GOP PA official says the quiet part out loud: 'We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to ‘do the right thing’

[Vic]

Anyone else find it interesting that Greene threatening to have her fellow members of Congress killed was "free speech," but Toomey voting to uphold the law is not?

 

[thilanliyan]

Anyone else find it interesting that Greene threatening to have her fellow members of Congress killed was "free speech," but Toomey voting to uphold the law is not?

Not interesting nor surprising

 

[Moonbeam]

Not interesting nor surprising

Interesting, that.

 

[hal2kilo]

Anyone else find it interesting that Greene threatening to have her fellow members of Congress killed was "free speech," but Toomey voting to uphold the law is not?

Modern Republican Party. Hypocrisy be thy name.

 

[MrSquished]

The Democratic party has a good soul overall with a minority of crappy politicians mixed in with the majority good ones. The GOP has an evil soul overall, with just a few good politicians mixed in with the mostly evil ones.

 

[Moonbeam]

Here's a head's up to those of an intellectual and nitpicking inclination.

I had mentioned and quoted script-lines from the movie version of Van Tilburg Clark's "The Oxbow Incident", a western novel that in some ways parallels the story of the January 6 "uprising". And in a post above, I said that I thought the script-lines confuse the distinction between a religion's moral law and the secular law of government. Eventually, for concerns I deem important, I go back and compare cinema script lines with either published history or the fictional novel and basis of the cinema screenplay.

The reading of the lynch-victim's letter at the end of the movie is drawn from text that appears early in the novel -- page 55. Van Tilburg Clark had no ambiguous understanding of it:

" . . . Law is more than the words that put it on the books; law is more than any decisions that may be made from it; law is more than the particular code of it stated at any one time or in any one place or nation; more than any man, lawyer or judge, sheriff or jailer, who may represent it. True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong, is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands of years to develop, and it is the greatest, the most distinguishing quality which has evolved with mankind. None of man's temples, none of his religions, none of his weapons, his tools, his arts, his sciences, nothing else he has grown to, is so great a thing as his justice, his sense of justice. The true law is something in itself; it is the spirit of the moral nature of man; it is an existence apart, like God, and as worthy of worship as God. If we can touch God at all, where do we touch Him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?"

Van Tilburg Clark had it right -- the clear sense that secular law and morality was as important in this life as the religious commandments are in relation to the next life.

And the screenwriters of the 1941 film muddled it up in their abbreviation of the author's original words.

IfI may suggest my reaction to the bolder above which I find beautiful and wonderfully profound, what I hear in it is that justice is the intention of the will to love, the will to love in its highest form. Thanks for that post. I feel that will in you and that makes me happy.

 

[Moonbeam]

Modern Republican Party. Hypocrisy be thy name.

I think it comes with the territory. Conservatives have larger right amigdalas than liberals do and smaller cingulates. The former deals with fear and the latter suppression of fear in logical analysis. I believe I am quoting scientific peer reviewed facts here. What strikes me as logical conclusions one can reach from this, seemingly supported by real world observations, is that conservatives are more likely than liberals to deny unpleasant realities. They do not process logically and emotionally independently as well as liberals do and because of their tendency to react with fear more than liberals have as a consequence a greater need to suppress data they react to as more threatening. Well, denial will always lead to hypocrisy when you are afraid to face the truth.

But don't forget, not to many thousands of years ago a tendency to flee at the slightest provocation had survival value when many of the imagined threats out in good frequency to be real. Apparently today the big tigers in the bushes are socialism, radical liberals, and culture cancellation, one's inalienable right to scream lion in a theater at the sound of somebody licking their ice cream.

Unfortunately, psychologically and sanity wise, the ability of language to become associated with past traumatic events means that we can both frighten and be frightened by words which means especially for the frightened the notion there is safety in the crowd conformity or cult membership where you are told your fears are real rather than delusional. Just imagine being afraid and told you're delusional. Good luck with that.

 

[nickqt]

The Democratic party has a good soul overall with a minority of crappy politicians mixed in with the majority good ones. The GOP has an evil soul overall, with just a few good politicians mixed in with the mostly evil ones.

Meh. The Democratic Party has a decent soul with a lot of good-intentioned but centrist politicians who are afraid of taking the correct stand on issues because it's hard.

The Republican Party has a shit-tier soul full of either Grifters who know better but love collecting cash, or absolute right-wing authoritarian lunatics who shouldn't be allowed to own anything sharp or hot.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

@BonzaiDuck, I've never seen it put that way, the majesty and sanctity of conscience for mankind. If I'd had that notion I may have applied to law school. I got a good enough score on the LSAT (without having done any prep at all, I just took it at graduation in math). But I feared that becoming a lawyer would ruin my conscience, not develop it. What I knew about the practice of law was pretty much what one gets from popular culture, in which lawyers are typically portrayed as hired to represent clients who want above all to win, generally any way they can. I had no role models to contradict this dire concept. There were no lawyers in the family, I didn't know any, never did. I know one lawyer now but have never discussed anything with him relating to the practice of law!

Reading your bolded text I was reminded of this quotation:

"All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have." - Albert Einstein

Perhaps Einstein was wrong.

No, I don't think Einstein was wrong. The CSI investigator and a good detective follow science, logic and facts. Yet, note a quote from an epidemiologist pertaining to the COVID crisis: "Nothing in science is absolutely certain." Science is an asymptotically progressing approximation to reality -- we go from Isaac Newton's physics to Einstein's Special Relativity -- a much closer approximation for certain phenomena.

Remember this? "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories." [Followed by the sound Richard Belzer calls the "Doink-doink".]

I couldn't bring myself to be a criminal defense lawyer, because their objective is to get a "not guilty" verdict even for those they know to be guilty. They have as their job the concoction of even the most improbable circumstances in a sieve of possibilities with the smallest, most unlikely odds of having occurred, and then to argue that such circumstances are grounds for reasonable doubt. So I would've been better suited to either CSI or detective roles, or a prosecutor.

I scanned through the posts on this thread, and discovered that I had posted the screenplay quote from "Oxbow Incident" somewhere else. So here, I offer again the book paragraph together with the movie-script excerpt. It was the movie-script which troubled me, because it seemed to confound God and God's law with secular law, and you can see how Van Tilburg Clark sorted it all out, while the screenwriters muddled it up.
[The book]
" . . . Law is more than the words that put it on the books; law is more than any decisions that may be made from it; law is more than the particular code of it stated at any one time or in any one place or nation; more than any man, lawyer or judge, sheriff or jailer, who may represent it. True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong, is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands of years to develop, and it is the greatest, the most distinguishing quality which has evolved with mankind. None of man's temples, none of his religions, none of his weapons, his tools, his arts, his sciences, nothing else he has grown to, is so great a thing as his justice, his sense of justice. The true law is something in itself; it is the spirit of the moral nature of man; it is an existence apart, like God, and as worthy of worship as God. If we can touch God at all, where do we touch Him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?"

[The movie]
"A man just can't take the law into his own hands and hang people... without hurting everybody in the world... because then he's not just breaking one law, but all laws.
"Law is a lot more than words you put in a book... or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It's everything people ever have found out about justice... and what's right and wrong. It's the very conscience of humanity. There can't be any such thing as civilization...unless people have a conscience...because if people touch God anywhere...where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody's conscience...except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived?"

Perhaps the movie director or screenwriter didn't like the introduction of the word "evolved", which suggests "evolution". Or perhaps they simply wanted to pander to the confused notions of a public who want to insert Moses and his tablets into the significance of secular law. It is true that religious commandments serve as a basis for secular law, and I suggested that the common features of all religions may be the basis for secular law -- an intersection of them all.
Remember the Tea-Party-Trumpers and their assertion that Muslims wanted to institute Sharia Law in the US? It cannot happen, if aspects of Sharia Law do not intersect with morality of Christian, Hebrew, Sikh, Buddhist, atheist and agnostic alike. They are two different things: one you follow in your daily practice as a individual trying to get to Heaven; the other you follow as a citizen complying with the foundations for preserving order in the nation-state of the here and now. But either way, they demonstrate the human conscience.

IfI may suggest my reaction to the bolder above which I find beautiful and wonderfully profound, what I hear in it is that justice is the intention of the will to love, the will to love in its highest form. Thanks for that post. I feel that will in you and that makes me happy.

I don't know if I'm so touchy-feely about it. If you look at the great ideological conflicts of our time, they focus on two concepts: Freedom, and Justice. One could argue that Marx and then Lenin had an interest in economic Justice, or that such aspect of Justice in general defined their belief-system. Yet everyone, through time and everywhere as a rule hungers for some kind of Justice. The man in the January 6 mob told the news-reporter that "They want to take away our freedoms!" Yet, he was part of a lynch-mob, seeking to hang the Vice President and possibly murder the speaker of the House. And as I may already have said, another man in the mob noted that "the courts don't help us!" He and his colleagues probably think that all decisions about Justice are simply the reflection of one or another political group, or that there is no immutable standard of Blind Justice in the Law. They must have been socially promoted to high-school graduation.

 

[interchange]

As a doctor you doubtless give the best advise that you can. I say what I believe to be true based on what I have experienced. I used to be somebody who couldn't hear anything any more than any good Republican cult member. I don't really have to imagine what it is to be like them.

I think your imagination of what a doctor is like gets in your way of seeing me for who I am. This paragraph applies to me just the same as it does to you. Being a psychiatrist is only as relevant as your path to discovery through Zen and Sufi teaching. These things may have given you the words you use to express what you know, and these happenings were the path to knowing, but what you know comes from observing yourself. It is no different for me. I don't imagine, should someone fail to empathize with another that the barrier has anything to do with them being fundamentally different.

What I was commenting on was how I received your first message which seems perfectly true, perfectly human, and without judgment against said humanity. I imagine appreciating your words in that light to be uncommon.

 

[WelshBloke]

Deplorable
deserving censure or contempt

Definition

Definition of DEPLORABLE

deserving censure or contempt : wretched; lamentable… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

Synonyms

• cheap,
• contemptible,
• cruddy,
• despicable,
• dirty,
• grubby,
• lame,
• lousy,
• mean,
• nasty,
• paltry,
• pitiable,
• pitiful,
• ratty,
• scabby,
• scummy,
• scurvy,
• sneaking,
• sorry,
• wretched

Ah. Remember when a certain group got all butthurt getting called that?

 

[Muse]

Ah. Remember when a certain group got all butthurt getting called that?

Yeah, you know, it wasn't such a transgression Hillary using that word. In fact, there's a lot of truth in it. The problem was that it wasn't tactful. She's infinitely more responsible than the man who trounced all over her and every other candidate and subsequent human obstacle on his way to legendary infamy.

 

[WelshBloke]

Yeah, you know, it wasn't such a transgression Hillary using that word. In fact, there's a lot of truth in it. The problem was that it wasn't tactful. She's infinitely more responsible than the man who trounced all over her and every other candidate and subsequent human obstacle on his way to legendary infamy.

I don't think that we need to be tactful about everything! If someone is deliberately being an arse then there's nothing wrong with calling them one.

 

[Muse]

I don't think that we need to be tactful about everything! If someone is deliberately being an arse then there's nothing wrong with calling them one.

I think it's a matter of context here and I don't recall the context particularly. I think Hillary was referring to a swath of Trump's supporters as "deplorables." I imagine she much regretted the utterance. I might be wrong in this. Of course, the clip is readily found:

 

[WelshBloke]

I think Hillary was referring to a swath of Trump's supporters as "deplorables."

I agree with her. And I think events have proven her right.

 

[Muse]

I agree with her. And I think events have proven her right.

Oh, I absolutely agree as well, but it wasn't politic to come out and say it so bluntly in the midst of a monumentally important campaign. But she wasn't a seasoned politician. She was senator from New York, AFAIK the only office she won by election. It's the old adage about catching more flies with honey than... well, here it is:

Do you really catch more flies with honey?

The proverb you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar means that it is much easier to get what you want by being polite rather than by being rude and insolent.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Oh, I absolutely agree as well, but it wasn't politic to come out and say it so bluntly in the midst of a monumentally important campaign. But she wasn't a seasoned politician. She was senator from New York, AFAIK the only office she won by election. It's the old adage about catching more flies with honey than... well, here it is:

Do you really catch more flies with honey?

The proverb you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar means that it is much easier to get what you want by being polite rather than by being rude and insolent.

Yeah running for pres, every phrase is going to be under a microscope. Just like "were going to put coal out of business" was used against her too.
Nevermind that what followed was about supporting those displaced workers with retraining programs. Every opponent would just loop that one sentence on repeat.

 

[Moonbeam]

I think your imagination of what a doctor is like gets in your way of seeing me for who I am.

Not necessarily. I rather think I chose that example because you are a doctor that matches my idea of what a doctor should be like rather than just because you are a doctor so you automatically have ideal doctor traits. Everything I think and say in some respect is subject to the (duality, unity) view that I have of our potential states of consciousness. I believe that self hate is there in almost everybody but the severity of the condition can vary. Some people who hate themselves and, as I claim, are unaware of it can function at very high levels in the traditional understanding we have of that sort of functioning. Others commit suicide because they don't know that their bad feelings are lies they believe from childhood and they were severely damaged to boot. Furthermore, hating oneself, I believe, is the source of all evil, what makes us act out of unconscious hate and also is the cause of all emotional denial. So we are potential angles and actual demons but in the case of the latter to varying degrees. In short, I do not idealize anyone because I believe we are fundamentally the same with the problems caused by self hate varying in degree but universal. The more conscious one is of the negatives of our nature the less likely one is to believe in an idealized self. But that ability to assess oneself especially negatively, strikes me as a very good thing.

This paragraph applies to me just the same as it does to you. Being a psychiatrist is only as relevant as your path to discovery through Zen and Sufi teaching. These things may have given you the words you use to express what you know, and these happenings were the path to knowing, but what you know comes from observing yourself. It is no different for me.

I had not meant to imply otherwise if you thought I did.

I don't imagine, should someone fail to empathize with another that the barrier has anything to do with them being fundamentally different

I believe the barrier is that to the extent you hate yourself you hate others and can't therefore have real empathy. That also means that I can't truthfully say I can have true empathy because I am aware to some degree of my self hate and self hate precludes it. On the other hand, knowing that to be a fact, I try not to let that bother me in the sense that it is some genetic deficiency or a sinful nature etc. All I can do is the best that I can.

What I was commenting on was how I received your first message which seems perfectly true, perfectly human, and without judgment against said humanity. I imagine appreciating your words in that light to be uncommon.

As uncommon as true self acceptance would be my guess. In the Bible there is the Parable of the Sower which comes to mind here. Some people are more able to face negative facts than others depending of personal experience. Some people are driven to seek truth either because their pain drives them to fix it or because of having become awakened to such potential via education and exposure to such liberal ideas. We are all the same but also we are different and come to knowledge from different places. When I said as a doctor you probably do your very best the implication was that as a psychiatrist you have had far more exposure to the kind of world views I believe in, in my opinion. My guess is that you have less obstacles in your way to my points of view. They all have their origin in psychoanalytic introspection or various mystical knowledge traditions that influenced my own introspection and inner experiences.

 

[darkswordsman17]

So, much like the dumbass cops spouting "a few bad apples" you people should really STFU and stop using dumbass phrases. You'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar, allegedly which I say that simply because the only way that'd be true is because honey is more viscous so the flies would be more likely to literally get stuck in it, not because being sweet is more appealing to flies than vinegar (seriously, vinegar attracts flies like crazy, so whomever came up with that is trying to force a wrong thing to support a nonsensical belief). Plus, it ignores "like flies on shit" which helps explain why spouting that phrase is completely moronic in this situation. Hilary could've been Peeps level sweet, it wouldn't have mattered against Turmp, the living embodiment of shit.

Plus, who fucking cares? Seriously? Goddamn this place is so fucking stupid, pissing and moaning about stupid shit that was distorted intentionally (yeah that's some singular blunder there, nevermind she was 100% right, or the fact that the fucking idiots that got mad about that are the same fuckin idiots that intentionally distorted everything with regards to her and Democrats).

The deplorables comment didn't fucking matter. You're morons if you think otherwise. But by all means, let's discuss some blip that didn't even matter for the 15,000th time, while showing that proverbs are fucking stupid, people that cite them tend to be fucking stupid, and people trying to apply them to real situations just highlights how fucking stupid they are, the proverbs are, and trying to twist stupid phrases to fit reality is really fucking stupid. Its literally the type of thought Turmp supporters have been doing.

This is just yet another way for people that don't want to accept reality to rationalize how "Hilary just wasn't likeable" to justify giving clownfucking racist asswipes a free pass for falling for Turmp the first time. The reality is it was a perfect storm of bullshit, much of it built on 20+ years of bullshit, centuries of racism, and good old fashioned American idiocy, combined with just enough meddling by Russian ops.

 

[Muse]

I never disliked Hillary Clinton. I didn't have a hard on for her but I think she would have made a much better than average POTUS. I suppose she still would.

...uh, beyond that she would have prevented the monumental catastrophe that was Donald Trump in the White House.

 

[hal2kilo]

Well Clarence Thomas voted his (his wife's) conscience.

Clarence Thomas GOP Election Challenge Dissent Sparks Calls to Investigate His Wife (msn.com)