A topic that I believe that has become commonly referenced in today's mainstream media is the recognition that the Republican Party has become a cult.

[SMOGZINN]

IE, they weren't classified until AFTER charges were filed.

They literally had stamps on them with classification marking. Are we to believe that Biden snuck into Mar-a-Lago with a stamp and marked the documents?

 

[iRONic]

“Staunch Moderate”

Shitlol!!!

 

[VashHT]

Ah yeah a centrist that only parrots right wing talking points and conspiracies. Not sure what OP think makes him centrist when everything he's expressed is solidly a right wing opinion.

 

[HomerJS]

I still haven't gotten a definition of what a "MAGA" is, but I generally wouldn't consider any extremist segments part of the "right" either. You are falling for the left wing rebranding.

Both the left and right have tons of idiots with dumb opinions that are corrupt. Hell we are finding out now that the biden administration retroactively classified the "stolen classified documents" they found at mar a lago. IE, they weren't classified until AFTER charges were filed.

One thing that will draw ire from people here are claims without any substantiation. If there is a story alleging Biden retroactively reclassified documents with inference to get Trump, show your work.

The claim "they all do it" just normalizes abhorrent behavior and nothing is ever done about it.

 

[dank69]

Ah yeah a centrist that only parrots right wing talking points and conspiracies. Not sure what OP think makes him centrist when everything he's expressed is solidly a right wing opinion.

He thinks the center is always between Democrats and Republicans. He doesn't understand that the Democrats are center-right.

 

[Jaskalas]

This notion that somehow republicans are more tolerant of dissent is utterly delusional. It's obvious you do not see them for who and what they are.

You stopped short of the entire idea.

Why does a person not "see them for who they are?"
There is a logical reason for such a view.
People are blind to themselves. Meaning he sees himself as one of them.

 

[woolfe9998]

You stopped short of the entire idea.

Why does a person not "see them for who they are?"
There is a logical reason for such a view.
People are blind to themselves. Meaning he sees himself as one of them.

Yeah, I already kind of figured that out. I just didn't want to be presumptuous.

 

[fskimospy]

Hell we are finding out now that the biden administration retroactively classified the "stolen classified documents" they found at mar a lago. IE, they weren't classified until AFTER charges were filed.

This is ludicrously false, and not even Trump's lawyers are making this argument. The only person who has advanced anything like it is Trump claiming he psychically declassified the documents and didn't tell anyone (lol). Where did you hear this nonsense?

Also, from a legal perspective it is entirely irrelevant if the documents were classified or not, it's a crime either way.

 

[Moonbeam]

I can't think of anything that happened to me. I just never believed it in the first place. I pretended to believe to make my parents and everyone happy but deep down I knew something was wrong.

I found out later that quite a few of the younger girls were raped by the leader. Some of them left. Some are still in the cult to this day even though the leader died years ago. I don't know if there is anything anyone can do. The best you can do is plant seeds of doubt and hope those seeds take root and grow. Cults train their members to use roundup on any seedlings ASAP though.

This implies to me that you were actually never a cult member despite the fact that others around you were and while this is a tremendously fortunate state of affairs to be blessed with as one way to give praise, it would seem that you might not be able to offer any insight as to how actual believers free themselves from the prison of cult belief. It suggests that maybe some people have some kind of natural immunity they themselves can't identify along with those who research the matter.

 

[Moonbeam]

It is okay to "be a failure." I put that in quotes because nobody is actually a failure. A person who would classify some else as a failure is a heavily damaged person. What is a success? Elon fucking Musk?

All that matters is if you try your best and do what makes you happy. You know this. You've been railing about competition for years but it seems you've forgotten.

Anyway, regarding the something extra you are looking for in addition to comfort: there is something extremely appealing about feeling like you've discovered a "truth" that very few others know. This is the other catalyst, and you're very familiar with it.

I don't understand why you would suggest I have forgotten. It is not my belief that people are failures; I say they have been programmed in a way that makes them unconsciously feel it and that it is a lie. I have said that the origin of this sickness is being put down as children and that the pain of it, in order to function, had to be suppressed. I say the ego is what protects us from feeling that pain, a phony bunch of crap we make up to which we attach ourselves we were told that being those things, whatever they are, make us great. Basically they are all forms of cults that create tribalism. I am this, I am that, and all of them make me great and why, because my real feeling is that I am the worst person in the world. You can see this only if you have gone very deeply into what you really feel.

So let me turn this around. Having been surrounded by a cult that included sexual abuse and seeing that some are still members today even though the cult leader is dead, I would venture to say that you may well feel a massive contempt for gullible people and gullibility in particular. I would say you might likely be contemptuous and deeply mistrustful of any who say they can see what others are missing, but doesn't that actually put you in that class, the cult of skeptics regardless of any possible evidence that there may be anybody around who can see what you cannot?

The idea that painful traumatic events are hard to uncover let alone transcend and the sciences that have developed to explore our inner world, the idea that people can heal, that there is a truth that people who suffer may not see, is for the West at least and in my opinion a revolutionary idea. So what will be the fate of a science that says we are motivated not to know the truth.

What what what was that, yes I was looking for my hat. I have to catch a train.

 

[Moonbeam]

Be very carful here. We often use the word 'belief' very loosely, but there is a major difference between believing that the sun will come up tomorrow and that a loving god is going to punish you for masturbating. While we use the same word for both, we mean very different things by it.

I disagree, all that has really changed is the tools used to exert that control. The need for control has not be obliviated, only thing that really changes is who is doing the enforcing. Fall outside the lines of that normalcy or break those traditions, and society will punish you for it. All that has changed is the scale. You can see this clearly with cults that have reached that middle size where they have more than a few thousand people they start to use a mix of individual and societal pressures to control their members. You can still see that in some of the larger religions as well, the aforementioned Mormons try really hard to exert individual pressure on a local level and are largely successful.

The way I use language is always problematic for me. Language is thought. Thought is division by comparison of things that do not exist. Duality is delusion. There is only conscious of the now that can be present. We are talking now in words that trigger memories of meanings and events that happened long ago. Thought is also fear.

So when I say I believe it really means nothing at all. It's an opinion transmitted with words you translate out of your own memories. So there was a time when time stopped and there I was simple conscious awareness the end of thought and questions. Memory now looks back and says in that no time I knew everything and now I remember I knew. I believe now that what I was then was everything, the alpha and omega. And since now I am just a nobody who experienced a brief moment of being, I say I believe I knew or became aware there that such a state of consciousness happens to people always has and always will. Now all I can say is that I believe that want I know I know happened when I stopped believing in anything. I let go and fell into the nothing and discovered that I was just up side down.

As to the argument about what effect size has to do with cults, I have no problem with whatever you want to believe. I believe that if you believe something you are exhibiting cult behavior. Of course I say I believe this because if I said I know this I would be displaying cult like certainty. As I said, language is hopeless.

 

[dank69]

I don't understand why you would suggest I have forgotten. It is not my belief that people are failures; I say they have been programmed in a way that makes them unconsciously feel it and that it is a lie. I have said that the origin of this sickness is being put down as children and that the pain of it, in order to function, had to be suppressed. I say the ego is what protects us from feeling that pain, a phony bunch of crap we make up to which we attach ourselves we were told that being those things, whatever they are, make us great. Basically they are all forms of cults that create tribalism. I am this, I am that, and all of them make me great and why, because my real feeling is that I am the worst person in the world. You can see this only if you have good very deeply into what you really feel.

So let me turn this around. Having been surrounded by a cult that included sexual abuse and seeing that some are still members today even though the cult leader is dead, I would venture to say that you may well feel a massive contempt for gullible people and gullibility in particular. I would say you might likely be contemptuous and deeply mistrustful of any who say they can see what others are missing, but doesn't that actually put you in that class, the cult of skeptics regardless of any possible evidence that there may be anybody around who can see what you cannot?

The idea that painful traumatic events are hard to uncover let alone transcend and the sciences that have developed to explore our inner world, the idea that people can heal, that there is a truth that people who suffer may not see, is for the West at least and in my opinion a revolutionary idea. So what will be the fate of a science that says we are motivated not to know the truth.

What what what was that, yes I was looking for my hat. I have to catch a train.

I would use the word pity instead of contempt. I typically transition into contempt if the gullible combines their gullibility with arrogance. I probably shouldn't, but I'm only human.

As for being in a "skeptic cult," I try my best to always start from 0, 0. Cartesian both in a location and philosophical sense. "I know nothing," if you will. Show me the evidence. I force myself to keep an open mind, and then evaluate the evidence presented to the best of my ability. If I am unable, I defer to the experts. The more experts the better, because it's easy for a few to mislead, but as more people need to keep a secret, the faster it will eventually come out. I don't dismiss things because I can't see them, but until experts can confirm their validity, I certainly won't give them much credence.

 

[JD50]

Both the left and right have tons of idiots with dumb opinions that are corrupt. Hell we are finding out now that the biden administration retroactively classified the "stolen classified documents" they found at mar a lago. IE, they weren't classified until AFTER charges were filed.

Your other thread makes so much more sense now. You are out of your mind.

 

[Moonbeam]

I would use the word pity instead of contempt. I typically transition into contempt if the gullible combines their gullibility with arrogance. I probably shouldn't, but I'm only human.

As for being in a "skeptic cult," I try my best to always start from 0, 0. Cartesian both in a location and philosophical sense. "I know nothing," if you will. Show me the evidence. I force myself to keep an open mind, and then evaluate the evidence presented to the best of my ability. If I am unable, I defer to the experts. The more experts the better, because it's easy for a few to mislead, but as more people need to keep a secret, the faster it will eventually come out. I don't dismiss things because because I can't see them, but until experts can confirm their validity, I certainly won't give them much credence.

I have no problem with this. Rational people try to protect themselves from being misled. The scientific method demands such an attitude. It's the process by which I came to reject everything I was taught is sacred. But the question I was seeking an answer to is why do I suffer. That answer is not in a test tube. It requires examination of the self. What is the science that separates the inner world into what is our true nature, who we really are as opposed to what we were taught to believe. In Sufi thinking, for example, there is the saying that he who tastes knows. What science deals with inner conscious states. Are there different states of awareness? Only seekers would ordinarily find out it seems to me. Another expression regarding the intoxication of wine as an analogy for the awakening of divine love with a human heart is the expression "He who tastes knows". There are endless signs that there is more than meets our philosophy for those who will see them.

 

[Moonbeam]

Your other thread makes so much more sense now. You are out of your mind.

Wouldn't it be the case that a cult, sensing that some member might be headed toward heresy would be be told among other things that he or she is out of his or her mind? I see no benefit is that approach because it is so easy to repel. I am guessing there are reasons why cult members believe others and not they are in a cult having to do with the fact that belief is filling some unconscious psychological need. That is the idea I want to explore, by reducing the commonality of the needs that drive people into cults we can reduce cult membership. I have already suggested what creates such needs, a need to relieve unconscious inner doubts about the value one feels about oneself. Telling people they are out of their minds is a natural product of hating being insecure about such things oneself, no?

 

[fskimospy]

Your other thread makes so much more sense now. You are out of your mind.

My favorite part is it usually doesn't take long for someone who claims their politics are straight down the middle to be like 'also Joe Biden is a lizard person'.

 

[dank69]

My favorite part is it usually doesn't take long for someone who claims their politics are straight down the middle to be like 'also Joe Biden is a lizard person'.

It's because Biden would have to be a lizard person (or something else just as crazy) to justify not voting straight blue ticket in this political environment.

 

[ivwshane]

To get a little back to the topic:

I think there is a difference between the right, republicans, and magas. Magas are in a cult and will ignore anything bad said about their cult leader Trump. They’ve been specifically told by him not to trust their own eyes and ears and to only believe him and they do exactly that. Righties are the authoritarians of the Republican (typically) party and they usually espouse some sort of racist viewpoint, whether it’s white nationalism, nativism, replacement theory, or some other bs. They are typically your gun nuts or your evangelicals, your anti choice, anti gay, anti woke crowd. They are the deplorables Hillary was talking about. Then you have your republicans, these are the party before country types, your Mitch McConnell’s, newt Gingrich’s, Sarah huckabee’s, they are the ones who won’t uphold norms or protect democracy if it means it’ll hurt republicans, they typically only care about tax cuts, culture wars, and exploiting norms to benefit the party.

So we have one part of the Republican party that is a cult, another that wants to be a cult, and a third group that enables the other two if it benefits them. In terms of political leaning you have republicans (center right), magas (who are typically to the right of republicans but can change depending on what their leader wants), then you have the far right who courts the extremists.

On the left (anything not Republican) you have the moderates, your Joe manchin’s, Feinstein’s, they are your corporate backed politicians who support policies that help corporations and who typically support the use of military. Further left of that you have your typical democrats who support unions, good fiscal policy, a many progressive programs. They are typically willing to compromise on policy to move things forward, even if it means achieving their policy goals at a slower pace. Next you have the progressive, they are typically all about helping your average American and are using less willing to compromise and are more about pushing grander policy ideas. While they do do a lot of things for show, they are typically grounded in facts but not necessarily reality. These are your AOC’s of the party. I’m not aware of any lefty extremists other than the made up ones by republicans and magas. They certainly don’t have any major political power like magas do.

 

[eelw]

To get a little back to the topic:

I think there is a difference between the right, republicans, and magas.

Sure there’s a difference, but never orange monkey aren’t any better. The Liz Cheney types actually vote with his policies far higher that the true MAGA congress critters. Then the ones while know it’s wrong, they pander to the crazy base just to remain in power. Or the Larry Hogan type that waste their vote on a write in instead of doing a definitive rejection of how his party is heading.

 

[ivwshane]

Sure there’s a difference, but never orange monkey aren’t any better. The Liz Cheney types actually vote with his policies far higher that the true MAGA congress critters. Then the ones while know it’s wrong, they pander to the crazy base just to remain in power. Or the Larry Hogan type that waste their vote on a write in instead of doing a definitive rejection of how his party is heading.

Lol you won’t hear me arguing that one is better than the other. I just think it’s important to distinguish between the three.

 

[fskimospy]

Lol you won’t hear me arguing that one is better than the other. I just think it’s important to distinguish between the three.

This all misses the point. The question should be WHICH policies.

Liz Cheney is awful on most policy positions but she is great on the ‘don’t end democracy’ position, which is the most important position.

 

[ivwshane]

This all misses the point. The question should be WHICH policies.

Liz Cheney is awful on most policy positions but she is great on the ‘don’t end democracy’ position, which is the most important position.

I consider her a conservative, in the traditional sense. However it’s a dying breed so it’s usually not worth bringing up.

 

[Greenman]

My favorite part is it usually doesn't take long for someone who claims their politics are straight down the middle to be like 'also Joe Biden is a lizard person'.

Actually, the popular theory among the lunatic fringe that I interact with is that the person we see is a double, with a subset of that group believing he's a clone of the "real" Joe Biden.
There are two or three fellows in the group that are so divorced from reality that it's very difficult to communicate with them, virtually everything is a conspiracy. The top one right now is the directed energy weapons used to torch Maui.

It's a fun group

 

[fskimospy]

Actually, the popular theory among the lunatic fringe that I interact with is that the person we see is a double, with a subset of that group believing he's a clone of the "real" Joe Biden.
There are two or three fellows in the group that are so divorced from reality that it's very difficult to communicate with them, virtually everything is a conspiracy. The top one right now is the directed energy weapons used to torch Maui.

It's a fun group

So after the Jews targeted California with their space lasers they turned on Maui?

 

[brycejones]

Actually, the popular theory among the lunatic fringe that I interact with is that the person we see is a double, with a subset of that group believing he's a clone of the "real" Joe Biden.
There are two or three fellows in the group that are so divorced from reality that it's very difficult to communicate with them, virtually everything is a conspiracy. The top one right now is the directed energy weapons used to torch Maui.

It's a fun group

It's kind of sad how you don't see that constantly exposing yourself to their craziness has led you down the path of denying reality on many occasions.