A new low for the United States. Compare leadership scandals

[iRONic]

At least the duck doesn’t include the nonsensical proselytizing in every one of his usually well-written posts. Plus… He’s old af like me. 😉

 

[HomerJS]

Our current president proudly admitted on video recording that he was involved in a quid pro quo. Joe Biden used his office of the vice president to facilitate private deals for his family with hostile foreign governments and those deals have resulted in enormous financial gains. Pelosi was recently caught using her official position to facilitate private deals for her son as well. Both politicians have been caught trying to cover up those facts.

You really going to compare blackmail for a personal favor vs executing official sanctioned US policy?

And compare all of that to stealing top secret classified information?

Then again you would

 

[HomerJS]

Orly? 😀

My shitty typing is nothing compared to the danger Trump has put this country in.

But you got me

 

[Greenman]

For someone who had young incel Republicans stalking her in the halls of Congress and taking ass pictures I don’t think she’s the problem

Clearly there is a shortage of good asses in the halls of congress, or AOC is once again over reacting to create a stir with her as the center.

I honestly don't think she's the problem either, but she is a small part of it. All of this is going to continue as tribalism and theater eclipse leadership and clear thinking.

 

[Captante]

Clearly there is a shortage of good asses in the halls of congress, or AOC is once again over reacting to create a stir with her as the center.

I honestly don't think she's the problem either, but she is a small part of it. All of this is going to continue as tribalism and theater eclipse leadership and clear thinking.

AOC DOES have a nice a$$ though! 😉

Real bi-partisanship was hurting before he arrived and any real "cooperation" died when Bill Clinton left office. Say what you will about "slick willie" he could cut a deal over drinks with almost anyone and that USED to be a part of DC politics.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Glutton for punishment I take it? 😉

Moon has a touchy-feely interest in the forum proceedings. He's trying to reveal a psychological dimension to our conflicts and distress. Never thought about it before, but I recently felt aware that he can really get his panties in a twist about things. Well -- just maybe.

Maybe I AM a glutton for punishment -- only depends on whether and how Moon might choose to respond to my screed. Maybe, to Moon as well as to the rest of us in general, it's not worth his trouble at this point. Then again, I could be a Glutton for Punishment.

As far as scandals go, I've just grown impatient as the slow wheels of government under Rule of Law proceed. The frustration shows in my unending search for inflammatory bumper posters that I choose -- in the end-- not to hang on the back of my beloved SUV. For instance:

"Guillotine Trump on the 4th of July broadcast to Red-State TV corner of Prime Time Square and Sesame Street."

In the end, I only hope the punishments for the various crimes are proportional to the damage done. But the whiney insurrectionists would never acknowledge any accountability or the measures taken to punish the crime(s).

They would say it's all "political" and arises only because "we hate Trump". I suppose we hate him to the degree that this drawn-out experience with the Criminal in our face has given us individual affirmation that transcends the built-in bias of legal proceedings designed to protect the innocent with occasionally unrealistic conclusions about reasonable doubt.

 

[Captante]

Moon has a touchy-feely interest in the forum proceedings. He's trying to reveal a psychological dimension to our conflicts and distress. Never thought about it before, but I recently felt aware that he can really get his panties in a twist about things. Well -- just maybe.

Maybe I AM a glutton for punishment -- only depends on whether and how Moon might choose to respond to my screed. Maybe, to Moon as well as to the rest of us in general, it's not worth his trouble at this point. Then again, I could be a Glutton for Punishment.

As far as scandals go, I've just grown impatient as the slow wheels of government under Rule of Law proceed. The frustration shows in my unending search for inflammatory bumper posters that I choose -- in the end-- not to hang on the back of my beloved SUV. For instance:

"Guillotine Trump on the 4th of July broadcast to Red-State TV corner of Prime Time Square and Sesame Street."

In the end, I only hope the punishments for the various crimes are proportional to the damage done. But the whiney insurrectionists would never acknowledge any accountability or the measures taken to punish the crime(s).

They would say it's all "political" and arises only because "we hate Trump". I suppose we hate him to the degree that this drawn-out experience with the Criminal in our face has given us individual affirmation that transcends the built-in bias of legal proceedings designed to protect the innocent with occasionally unrealistic conclusions about reasonable doubt.

I actually kind of like the guy based purely on his apparent intentions but the "holier than thou" attitude he displays on a regular basis makes him really hard to take.

He'll occasionally bring up something truly profound and then spoil it by heading off into left field on a diatribe of multi-paragraph run-ons about how only he is enlightened enough to see it.

It gets old fast. 😉

 

[Greenman]

I actually kind of like the guy based purely on his apparent intentions but the "holier than thou" attitude he displays on a regular basis makes him really hard to take.

He'll occasionally bring up something truly profound and then spoil it by heading off into left field on a diatribe of multi-paragraph run-ons about how only he is enlightened enough to see it.

It gets old fast. 😉

All true enough, but he's a kind soul and doing what he believes is right without demeaning others. That's what's referred to as "a good man".

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I actually kind of like the guy based purely on his apparent intentions but the "holier than thou" attitude he displays on a regular basis makes him really hard to take.

He'll occasionally bring up something truly profound and then spoil it by heading off into left field on a diatribe of multi-paragraph run-ons about how only he is enlightened enough to see it.

It gets old fast. 😉

I think i agree with that 100%. But despite any crippling of his ability to be one, do you think he is a committed Truth-Seeker?

I think that refining a consensually agreed definition of a Truth-Seeker would be a productive contribution to this forum. But just for laughs, who would you choose as reliable Truth-Seekers among this list below?

Bill Gates
Kaleigh McEnany
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
Oliver Stone
Lindsay Graham
Tucker Carlson
Mark Twain
Hillary Clinton
Liz Cheney
Doctor Oz

The trivia question might only suggest some attributes that define a Truth-Seeker, but one would do just as well to explore the issue intrinsically without examples to drive the definition.

 

[Captante]

Out of that bunch I think I'd have to go with Mr Clemens. 😉

(I don't really trust anyone but especially not politicians not even AOC)

 

[HomerJS]

Clearly there is a shortage of good asses in the halls of congress, or AOC is once again over reacting to create a stir with her as the center.

I honestly don't think she's the problem either, but she is a small part of it. All of this is going to continue as tribalism and theater eclipse leadership and clear thinking.

AOC overreacting? I suspect if some creep with his phone walked up from behind and started taking pictures of your sister's, gf or mother's ass you would "overreact". Likely with a fist to their face.

Then again we don't want women to "overreact"

 

[Pohemi]

I really don't understand why this constitutes any sort of 'scandal'. Assuming it's not a matter of breaking COVID lockdown rules? PM can dance, shock horror! Definitely a better mover than Theresa May, that's for sure.

Same reason (and same kind of people) that there were complaints about AOC dancing on a rooftop, or having previously been a bartender. They acted as if these facts and/or momentary instances were reasoning enough to make her incapable or unqualified to take an elected position.

All of that is correct, but she should have been discrete about it.

These days, without limiting people from entering with their own mobile devices...how do you remain discreet? You're not saying anything different than, "she shouldn't be allowed to party".

Anything more than a few people in a closed venue will not be discreet. If you don't expect anyone present to take pictures on their phones and share them, you're a fool imho.

 

[Captante]

To be fair there IS something to be said for not providing free ammunition to your political opponents by being careless.

Having said that, I would pay GOOD money for a video of the Finnish PM dancing at a party WITH AOC!

😛 😉




*(I'll AOC myself out now)

 

[cytg111]

All of that is correct, but she should have been discrete about it.

Sarcasm. Right? Cause the alternative would be the dumbest shit you’ve ever put here…

 

[cytg111]

Our current president proudly admitted on video recording that he was involved in a quid pro quo. Joe Biden used his office of the vice president to facilitate private deals for his family with hostile foreign governments and those deals have resulted in enormous financial gains. Pelosi was recently caught using her official position to facilitate private deals for her son as well. Both politicians have been caught trying to cover up those facts.

You forgot about the space demons, illuminati and the anti christ. THANKS BIDEN.

 

[Captante]

You forgot about the space demons, illuminati and the anti christ. THANKS BIDEN.

I'm hungry for pizza suddenly! 😛 😉

 

[brycejones]

All of that is correct, but she should have been discrete about it.

Discrete about what?

 

[MrSquished]

I don't agree with all of AOC's policies as she is further left than I - but she is actually smart, intelligent, seems to have actual morals and values humans, and can form a cogent argument and is rather reasonable compared to most of the GQP. I could actually have a reasonable debate with her. Most of the GQP politicians these days are flat out nuts or corrupt. Can't even put them in the same breath really.

 

[Moonbeam]

Is a teacher without a class still a teacher?

Clearly a question that anyone with a brain would only ask of someone whom they consider to be psychologically qualified for the vivification of such an answer by a life marked by experience as a teacher.

It would be stupid therefore to ask someone such a question who had nothing or no one to teach. So I would suggest that you just learned from me something you had not previously realized having just been taught, or you’re basically just stupid for asking. 🙂

 

[Drach]

Sarcasm. Right? Cause the alternative would be the dumbest shit you’ve ever put here…

Doubtful about the dumbest shit he has posted here.
I went back to look at his/her postings and they are clearly more batshit crazy posts.

 

[Moonbeam]

I won't put it into precise language at this point. I only want to modify Moonbeam's analysis without throwing it out with the bathwater.

I only have a suspicion that Righties abjure and condemn the so-called "mainstream" sources like MSNBC because the featured newscasters are often vivacious and intelligent women. They assume that because their own sense of being informed and enlightened involves obtaining the inferences of newscasters grounded in fact (or not grounded at all) and accepting them as is, then everybody on the left can also be defined as a lemming such as themselves.

They have a disdain for AOC because she can produce enlightening lectures to an audience as if she were a PhD delivering to a class of 60. This sort of information delivery is too much above your average Trumper. Add sexism, and they are repelled even more for her unwillingness to take a rear seat in the discussion just because she's a woman. And since their understanding of what it means to be "smart" includes facility to contrive and deceive, they suspect any articulate source of information as equivalent in reliability to their favorite and mendacious sources.

This is all part of a wider stream of sentiment, capability and attitude. They always put the cart before the horse, and they always proceed trying to impose their ideological desires on everyone else without regard to the effect it has on others and the limitations on achieving the goals underlying their vision of the world against the actual, "positive" understanding of how the world works, and how the real world is defined in ways that would make their utopian visions unachievable for the greatest number of people.

They might think Caleigh McEnenny is "smart" and point to her Harvard education, but if the attributes of smartness include honesty, this makes both Harvard and Smack-a-ninny stupid. They always overlook The Stupid.

This cerebral crippling infects our political decisions. There are several reasons that our national elections are so close with results of less than a 10% spread, because everyone has normative ideals of "how things should be" which differ, even within political parties. One could almost imagine that the Founders concept of democratic outcomes broadly accommodated subjective things like whether or not candidates are "liked" to one degree or another. But there is no substitute for a criterion of an electorate with something we must call "perfect information". You can elaborate on your own as to what "perfect information" actually means, but let us entertain that it involves the largest accommodation of relevant facts, the most rigorous and unflawed practical inferences made from those facts, and a general commitment to the Truth above all things.

As for this commitment to the Truth. You cannot be a Truth-Seeker unless you assume that the Truth is absolute in its specification, or that at some point the pursuit of facts and earnest inference will lead you invariably to the Truth. If you do not understand these things, if you can't hold the Truth in regard higher in importance than even your patriotic loyalty to your nation-state, then you do not have any asymptote to Perfect Information.

The American Electorate strays far afield in achieving this Perfect Information on both an individual level and a collective or average level. But the Founders knew this even 240 years ago. Perhaps they conceived of representative bodies of Wise Men under the communication limitations of that particular time and era. There was no telegraph. There was no telephone. Something called a railroad was merely in a developmental state. In that case, the partisan influence of constituents upon partisan legislators would be limited, and the imperative of simply representing the largest possible number of citizens in a congressional district could take precedence over adherence to some ideologically-driven party platform. If only people who could craft polished letters posted by US Mail had more than average influence upon the elected leader, the disruptive or unhelpful pressure of the colossally uninformed would be attenuated.

But nobody anticipated the insane frenzy of people whose literacy only found a home in four-line tweets, or who had no concept of deceitful forces (departing from perfect information), nor any idea as to identifying them.

Thus, we find ourselves in America with an All-Time Low in our Leadership Scandals. We cost ourselves enormous sums just for the extra effort needed to ferret out the Truth, the extra activity in investigating real scandals and deliberating over accountability, and the delays in addressing problems just because the least-informed side of the equation refuses to recognize those problems. As example, the difference between attacking the problem of climate change early enough (how about 20 years ago?), and the waste of money and effort over the hyped-up media campaign and so-called "audit" of the Arizona campaign.

The scandals occur in these depraved manifestations in proportion to the confusion of an electorate, unbridled access the misinformation and the ability to communicate and amplify the nonsense through these newly-evolved mechanisms like the internet and the communication platforms arising along with it.

Was that ever a treat, a magnificent exposition on what I concur is the downward slide we see before us.

The phenomenon I have chose to focus on is the amazing incredulty generated in the minds of those of us who see through the Right's bull shit. How can the titanic and obvious lies they swallow with gusto, and profoundly against their own best interest on top of it, prove to be a favorite meal for them?

For this, I believe, a psychological, not a political understanding is required:

Owing to the fact that you can't fool all of the people all of the time, you need to fool a majority of the people consistently to creat such cult like behavior, while the real core mission, the raison detre of the Republican is to hold power and be rewarded for it by the American elite, generally rich white copoorate busness men, by doing their bidding.

And you can't easily acquire a majority of votes among people naturally inclined to use their intelligence to vote in their own self when your mission is not in their real interest. You need a way to hijack that inclination and, or, add to your pool of voters, preferably both. You need to broaden your appeal since your real ambitions do not, once again, appeal to the intelligent self interests of most people.

So you need to find a substitute appeal, not to enlightened self interest but to the crave appetites of, those we refer to these days as 'deplorables', the festering grievances of ignorant, downtrodden, angry and abused people. Therefore you play to their prejudice and their repressed desires.

But even that has not been enough because it is natural for people not to really want to be deplorable beings. Anybody at any time might wake up to the truth. So, and this is the part that psychology is required to see, the answer the cunning realize will get around this, is to make being everything associated with being deplorable the highest virtue.

A man like Trump is the embodiment of pride in being a filthy shit. He is a beacon of negative character imploring and teasing the populace to saying give vent themselves to everything base and they too, you too, will be rewarded with a golden toilet to shit in, a beautiful wife, lustful admiration, and dominion over your enemies, just like he has. The law does not apply to the egotistically great.

And this can only happen to people who have ingrained within themselves a hatred for who they were made to believe they are and then the asshole comes along to say love your asshole self.

The one thing people filled with self contempt will place above all other interests is permission in the form of flattery to express that within themselves what they were told to repress as deplorable. Now I can take revenge on others who had nothing at all to do with being at cause for my pain.

This is only possible because people do not know they hate themselves and they do not want to know they don't want to know it. This is the flaw in our character that men like Trump instinctively sense and as it easily will since it's the root of narcissism itself. That is what I see and so state. And that path down the road of denial is the path to perdition because we create what we fear.

I believe you used to lean to the right as a young man. Does it ever trouble you that you were so deceived? It really shouldn't. If you had not been that person then you would not be who you are today. And while it might be of little value to you that I say so, I think your an amazing person and I have thought so for a long time.

Edited on a number of occasions

 

[Moonbeam]

Discrete about what?

Really. You didn't notice the shit storm she kicked up. She had an expectation of privacy and some shit allowed the video to go public. If you are going to help others whom others will not want helped, self-abnegation is required. It's not fair but guess what else isn't fair either.

 

[Greenman]

AOC overreacting? I suspect if some creep with his phone walked up from behind and started taking pictures of your sister's, gf or mother's ass you would "overreact". Likely with a fist to their face.

Then again we don't want women to "overreact"

It's unlikely that someone taking a picture would evoke an attack on my part. Even when they're of me (darn my dashing good looks).

 

[Moonbeam]

What you see is a human being expressing human behavior fun and hapiness. If you cant identify with that, being human, please turn in your humanity card.

You can't just tell people who have learned to hate their own humanity such hatred makes them inhuman. They can't be human because they hate themselves having lost their own humanity. The only way out is via spiritual practice that awakens the true self, or awareness of the hopelessness of their situation. If they won't look at the fact that the reason they hate humanity is because they hate the humanity they once had, they will never see how ridiculous that is. There is nothing wrong with them that they believe in a lie they won't admit to believing because that belief is beyond consciously awareness.

 

[cytg111]

You guys seen this?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1560961621081686018