. He who does not work, does not eat. That was the basic motto. You were able to grow your own food, and if you wanted someone else’s food, you had to give them something of value for it. By the end of THAT year, they had surpluses everywhere and Jamestown was flourishing.

“”Socialism” has been portrayed as identical to Communism (note the key differences between the definition of socialism and that of communism:”

Because it actually is VERY similar. The only difference is socialism tries to just suggest it, while communism forces it. Socialism inevitably devolves into communism/fascism or bankruptcy, depending on whether the government forcefully seizes control of everything in order to maintain the socialist agenda. That’s what happened in Russia, the foundation of modern Marxist socialist thought.

“We’re buying tanks that the military doesn’t even want and can’t use.”

No offense but that really has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism. That’s just runaway government spending. If anything, it’s more proof that the government isnt able to intelligently handle money since they have no profit motive guiding them in order to be as efficient as possible.

“nd then we’re told there’s no money for social programs… even for proper care for veterans).”

That’s also not having to do with capitalism or socialism. That’s government corruption and waste. Again, more like proof that the government is ineffective when it comes to handling our money because of no worry about making a profit and looking good to the consumer.

“And then there’s the claim that socialism “never works.””

I’d say it’s more a factual observation than a claim. 🙂

“…Except that it does work, all the time”

Literally incorrect. Every time someone points to an example of ‘socialism done right”…. wait a few years. And that country is in tatters. The last big thing was Venezuela. How’s that doing now? Before that it was Greece. How’s that doing now? They always point to countries with far smaller, usually homogenous societies, which are going to take longer until they run out of other people’s money. But eventually you will run out of other people’s money. Eventually the people actually producing will wonder why they should produce if the government will just seize everything and redistributes it at a loss to them. And they will stop. And then the country is in tatters because the government keeps spending money that it’s no longer taking in.

” It’s also worked in places such as Sweden (and I know that there are people who claim that Sweden has huge issues and is a “rape capital” and whatnot..”

They actually address that in the Steven Crowder video. Specifically.

“One of the best comments on the subject was the pilot episode of Star Trek: TNG, where Q refers to the Cold War as “a conflict over resource management.”

Star Trek literally has something which actually makes socialism not absurdly stupid – the replicator. It literally brings scarcity to a minimum. And the basis for most economic systems working is the principle of scarcity. No scarcity, no supply and demand problems, no real incentive for profit anymore.

When we have working replicators that make food and goods out of air, I’ll give Bernie Sanders’ system of government a try.

“Because that’s what it’s all about, really – a disagreement over the optimal method of ensuring resources will be allocated to where they can do the most good for the most people.”

Except no, it’s not. It’s about how one side’s ‘optimal method’ is to force other people to redistribute their goods as they want, against their will, removing their autonomy, and another group that lets them do what they want with their own goods and services, but letting them know if they don’t sell it at a fair price, someone else will and put them out of business and leave them with their goods/services but no money.

“Sweden has huge issues and is a “rape capital” and whatnot… and I’ve also got Swedish friends who are very tired of the mischaracterization; the only reason they’re called a “rape capital” is because they actually REPORT the majority of sexual assaults. ”

Um….. they actually don’t reports a lot of the sexual assaults, and they’re STILL the rape capital of the world. But I’m not really blaming that on socialism. Socialism, however, is why their economy is going to crap out in a few decades. They have a longer period before that happens because they were a small, homogenous population (although they’ve been changing that, increasing their population, which means increasing their welfare state, while not increasing their workforce to produce income).

” By contrast, Pakistan has very few reported cases of rape… and look at what happens there).”

Again, not really having anything to do with socialism.

“Also, in Israel – the “kibbutzim,” the “settlements” that have been demonized as “proof of Israel’s imperial genocidal evil,” are in fact… communes”

Israel is not socialist. They’re VERY decidedly capitalist, in fact. And they have to be in order to survive as an economic powerhouse. Again – there is a difference between the government doing something and socialism. All governments do stuff within some limited capacity. That’s what government IS. That is not the same as socialism where the government controls all the means of production.

“Capitalism relies on an “invisible hand” (though it should be noted that Adam Smith actually believed in the importance of NOT letting businesses run amuk:”

Um… right? The invisible hand is what makes capitalism work. Steven Crowder explains this in the videos too. And Adam Smith was mainly concerned with not letting businesses become monopolies, oligopolies, monopsonies, or oligopsonies. Because that stifles the invisible hand of capitalism and makes the companies have the freedom to act as irresponsibly as a government.

“Capitalism is a method, not the desired end goal… and if a method needs improvement, then it should not be religiously defended.”

Capitalism doesn’t have a desired end goal. It has a cyclical desire to keep functioning by acknowledging that while some people are good, other people are greedy, and provide will profit incentive so that the greedy people will HAVE to do something good because that will make them more money. It makes greed work FOR the society. To quote Gordon Gekko, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed in all of its forms. Greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge has marked the upwards surge of mankind.”

What’s important is to control the direction that they use that greed, not to stop them from being greedy. and remove their autonomy.

“Back to Sweden as an example of what I’m talking about. In the Scandinavian countries, a convicted criminal is placed in a prison that is practically a country club by American standards.”

Would you like the NUMBERS of incarcerated? We have more people incarcerated in the US than the total population of Sweden. Smaller population means less money that needs to be spent on prisons, because less crime overall as a number (even if not as a percentage of the population). If Sweden were the population of the US, the prisons would a nightmare, if they could afford to keep them open at all.

“Also, I would like to point out that the Nazis were never socialists”

No, they were socialists who became fascists. Because that’s the end result of socialism. Either bankruptcy or communism and fascism.

It’s even in the name. The Nazi party was the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. They ran on a socialist platform. A very clear socialist platform in fact. Then they enacted their socialist agendas by taking total power and becoming fascists.

I’d post more but my computer keeps freezing when I post on this forum for some reason.

” Yes, the military is indeed an example of socialism”

No, it is not. The only way you can define the military as socialism is to say that ANY country that ever has any military to defend itself from outside invasion is socialism. That’s obviously not true. The mere fact of government running one element of something is not socialism – you’re basically arguing that ANYTHING the government does is socialism and government is socialism period. That’s not the case. That’s never been the case. You’re making a fundamental mistake on what socialism is, and what the military is for ANY nation that’s ever existed. Pretty much what you’re trying to say is that every single nation state’s army is socialism. I hope you can see the fundamental disconnect in that sort of reasoning.

“Some services are better left to private enterprise, whereas others do better under government oversight and control.”

Other than the coinage of money (and I guess the handling of nuclear weapons), the former of which is specifically written into the Constitution as a function of government, I’ve yet to see anything the government has run which has not been done better when left to private enterprise (taking into account certain oversight to prevent stuff like monopolies and exploitation through unsafe labor practices without due compensation).

Please show me something, and I’ll show you how private enterprise has done it better, more efficiently, and with less burden to the citizens of the nation.

“The reason why we socialize an industry (such as the military, or courier services, or anything else)”

The military is not a socialized industry. The military is not an industry at all, in fact.

And as for courier services, it’s not socialized either… and private industry does a much better job at it, and was responsible for most of the advances in modern courier services which even the USPS benefited from. Like tracking numbers.

” What happened in Russia was that the people finally got rid of those bastard Czars and the aristocracy, started a democratic government”

Um…. there was nothing democratic about it. It was all about soldiers deserting – first deserting the Tsar and moving to the Provisional Government or the Petrogard Soviets, then moving to the Bolsheviks because they were starving. The Provisional Government was utterly useless and the Petrograd Soviets took over within less than a year (more like less than 3 months), with Order Number 1. By the fall, there were at least three coup attempts. And it was the Provisional Government that the Bolsheviks took over from in the last successful coup, not the Tsars.

“3:I had to look up who Steven Crowder is.”

Or you could just watch the video.

“Apparently he’s a conservative pundit who denies the existence of climate change”
Actually no he doesn’t. You need to actually watch a video on what he says at least.

“(which at this point is beyond ridiculous, given what’s happening in Texas and Florida)”

Um…. no offense, but the hurricanes aren’t from climate change (the newest name for what was formerly global warming, and prior to that global cooling). The hurricanes are because hurricanes happen as part of the natural weather patterns on the planet.

“, and was employed with Fox News for a time before they fired him for being too offensive even for them”

Actually he wasn’t fired. He left because he wanted to start his own show and have autonomy on his show. Please watch some of it before writing things which aren’t accurate. Ben Shapiro actually helped him write the contract, and Crowder wasn’t a fan of Fox News because he wasnt a fan of people like Bill O’Reilly or Murdock. Not exactly a bad thing.

“The fact that the kibbutzim – the communes – are then able to export goods and services that can compete in the greater world economy are in fact a pretty compelling argument in their favor”

Repeating again, they’re not socialists. They’re capitalists.

” The end goal is “make sure as many people are as well off as possible.” As P.J. O’Rourke said of the (Libertarian) Cato Institute, “their goal is to make everyone ridiculously rich.””

I’m… not sure how that’s a bad thing.

“Gordon Gekko was the bad guy. In the film he tries to destroy the airline (thereby depriving society of the benefits provided) in order to steal the money in the pension plan.”

He was the bad guy. But he was also right about greed being a driving force for good as he had stated during the stockholder meeting in the film. The two statements are not mutually exclusive.

“Yes, we incarcerate a truly horrific number of people.”

Actually we only incarcerate about 0.91% of the adult US population. If we were the size of Sweden and only incarcerated 0.91 percent of the US population, we’d be incarcerating less than 40,000 people total. Which would be a lot easier than 2.2 million. Population size matters when it comes to prison costs.

“Nazis were fascists. They were not socialists. Their actual policies were never socialist. Before they were in power, they were not socialists – they simply appealed to people who were literally starving because German currency was almost worthless thanks to the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles.”

It’s literally in their name. National Socialist German Workers Party. Socialism was their platform. It’s in the Weimar Constitution.

They became fascist because socialism descends into fascism or bankruptcy. And the Germans were already bankrupt because of the Treaty of Versailles. They outright stated they’d fix it by socialist redistribution, and used the jews as the scapegoat, like Occupy and Antifa use the more nebulous term ‘1%’…

Yes lets shelve it. Interesting talk, but it’s making my entire computer freeze now because of something happening to WebGL.

While you’re right that, in hindsight, that was the effect, I think it helps to remember that I, for one, believed there was zero chance that Trump would become President. It turns out that virtually everything I thought I knew about the American people was fundamentally wrong, and that truly hurt to find out.

But if Clinton, and the Democrats in general, made the same basic mistake that I did, on the same scale, then this became a tragic and horrific failure of judgement, rather than a failure of morality.

Oh my God why was I searching for the worst takes of all time all over the Internet when they all were right there in the same place I visit every day!

Here’s a secret: if you use the potentiality of being an asshole at no cost to your safety as a threat, you’re an asshole.

So after a crash course in sarcasm, I’ll just say this:
There would be nothing, /nothing/ funnier on the Internet than the nigh-conspiracy theory level lack of understanding of remotely anything displayed by the fourteen year olds in their “cynical edge” rebelling phase making their terrible, terrible and adorable baby steps into critical thinking, and the sad ones who never grow out of it because they haven’t been cowered into humility and learned to shut up by the scorn of people who actually know what they’re talking about when they open their mouths… if it wasn’t so dangerous.

This is the cross I have to bear. On the one hand, it got so bad it’s the same breed of untamed ignorant arrogance that ended up in your white house. (The words you chose for Trump being pointedly, so deliciously ironic.) On the other hand, your argument is so, so pathetic and hilarious. Look at him! Not only does he genuinely think he knows politics, /he says he solved it all on his own!/

More corrupt and hypocritical… seriously? Are you referencing how he bought a house after the election (after selling a property his wife received as an inheritance to finance it in a fully above the board manner), and the media rushed to misreport it and imply he’d embezzled funds (the way Clinton does all the time)?

Or perhaps you meant how he claimed to have marched with the civil rights protestors, when he was actually arrested in the 60s… oh, wait. He got arrested in the 60s BECAUSE he was in the civil rights movement and got charged with… resisting arrest (because that’s what cops do when they want to harass people who haven’t committed an actual crime).

Or when he claimed to have been pushing for healthcare for women… oh, that would fall under the “single payer healthcare” he was pushing, the healthcare system that everyone wants, the system that every other developed nation has, the system that Clinton claimed was “unrealistic?”

Or did you mean an attempt to make a mountain out of a molehill regarding how his wife took out a loan for Burlington College, and one of the cosigners may not have been prepared to cover as much of the collateral as she thought? Yes, that’s certainly a fine example of corruption: “This vile con artist let his wife make a mistake on paperwork while taking out a loan for… a college, while not actually pocketing any money for herself.”

A number of things. Enjoyment, for one thing – some of the comments are hilarious, not to mention the pleasure of discussing the comic and the characters. Enlightenment for another – there are plenty of people who know things I don’t, and many of them talk about those things here as well as elsewhere. Even the people I disagree with make for some excellent posts – or should I say, ESPECIALLY the people I disagree with, particularly if they provide factual information and new ways of looking at things.

I will admit that there’s also a sense of satisfaction out of popping the comfort bubbles of people who need to be pricked. It’s why I took a great deal of pleasure from the aftermath of the election – even though I still detest Trump and always did, it was a joy to see so many complacent and arrogant members of the establishment and their supporters have such deliciously public meltdowns. A reminder that the cyberpunk genre is mired in a defeatist pessimism not mirrored in reality (and I say that as someone who always enjoyed cyberpunk… though the “post-cyberpunk” stuff is even better). I have a refrigerator magnet that sums it up: “Comfort the disturbed. Disturb the comfortable.”

Weirdly, not entirely. Monkeys, besides having a desire for safety and, yes, control, also have a desire for other monkeys they know to do well. The issue is what you do with the monkeys you don’t know well — chimpanzees are quite happy to capture and eat other monkeys, and will kill other bands.

But the bigger your brains are, the more you tend to expand your monkeysphere, and society is just a tool to expand it further. While “the rules are made by the monkey with the biggest club” isn’t FALSE, exactly, it’s not the whole story, either. Animals have some sense of fairness, of altruism, of communal work. And the monkey with the biggest club can be defeated by two monkeys with smaller clubs. And that’s relevant. Especially when altruism has the tendency to create a desire for coordinated action among many, many monkeys.

Yes, selfishness, cruelty, and brute strength can get you a long way. But it has limits, and altruism, cooperation, and fairness can defeat it at points. It’s not 100%, and it doesn’t always win, but it’s a factor, too.

For what it’s worth, I’m also Jewish. 🙂 But, yeah, if you are in the United States, you pick up stuff about Christianity, and friends have told me of the concept of the Body of Christ, at least among Catholics. (I’m in Boston, and part Italian, so most of my friends and the chunk of my family who aren’t Jewish are mostly Catholic).

To Catholics, the idea is that when you take Communion, you are communion with God, but also, transitively, with all other people throughout the world and throughout history who have also taken Communion. That the Body of Christ refers to the Eucharistic wafers themselves, sure, but it also refers to ever person who has ever consumed them, and, in a real and semi-literal sense, all Christians are not only a community, but, in fact, one person.

That is an extremely effective way of extending your monkeysphere to billions of people all at once, at least, if that is how you internalize the concept.

Our Jewish concept of Am Yisrael, of the People Israel, does a similar thing, but, since there are only, what, on the order of a dozen million, maybe a couple dozen million, of us, it’s less.expansive.

Nonethless, when you said you are Jewish, I, sw a person who emotionally internalized the idea of Am Yisrael as a child, genuinely and involuntarily felt a kinship with you. I mean, I’m already predisposed to do so, because we are fans of the same webcomic, and it’s not universal — I don’t feel any kinship to, say, Bernie Madoff, Joe Lieberman, Jared Kushner, and like that, but, well, you, Carrie Fischer, Leonard Nimoy, Paul Simon, Gal Gadot, Natalie Portman, Rachel Bloom, yeah.

Then you eventually run into someone else who shares your interests… and is a lot better at it than you are.

It’s a valid question.

-not- wanting to sound like someone who worshipped the paper pTerry’s words were inked on, but I find more inspiring an interview in which he said basically that even though it’s an uncaring universe doesn’t at all mean _we_ shouldn’t continue to care about things (and people) , or require the universe’s seconding for what we value to -have- value.’

(Not because Pratchett said it, but because I find it makes sense, for what little that’s worth.)

Somebody’s got to watch the coats and purses…

You know I’m taking that as a supervillain name.

I somehow managed to read “watch the boats and purses” and I was like, wow, they go to fancy parties

Will you be a benevolent demiurge?

What a coincidence. I plan on not dying as well, but I also don’t think there will be a Heat Death. I consider the universe to be on a moebius strip via brane cosmology 🙂

Mainly because it’s cool to say that.