Chaos and the Anti-Thread

[Emil El Zapato]

Pictures of my niece and her new hubbie. I included one scene from their 20 million dollar ranch. The patriarch and wife don't live there, they just own it and have a resident staff of 150 that lives there. They live in Dallas, Texas.

I just wanted to prove that I wasn't making this sh*t up. :)

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This is a picture of one of my sister-in-law's transexual nieces/ nee nephews Sorta cute, huh?!

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[Emil El Zapato]

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[Emil El Zapato]

Black Mold Warning:
Chronic Fatigue
Prolonged exposure to black mold may cause the immune system to release a sedative called Chloral Hydrate, which is used as a defense to slow down the effects of toxic black mold in the bloodstream. Chloral Hydrate also causes chronic fatigue, drowsiness, muscle pain, joint pain, and recurring cold or flu like symptoms. If you notice these signs, hire a mold removal company to inspect your home or business for mold and remove anything they find.

[Wind]

Yup, been quite aware of that. Chronic fatigue is thought to be a virus related thing and an autoimmune disease.

[Emil El Zapato]

How cute can Lily be:



https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/kpVYcObWrndu9XYJBZ17PAhlh3_Jkd5sq1FeH4C1XI7MJvdymB mHc6GMxn6Wv8U1oKKU7QrZw51_B5tjICANI1GOu-u_H-Ym2Rlvk67ny4uQ1ZIbBmC4B0YxbpI3R1vK8U9rtAHZPTrYzg

Milana Aleksandrovna Vayntrub is an American actress, comedian, and activist. Born in the Soviet Union to Jewish parents, she began her career as a child ...

[Emil El Zapato]

I think I just made the chess championship round or semi-finals not sure. It started out with about 1000 competitors.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN1kQEJud7A&t=17s

[Wind]

Jon Stewart on gun related deaths in America.

https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1631707661015056391?t=NLSJX4RNtTxoi5Hr-oH7qA

[Emil El Zapato]

Another niece ... just opened a fitness business in LA area...her mother used to work at Gold's gym there. Runs in the family apparently.

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[Emil El Zapato]

Jon Stewart on gun related deaths in America.

https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1631707661015056391?t=NLSJX4RNtTxoi5Hr-oH7qA

Jon Stewart is an ass kicker, he is a very clear thinking intelligent human being.

[Wind]

Seems that 20 years ago today US invasion of Iraq began. The question is if anything was learned...

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[Emil El Zapato]

I was listening to Petraeus earlier. He said yes, much was learned and he was proud of his participation and what was done despite that many 'Americans' were 'displeased' by it.

What did he learn? Sorta like what the doctor says when you say, "Hey doc, it hurts when I do this?!". "Well, don't do that then!"

[Emil El Zapato]

I think I just made the chess championship round or semi-finals not sure. It started out with about 1000 competitors.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN1kQEJud7A&t=17s

It's all a scam! They moved me into the 'expert' division. My chances range from zero to below zero. And who said life was fair and that the U.S. was God's gift to humanity.

[Wind]

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[Emil El Zapato]

I got booted from my local neighborhood forum. I swear some people just have no sense of humor:

Here is what did it:

Under the banner of a 'Single mom' some lady was talking about not being able to feed her baby...a surreptitious ploy to get free stuff by donation. I replied that and I quote: "In 70% of cases, single moms choose to be single" boom, I'm done...lol. No loss 'cause better than 70% of the denizens are absolute mo-rons. All they want to do is bitch about the guy tailgating them (hint, it it probably was me...no, not really, at least not this time) A bunch of righty redneck dumbf*cks.

[Emil El Zapato]

I'll tell you what is scary:

In Israel they are striking, rioting, demonstrating AGAINST fascism! That means fascism has taken a strong hold. I guess one could be grateful that in the U.S. on January 6th 2021 they rioted FOR fascism.


Does anyone remember the American political party, 'Insert Party Name Here', that invited Netanyahu, to speak in the Senate in protest of President 'Insert Name Here' attempts to castigate and pull away from the Israeli government's policies regarding the treatment of the 'Insert Name Here' minority.


C'mon, I'm sure you can remember Boids. You be American.

[Aragorn]

In Israel they are striking, rioting, demonstrating AGAINST fascism! That means fascism has taken a strong hold.

Why, yes, of course it has. Netanyahu and his Likud party have always been very far to the right, but at the last elections, they couldn't get a majority, and so they co-opted a couple of small and ultra-far-right parties into their coalition.

In addition to that, the announced far-right overhaul of the justice system — which is what the people are protesting against — is important to him personally, because without it, he's facing prosecution and a potential prison sentence.

[Emil El Zapato]

For some reason that sounds very familiar.

[Wind]

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[Emil El Zapato]

2sYBf1LUJEs

Amnesty Intl has been screaming about that for many years. An Indian Muslim likely, an authoritarian I'd bet my pee pee on. She is making it up just as she says she isn't... Why does everyone focus on this nonsense.

As Jon Stewart said recently... weaponized nonsense. Kuklinski is going past Biden's response. She wonders why, I wonder why, also.

[Emil El Zapato]

I was going to forego this but now:

A lesson for life about how the world works (Something to carry around with oneself)

Right now both the left and the right is putting the screws to Tik Tok due to its Chinese connections. There reasons for this are twofold but I don't know which is primary. I'll start with the one I think it is.

First, the left is once again following the right's lead because everyone is despERATe to show the rabble that the U.S. government is indeed functional by its ability to work together for a common cause, it is not in the nature of the liberal to go all freakazoid over national security.

Second: After Biden's shootdown of the Chinese spy ballon, the left rank-and-file cannot afford to not show solidarity with its leader, Biden.

ok, that didn't turn out as profound as I thought it would, but it is the truth, nonetheless. The message is clear, the squeeky wheel gets the grease...In this case, the paranoid get appeased so the wheels of progress keep moving forward, but it won't, because the crazies are insatiable.

[Emil El Zapato]

No doubt, they are quite outstanding in that regard, I've been arguing with El Sid about that for about a year now. :)

[Wind]

This is where the USA is truly the greatest.

Gun violence statistics (https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls)

Gun violence archive 2022

Published date: March 27, 2023

Total Number of GV Deaths - ALL Causes 44,333

Homicide/Murder/Unintentional/DGU 20,243

Suicide 24,090

Total Number of Injuries 38,587

Mass Shootings 646
Mass Murders 36
Number of Children (age 0-11) Killed 314 Injured 681
Number of Teens (age 12-17) Killed 1,366 Injured 3,805
Officer Involved Incident Killed 71
Officer Killed or Injured Injured 341
Officer Involved Incident Killed 1,402
Subject-Suspect Killed or Injured Injured 871
Defensive Use 1,187
Unintentional Shooting 1,627
Murder/Suicides Incidents 671

[Emil El Zapato]

This is where the USA is truly the greatest.

Gun violence statistics (https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls)

Gun violence archive 2022

Published date: March 27, 2023

Total Number of GV Deaths - ALL Causes 44,333

Homicide/Murder/Unintentional/DGU 20,243

Suicide 24,090

Total Number of Injuries 38,587

Mass Shootings 646
Mass Murders 36
Number of Children (age 0-11) Killed 314 Injured 681
Number of Teens (age 12-17) Killed 1,366 Injured 3,805
Officer Involved Incident Killed 71
Officer Killed or Injured Injured 341
Officer Involved Incident Killed 1,402
Subject-Suspect Killed or Injured Injured 871
Defensive Use 1,187
Unintentional Shooting 1,627
Murder/Suicides Incidents 671

That isn't an American statistic Wind that is an American Right statistic...you know the 1st Amendment folks that send emails to their congress people warning of gun control on the day when 3 children are killed in cold blood by an AR-15 rifle, pistol and revolver. I despise those people very likely more than Project Avalon people despise the United States. In fact, I'm certain of it.

Please remember that when I criticize posts, I am criticizing the messenger, i.e. the jackass in the video. Not the wise dude in your mirror.

Project Avalon bad! Don't do Project Avalon! :)

[Wind]

That isn't an American statistic Wind that is an American Right statistic...

So the NRA and Republicans are responsible for those deaths, but not team Democrat in your mind?

[Emil El Zapato]

So the NRA and Republicans are responsible for those deaths, but not team Democrat in your mind?

Exactly, that is what I've been saying for years. Refer to the above post regarding the model of life in the U.S. Ostensibly in the U.S. we live in a liberal democracy which requires some level of compromise. Repubs by nature know they do not have to conform to that philosophy, they don't need or want liberal democracy whereas by definition the liberal does, therein begins the lack of balance in the power structure. The United States for better or worse is a world power and the internal dominance of the right has ramifications for the entire world.

[Emil El Zapato]

I was trying to determine if FirstPost was India's version of Fox news and this is what I found.

It is hard to get a good read on this guy but he is the CEO of the corporation behind the news outlet:

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India’s wealthiest man and its richest banker are backing a politician of Congress, the main opposition party, in general election, a rare public endorsement by two of the country’s most influential businessmen.


https://www.reuters.com/resizer/u5h2zrbFhLxPpulttpgaQPksOnc=/800x0/filters:quality(80)/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/XXOQA3WE3FIRFFS3PZYEWS5AWU.jpg

Results in the seven-phase general election, which began on April 11, are due on May 23. Mumbai, the financial capital, goes to the polls on April 29.

Mukesh Ambani, who heads Reliance Industries, and Uday Kotak, managing director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, both endorsed Milind Deora, the Congress candidate for the South Mumbai constituency.

“Milind is the man for South Bombay,” Ambani said in a short video posted by Deora on his Twitter account late on Wednesday.

Reliance did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The endorsement comes as a surprise. Many politicians see Ambani’s family as having close ties with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“This is surprising that Ambani has endorsed Deora, considering the ties he has with Modi,” said Manisha Kayande, spokeswomen of Bharatiya Janata Party’s regional ally Shiv Sena, which has fielded a candidate against Deora.

The attempt to influence voters with the backing of industrialists will backfire, she said, because ordinary people want a leader who fights for their cause and not for tycoons.

The Ambani family hail from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, and they have often praised him publicly.

Deora, a former junior minister in the previous government, is the son of a career Congress politician and his family has close ties with the Ambanis. He is also a two-time MP from the south Mumbai constituency whose 1.5 million voters include some of India’s top tycoons.

“Having represented South Bombay for ten years, I believe that Milind has in-depth knowledge of the social, economic and cultural ecosystem,” Ambani, the chairman of retail-to-telecoms conglomerate Reliance Industries, said in the video.

Like Ambani, Kotak also endorsed Deora in the video.

Kotak Mahindra Bank did not respond to an email seeking comment.

“Your boss says that Modi is (a) slave of the top 15 industrialists, including Kotak and Mukesh. But what is this? Any answer @RahulGandhi?” ran one comment from an unverified Twitter user.

“If Mr. Ambani, after weighing the optics, has still chosen to come out in (the) open for Congress, what has (he) been doing from behind?” Akhilesh Mishra, chief executive of the New Delhi-based BlueKraft Digital Foundation, asked in a Twitter message.

[Emil El Zapato]

It is possible but the likelihood of impartiality is slight.


https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8b/40/01/8b4001e372b267d886f6a835ce2515c4.jpg

These are the stations the news announcer works for: WION and Gravitas

Is the channel WION or Gravitas trustworthy for their news?
Wion is a product of zee group and hence pro government. Trustworthy depends on the news topic. Will they show the failures and the shortcomings of modi govt?

It is just another propagandist news channel. Afteral Sudhir Chaudhury is the editor-in-chief. What better can you expect? They blame bollywood for Indians leaving India to pursue better opportunities outside India. They don’t blame the political instability, highest unemployment rate or lack of opportunities in India for it. WION is Republic TV with a more polished anchor.

This is her political affiliation: Palki Sharma politics and her BJP party/Hindutva

Hinduism is the name given to the most ancient and persistent religion on the Indian subcontinent, and Hindutva is the name by which the ideology of the Hindu right, represented by the political party Bharatiya Janata Party, or Indian People’s Party (BJP), is known. It is also the ideology of the cultural body known as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or National Volunteer Core (RSS), which was founded in 1925 and with which the BJP has strong links. Ever since the rise of the BJP on the Indian political scene from 1990 onward, and its recent successes in national elections in India in 2014 and 2019, the question of the relationship between Hinduism as a religion and Hindutva as a political ideology has come to the fore, because the word “Hindu” is common to both.1 The exploration of the relationship between Hinduism as a religion and Hindutva as a political philosophy has become a virtual academic cottage industry that shows no signs of slowing down.2 In popular writings on the subject, Hindutva has been variously described as “Hinduism on steroids,” as “Hinduism which resists,” or as “an illegitimate child of Hinduism.” A preliminary way of understanding the difference between Hinduism and Hindutva would be to recognise that Hinduism is a religion (however defined) while Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, is a political ideology, whose relation to the religion of Hinduism could be considered analogous to the relationship between Christianity and Christian fundamentalism or Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. There is, however, one key difference. Hinduism is a plural tradition, as compared to Christianity and Islam which possess well defined universal creedal formulations that are largely absent in Hinduism according to most observers. Therefore, Hindu “fundamentalism” is remarkably thin in terms of religious content as compared to Christianity and Islam. What follows is an attempt to analyze the differences between Hinduism and Hindutva by identifying the points that separate or divide them.

II
Several distinctions are at play in this debate. An understanding of these distinctions and their historical background will go a long way toward helping us gain and maintain a grip on the issues involved. We might identify the first divide by recognizing the distinction between religion and culture as it operates in this debate, especially as it may hold the key to understanding the seminal text of Hindutva, namely Hindutva (1923) by V. D. Savarkar.3

One is normally inclined to treat Hinduism as a religion of India, an ancient tradition that does not distinguish between religion and culture, and is just one of the religions found in India that has coexisted with many others such as Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. A crucial move that Hindutva thinkers make is to draw a distinction between those religions that have their origin in India—such as Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism—and Christianity and Islam, which indeed have followers in India, but did not originate there.

The first four religions mentioned above will henceforth be referred to as Indic religions to distinguish them from Christianity and Islam. The need to distinguish the Indic religions from other religions in India lies in the impact made by the introduction of the Western term religion in the census operations carried out by the British in India, especially from 1871 onward. In these decennial or decadal censuses, the participants were asked to indicate their religious affiliation largely on the British assumption that one could only belong to one religion at a time. Some Indians began to feel over the years that this was having the effect of compartmentalizing what we might call the Indic religious tradition into four separate “religions.” The key fact to keep in mind here is that the Indian followers of these four members of the Indic religious tradition did not treat their own relationship to these traditions necessarily in exclusive terms prior to the British intervention. In the Western conception of religion, a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim had to be considered members of different religions (despite the fact that they worship one and the same God), whereas in the Indian conception of religious life, one could be a member of more than one tradition at the same time. Modern Nepalese, for instance, freely describe themselves as both Hindu and Buddhist, as they lay outside British jurisdiction.4

This dual or multiple religious identity that prevailed within the Indic religious tradition as a whole was in danger of being subverted as a result of the census operation. While the British were in power in India, Indians who felt differently were not in the position to challenge this disturbing trend directly. They therefore tried to counter it ideologically by using the distinction between religion and culture as drawn in the West to their advantage. The word “Hindutva” was coined to refer to “Hinduism” not as a religion but as a culture. Thus, the Hindutva spokespersons claimed that although these four religions were four different religions according to the British census, all four of them share a common culture. What the word “religion” had divided, the word “culture” united. The four religions shared in common the ideas of karma and dharma, veneration of the cow, and so on, and their holy places of worship were within India, unlike those of Christianity and Islam, which were outside the Indian subcontinent. The name “Hindutva” was given to this uniting culture, which was shared by all those for whom India was the land of both their birth and the birth of their religion.

This development provides an interesting example of the interface between two civilizations. The concept of religion as it prevailed in the West was tied to a singular religious identity, whereas in India dual or multiple identity was the norm. The introduction of the word “religion” by the British in India—with its connotation of “exclusive” religious identity—began, therefore, to change the contours of religious life in India, and the word “Hindutva” was arguably coined as a centripetal force to counter the centrifugal forces released by introducing the Western concept of religion into India.

The close relationship of these two concepts of Hinduism and Hindutva may help us account for the paradox that those Indians, usually liberals, who stand by Hinduism (rather than Hindutva) regard Hindutva or political Hinduism as a subset that falls within the larger set of Hinduism. Followers of Hindutva, on the other hand, prefer to see Hinduism as a subset of Hindutva (rather than the other way around) in the sense that a culture may contain many dimensions, including the religious, within it. Briefly, for the liberals, Hinduism comes first and then Hindutva. For the Hindu nationalists, Hindutva comes first and then Hinduism.

III
Another distinction to keep in mind in this context is between two versions of Indian history: secular and religious. Believers in Hinduism tend to root for the secular version. According to the secular interpretation of Indian history, the idea of India is essentially territorial. There is a geographical area called India, and all those who live within that territory are Indians. In fact, they are Indian citizens because the concept of citizenship is territorial: anybody born within the territory of India is an Indian. This is a primary building block of this view. From this, it follows that all Indians—irrespective of the religion to which they belong—are Indians who qualitatively contribute equally to the religious life of India. The fact that the holy lands of some of the religions, which they happen to follow, lie outside India is trumped by the fact that they themselves are born in India and are its citizens. The implication is that modern India as we know it, then, has been built equally by all its citizens, and its future belongs equally to all of them.

This is the modern, secular, liberal vision of India enshrined in the Indian Constitution, which was originally drafted in English as a further tribute to its modernity. This vision was also shared by the leaders of the freedom movement in India, which lends it further credence. This is the version of Indian history subscribed to by most of those Indians who stand by Hinduism (rather than Hindutva).

The alternative vision of India points out that the moment of Indian Independence was also the moment of Partition of British India into India and Pakistan, with the latter country being formed explicitly as the homeland of India’s Muslims. This would seem to imply that the division of the subcontinent was between a Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu India. But this implication was rejected on the Indian side. The usual response from the liberal side to this implication is that the distinction between India and Pakistan was not between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India but between a theocratic Pakistan and a secular India.

For a long time, this argument prevailed, but the subsequent history of modern India seemed to follow a course that can only be described as characterized by asymmetrical secularism, in the course of which the interests of the Hindu majority were felt to have been compromised.

It is this secular erosion of Indian polity that is often held responsible for the rise of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism. Ironically, the Hindu right also accepts the idea of secularism in the sense of separation of church and state as a legitimate aspiration, and therefore dubbed the secularism as practiced by the Indian National Congress—India’s dominant party until recently, which swears by secularism—as pseudosecularism.

According to this account of Indian history favored by the Hindutva school, the Hindus are the original inhabitants of this land, where they developed a great civilization in the past. Unfortunately, they subsequently came under first Muslim and then Christian foreign rule from about 1200 until 1947. These two regimes were hostile to Hinduism, which somehow managed to survive this dark period of its history.

The achievement of Independence by India was a game changer. Perhaps for the first time in Indian history, 95 percent of all Hindus in the world now live under a single central government in India. But the situation is complicated by the presence of sizable minorities. It is worth noting the history of the West is usually one of a majority dominating a minority, while the history of India is one in which minorities (first Muslims and then Christians) have dominated the majority (Hindu) for centuries. This Hindutva version of Indian history implies that the time has come for Hindus to assert themselves politically after centuries of first Islamic and Christian, and now secular, oppression. This self-assertion is bound to be political in nature because their subjugation was also political. The followers of other religions in India also have their proper place in India because Hinduism is a plural and tolerant religion that provides ample scope for them to flourish peacefully alongside Hinduism, although the righting of historical wrongs at the hands of Muslims and Christians has to be addressed. The Indian National Congress offered India the (diluted) Hinduism of secularism; Hindutva offers India the secularism of Hinduism.

The secular and Hindu nationalist versions of Indian history differ in their understanding of its telos, with adherents of Hinduism rather than Hindutva veering toward the secular version and the adherents of Hindutva veering toward the Hindu nationalist version.

IV
Another distinction between the adherents of Hinduism and those of Hindutva also pertains to the interpretation of Indian history and has to do with the nature of Islamic and British rule over India. Hindu liberals regard the Muslims who ruled over India and the British who ruled over India on a different footing. They argue that during the long presence of Muslims in India, they had become Indians by virtue of their residence, and therefore the struggle for Independence against the British was a struggle both of them engaged in together. The dark period of Indian history consists of only British rule over India, during which both Hindus and Muslims were mercilessly exploited. Historians of the Hindutva school, however, see the situation differently. According to them, the real struggle on the Indian subcontinent was and continues to be the struggle between Hinduism and Islam for the possession of the subcontinent. The 200-year British rule over India is viewed merely as an interlude in this 1,000-year-old struggle. In fact, the Hindutva school is even inclined to view British rule over India somewhat favorably as compared to Muslim rule. In other words, Hindu liberals take a milder view of Muslim rule over India and a more severe view of the period of British rule, while Hindutva historians take a more severe view of Muslim rule over India and a milder view of British rule.

V
Another point on which Hindu liberals and Hindu nationalists differ is on the assessment of Mahatma Gandhi’s (1869–1948) place in history. Hindu liberals, as well as Indian liberals more generally, glorify the achievement of Independence by India under the leadership of Gandhi by nonviolent means as a unique event in human history and therefore hold Gandhi in high esteem, an esteem shared by many in India and the world. Many Hindu nationalists, however, focus not on the Independence of India but on the Partition of India, and they regard Gandhi’s attitude toward the Muslims of India, which they dub as appeasement, responsible for it. They are particularly bitter that Gandhi continued this attitude even after the country had been partitioned and went on a fast to compel the now-independent government of India to release funds to Pakistan, even when the two countries were at war in Kashmir. The assassin of Gandhi, Nathuram Godse (1910–1949), specifically mentioned this as the factor that drove him to kill Gandhi. Many Hindu nationalists tend to exonerate him of his crime, and some even revere him. Indian liberals regularly highlight this fact, that the sympathies of the Hindu right lie with Godse rather than Gandhi.

The fact that the political Independence of India is attributed by many to the nonviolent movement led by Gandhi from around 1920 onward may create the impression that Hinduism is essentially a pacifist tradition. This is also supported by the fact that Hinduism usually comes across as a religion more concerned with piety than power. This version of events is questioned by the Hindutva school in two ways. First of all, they accuse liberal historiography of downplaying the role of the revolutionary movement in India, which advocated armed resistance to dislodge the British prior to the rise of Gandhi around 1920. Moreover, they also accuse liberal historiography of downplaying the role of Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) in the achievement of Indian Independence. Bose was a remarkable leader who was even elected as a president of the Indian National Congress, which was led by Gandhi. Bose made common cause with Germany and Japan to defeat the British. During World War II, he formed the Indian National Army (INA) from Indian soldiers of the British Army who had surrendered to Japan. This INA even engaged the British Army in combat in Assam. Hindutva historians ascribe the retreat of the British from India in 1947 to the threat posed by the formation of the INA by Bose. Once the INA was formed, the ghost of the Sepoy Mutiny once again began to stalk the British dream of an Indian empire. After its formation, the British could not trust the loyalty of Indian soldiers in the British army, on which the British control of India ultimately depended. Hindutva historians regard the view that the British left because of Gandhi’s nonviolent tactics as politically naïve.

This militant tradition is also seen by Hindutva historians as a continuation of the militant tradition found in Hinduism in former times. Hindutva historians prefer to see the entire rule of Muslims over India as a period of constant Hindu resistance to Muslim rule. Liberal historians dwell on the figures of Akbar (1542–1605) and Aurangzeb (1618–1707) during the period of Moghul rule over India from 1526 to 1858, while Hindutva historians dwell on the determined resistance during the rule of these Moghul emperors by Maharana Pratap (1540–1597) and Shivaji (d. 1680). The same holds true of the period of the Delhi Sultanate (ca. 1200 to 1526), during which there was fierce Rajput resistance to the establishment of Muslim rule over India.

VI
Caste is a complex subject, but it also figures in the discourse on the differences between Hinduism and Hindutva. The liberal historians emphasize the discriminatory aspects of caste and also tend to see it as a negative factor in the context of economic development. The Hindutva historians, while often deploring the discriminatory aspects of the caste system, also see it as a form of cellular social defense against the civilizational challenge posed by Muslim rule, which liberal historians tend to see largely in political and economic terms. The liberal historians also generally favor a Marxist analysis of the situation, which tends to downplay religious differences. Hindutva ideologues also raise an interesting but different question in the context of economic development. The magisterial work of economic historian Angus Maddison (1926–2010) has established that India led the world in the share of global output from the beginning of the Christian era until 1500.5 It lost out to China in 1600 but regained its position in 1700. Soon after, the British gained control of India, and by the time the British left in 1947, India’s share of global output was among the lowest. Conventional wisdom considers the caste system as the dominant form of social organization in India from the beginning of the Christian era until today and argues that it was under British rule that its hold was probably weakened because of the policies of the British government. If one continues to look upon the caste system as something baneful, then how does one reconcile such an assessment with the fact that, while the system was supposed to be dominant, India was one of the most productive countries in the world, while during British rule, when the hold of the caste system was reportedly weakened, the global share of India in output declined sharply?

In this context, the political role of the caste system also needs to be examined. When the Hindutva movement was in its early stages, its leadership was often criticized for being dominated by brahmins, especially from Maharashtra. Over the years, however, its leadership has changed, and its two primary figures in politics currently, namely Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Party President Amit Shah, are both non-brahmins: Modi actually comes from a caste classified just above the former untouchables. This provides an interesting contrast to the caste composition of Hindu liberals who, although they routinely deplore the caste system, mostly come from the upper castes.

Another issue on which Hindu liberals and followers of Hindutva differ is the cow issue. The very issue embarrasses Hindu liberals, who find it quite illiberal to bring up such a “communal” issue as a ban on beef eating. The followers of Hindutva, however, treat the matter very seriously, especially in those parts of India known irreverently as the cow belt: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan, and perhaps also Haryana. It remains a deeply emotional issue for Hindutva, which leaves the Hindu liberals cold.

There is then the issue of language. English continues to be the dominant language in India, although only about 12 percent of the population seems to use it. But the attitude of Hindi liberals and Hindu nationalists toward it differs. Hindu liberals consider it a positive factor in national life. They see it as a language that keeps India united and as an asset in an increasingly globalizing world in which science, technology, and international commerce play such a crucial role. Hindu nationalists may accept some of these arguments but basically feel that the dominance of English in public life is unjustified, and its role, at least in public life, must be replaced by Indian languages. The situation is complicated by the fact that India has twenty-two recognized regional languages, and although Hindi is spoken by just under half the country and widely understood in the rest, there has been fierce resistance to its “imposition” in the south of India. So the status quo, as it was at the time of Independence, continues to prevail. For Indian liberals, it is by and large a matter of celebration, while for the Hindu nationalists, it is a matter of sufferance. The difference in their attitudes may be described as follows: Indian liberals tend to regard someone who does not know English in India as undereducated, while Hindu nationalists regard an Indian in India who knows only English as undereducated.

VII
This list of differences is not exhaustive but rather illustrative. The two streams of thought also differ on their assessment of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru; on some aspects of the Constitution of India; on the nature of Indian secularism; on the appropriate economic policy for India; and religious conversion. I hope, however, that this essay suffices to convey a sense of the nature of the differences between those who take their stand on Hinduism and those who take their stand on Hindutva.

The broader context in which these differences occur is that of India’s interaction with the West, the dominant modern civilization from the sixteenth century onward globally. When two unevenly matched civilizations interact, the civilization at the receiving end (in this case, Indian as opposed to the dominant West) has basically three options: outright rejection, selective appropriation, and outright acceptance. Both Indian liberals and Hindu nationalists dismiss outright rejection and outright acceptance as viable options, and believe in selective appropriation. The difference between them is regarding the nature of the mix in which the Hindu nationalists want a greater measure of the “Hindu” element compared to the Indian liberals.6 According to the Hindu nationalists, this should be so because the Hindu civilization has been an enduring one, and the Hindu religion is subscribed to by close to 80 percent of the population of India. Hindu and Indian liberals fear that this attempt to enlarge the Hindu footprint in India may seriously upset the delicate equilibrium, prevailing in a multicultural, multireligious, and multilingual country like India.

[Emil El Zapato]

This exemplifies my above posts and they are critical to understanding the Great Satan (United States). I know no other way to state it to capture the essence:

Guess party affiliation:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffm06iZdfDc

[Wind]

Here's something anti-chaos, is this close to you in Texas? She's having her exhibition there soon.

Gk-Aa3o3G_o

[Emil El Zapato]

Here's something anti-chaos, is this close to you in Texas? She's having her exhibition there soon.

Gk-Aa3o3G_o

It's about 200 miles, near Austin TX. I'm going to see if my daughter wants to make time to go see it...thanks for the heads up, Wind.

When I showed my daughter, Akiane's early paintings, she was blown away, it was at my daughter's beginning that she saw what she was up against. My daughter never liked doing portraits. I hope that wasn't the reason. :(

[Emil El Zapato]

Hey Wind,

It looks like I'm the last one on board. The biggies are wigging out about AI. What are you thinking about this?


Hey Wind,

It looks like I'm the last one on board. The biggies are wigging out about AI. What are you thinking about this?

When I was studying Computer Science, I shied away from 'machine learning' because I felt I wasn't ready for it, nor would I ever be.

This is unbelievably crazy...they up to something or overestimating the Frankenstein's monster they think they have created.

[Emil El Zapato]

It just hit me...It's April Fool's day!

[Wind]

Hey Wind,

It looks like I'm the last one on board. The biggies are wigging out about AI. What are you thinking about this?

ChatGPT and AI art are just the beginning. Letting the "demon" out of the box? Eventually surely yes.

f3LIh4AFXAg
ZdA5V4K0d_o

[Wind]

Belgian man dies by suicide following exchanges with chatbot (https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/430098/belgian-man-commits-suicide-following-exchanges-with-chatgpt)

"A young Belgian man recently died by suicide after talking to a chatbot named ELIZA for several weeks, spurring calls for better protection of citizens and the need to raise awareness.

"Without these conversations with the chatbot, my husband would still be here," the man's widow has said, according to La Libre. She and her late husband were both in their thirties, lived a comfortable life and had two young children.

However, about two years ago, the first signs of trouble started to appear. The man became very eco-anxious and found refuge with ELIZA, the name given to a chatbot that uses GPT-J, an open-source artificial intelligence language model developed by EleutherAI. After six weeks of intensive exchanges, he took his own life.

Last week, the family spoke with Mathieu Michel, Secretary of State for Digitalisation, in charge of Administrative Simplification, Privacy and the Regulation of Buildings. "I am particularly struck by this family's tragedy. What has happened is a serious precedent that needs to be taken very seriously," he said on Tuesday.

He stressed that this case highlights that is it "essential to clearly define responsibilities."

"With the popularisation of ChatGPT, the general public has discovered the potential of artificial intelligence in our lives like never before. While the possibilities are endless, the danger of using it is also a reality that has to be considered."

Urgent steps to avoid tragedies

To avoid such a tragedy in the immediate future, he argued that it is essential to identify the nature of the responsibilities leading to this kind of event.

"Of course, we have yet to learn to live with algorithms, but under no circumstances should the use of any technology lead content publishers to shirk their own responsibilities," he noted.

OpenAI itself has admitted that ChatGPT can produce harmful and biased answers, adding that it hopes to mitigate the problem by gathering user feedback.

In the long term, Michel noted that it is essential to raise awareness of the impact of algorithms on people's lives "by enabling everyone to understand the nature of the content people come up against online."

Here, he referred to new technologies such as chatbots, but also deep fakes – a type of artificial intelligence which can create convincing images, audio and video hoaxes – which can test and warp people's perception of reality.

Michel added that citizens must also be adequately protected from certain applications of artificial intelligence that "pose a significant risk."

The European Union is looking to regulate the use of artificial intelligence with an AI Act, which it has been working on for the past two years. Michel has set up a working group to analyse the text currently being prepared by the EU to propose the necessary adjustments."

[Emil El Zapato]

Belgian man dies by suicide following exchanges with chatbot (https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/430098/belgian-man-commits-suicide-following-exchanges-with-chatgpt)

"A young Belgian man recently died by suicide after talking to a chatbot named ELIZA for several weeks, spurring calls for better protection of citizens and the need to raise awareness.

"Without these conversations with the chatbot, my husband would still be here," the man's widow has said, according to La Libre. She and her late husband were both in their thirties, lived a comfortable life and had two young children.

However, about two years ago, the first signs of trouble started to appear. The man became very eco-anxious and found refuge with ELIZA, the name given to a chatbot that uses GPT-J, an open-source artificial intelligence language model developed by EleutherAI. After six weeks of intensive exchanges, he took his own life.

Last week, the family spoke with Mathieu Michel, Secretary of State for Digitalisation, in charge of Administrative Simplification, Privacy and the Regulation of Buildings. "I am particularly struck by this family's tragedy. What has happened is a serious precedent that needs to be taken very seriously," he said on Tuesday.

He stressed that this case highlights that is it "essential to clearly define responsibilities."

"With the popularisation of ChatGPT, the general public has discovered the potential of artificial intelligence in our lives like never before. While the possibilities are endless, the danger of using it is also a reality that has to be considered."

Urgent steps to avoid tragedies

To avoid such a tragedy in the immediate future, he argued that it is essential to identify the nature of the responsibilities leading to this kind of event.

"Of course, we have yet to learn to live with algorithms, but under no circumstances should the use of any technology lead content publishers to shirk their own responsibilities," he noted.

OpenAI itself has admitted that ChatGPT can produce harmful and biased answers, adding that it hopes to mitigate the problem by gathering user feedback.

In the long term, Michel noted that it is essential to raise awareness of the impact of algorithms on people's lives "by enabling everyone to understand the nature of the content people come up against online."

Here, he referred to new technologies such as chatbots, but also deep fakes – a type of artificial intelligence which can create convincing images, audio and video hoaxes – which can test and warp people's perception of reality.

Michel added that citizens must also be adequately protected from certain applications of artificial intelligence that "pose a significant risk."

The European Union is looking to regulate the use of artificial intelligence with an AI Act, which it has been working on for the past two years. Michel has set up a working group to analyse the text currently being prepared by the EU to propose the necessary adjustments."

that's pretty crazy, it is the manipulation of AI by the developers that is the real danger in my opinion, not the AI itself?

[Wind]

that's pretty crazy, it is the manipulation of AI by the developers that is the real danger in my opinion, not the AI itself?

Perhaps Aragorn could answer that better. AI is confined to it's own parameters created by humans.

You should be happy about this.

L6WhcEvLl0A

[Aragorn]

Perhaps Aragorn could answer that better. AI is confined to it's own parameters created by humans.

Well, it encompasses deep-learning, which basically means that it's gathering information from all kinds of sources — provided that it has access to them — and then statistically analyzes them for accuracy by comparing them in content.

But the key thing to keep in mind is that A.I. is not sentient — regardless of its own claims — and is only but a very sophisticated algorithm that's capable of adapting itself in order to optimize its efficiency. It does not think, it is not conscious, and it does not know right from wrong. It merely calculates, and it comes up with solutions in an opportunistic way, i.e. if something is not specifically disallowed, it will make use of all possible approaches to solving what it considers the problem to be.

And if the humans interacting with the A.I. aren't careful about properly formulating what exactly the problem is and/or what the desired result should look like, then the A.I. may come up with some very peculiar solutions — again, because it does not know right from wrong..

[Wind]

It does not think, it is not conscious, and it does not know right from wrong. It merely calculates, and it comes up with solutions in an opportunistic way, i.e. if something is not specifically disallowed, it will make use of all possible approaches to solving what it considers the problem to be. The A.I. may come up with some very peculiar solutions — again, because it does not know right from wrong..

It's as if you just described a psychopath, with the difference that a human psychopath would think and be conscious. :hmm:

[Aragorn]

It does not think, it is not conscious, and it does not know right from wrong. It merely calculates, and it comes up with solutions in an opportunistic way, i.e. if something is not specifically disallowed, it will make use of all possible approaches to solving what it considers the problem to be. The A.I. may come up with some very peculiar solutions — again, because it does not know right from wrong..

It's as if you just described a psychopath, with the difference that a human psychopath would think and be conscious. :hmm:

That is actually a very good way of looking at it, yes. :unsure:

[Emil El Zapato]

Conclusion: Donald Trump is an A.I.

I think I finally figured him out, but the law will have gotten to him before he is able to complete the processing of his algorithm.

If the U.S., as an independent social construct with a somnambulistic but semi sentient consciousness, is to resolve its existential dilemmas it has to be destroyed from within. As Carl Jung would say the only way to the light of healthy awareness is through the destruction of the shadown self. Trump, the deep fake is embarked on that mission. His unconscious algorithmic processor is instructing him to destroy everything in order to facilitate a crossing of that barrier to enlightenment, for the sake of the U.S. only, of course.

He really is a self-sacrificing hero. And only now have I realized what so many have realized before me. He ain't criminal, he's my hero, nay, he's our savior.

[Aragorn]

Conclusion: Donald Trump is an A.I.

Nah, A.I.s are sophisticated and capable of solving complex problems. The only complex thing Donald Trump is capable of is combing what's left of his hair in a very convoluted way so that it completely masks his baldness. :p


I think I finally figured him out, but the law will have gotten to him before he is able to complete the processing of his algorithm.

If the U.S., as an independent social construct with a somnambulistic but semi sentient consciousness, is to resolve its existential dilemmas it has to be destroyed from within. As Carl Jung would say the only way to the light of healthy awareness is through the destruction of the shadown self. Trump, the deep fake is embarked on that mission. His unconscious algorithmic processor is instructing him to destroy everything in order to facilitate a crossing of that barrier to enlightenment, for the sake of the U.S. only, of course.

He really is a self-sacrificing hero. And only now have I realized what so many have realized before me. He ain't criminal, he's my hero, nay, he's our savior.

Who are you and what have you done with Chuckie? :belief:

[Wind]

The only complex thing Donald Trump is capable of is combing what's left of his hair in a very convoluted way so that it completely masks his baldness. :p

https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9b4fefbc1a467102ef8fae7d1869d941-lq

Trump arrest pictured in AI art (https://thechainsaw.com/nft/nft-art/ai-trump-arrest-heres-how-to-tell-fake-putin-xi/)

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/03/21/17/68950869-11886195-image-a-1_1679418950563.jpg

https://thechainsaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/trump-reading.jpeg

https://thechainsaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/trump-ai-pics.jpg

[Octopus Garden]

Here's something anti-chaos, is this close to you in Texas? She's having her exhibition there soon.

Gk-Aa3o3G_o

There's something unbelievable about this story. They went from a shack, without a kitchen, in Illinois somewhere, to a multi million dollar Frank Lloyd Wright mansion in Missouri, within the course of a year, (judging by the video footage of Akainya taken in the shack and the new house) because her mother's business did well? Huh? Was she laundering drug money?

[Octopus Garden]

Conclusion: Donald Trump is an A.I.

I think I finally figured him out, but the law will have gotten to him before he is able to complete the processing of his algorithm.

If the U.S., as an independent social construct with a somnambulistic but semi sentient consciousness, is to resolve its existential dilemmas it has to be destroyed from within. As Carl Jung would say the only way to the light of healthy awareness is through the destruction of the shadown self. Trump, the deep fake is embarked on that mission. His unconscious algorithmic processor is instructing him to destroy everything in order to facilitate a crossing of that barrier to enlightenment, for the sake of the U.S. only, of course.

He really is a self-sacrificing hero. And only now have I realized what so many have realized before me. He ain't criminal, he's my hero, nay, he's our savior.

Brilliant! Think you're onto something there.

[Wind]

Huh? Was she laundering drug money?

https://media.tenor.com/tVLoJGjwycgAAAAC/the-office-stanley.gif

[Wind]

Akiane

LIFE AND FAMILY


Born on July 9th, 1994 in a shack on the edge of a cornfield in Mt. Morris, Illinois, USA.

Heritage: Lithuanian, Jewish, Danish, Russian, Polish, French, Hungarian and Chinese. Mother: pedagogue, lecturer, counsellor and writer. Father: hospital dietary director, chef and cooking instructor.

The third of five children, Akiane regards her four precocious brothers as her best friends. “I grew up without any close friends, extended family or relatives.

While my oldest brothers helped my art journey, my youngest brothers slowed it down. But it’s my youngest brothers who’ve kept me grounded.”

At four began expressing her complex visions through drawing utilizing whatever medium was found on hand: candles, fruits, vegetables, charcoal or pencils.

At six began experimenting with color pastels, and at seven with acrylic paints.

At eight completed her first five-foot long oil paintings mastering realism and holding her first solo art exhibits.

At nine was discovered and featured by Oprah Winfrey.

At ten her first book “Akiane: her life, her art, her poetry” was published by Harper-Collins-Thomas Nelson, and her unique story rapidly circled the whole world.

“Only when we are filled with light we cannot live unnoticed.”

HER LIFE STORY & ENCOUNTER;

In 1994 our family was living in a dilapidated shack on the edge of a corn field, not too far from a huge nuclear power plant. My mother delivered me just like my older two brothers at home, underwater, by herself, without a midwife’s or doctor’s assistance. When I was born my father got suddenly very ill and nearly died, most probably from toxins in our well water and pesticides that were sprayed over our house by the crop planes. We had no kitchen, barely any furniture, except for one mattress, one chair, one small bookshelf, a few hand-made books, three pots and two iron cast pans on a portable burner. Large ugly holes and paint spots were all over the cracked plywood. The unfinished drywalls with deep cracks were our only decorations. We often washed dishes in a utility sink in our basement that was perpetually flooded.

My mother used to walk with us in our rural community in hopes of finding friends for us, but one door after another got shut in front of us. Once she even called the whole town of three thousand people and invited them to our home, but nobody came. The neighborhood we lived was rather unwelcoming: one neighbor threatened to assault us if we did not attend his church, another tried shooting our dog, another was murdered, yet another purposefully used to burn trash next to our shack causing fires we were forced to extinguish. One day in the midst of another fire alert my mother and I fell off steep run-down stairs. To this day I have a scar on my forehead from that fall.

Since my Dad’s health began rapidly declining, my mother got us a collapsible ladder to climb, and, while we played in the same tiny room, right beside us, she started a home business without any money in order to support our family. She involved all of us in her new sales endeavor: carrying me on her back in two feet high snow she walked door to door in different subdivisions and different towns selling my favorite snack—edible algae.

Within two years the business grew, and we moved into a massive ten thousand square feet Frank Lloyd mansion in Rolla, Missouri. Some of my best memories came from those four years of living there: we swam in a huge indoor pool, rode scooters along endless corridors and fished in our small lake. We loved weaving dandelion wreaths, growing butterflies from cocoons, and chasing our gigantic Newfoundland dog across the golf course hills.

Even though our library expanded to twenty thousand books I was never drawn to read. I liked actual living experiences. And since I was growing up without any relatives, what I enjoyed the most was spending time with my family. My older brothers were my best mentors and playmates, and my parents— my best role models: they always made light out of the most challenging situations. During tough times they would laugh at themselves, perform comedy skits, draw caricatures, or just tickle each other.

As soon as my father’s health improved my mother stunned everyone by suddenly quitting the business and putting our house on the market. She wanted to spend more time with us, especially me, as I needed lots of attention and guidance. Had she not made that decision, nobody would have noticed either my first shared dreams or my artistic inclinations, and without her daily support I would never have become the artist that I am today.

We did lose our library, our house, our furniture, our new playgrounds, and we did find ourselves on the edge of bankruptcy, but we gained much more—now we had our mother educating us full time. I loved her attention: she listened to me sometimes for hours at a time about the smallest details I remembered from my spectacular dreams and visions of the future and other worlds. She was the only one who believed that what I was describing was not the fabrication of my fantasies, but my real experiences, and she meticulously recorded everything in her journal.

ENCOUNTER CONT'D

Just like theoretical mathematicians and quantum physicists who live with another perception of the world, a separately developed sense that most of us are oblivious to, I thought I, too, possessed yet another sense, a precise and clear blueprint of the universe. Looking back at my spiritual experiences there were many unexplained manifestations, however, no other event had impacted my family as much as a baffling phenomenon witnessed one rainy spring day by so many different people when I was five, I disappeared.

Hundreds of vehicles in our small town were stopped for inspection, and my photograph was distributed throughout all local dispatches. I was able to see exactly how many police officers, state troopers, firemen, search dogs and neighbors were looking for me because of a suspected kidnapping, however nobody could see me. That’s right. Nobody. It was as if, temporarily, I was off a radar. Undetectable. I remember splitting into a myriad fragments, hundreds upon hundreds of eyes that could see in all directions and participate in many imperative planetary and extra-planetary proceedings all at the same time. Then, after many long hours, I reappeared in the midst of numerous eye-witnesses, right by the windows in the crescent shaped corridor of our house. Neither my family, nor the officers, nor I could comprehend what had really happened, nor did we discuss it any more as it carried rather distressing and inexplicable association. The only reminder of that haunting day is the stuffed Smokey bear that the police officers gave me.

After that incidence my sketches, now in color oil pastels, were on every possible flat surface of the mansion. My mother kept on guiding me to use the paper, but the paper was just too small for me. I needed much larger spaces. She was incredibly forgiving for my destructive artistic explosions and never reprimanded me for messing up the walls, the floors, the carpets, the tables, the windows, or the clothes even during the realtors’ house showings. For some reason, I did not value my paper sketches and used to throw them in a garbage. Had my mother not persistently salvaged them, none of my earlier works would be here today.

After my Dad got laid off we decided to move again, this time to Northern Idaho, the location that had been revealed in one of my visions. We continued caring for our sick Ilia, but my life changed into an unexpected direction. My mother once again started reminding me of my gifts, and before long her catchy enthusiasm revived my passion for art: my vivid visions gradually returned, and so did my dedication to art: I started getting up earlier and earlier in the morning to paint, working on larger and larger canvases, and with more and more diverse mediums.

I asked my mother to take me to the farms to sketch animals and to the stores to find human models. I remember after my first oil painting my mother gave me a big hug and declared, “Akiane, this is a masterpiece. If you do nothing more in your life, you’ve already left a legacy!” Her support was more than what I could ask for, and she gave everything she had not only to me, but to all her children and to all the people around her. She never asked anything in return.

Yet despite my mother’s complete acceptance and backing, there was one distressing predicament. She was the only one who appreciated my work. There was absolutely nobody else who recognized my budding talent. And when my mother suggested showing my art to others there was an overwhelming protest from the rest of my family. On one hand, they wholeheartedly wanted to protect me from the public eye, but, on the other hand, they could not see anything remarkable in my paintings.

After months of heated tension and negotiations my mother and I invited local people to our house just to see their response, but what we encountered was a complete indifference and cynicism. Nobody seemed to like my art. A few visitors suggested even burning all my paintings and writings. My mother did not give up. She continued bringing more and more art fans, more and more art experts, but time and again, they all saw the same: nothing out of the ordinary. My mother continued writing letters to various sponsors, organizations, agents and media in hopes that someone could see what she did. But no one shared her excitement.

Realizing that nobody, except for my mother, cherished my work, I became more and more disillusioned. One time I threw my painting in the rain outside. And as it was landing into the puddle someone caught it. Just in time. It was my mother. Out of breath she shared something, “Last night I had a strange dream. I saw thousands of people waiting for your art. The line stretched all the way to the horizon.” I wanted to believe her, to believe in my own insights of the future and to believe that I could paint something inspirational, but I was becoming more and more discouraged by apathetic and malicious reactions from virtually everyone around me.

But my mother did not give up. She kept on showering me with compliments and affection and encouraged me to persevere, to paint and to ignore all the skeptics. So spending the last savings we had on paints I tried painting again. Half-heartedly. Hesitantly. Gradually. One painting at a time. There was nobody else who was waiting for my new brushstrokes or my new visions, except for my universe and my mother, so I practiced and worked without any expectations, without any need for approval or recognition, and without any knowing what was next. I began noticing ordinary life in an extraordinary world, and extraordinary life in an ordinary world.

END OF STRUGGLES & START OF BREAKTHROUGH;

I received an unexpected invitation to fly to Chicago. To be a guest at the Oprah show. In a flash, my world changed, and everyone including my family and my acquaintances suddenly saw what my mother had seen all along. It was as if someone dissipated the fog and unveiled the scene to be discernible more clearly.

Shortly after, I was observing an endless line in a museum. Around two thousand people were waiting to see art. It took me a while to comprehend that they all came to see MY art. And it was also the day I grasped the meaning of vision, love and perseverance, appreciating my mother as my main compass navigating me throughout all the tumultuous storms of my intense art voyage.

Over my teenage years after my fourth brother was born we circled the world together through thirty countries and living in three continents, embarking upon reaching out to others who also needed guidance and inspiration. We counseled families about arts, relationships, cultures, ingenuity, and holistic education.

We collaborated in harmonizing diverse secular and spiritual groups for peaceful communication and conflict resolution and visited hundreds of schools around the globe. Our ideas helped many organizations and families shake off mediocrity and maximize their unlimited potential, and, in some cases, our insights caused tidal waves of immense pedagogical changes. One of the most significant heart projects of ours became global unity through literary, film, performing and fine arts and helping other aspiring and established artists, young and old, from all over the world to reach their dreams, because in order for our dreams to come true just one person is needed. Just one person who can believe and support our gifts and our mission. Just as it happened to me."

Wm9BGxpf0hU

[Emil El Zapato]

There's something unbelievable about this story. They went from a shack, without a kitchen, in Illinois somewhere, to a multi million dollar Frank Lloyd Wright mansion in Missouri, within the course of a year, (judging by the video footage of Akainya taken in the shack and the new house) because her mother's business did well? Huh? Was she laundering drug money?

A gift from God, OG. My daughter and I may go see her Austin Texas show which starts tomorrow and runs through Saturday. I noticed that Akiane's art didn't change dramatically past the age of 16. A child prodigy Indigo child. I checked the price for one of her works and it was going for $25,000.

When I was in college, I was forced (required) to take an art class. It was an interesting experience in a number of ways. I ended up with an art partner that happened to be a Miss New Mexico. She helped me retain my dignity as I am a pitiful artist, but in any case the class took a field trip to the art galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was partnered up with a gay dude for the night stay, but I don't think anybody knew that. He was actually from a farm town background. I guess a brokeback mountain type in real life. So the punchline I saw paintings going for 250,000 and up. It was crazy the kind of money generated by art.

[Emil El Zapato]

Nah, A.I.s are sophisticated and capable of solving complex problems. The only complex thing Donald Trump is capable of is combing what's left of his hair in a very convoluted way so that it completely masks his baldness. :p



Who are you and what have you done with Chuckie? :belief:

Life is crazy and so am I.

[Emil El Zapato]

"Dear and Glorious Physician", Taylor Caldwell:

"The gods", said Keptah, wryly, "are still jealous of their wisdom. It is Promethean fire, and when it burns in any man the gods punish him, but his fellows punish him more. It has also been said that you cannot teach a man anything; you can only assist him in finding it within himself. If he has no mind, then all your exhortations, all your lessons, all you attempt to do to improve his environment, all your sacrifices and your ideals will not stir him from his beasthood. For your presumption that he has a mind because he has the shape of a man he will turn and rend you. And I find that is just retribution."

[Emil El Zapato]

Beware of A.I. generated scames:

I very nearly lost 10,000 dollars yesterday due to a scam using my older brother's A.I. generated voice. It was close, very close to working on me. Beware! The monster has arrived!

[Aragorn]

Beware of A.I. generated scames:

I very nearly lost 10,000 dollars yesterday due to a scam using my older brother's A.I. generated voice. It was close, very close to working on me. Beware! The monster has arrived!

Yep, I got an A.I.-driven phishing email in my inbox two weeks ago, and I read about the scams on Slashdot. :hmm:

Whatever new technology gets developed, you can rest assured that the bad guys are going to be adding it to their arsenal, and A.I. is no exception to that rule. :unsure:

[Emil El Zapato]

Yep, I got an A.I.-driven phishing email in my inbox two weeks ago, and I read about the scams on Slashdot. :hmm:

Whatever new technology gets developed, you can rest assured that the bad guys are going to be adding it to their arsenal, and A.I. is no exception to that rule. :unsure:

It was an embarrassing situation for me. But damn, it was a professional scam. They will never have a chance like that again. I should have changed my email address and phone number years ago, but likely not even that would really help.

[Wind]

Once upon a time there was homo sapiens.

9x7FGbW3IVc

[modwiz]

Once upon a time there was homo sapiens.

9x7FGbW3IVc

Yeah, the male side of things.

Too bad they are needed.

Cleaning up their mindless and insecure aggressions would make them likable.

[Emil El Zapato]

"Lucanus, you will remember that the prophecy of the Messias has seeped into all the religions of the world, and not only in the Scriptures of the Jews. God endowed every man everywhere with the dim knowledge of His coming among men. The soul has its knowledge beyond the sterile reasoning of the mind. It has its instincts as the body has its instincts."

Happy Easter all, and yes, no profanities are necessary.

For me, to betray my faith, is to betray my heritage.

[Wind]

Happy Easter and enjoy the chocolate eggs! I know I sure have and will. I'm sure you'll enjoy this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYX9mkdLIyE) movie too, Chuck.

https://www.digitalmomblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/jesus-happy-easter-meme.jpg

[Emil El Zapato]

Happy Easter and enjoy the chocolate eggs! I know I sure have and will. I'm sure you'll enjoy this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYX9mkdLIyE) movie too, Chuck.

https://www.digitalmomblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/jesus-happy-easter-meme.jpg

lol, you pagan!

[Wind]

Paganism was first here then Christianity came along, Jesus and the Chocolate bunny made a deal.

[Aragorn]

Paganism was first here then Christianity came along, Jesus and the Chocolate bunny made a deal.

Santa was in on it too. :p

[Wind]

Santa was in on it too. :p

He had some issues to deal with the Easter Bunny though.

7uZt2guYZN4

[Emil El Zapato]

He had some issues to deal with the Easter Bunny though.

7uZt2guYZN4

I knew the bunny would take him, that thing is big and scary. And Santa is over the hill, he should have retired long ago. I'd like to see the bunny and Chuckie Cheese go at it. That might be one for the ages.

Jesus movies are always good, I will enjoy it. :)

[Emil El Zapato]

From my niece's son: He's a pretty good graphic artist, I don't know if this is original or not.

https://scontent-hou1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/340495396_754711879573784_5955487923978589523_n.jp g?_nc_cat=104&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5b7eaf&_nc_ohc=hG5CMQJrcbMAX_NtKdn&_nc_ht=scontent-hou1-1.xx&oh=00_AfCSIKcTVb7YTJTGeLKnQ3JK2Tl3InaRZI_cCwCBnm82 Kg&oe=64382F4A

[Wind]

He must have used a meme generator for that.

[Aragorn]

Is anyone really surprised? (https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/) :facepalm:

[Wind]

https://media.makeameme.org/created/dont-wanna-be-983de3b899.jpg

[Aragorn]

https://media.makeameme.org/created/dont-wanna-be-983de3b899.jpg


I'm afraid it's already too late for that, Donny. :p Besides, you love idiots. They're the ones who voted you in office and stormed the Capitol for you. You wouldn't be anywhere today if it weren't for their support.:p

:onthequite:

[Emil El Zapato]

Is anyone really surprised? (https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/) :facepalm:

Not that I disagree but this is a stupid article. One researcher must be suffering from the reverse Flynn effect as she claimed an emphasis on STEM education was causing things. STEM focuses on mathematics and science and would if anything increase scores. I would be more inclined to think that the focus on image creating tech devices such as smart phones would be more likely to decrease 'classic' intelligence scores and increase spatial reasoning. There are a number of intelligence factors necessary to grok the virtual world that are directly related. And Fox news would be deleterious to logic and verbal reasoning. Project Avalon would also have a very bad effect on logic.

[Emil El Zapato]

Has anyone seen a photo of Deja Taylor...ANYWHERE on the web? Where are all the alternate sources of news?

[Wind]

In regard to modern capitalism especially in the US, I saw an interesting comment in Youtube:

"Capitalism’s insatiable appetite for cheap and productive labor has given rise to an entire society consumed with self-doubt and anxiety. We’ve been conditioned to believe we’re replaceable, and even disposable, like everything else in our consumer throwaway culture. Traditional “mental health” only offers coping strategies. This isn’t good enough. As long as we have an economic system driven by the ruthless exploitation of people and planet, we will continue to experience violence in all it’s myriad of forms including racism, sexism and depression caused by self-doubt and anxiety. Karl Marx predicted that the natural trajectory of capitalism is alienation from nature, community, work and self. We've arrived."

yynYFEp8H6w
30HeJvE9KCg

Please tell me there isn't something wrong with this picture.

"In the past few years, the richest 1% of the world have acquired nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99%.

While Elon Musk paid a true tax rate of about 3% for years, a rice trader in Uganda paid 40%. She makes US$80 each month -- and Musk is worth US$180 BILLION.

There is one clear way to help address this gap -- we must Tax the Rich. And now is our chance. US President Biden just called for a historic billionaires tax, and with enough public pressure (https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/tax_the_rich_loc/), he could champion the idea at an upcoming meeting of world leaders.

A wealth tax of up to 5% on the ultra-rich could raise enough money to lift 2 billion people out of poverty!"

MY-5HKkGIIs

[Emil El Zapato]

In regard to modern capitalism especially in the US, I saw an interesting comment in Youtube:

"Capitalism’s insatiable appetite for cheap and productive labor has given rise to an entire society consumed with self-doubt and anxiety. We’ve been conditioned to believe we’re replaceable, and even disposable, like everything else in our consumer throwaway culture. Traditional “mental health” only offers coping strategies. This isn’t good enough. As long as we have an economic system driven by the ruthless exploitation of people and planet, we will continue to experience violence in all it’s myriad of forms including racism, sexism and depression caused by self-doubt and anxiety. Karl Marx predicted that the natural trajectory of capitalism is alienation from nature, community, work and self. We've arrived."

Please tell me there isn't something wrong with this picture.

"In the past few years, the richest 1% of the world have acquired nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99%.

While Elon Musk paid a true tax rate of about 3% for years, a rice trader in Uganda paid 40%. She makes US$80 each month -- and Musk is worth US$180 BILLION.

There is one clear way to help address this gap -- we must Tax the Rich. And now is our chance. US President Biden just called for a historic billionaires tax, and with enough public pressure (https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/tax_the_rich_loc/), he could champion the idea at an upcoming meeting of world leaders.

A wealth tax of up to 5% on the ultra-rich could raise enough money to lift 2 billion people out of poverty!"


Amen, Marx was on the mark. Art: my daughter intends trading her art for goods and favors. I always refer to M. KIng Hubbert who 100 years ago envisioned value placed on human energy expenditure. When I presented that idea to co-workers (engineers) they laughed at me. <sigh>

I've worked the assembly line process (for years). It is literally a living hell.

Taxes threaten the psyche of the super wealthy and when threatened the rich act to protect themselves from existential crises...meaning they move the economy to generate more wealth and everyone profits.

[Emil El Zapato]

Went looking at PA today...gawd those people are stupid, but they intend to save the world... lol

[Aragorn]

Went looking at PA today...gawd those people are stupid, but they intend to save the world... lol

Not the world. Just their own little island. ;)

[Emil El Zapato]

yeah, I can see that. :)

[Diabolical Boids]

Went looking at PA today...gawd those people are stupid, but they intend to save the world... lol

Resisting urge to go and look at PA today. Post operative boredom making temptation even greater.

(Covers eyes with hands. )

Okay What stupid things are they doing?

[Emil El Zapato]

Resisting urge to go and look at PA today. Post operative boredom making temptation even greater.

(Covers eyes with hands. )

Okay What stupid things are they doing?

You had surgery? I hope all is well. They are just typically jabbering nonsense and thinking how profound they are. Delusional would be a good descriptive term. :)

[Diabolical Boids]

You had surgery? I hope all is well. They are just typically jabbering nonsense and thinking how profound they are. Delusional would be a good descriptive term. :)


I did have an operation or rather a robot operated on me which sounds weird even now. I think I did anyway I have my suspicions because I just closed my eyes a second and when I opened them again, I was loopy and stoned out of my mind and feeling no pain so I kept asking the nursing staff in the recovery room when I was going to have my operation so I probably shouldn't be laughing at other people's stupidity.:rolleyes:

[Emil El Zapato]

I did have an operation or rather a robot operated on me which sounds weird even now. I think I did anyway I have my suspicions because I just closed my eyes a second and when I opened them again, I was loopy and stoned out of my mind and feeling no pain so I kept asking the nursing staff in the recovery room when I was going to have my operation so I probably shouldn't be laughing at other people's stupidity.:rolleyes:

recently, i had a procedure where i was knocked out. I didn't say a word until i was conscious enough to know where i was at and then what time I was at. When the post op nurse brought me my clothes, I remarked, "I was hoping I would get a chance to sport my new underwear. She blandly remarked back, "well, you're sporting them". I laughed and she walked away without batting an eyelash. :)

[Wind]

KH-ZuQjT8o4

[Emil El Zapato]

I walked downstairs after taking a shower and the clock said 11:11. I walked into my bedroom and the clock set on Eastern Standard Time said 12:12. It precipitated a very deep philosophical thought.

Who lived at 1313 Mockingbird Lane? No cheating!

[Emil El Zapato]

I walked downstairs after taking a shower and the clock said 11:11. I walked into my bedroom and the clock set on Eastern Standard Time said 12:12. It precipitated a very deep philosophical thought.

Who lived at 1313 Mockingbird Lane? No cheating!

The Munsters!

[Octopus Garden]

Santa was in on it too. :p

Santa has his claus into everything.

[Octopus Garden]

I heard the other day that one of the ways billionaires get away with paying no or little tax is by taking out bank loans for income. They use their properties and company shares as collateral. You don't pay taxes on loans, obviously. And as they likely take the loan out and pay it back over the course of a year, the interest rates would be very low...much less than what they should be paying in tax.

They are such complete a##holes.

[Emil El Zapato]

I heard the other day that one of the ways billionaires get away with paying no or little tax is by taking out bank loans for income. They use their properties and company shares as collateral. You don't pay taxes on loans, obviously. And as they likely take the loan out and pay it back over the course of a year, the interest rates would be very low...much less than what they should be paying in tax.

They are such complete a##holes.

They only way for the little people to get theirs is to cheat like hell. One of the things that many overlook is that lawmakers have for years provided tax breaks for themselves. The side effect is that anyone can take advantage of them if the will is there, but as we know the spirit is weak.

[Octopus Garden]

I pay U.S. taxes, Chuckie, as I inherited my late husband's business, located in the U.S. I have an accountant who would never let me cheat. I would be too scared to anyway.

But I get what you're saying! I think too, this is why they didn't crack down on crypto immediately and why the SEC is still hemming and hawing about it. A lot of their campaign financing comes from drug money laundered through crypto, through exchanges.

I hope you're migraines are better today. I get coffee headaches when I quit all caffeine altogether. I love caffeine. It makes me happy, but keeps me awake at night. What a vicious circle, huh?

[Emil El Zapato]

I pay U.S. taxes, Chuckie, as I inherited my late husband's business, located in the U.S. I have an accountant who would never let me cheat. I would be too scared to anyway.

But I get what you're saying! I think too, this is why they didn't crack down on crypto immediately and why the SEC is still hemming and hawing about it. A lot of their campaign financing comes from drug money laundered through crypto, through exchanges.

I hope you're migraines are better today. I get coffee headaches when I quit all caffeine altogether. I love caffeine. It makes me happy, but keeps me awake at night. What a vicious circle, huh?

exactly about the migraines...Too much, not enough...migraine.

[Wind]

Sucker Carlson and Don Lemon-face have been canned. Balance has been restored in the Force for now?

25GHBXP1O3I

Also perhaps Sleepy Joe shouldn't run again. How about giving Marianne a chance? One can dream! :rolleyes:

8c1bhWN3NKE

[Emil El Zapato]

Sucker Carlson and Don Lemon-face have been canned. Balance has been restored in the Force for now?

Also perhaps Sleepy Joe shouldn't run again. How about giving Marianne a chance? One can dream! :rolleyes:

It is all disappointing to me. Fucker is gone but not forgotten, his ugly head will rise again. But perhaps his soul is not condemned.
Don Lemon has always had a persona that makes one want to dislike him. Perhaps just rewards.

As for Slo Joe, 80% of Demos would vote for him if he is the candidate. I remain neutral...

He's a good person that gets unjust criticism beyond that he is as old as the hills and twice as dusty.

[Diabolical Boids]

Sucker Carlson and Don Lemon-face have been canned. Balance has been restored in the Force for now?

25GHBXP1O3I

Also perhaps Sleepy Joe shouldn't run again. How about giving Marianne a chance? One can dream! :rolleyes:

Tucker is laughing all the way to the bank, and likely was less fired than 'freed' to run for office. Lemon has been warned repeatedly by CNN who desperately needs to recover some viewership, so I'm not sure what he's acting surprised about he's been complaining about being fired in advance in public for so long the law of attraction basically dictates it had to happen. I don't care enough to check in to see if he's played the race card about his firing or he wore it out while still on air.

RFK will be Biden's (who already stated he won't be debating which should be warning but never is) primary threat even thought he's crippled by his lack of extreme leftness, but his election has basically already been stolen. In spite all the rah rah and blah blah about having a woman in office, Williamson won't even be a footnote. It will be another old white man that everyone says they no longer want in office and you keep wondering how old white men end up in office when no one wants them there.

[Emil El Zapato]

Tucker is laughing all the way to the bank, and likely was less fired than 'freed' to run for office. Lemon has been warned repeatedly by CNN who desperately needs to recover some viewership, so I'm not sure what he's acting surprised about he's been complaining about being fired in advance in public for so long the law of attraction basically dictates it had to happen. I don't care enough to check in to see if he's played the race card about his firing or he wore it out while still on air.

RFK will be Biden's (who already stated he won't be debating which should be warning but never is) primary threat even thought he's crippled by his lack of extreme leftness, but his election has basically already been stolen. In spite all the rah rah and blah blah about having a woman in office, Williamson won't even be a footnote. It will be another old white man that everyone says they no longer want in office and you keep wondering how old white men end up in office when no one wants them there.

In the Hegelian Dialectic no one gets their way and everyone keeps bitching and most don't understand it. I do. :)

I would actually vote for Bernie Sanders this time (live and learn) The younger left wants him badly, the 30% stupid and crazy might vote for him in lieu of the Orange Jesus. RFK jr. might be nuts enough to get that 30% but I don't see me voting for him simply because he is more scatterbrained that Biden.

I considered whether or not I would vote for MW. I could but it would be in full knowledge that the right would never let that happen...even if they had to vote for Pence.

Many complained about how Sanders was screwed against Hillary (the right's she-devil). He might have been taken off guard the 1st time, but he had options the 2nd time and he by choice folded himself into the inevitable result of the American political Hegelian Dialectic (he could not win even if given a fair chance by the Demos and because the right would have palpitations resulting in the Orange One again).

3rd party candidates would be interesting...MW, Sanders, Pence, etc. All of the HD loser fallouts. DeSantis should not keep waiting and just go to hell now (His demonic presence serves no purpose, we already have the Orange AntiChrist and the False Profit.

[Diabolical Boids]

After two stolen elections it's not about NOT voting for Bernie Sanders. It's about learning that no matter how popular Sanders is, how many votes he gets, they are not going to let him into office anymore than they will let RFK in. And why isn't anyone content with the most popular president anyway?

And the fear porn about conservatives getting in office? Everyone can sleep easy that we will never see checks nor balances in this nation ever again. And the hatred over that sort of balance is not going to hurt conservatives, it's going to hurt the bearers of it.

Me. I'm looking for something less death culty than the right or left or politics.

[Emil El Zapato]

Same Hegelian Dialectic Boids. The left knows that they are vulnerable because of the right's concerted use of propaganda, memes, fake news, and the rest of the repertoire against Biden (it is brilliant if not inhuman in its use and effectiveness). Biden is perfectly capable of successfully navigating the Presidency, he has done so with impressive results for the last 3.x years. The left knows it, but he is vulnerable because of his age, not his mind, though the right has conflated the two together in usual masterful fashion. If they can tolerate a nutjob like Orange what's his name, they can tolerate slo Joe, if only he would declare his allegiance to the white race. That is all it takes to get the right all sexed up.

[Aragorn]

Many complained about how Sanders was screwed against Hillary (the right's she-devil). He might have been taken off guard the 1st time, but he had options the 2nd time and he by choice folded himself into the inevitable result of the American political Hegelian Dialectic (he could not win even if given a fair chance by the Demos and because the right would have palpitations resulting in the Orange One again).

You've got that wrong. Even the second time around, Bernie could never win because the DNC had agreed in advance that they were all going to vote against him, and when Bernie discovered the truth, he withdrew.

[Wind]

Tucker is laughing all the way to the bank, and likely was less fired than 'freed' to run for office.

Tucker has been earning 20 millions per year (https://twentytwowords.com/tucker-carlson-made-as-much-as-20-million-a-year-at-fox-news/) and can still have a large audience so it's not a bad deal for him.

Remember that he too was publicly kissing Trump's ass, but privately admitted hating him and called him (https://apnews.com/article/tucker-carlson-fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trump-5d6aed4bc7eb1f7a01702ebea86f37a1) a demonic force, a destroyer.


In spite all the rah rah and blah blah about having a woman in office, Williamson won't even be a footnote. It will be another old white man that everyone says they no longer want in office and you keep wondering how old white men end up in office when no one wants them there.

I think you are unfortunately right. Although I'd love to see Marianne winning and leading as she is compassionate, she's still just a fringe candidate who doesn't have enough support and mainstream media doesn't want to give her the attention. Sleepy Joe only won last time because Trump messed the Covid situation so badly. There's a real good chance that Trump will win again, especially if Desantis folds when he goes against him. Bernie cucked, bowed down and kissed the ring while claiming that Joe is a good friend of his. Politics as usual.

[Diabolical Boids]

Same Hegelian Dialectic Boids. The left knows that they are vulnerable because of the right's concerted use of propaganda, memes, fake news, and the rest of the repertoire against Biden (it is brilliant if not inhuman in its use and effectiveness). Biden is perfectly capable of successfully navigating the Presidency, he has done so with impressive results for the last 3.x years. The left knows it, but he is vulnerable because of his age, not his mind, though the right has conflated the two together in usual masterful fashion. If they can tolerate a nutjob like Orange what's his name, they can tolerate slo Joe, if only he would declare his allegiance to the white race. That is all it takes to get the right all sexed up.

Biden self admittedly cannot and will not do any sort of debate.

[Diabolical Boids]

Same Hegelian Dialectic Boids. The left knows that they are vulnerable because of the right's concerted use of propaganda, memes, fake news, and the rest of the repertoire against Biden (it is brilliant if not inhuman in its use and effectiveness). Biden is perfectly capable of successfully navigating the Presidency, he has done so with impressive results for the last 3.x years. The left knows it, but he is vulnerable because of his age, not his mind, though the right has conflated the two together in usual masterful fashion. If they can tolerate a nutjob like Orange what's his name, they can tolerate slo Joe, if only he would declare his allegiance to the white race. That is all it takes to get the right all sexed up.



The Democrats as a whole are less vulnerable than the fringe left that holds out for Biden. And you have summed up in two posts why the Bidenites are vulnerable.

And if people are that vulnerable, frightened and scared even holding both houses, the WH and the media there is nothing on earth that is going to make them secure.

[Emil El Zapato]

The Democrats as a whole are less vulnerable than the fringe left that holds out for Biden. And you have summed up in two posts why the Bidenites are vulnerable.

And if people are that vulnerable, frightened and scared even holding both houses, the WH and the media there is nothing on earth that is going to make them secure.

I can buy that.

[Emil El Zapato]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO5G6aNNdNI

My part of the world

[Diabolical Boids]

Now joined by more recent singular shootings of people who got shot for retrieving a ball from the neighbors yard, two shootings for accidentally knocking on the wrong door, and a shooting for turning into the wrong drive way and backing out again.

This isn't about guns though. That is about people becoming more fearful as more fear porn is dumped into the system. Fear leads to anger and then panic. Yet everyone is on this power trip where we have to keep the other side more afraid, if they are not actively mind psyching themselves into being more afraid, and mind psyching themeslves to be ever more offended. . This is the society we have built post 9/11. No one feels safe. No one is happy but everyone agreed it was the best thing to do to keep everyone safe. But no one is safe. Happy people don't do this to each other. People who are truly content and secure don't do this. So nonmatter how much we cry Rah Rah, Hurray for our Team, we can look at events like this and see that the Team really has done nothing but destroy as much as the team before it.

I will note that emotional safety does not lead to happiness. Ever.

[Diabolical Boids]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO5G6aNNdNI

My part of the world

Who applauded the idea that the perp and people like him should be deported for crimes and allowed re-entry repeatedly all in the name of diversity? Why do only white males have to stop being haters? Why is this dude's hate so much more sanitized than and moral? Why does the philosophy of "Crime isn't a big deal, diversity is a bigger deal," suddenly stop applying right now? Why is the crime suddenly a big deal after having so much leniency towards it? The people who think that mass unchecked entry and reentry into the nation is a good idea are people who don't get to weep, rail or even get to feel bad about this because up until this moment every movement of this guy was just a really good humane idea. And they will only make themselves look foolish by claiming this even happened because of the hate attitudes of those who want to take a harder stance on border control.

[Emil El Zapato]

Who applauded the idea that the perp and people like him should be deported for crimes and allowed re-entry repeatedly all in the name of diversity? Why do only white males have to stop being haters? Why is this dude's hate so much more sanitized than and moral? Why does the philosophy of "Crime isn't a big deal, diversity is a bigger deal," suddenly stop applying right now? Why is the crime suddenly a big deal after having so much leniency towards it? The people who think that mass unchecked entry and reentry into the nation is a good idea are people who don't get to weep, rail or even get to feel bad about this because up until this moment every movement of this guy was just a really good humane idea. And they will only make themselves look foolish by claiming this even happened because of the hate attitudes of those who want to take a harder stance on border control.

No one, I'm sure. This guy is a disturbed cold-blooded killer. He belongs in a cage and any sane observer would double down on that reality. No one advocates for such as this. The right will certainly pretend that the left does and it goes over pretty well and they will cite an example or two among the thousands that pose no risk. As one of my co-workers suggested once, put tanks on the banks or crocodiles in the river to solve the problem. I would bet dollars to donuts any change would be temporary.

The reality is historically documented for centuries. We all know it, save perhaps the exploitation that occurred in the 20th century. It is not a one-sided problem. It is the inhumanity of so many that makes it a bigger problem. I'll bet that the majority of those crossing the border had family here hundreds of years before, dare I say it, your ancestors took up root?

Further, past efforts have nearly negated the stream of Mexican border crossers, now they come from further south with many of the same problems as those earlier. It is a global problem and most all are unable to get past their animal instincts to solve it in a rational fashion. Perhaps it is the fate of man, some survive some die, some kill.

[Diabolical Boids]

No, I'm sure. This guy is a disturbed cold-blooded killer. He belongs in a cage and any sane observer would double down on that reality. No one advocates for such as this. The right will certainly pretend that the left does and it goes over pretty well and they will cite an example or two among the thousands that pose no risk. As one of my co-workers suggested once, put tanks on the banks or crocodiles in the river to solve the problem. I would bet dollars to donuts any change would be temporary.

The reality is historically documented for centuries. We all know it, save perhaps the exploitation that occurred in the 20th century. It is not a one-sided problem. It is the inhumanity of so many that makes it a bigger problem. I'll bet that the majority of those crossing the border had family here hundreds of years before, dare I say it, your ancestors took up root?

Further, past efforts have nearly negated the stream of Mexican border crossers, now they come from further south with many of the same problems as those earlier. It is a global problem and most all are unable to get past their animal instincts to solve it in a rational fashion. Perhaps it is the fate of man, some survive some die, some kill.

There are no solutions as long as the people who want to be in charge continue the way that leads to more mayhem and murder. The left has already concluded the Governor is the real criminal for referring to the gunman and the victim as illegal aliens. Some words are worse than five execution style deaths which shows just how unseriously people treat this. Suddenly its about white liberal tears at hearing some inhumane words which are actual legal definitions. If people cannot read some legal definitions without crying they need to have other jobs found for them, not positions of responsibility or power and especially not control over the lives of undocumented people.

Huff Post beat you to the 'blame the conservatives' punch. Is it a solution. No. It won't prevent further tragedies.

You are looking at immigration control from an emotional romanticized "When America was a Frontier" POV. Those people had ancestors here way before I did. Okay sure.

And their enemies were crossing the border and killing those ancestors too, hundreds of years ago.

Criminals creeping in unpopulated areas are not that much threat to a civilization that doesn't exist. And people were allowed to protect and defend themselves from criminal border creepers back then during the day of the ancestors in a way people are not allowed to today.

But it's not a frontier anymore and not hundreds of years ago. Because someone came up with a plan to prevent frontier wars and Wild West Deaths in the Southwest all of which existed before the US expanded into the West I might add, and it was called immigration control. The ancestors of these people were then documented and easier to protect and their enemies refused entry into the nation. Of course, that's before those people were exploited for political power by the folks in charge. So for a time there was a solution. It was so fine tuned you could make sure a wealthy Syrian doctor wasn't claiming asylum to get benefits that were intended for poor Syrian refugees.

Oh but the folks in charge said that had to go. All racist! All hate! That's why you see so many asylum seekers living the life of luxury. They got benefits that were targeted for people who actually needed asylum.

Oh but that was all racist! It bothered people who want to meddle and have control but don't actually have the mental coherence to provide actual provide a better solution. As long as an action is taken, no matter how unhelpful they can say they did something. The inability to see individual circumstances of the people crossing the border.


The folks in charge don't care about the safety of legal immigrants let alone illegals. Legal immigrant are just full of solutions for the immigration problems so that means the folks in charge harbor a secret resentment for them because they came here moral and lawful way. And they can get wasted, killed or stalked by illegals and its up to immigration control to protect them but immigration control isn't supposed to interfere with illegals because that's hate behavior and racism. And the people in charge thinks that is a solution. That's a control drama. That's pain body and projection right out of an Eckhart Tolle Book. And people involved in control dramas are stuck, stuck. stuck they cannot move forwards or backwards or come up with solutions. The drama, the murder, the death that is all the solution. That's where the gratification is found. For the folks in charge that's like something that happened on the news, not something they are directly responsible for.

No one can easily protect undocumented people nor undocumented criminals that's why we had immigration laws. They protect everyone! But immigration law is dry and reasonable it's not emotional, caring and passionate, it's not diversity, it doesn't make people feel special. It just solves the problem. How do you get around that? You can't. Now the folks in charge can only --surprise, surprise!--cry and blame which just stacks the deck for the next tragedy. It's the problem that is enchants them, that is what is most gratifying that is why nothing is ever fixed.

Ok so its all fixed now as the folks in charge call it. The the governor was blamed for something that had everything and nothing to do with the tragedy. They were illegal aliens and the real crime was saying so which goes to prove how much people care about those folks in the body bags. Zilch Zero. Who else now. Surely that can't be enough. Trump of course he must be blamed. Toss De Santis in there even though he has nothing to do with Texas immigration. Then the entirety of the conservative haters and those centrist Democrats that don't agree with open borders. Apparently all that blaming makes the folks in charge magically innocent!

Everyone who ever said we need better border control must be blamed so everyone can be blamed except for the people who made up this idiot way of going about things and are currently in charge of this mess. Of course how could anyone say they were responsible.

This is the best thing for the energy vampires since last weeks shootings.

[Emil El Zapato]

I'll show the root of the problem: There have been 163 mass shootings so far this year AND no one has huevos to choose what is best for the people.

We can put a spin on just about anything but the above is the bottom line.

[Diabolical Boids]

I'll show the root of the problem: There have been 163 mass shootings so far this year AND no one has huevos to choose what is best for the people.

We can put a spin on just about anything but the above is the bottom line.

Yeah well someone might lose their overpaid job where they don't have to think or do anything. For the Sheriff that was so terribly offended by Abbot's words I would like to know where his concern was when the victims called 911 five times and not a single officer showed up until it was too late. I note he hasn't put any reward money up. Only the hateful racist people have.

After crying about defunding the police for the last five years his own party has stripped him of the right to complain. If places like NYC don't have the resources to look after illegal immigrants what are those huge but empty of infrastructure border counties going to do to manage the rights and protections of illegals? I live in a county just like that. Little infrastructure, a big area and very little LEO. Deputies may be responding from 40 miles away. But our deputies go door to door to ensure we are armed because we are basically on our own. We know all our deputies, they aren't in ivory tower patrol cars and they know us. Fortunately we aren't near a big city run by fringe politics so we have low crime and its seldom of the violent variety. Weirdly its mostly women involved in violent crime around here.

No one else in the world thinks its an infringement of their rights that their government or public officials know they are a citizens or on a work visa. On the trajectory we have been on the last twenty years we can only expect more violence, more senseless stupid shit happening. And its no mistake that illegals are the most at risk and vulnerable. What they don't tell you its not that they are at the mercy of hater white men and neo Nazis but the government itself. Their deaths are a boon to political parties and that's why I call them a death cult. It's a dream come true for them when tragedies like this happen.

[Wind]

Just this past weekend I was talking about the US gun culture and mass shootings with my dad. I said that although I like guns I'm still somewhat glad we don't have a real gun culture here nor do I own any, not sure that I could although in my dreams I could be a collector. Anyways, the way we Europeans seem to see things are so very different compared to a lot of Americans, especially those living in the gun oriented states. I'm not saying one stance is wrong and the other is right, it's just very different. To Americans guns are almost considered as holy. Yet there is something very sick in the culture which causes insane people to go kill others and with guns it's very easy and rifles especially do nasty damage. Kids with heads blown off. So how do you solve a problem which infests the very culture itself?

Others fear that they will get shot, others fear that their guns will be taken away. We all know that guns won't be taken away, but is there actually any method to stop the madness in the culture? In a sane, normal culture people wouldn't go on just shooting each other all the time. In USA a mass shooting is another monday. Call me naive, but in any sane culture you wouldn't have to have guns for your safety. You could surely have them for sports and as collectors items, but not for harming other living beings. Is the culture so deranged?

[Diabolical Boids]

The state of TX is fortunate it allowed to investigate their deaths. Or that they didn't go missing entirely because there is no legal way they could be found without offending the fringe.

At one time immigration law, as dry and dispassionate as it was, meant that you could interview people coming in to make sure they didn't pose a threat to people who were already here. That happens alot especially if they are fleeing socialist fail states, political and religious wars, dictators or cartels. But we can't protect those people anymore. It would offend the people stalking them.

But as dry as the law was it was effective. But it had to be replaced by the emotionally arrested who think everything in existence is a leuche feast to gobbled like psychic vampires and must be laden with torrid emotions so the same can feed everywhere. I knew this was a reality when TV sets started showing up on gas pumps.

Celine syndrome. Named for that lady from PA who was so addicted to her own emotions she would self cannibalize right there in front of you for everyone to see and was unshockingly targeted for manipulation by Charles. If you remember that. Of all that happened that's what I remember the most. The self cannibalization. I never saw it before. Now that's all you see.


When the killer tornadoes went tearing through here the beginning of April, a huge greenhouse collapsed outside of town. It was a 20 acre greenhouse and employed only Canadians here on work visas and illegals from all over Mexico and Central America. The illegals live onsite but they can be found in town, at the churches, food pantries, outreach programs and at community events held for them during holidays etc. There's quite a lot of them for such a small town because the greenhouse provides a lot of work so we have a lot of illegals here for being such a small place. In addition to their state and federal benefits they are supported locally by members of the various hater societies as they are referred to. It's amazing how much time and resources are invested by these hater people towards the people they hate. It kind of makes you wonder why they do so much for people the MSM says they hate.

Anyway after the tornadoes ripped through everyone wanted to know if the illegals were okay. Because if don't you are a hater and if you do....well you are still a hater.

We can't ask or find out what happened to them because it infringes on their rights.

They get benefits but unless they are seeking asylum, they aren't very good benefits, and they are hard to actual receive when you don't have any documentation. So they get supplemental from the community. We can feed them, clothe them, provide them with holiday meals, church services, a place to socialize but we can't help them if they are lost, injured or displaced or find out if they are okay, hit by flying debris, laying dead in a field, have no place to live or stay at because that's not respecting their rights. To find out or inquire is too much like documenting and that's racist. Too much like treating them like normal humans instead of sacred cows to be exploited for political purpose. So it's not about documentation it's about the desire these people remain anonymous and untraceable and remain fringe citizens as much as possible. Why?

But people like to talk, and they will talk. About where they are from and where they been and as the term migrant implies there are patterns to their travel Patterns are traceable. All of which they are not supposed to talk about because it's construed as documenting. Who the hell told them that? Clearly the plan isn't for them to fit in because that's part of fitting in, talking about your past. No one comes to America without conveying why they came here, and from where and why. Americans can't resist an accent and always want to know where people are from and why they are here.

For some reason our southern border migrants aren't supposed to talk about themselves. They are coached at the border, and if they happen to be arrested before being turned loose. This is not the term they use, but at this conjecture in hate politics it's pretty easy to know when someone is talking about being prepped or groomed.


I can only imagine what goes through these people's heads. Especially here, Conservative Central. They are strangers in a strange land and have to rely on a political area and group they have been indoctrinated to believe hates them. But this is a favored state for illegals. Here among the haters, they are provided with stuff for their kids, extra food, clothing, translators, Church services, Sunday dinners, Holiday dinners, blankets, a place to socialize and be included in community events. It's a very popular state for illegals. Lots of them are Catholic and there's a strong Catholic presence here so I guess its way of connecting. It's hilarious the fringe shoved them into the arms of the moral majority (yes it still exists a little bit here) What can you do, people will follow the hand that feeds them than the empty face on tv blabbing on about the danger of words.

The Medicaid is better here than the federal programs and beats all other states combined and chances are even if they are undocumented, they will still make a decent wage. Not a legal wage. But better than California or NYC.

In answering my own question, wages are the number one reason the lunatic fringe want illegals to remain undocumented. They can blame it on the haters but they are perpetrating it even now under their rule.

It's like a blue state's dream of Medicaid made reality in a plain old boring red state of haters. And even the citizens here can get excellent Medicaid no questions asked, it's not just reserved for special interest groups.

What does the lunatic fringe offer them? A few self-righteous remarks about they don't have to fear people calling them some words they don't understand in English anyway. So hilarious and the hilarity is made even more hilarious because the fringe wants to be taken so seriously as do gooders when they are not doing anything but having a bunch of complex PTSD feelings.

It's a law now. They are now called undocumented noncitizens and if you say that to the illegals they will smile politely and shrug and look confused because they don't understand that term in English either. Hilarious. But it will translate. So you get an idea who interacts with these people on a face-to-face level and who don't. Who is in touch with reality as it were.

It never occurred to these hysterics that a term that illegals can't even understand could hardly offend them in the first place. That tells me they don't see or envision these people as people but more as faceless mass unrealized concept to self cannibalized over. Those are the sort of people who are currently crying about terminology as if it were somehow worse than their actual deaths of the people shot in Texas. That's self-evidential. That's a reaction to cover up a guilty conscience.

These people are so much brighter and authentic than their alleged lunatic fringe advocates. Immigration causes so many problems for this country but I'd trade every single lunatic fringe word whiner and replace them with the migrants that work in the area. They aren't crying and whining. The system fails them miserably but the communities they land in frequently don't. And they are very grateful and gracious for the help they receive. The are politer, more smiley, their kids are better behaved, they are pleasant and authentic.

These people KNOW what their advocates can't accept. They are illegals, there are words for the term illegal in every language. It's only offensive in America. They know they crossed the border illegally. They know they didn't seek asylum. Or protection. Or apply for a visa. They know they are illegals; they refer to themselves as such. In their language. They aren't offended by it. In English they don't even know what it means because so many of them do not speak common vernacular English let alone technical English. The lunatic fringe expects they will show up in these lands all prepared to be as offended and hating of this nation as the fringe is. And they aren't. They are pragmatic and hopeful and realistic.

Oh and the migrant kids who go to the local schools and have to explain to their parents why some kids use litter boxes in class. The parents can't believe it. They can't believe after enduring the filthy unsanitary conditions they endured arriving here that the lunatic fringe allows children to subject themselves to such unsanitary practices. It's very embarrassing to explain this to new people coming in nation. So in a real sense turning the tide against the lunacy of the fringe also rests with these people. They are going to bite the hand that never fed them in the first place.

The illegals of the criminal variety know they are criminals. They've been in jail, and prison. They have prison tats. They call themselves gangstas and run in chain gangs brought up from Mexico and further south. They aren't the least offended by being called illegals. Or criminals. They are proud of it. They don't cry if someone calls them a criminal. Someone in a high-rise in NYC does.

It's the lunatic fringe brought to tears over the terms. Terms that have nothing to do with them.

I've never been in a time where people care so little and are so disconnected from even the things, they insist they care about and wan so many accolades and tears shed for them for doing so little.

[Diabolical Boids]

Just this past weekend I was talking about the US gun culture and mass shootings with my dad. I said that although I like guns I'm still somewhat glad we don't have a real gun culture here nor do I own any, not sure that I could although in my dreams I could be a collector. Anyways, the way we Europeans seem to see things are so very different compared to a lot of Americans, especially those living in the gun oriented states. I'm not saying one stance is wrong and the other is right, it's just very different. To Americans guns are almost considered as holy. Yet there is something very sick in the culture which causes insane people to go kill others and with guns it's very easy and rifles especially do nasty damage. Kids with heads blown off. So how do you solve a problem which infests the very culture itself?

Others fear that they will get shot, others fear that their guns will be taken away. We all know that guns won't be taken away, but is there actually any method to stop the madness in the culture? In a sane, normal culture people wouldn't go on just shooting each other all the time. In USA a mass shooting is another monday. Call me naive, but in any sane culture you wouldn't have to have guns for your safety. You could surely have them for sports and as collectors items, but not for harming other living beings. Is the culture so deranged?

You are from Europe? If so then you were born into a culture and a civilization that existed for hundreds of years before your modern existence of now came along? I'm not sure where you are from so I'm guessing.

We are a young nation. We didn't exist 400 years ago like Europe did which was already civilized. We were still a wild frontier in some areas even in my lifetime and certainly in the time of my parents, grand parents and great grandparents. We just established civilization throughout the nation within the last 120 years.

We are a very new country. But we aren't the same people who initially settled here. I guess Europeans expect us to be more European than we are because it was Europe that colonized here. But even then, it wasn't just a single colonization it was England, France, Spain, and whoever planted a flag here. The melting pot and culture clash began early. Lots of Europeans are not really aware of the melting pot end of American history. It wasn't a concept designed for over immigration.

Early on in America, there was a lot of violence, a lot of unclear borders, frontier wars, a lot of lawlessness, and crime not to mention wild animals and a gun is how you protected yourself from the very beginning. The land was settled during peak immigration times about 120 years ago by Europeans so I can't say with all honesty that Americans are to blame entirely for it if I am being fair and impartial. Right after we got the Western violence under control we had another wave of millions of European Immigrants pouring in until after the WW2 and it finally subsided in the 60's. That wasn't that long ago.

Having all these culturally different people pouring in from the old worlds to the new had to have impacted us somehow. It went from a trickle to a tidal wave. A lot of recent immigrants to the US are super conservative and that doesn't fit well with all progressive plan for America. People are still having their old world traditions here and that doesn't sit well with the all progressive plan for America and creates tension. Someone turned up the heat in the melting pot and people can no longer deal with stress or tension because they are so disconnected, they immediately resort to being offended then on to the mindless hate and rage.

The deliberate assumption that because you were a shooter in a mass shooting you must be a conservative. Today's shooting sort of highlights what I mean. A lot of shooters have the progressive agenda which you can spot easily because it targets schools.

A lot of our immigrants have cultural differences long before they moved to America. That they chose their new home to be the battle ground for their old grievances contributes to the overall problem It's not just one thing, its lots of things and none of it really has anything to do with guns. It's foolish like blaming a knife or fork but blaming guns means we never have to look at the real problems and those problems are sourced in humans.

Now obviously we aren't a frontier like we were just a hundred years ago when there was danger everywhere. Now we are just told danger is everywhere, and sometimes that is true but the news and politics has everyone at each other's throats flaming the fires of fear. If people are not physically violent then they are emotionally violent and the people who are claiming that the hate must stop are usually the most hate filled. We have a mental health crisis in America. They like to call it diversity, and cultural expansion but its a mental health problem.

I live in a conservative area. An area of 2nd generation immigration especially German. It's not unusual for conservatives the people accused most of gun violence or for promoting a glamourous gun culture but its hip hop inner city gang culture that does that. So does Hollywood. This is where the least amount of it occurs. Because we are all armed. I live in a remote area meaning it's just empty cultivated farming land but there's no one nearby to help you if trouble should show up at your door and they are usually armed if they go through the bother of coming all the way out here. No one can hear if you are in trouble. You can run across a farmers field to get help but when the field is 2000 acres you can sort of see what I mean.

The deputy could be tied up clear on the other side of the county an hour away if you have to call the police. Law enforcement door knocks making sure we are armed because of this reason. The remoteness the distance, the response time. They rely on us to be self-reliant. In spite of the sparse population and remoteness, it's a good place for robberies. Lots of things that can be fenced quickly for cash in the cities like farm equipment, ATVs, mowers, saddles and guns.

You can die out here so some assbag can lift a few tires and that's all the value your life then had which amounts to a few pounds of rubber. Or you can value your life and respond with equal or greater force. Sometime that seems very unfashionable in the world today, like its self conceit or something. At the end of the day that's what sort of crisis we are in, no one values life anymore.

Or you can use a gun as a deterrent, which is usually why people get guns. Not to become sharp shooters but to deter.

People are learning not to go into cities, most of them are progressive run like Detroit and Chicago and gun crime in rampant and the people are violent it doesn't matter what race they are. City people are violent callous race on their own in America regardless of their color or genetics. For all their laws and bans on guns they haven't addressed the actual issue. Mental health and violence mixed with debt and deliberately created poverty, bad local economies, urban decay, and no jobs.

Guns are just an easy way to hurt who you want to hurt. You can ban them but the violence and mental health issues will remain and the hurt will come some other way. Then people will be beaten, robbed, run over by cars, blown up. You see that happening everyday too but it doesn't have the impact that a mass shooting does so it doesn't make it past the local news.

But the more violent and unreasonable people get the more people will carry weapons. The more that lawlessness is encouraged by illegal border crossings. So we are creating more of a melting pot when even the old one was becoming unmanageable.

You were probably not born into a melting pot? I'm not sure if there's another melting pot nation in the world to compare America to. America might have been different if it had remained predominately a European place. It's not like I'm trying to highlight ignorance but its just things that are typically not taken into consideration. America's problems always seem to swamp its history.

Having so many people from so many places all over the globe wanting their culture to be dominate or recognized instead of melting or blending it as intended creates a lot of tensions. But it was manageable until politics started whispering in people's ears. I blame politics for most of the violence. They delight in these shootings. Normal people regardless if they have guns or not do not. These shootings advance political agendas. You will notice that in all the articles emerging about just this shooting. Before any sentiments about the tragedies can be expressed the politicians are on the air waves attacking the other side, defending their position and the victims become incidental and the hatred and emotional violence associated to these articles is mind blowing. It's addictive that's all I can say. The why is a discussion for another day.

It would sicken you to know how much these events serve politics and for that reason the violence will always be stirred. The mental illness dismissed as people hating diversity. And the people who lead the charge either are really very ignorant about America or deliberately obfuscate for the sake of power. They act like America is old World style Europe with the prejudices of our forebears but its not but that is how they imagine us to be like they don't live here and maybe the people doing that don't live here either.

People feel like they are not well represented which is hard to do when literally everyone on the planet is represented here in some way or another. There's so many different people here from everywhere and not enough stage for them anymore. For that reason its stupid to call us a racist nation. Every flippin race on the planet is here.

We were founded by Europeans, came from Europe but we aren't Europeans anymore. We had an indigenous presence here when Europeans moved in the same as Australia did. Modern Americans didn't do that, old world Europeans did. That's who they dealt with the indigenous people. It's not how we deal with them today.

Old world Americans were involved in so much of our brutal history, We are just coping with and running damage control over what they did now. Americans didn't bring guns to these borders, Europeans did. People forget that. Americans didn't hatch out from under Plymouth rock. We were cultivated from European roots that were grafted here. I'm quite sure many of our tendencies began there and evolved into something else. Like a grafted plant we grew into something different over the years. Or perhaps even something no one expected an can't understand because of the melting pot.

We've have some bad patches in our history like any other nation that people want to continue to wallow in like the Civil War and Slavery instead of letting it go , learning from it and moving on. Getting themselves all worked up over stuff that happened centuries ago like it was happening today.

The politicians won't let people move on from that. If there are no problems they will create one no matter how silly.

Politics is robbing us of our identities. That creates more violence as people become unhinged and frightened. A lot of our problems are mirrored in Europe. They also create fear and hate and misunderstanding.

Politics has a captive audience of emotionally ill people to manipulate. So does the news. Everyone looking for attention and getting more and more frustrated to compete for attention to fill the big empty inside. We've lost all spiritual life in America, its offensive to be a spiritual or god loving person. People with no spiritual life become unhinged and enraged easily. Fear of God and good old religious guilt goes a long ways towards curbing violence. But its not politically correct to be spiritual. The only religions welcome are hate religions and dogmas. So many political movements have taken on the religious undertones of the Crusades.

They want to keep rubbing salt in the wound and there's too many people who feel victimized who want the salt rubbed in. That creates fear, and hate and then ultimately violence. All our institutions are running amok instead of being a stabilizing force. It's like our judges, doctors, politicians and lawyers want to all jump in on the riot instead of curb it.

Guns are highlighted most because its scariest but everyday there's beatings, and knife fights and other forms of mass violence that occur with far more frequency than gun shootings.

The more violence there the more people will arm themselves.

We have politically encouraged pillage, our government encourages violence, it encourages racism, and racial unrest openly, it encourages destruction of community and public property and that makes people even angrier, more afraid more hateful and ore violent. Then it blames guns as the cause. A gun didn't mastermind that sort of thing. The gun is what they fear. A gun represents putting an end to their nonsense. A gun is what stands between us and total assimilation by a political AI. No wonder they hate guns.

[Wind]

You are from Europe?

Yes, Northern Europe or Scandinavia. Finland to be precise.

[Emil El Zapato]

In all seriousness Boids and with no hostility remember this: "Don't judge me, until you have walked a mile in my moccasins"

But you hit a point about 'illegals' treatment. In the first case, illegal is a word that doesn't apply. They aren't illegal. Illegal is a criminal denotative term. Crossing the border is a civil matter. And that is why the right wanted to criminalize it. And that is why 'some' people are upset by the term. Using it is a way to sway public consciousness to the negative pole. Another rightward ploy to get their way.

The psycho dynamic that dominates the conservatives consciousness is the double-bind (if you don't know what that means I recommend researching it). They can never deal with the world around them in a satisfying way to themselves. An analogical example would be the fact that they love cheap labor while detesting the cheap laborer. This dynamic keeps them in a state of dissatisfaction and frustration in perpetuity. They are driven to love and protect guns over and above their own children. And subconsciously they are bound to what they have been trained to experience as 'normal' and consciously they have no clue.

Have you ever seen the interviews with 'MAGAs'? When asked to explain why they believe what they do, they can't answer the question because they aren't making conscious decisions, once again I state they are 'bound' within their instinctive subconscious drives. And it is forking up the world.

And, of course, wetbacks don't care if they are called illegals, they just want to survive. I don't know if that old double-bind meme about recent Mexican immigrants not having an interest in learning English is still around but in any case, by the 3rd generation 97% of them can't speak Spanish, I'm one of them. 2nd generation are fully bilingual which is considered a sin in what is probably the only place in the world, the United States. Double binded people are a drag on social functioning for everyone.

[Diabolical Boids]

Do Northern Europeans have no guns at all or restricted access by special license?

Either way I don't think that accounts for the low violence rates in northern European nations. I know our social stressors are different, so I guess its futile to make comparisons.
What do you think accounts for it?

What unnerves me.

The amount of emotional violence in the US and growing in other Western nations is one hundred thousand times more prevalent on a daily basis--heck a momentary basis-- than any sort of 'gun violence' or violent crime. It's so prevalent that likely it can't be measured but gun violence is nothing compared to the hate dumped into the energetic fields surrounding us even as we speak, right now.

Thats where violent crime comes from but it's not a crime in and of itself. It's online, in mainstream social media, in politics, the news, all over. People have lost all restraint. It's socially acceptable to be triggered and hateful. It's normal. You have to excuse it even. It's not peopole acting like assholes but that makes it worse somehow. And you are abnormal if you smile politely and bite your tongue and keep your manners and don't escalate a potentially emotional violent episode. And if you do, they bang at you harder intent on getting a reaction. They get angrier and more hateful the less of reaction you give.

People are wired like bombs to be offended and explode. Over a word, a look, something totally innocent and harmless that they just happen to hate. Something that happened way over on the other side of the nation and after the fact, people act like they are direct victims of something they seen on TV while sitting on the couch.

So all this violence we have in America, and in the West, is the result of a constant upload of violent emotion, ill wishes pouring into the energetic fields that we live and interreact even if we don't realize it. And yes even the conflict with Russia can be attributed to it.

We don't have any control over the physical and gun violence, but we do have individual and group influence over what goes into that field. We have access to that field and we can swamp it with healthier emotions, thoughts and ideas. We can change our energy be mindful of it. I know the only way to keep the peace in my domestic situation is to change my energy when someone goes round the bend because they aren't going to change theirs. And honestly that is the only realistic thing I think we can do to check the runaway hate.

Which of course goes back to Wind's Thrive thread.

[Emil El Zapato]

Who is doing the hating and indulging in the violence, consider it case-by-case. The victims of the 'illegal' were from Honduras and on a church retreat, conditions which really doesn't scare the hell out of me.

[Diabolical Boids]

Who is doing the hating and indulging in the violence, consider it case-by-case. The victims of the 'illegal' were from Honduras and on a church retreat, conditions which really doesn't scare the hell out of me.

The church story doesn't really add up because the news said it was his neighbors, like in a neighborhood. What kind of church outing is at one's own home. They make it sound like they were taking a church field trip but in their own neighborhood where they were neighbors and shot by another neighbor. Who is that bad at fabricating a story? That's made up or just really bad reporting.

The story itself is not cohesive or consistent and the church thing is one of the things that make it incongruent. The media knows people are so stewed in their own emotions they won't notice that kind of incongruencies but I'm not and I do.

It doesn't really make a difference but the majority of politicians calling for riots, and violence and force are progressives and the woke: Pelosi, Waters, Biden, Cortez, and her cohorts. Force, violence and hate upon random Americans. Working the woke.

I know you want reassurance that only conservatives because you are so self identified with the goodness and intent of the progressives. They aren't and they don't became good by insisting their opposites are violent and hateful. The last 7 shootings were hardly people you can consider elite WASP conservatives. A transgender armed manifesto writer? Really? A career criminal border crosser?

There are a LOT of conservatives in Mexico and Central America, Catholics, Christians with a traditional value systems. If conservatives were that much of a threat this progressive administration would close the border does not fling it wide open. Another incongruencies no one notices because they fail to see immigrants as people and only consider them when its politically expedient to do so.

The centrists, right and left, the non-extremists are angry but that's not the same as hate. The progressives like to twist it into hate. They are afraid for their children. They want to defend their children, their homes and lives. That's not hate its love. They aren't tossing their kids out to the ideology for mutilation. That's hate.

Governors restricting the access the perverts and reverse racists have to children and hate porn may sound like hate because the perverts are deprived of access to them, but really, it's about love not hate. Civilization can thrive and grow without raping or trafficking kids or teaching them the entire white world hates them.

This calls for a little self-examination if we are enraged that politicians are haters by restricting the access that perverts and political agendas have to children. I'd examine why I and my cohort wanted such unimpeded access to their minds and bodies.

So I attribute the hate to extremists, right and left and particularly the progressives. Their behaviors are more extreme and hateful. They are both mentally, emotionally and spiritually ill. Not that it matters. It's the same hate regardless. Liberal hate is the same as conservative hate.

It's a matter of what changed recently.

The right extremists stick with traditional right values--shoot now and let God sort them out and lets have a war with random MFS. They've always been that way, they are few and they are predictable but they are not clamoring for child mutilation and chemical castration or asking for legal ways to rape children or deprivation of rights under color of law. Thats all new and introduced by the progressives.


They are traditional in their hate. They are not making up fifteen thousand genders to be hateful over, or to forever divide people from themselves and each other or finding clever ways to remove little liberal children from their homes so they can have better access to them.

So while typically hateful I'm going to have put most of the bizarre hate and issues we've never had to deal with before because they are mostly made up with the progressives, liberalism that turned into a tumor. Liberals and moderate democrats are angry at them for the same reasons as conservatives. The people who create problems then cry about it and blame others.


But they all feed off the idea of each other.

Excuse me for being graphic but these extremists are like getting hate porn, taking it into the bathroom, and flogging themselves with their own hate until their penis falls off, then acting like they are the victim of something. Someone has to pay. Someone has to treat them as special because they chose to castrate themselves. And anyone who tries to stop them from self harm is a hater.

Guess what? Bad things happen to career criminals, and drug users, and rapists. They are not objects of pity let alone saints or Gods. Their lifestyle catches up to them. Everyone's life style catches up to them if its unhealthy another, its not bias. It's life. It's nature. But who decided a career criminal had to be venerated in public ? Venerating crime and then wondering why it escalates is crazy. It's a mental illness.

They are very distinct demographics easily recognized by their behaviors. If we are observant and not brooding in our sense of self victimhood or actively identifying with these people. People in Europe see this very easily because they are objective and not involved. And they aren't haters because they are afraid it might happen in their nations. And they aren't extremist conservatives, its that are not identified with American politics. Who'd want to be?

[Emil El Zapato]

The church story doesn't really add up because the news said it was his neighbors, like in a neighborhood. What kind of church outing is at one's own home. They make it sound like they were taking a church field trip but in their own neighborhood where they were neighbors and shot by another neighbor. Who is that bad at fabricating a story? That's made up or just really bad reporting.

The story itself is not cohesive or consistent and the church thing is one of the things that make it incongruent. The media knows people are so stewed in their own emotions they won't notice that kind of incongruencies but I'm not and I do.

It doesn't really make a difference but the majority of politicians calling for riots, and violence and force are progressives and the woke: Pelosi, Waters, Biden, Cortez, and her cohorts. Force, violence and hate upon random Americans. Working the woke.

I know you want reassurance that only conservatives because you are so self identified with the goodness and intent of the progressives. They aren't and they don't became good by insisting their opposites are violent and hateful. The last 7 shootings were hardly people you can consider elite WASP conservatives. A transgender armed manifesto writer? Really? A career criminal border crosser?

There are a LOT of conservatives in Mexico and Central America, Catholics, Christians with a traditional value systems. If conservatives were that much of a threat this progressive administration would close the border does not fling it wide open. Another incongruencies no one notices because they fail to see immigrants as people and only consider them when its politically expedient to do so.

The centrists, right and left, the non-extremists are angry but that's not the same as hate. The progressives like to twist it into hate. They are afraid for their children. They want to defend their children, their homes and lives. That's not hate its love. They aren't tossing their kids out to the ideology for mutilation. That's hate.

Governors restricting the access the perverts and reverse racists have to children and hate porn may sound like hate because the perverts are deprived of access to them, but really, it's about love not hate. Civilization can thrive and grow without raping or trafficking kids or teaching them the entire white world hates them.

This calls for a little self-examination if we are enraged that politicians are haters by restricting the access that perverts and political agendas have to children. I'd examine why I and my cohort wanted such unimpeded access to their minds and bodies.

So I attribute the hate to extremists, right and left and particularly the progressives. Their behaviors are more extreme and hateful. They are both mentally, emotionally and spiritually ill. Not that it matters. It's the same hate regardless. Liberal hate is the same as conservative hate.

It's a matter of what changed recently.

The right extremists stick with traditional right values--shoot now and let God sort them out and lets have a war with random MFS. They've always been that way, they are few and they are predictable but they are not clamoring for child mutilation and chemical castration or asking for legal ways to rape children or deprivation of rights under color of law. Thats all new and introduced by the progressives.


They are traditional in their hate. They are not making up fifteen thousand genders to be hateful over, or to forever divide people from themselves and each other or finding clever ways to remove little liberal children from their homes so they can have better access to them.



So while typically hateful I'm going to have put most of the bizarre hate and issues we've never had to deal with before because they are mostly made up with the progressives, liberalism that turned into a tumor. Liberals and moderate democrats are angry at them for the same reasons as conservatives. The people who create problems then cry about it and blame others.


But they all feed off the idea of each other.

Excuse me for being graphic but these extremists are like getting hate porn, taking it into the bathroom, and flogging themselves with their own hate until their penis falls off, then acting like they are the victim of something. Someone has to pay. Someone has to treat them as special because they chose to castrate themselves. And anyone who tries to stop them from self harm is a hater.

Guess what? Bad things happen to career criminals, and drug users, and rapists. They are not objects of pity let alone saints or Gods. Their lifestyle catches up to them. Everyone's life style catches up to them if its unhealthy another, its not bias. It's life. It's nature. But who decided a career criminal had to be venerated in public ? Venerating crime and then wondering why it escalates is crazy. It's a mental illness.

They are very distinct demographics easily recognized by their behaviors. If we are observant and not brooding in our sense of self victimhood or actively identifying with these people. People in Europe see this very easily because they are objective and not involved. And they aren't haters because they are afraid it might happen in their nations. And they aren't extremist conservatives, its that are not identified with American politics. Who'd want to be?

Seriously, you've never heard of non-denominational churches. They are popular with fallen Catholics especially from south of the U.S. border. They cater to the poor, those out of sync with mainstream society, those that feel slighted by the Catholic church, etc. Many of those people are truly in need, many of the others conflate 'religion' with spirituality and feel that the Catholic religion is not responsive to them as if they need an authority, a crutch to speak with God and/or Jesus; (that is just my opinion, of course, the Church did plenty to me but that never led me to think that Priests and Nuns are THE CHURCH.) I've been to one and it was an interesting experience. I went with a girl that was pretty screwed up socially. Attractive, easy, and from a highly dysfunctional family...the usual story. The 'speaker' was actually pretty spiritually insightful, I was impressed, but I felt desperately sad for him because it was obvious his biggest concern was the collection basket. I never had any urge to experience it twice.


Seriously, you've never heard of non-denominational churches. They are popular with fallen Catholics especially from south of the U.S. border. They cater to the poor, those out of sync with mainstream society, those that feel slighted by the Catholic church, etc. Many of those people are truly in need, many of the others conflate 'religion' with spirituality and feel that the Catholic religion is not responsive to them as if they need an authority, a crutch to speak with God and/or Jesus; (that is just my opinion, of course, the Church did plenty to me but that never led me to think that Priests and Nuns are THE CHURCH.) I've been to one and it was an interesting experience. I went with a girl that was pretty screwed up socially. Attractive, easy, and from a highly dysfunctional family...the usual story. The 'speaker' was actually pretty spiritually insightful, I was impressed, but I felt desperately sad for him because it was obvious his biggest concern was the collection basket. I never had any urge to experience it twice.

Never forget the Hegelian-Dialectic. It pulls heavily to the right because the right is comprised of true Americans and thus reigns over everything they survey and no one else is left (hee hee) with room to groove.

The initial report was wrong by the media, they posted a wrong photo and identified the assailant as a Honduran...oops, I guess there is something to all looking alike.

[Emil El Zapato]

Double bind Actually, I would equate anal-retentive to the double-bind and naturally it follows that the conservative would be most vulnerable.

Part of a series on Medical and psychological anthropology

Social and cultural anthropology

A double bind is a dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more reciprocally conflicting messages. In some scenarios (e.g. within families or romantic relationships) this can be emotionally distressing, creating a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), such that the person responding will automatically be perceived as in the wrong, no matter how they respond. This double bind prevents the person from either resolving the underlying dilemma or opting out of the situation.

Double bind theory was first stated by Gregory Bateson and his colleagues in the 1950s, in a theory on the origins of schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Double binds are often utilized as a form of control without open coercion—the use of confusion makes them difficult both to respond to and to resist.

A double bind generally includes different levels of abstraction in the order of messages and these messages can either be stated explicitly or implicitly within the context of the situation, or they can be conveyed by tone of voice or body language. Further complications arise when frequent double binds are part of an ongoing relationship to which the person or group is committed.

Explanation
The double bind is often misunderstood to be a simple contradictory situation, where the subject is trapped by two conflicting demands. While it is true that the core of the double bind is two conflicting demands, the difference lies in how they are imposed upon the subject, what the subject's understanding of the situation is, and who (or what) imposes these demands upon the subject. Unlike the usual no-win situation, the subject has difficulty in defining the exact nature of the paradoxical situation in which they are caught. The contradiction may be unexpressed in its immediate context and therefore invisible to external observers, only becoming evident when a prior communication is considered. Typically, a demand is imposed upon the subject by someone whom they respect (such as a parent, teacher, or doctor) but the demand itself is inherently impossible to fulfill because some broader context forbids it. For example, this situation arises when a person in a position of authority imposes two contradictory conditions but there exists an unspoken rule that one must never question authority.

Gregory Bateson and his colleagues defined the double bind as follows (paraphrased):

The situation involves two or more people, one of whom (for the purpose of the definition), is designated as the "subject". The others are people who are considered the subject's superiors: figures of authority (such as parents), whom the subject respects.

Repeated experience: the double bind is a recurrent theme in the experience of the subject, and as such, cannot be resolved as a single traumatic experience.
A 'primary injunction' is imposed on the subject by the others generally in one of two forms:

(a) "Do X, or I will punish you";
(b) "Do not do X, or I will punish you."

The punishment may include the withdrawing of love, the expression of hate and anger, or abandonment resulting from the authority figure's expression of helplessness.
A 'secondary injunction' is imposed on the subject, conflicting with the first at a higher and more abstract level. For example: "You must do X, but only do it because you want to." It is unnecessary for this injunction to be expressed verbally. If necessary, a 'tertiary injunction' is imposed on the subject to prevent them from escaping the dilemma. See phrase examples below for clarification.

Finally, Bateson states that the complete list of the previous requirements may be unnecessary, in the event that the subject is already viewing their world in double bind patterns. Bateson goes on to give the general characteristics of such a relationship:

When the subject is involved in an intense relationship; that is, a relationship in which he feels it is vitally important that he discriminate accurately what sort of message is being communicated so that he may respond appropriately; And, the subject is caught in a situation in which the other person in the relationship is expressing two orders of message and one of these denies the other; And, the subject is unable to comment on the messages being expressed to correct his discrimination of what order of message to respond to: i.e., he cannot make a metacommunicative statement.

Thus, the essence of a double bind is two conflicting demands, each on a different logical level, neither of which can be ignored or escaped. This leaves the subject torn both ways, so that whichever demand they try to meet, the other demand cannot be met. "I must do it, but I can't do it" is a typical description of the double-bind experience.

For a double bind to be effective, the subject must be unable to confront or resolve the conflict between the demand placed by the primary injunction and that of the secondary injunction. In this sense, the double bind differentiates itself from a simple contradiction to a more inexpressible internal conflict, where the subject really wants to meet the demands of the primary injunction, but fails each time through an inability to address the situation's incompatibility with the demands of the secondary injunction. Thus, subjects may express feelings of extreme anxiety in such a situation, as they attempt to fulfill the demands of the primary injunction albeit with obvious contradictions in their actions.

This was a problem in United States legal circles prior to the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution being applied to state action. A person could be subpoenaed to testify in a federal case and given Fifth Amendment immunity for testimony in that case. However, since the immunity did not apply to a state prosecution, the person could refuse to testify at the Federal level despite being given immunity, thus subjecting the person to imprisonment for contempt of court, or the person could testify, and the information they were forced to give in the Federal proceeding could then be used to convict the person in a state proceeding.

History
The term double bind was first used by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson and his colleagues (including Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley and John H. Weakland) in the mid-1950s in their discussions on complexity of communication in relation to schizophrenia. Bateson made clear that such complexities are common in normal circumstances, especially in "play, humour, poetry, ritual and fiction" (see Logical Types below). Their findings indicated that the tangles in communication often diagnosed as schizophrenia are not necessarily the result of an organic brain dysfunction. Instead, they found that destructive double binds were a frequent pattern of communication among families of patients, and they proposed that growing up amidst perpetual double binds could lead to learned patterns of confusion in thinking and communication.

Complexity in communication
Human communication is complex, and context is an essential part of it. Communication consists of the words said, tone of voice, and body language. It also includes how these relate to what has been said in the past; what is not said, but is implied; how these are modified by other nonverbal cues, such as the environment in which it is said, and so forth. For example, if someone says "I love you", one takes into account who is saying it, their tone of voice and body language, and the context in which it is said. It may be a declaration of passion or a serene reaffirmation, insincere and/or manipulative, an implied demand for a response, a joke, its public or private context may affect its meaning, and so forth.

Conflicts in communication are common and often individuals ask "What do you mean?" or seek clarification in other ways. This is called meta-communication: communication about the communication. Sometimes, asking for clarification is impossible. Communication difficulties in ordinary life often occur when meta-communication and feedback systems are lacking or inadequate or there is not enough time for clarification.

Double binds can be extremely stressful and become destructive when one is trapped in a dilemma and punished for finding a way out; however, making the effort to find the way out of the trap can lead to emotional growth.

Examples
The classic example given of a negative double bind is of a mother telling her child that she loves them, while at the same time turning away in disgust, or inflicting corporal punishment as discipline: the words are socially acceptable; the body language is in conflict with it. The child does not know how to respond to the conflict between the words and the body language and, because the child is dependent on the mother for basic needs, they are in a quandary. Small children have difficulty articulating contradictions verbally and can neither ignore them nor leave the relationship.

Another example is when one is commanded to "be spontaneous". The very command contradicts spontaneity, but it only becomes a double bind when one can neither ignore the command nor comment on the contradiction. Often, the contradiction in communication is not apparent to bystanders unfamiliar with previous communications.

Phrase examples
An example from Gerald M. Weinberg in a non-family situation.... "I suggest you find someone who you feel is more capable in this role". This requires the recipient to either confirm that the current incumbent in the role is sufficiently capable, or accept that they choose someone else based on their feelings - not an objective assessment of whether the incumbent is capable.
Mother telling her child: "You must love me".

The primary injunction here is the command itself: "you must"; the secondary injunction is the unspoken reality that love is spontaneous, that for the child to love the mother genuinely, it can only be of their own accord.

Child-abuser to child: "You should have escaped from me earlier, now it's too late—because now, nobody will believe that you didn't want what I have done", while at the same time blocking all of the child's attempts to escape.

Child-abusers often start the double-bind relationship by "grooming" the child, giving little concessions, or gifts or privileges to them, thus the primary injunction is: "You should like what you are getting from me!"

When the child begins to go along (i.e. begins to like what they are receiving from the person), then the interaction goes to the next level and small victimization occurs, with the secondary injunction being: "I am punishing you! (for whatever reason the child-abuser is coming up with, e.g. "because you were bad/naughty/messy", or "because you deserve it", or "because you made me do it", etc.).
If child shows any resistance (or tries to escape) from the abuser, then the words: "You should have escaped from me earlier (...)" serve as the third level or tertiary injunction.
Then the loop starts to feed on itself, allowing for ever worse victimization to occur.

Mother to son: "Leave your sister alone!", while the son knows his sister will approach and antagonize him to get him into trouble.
The primary injunction is the command, which he will be punished for breaking. The secondary injunction is the knowledge that his sister will get into conflict with him, but his mother will not know the difference and will default to punishing him. He may be under the impression that if he argues with his mother, he may be punished. One possibility for the son to escape this double bind is to realize that his sister only antagonizes him to make him feel anxious (if indeed it is the reason behind his sister's behavior).
If he were not bothered about punishment, his sister might not bother him. He could also leave the situation entirely, avoiding both the mother and the sister. The sister can't claim to be bothered by a non-present brother, and the mother can't punish (or scapegoat) a non-present son. Other solutions exist too, which are based on the creative application of logic and reasoning.

An apt reply would be: "Please tell sis the same". If mother wants to 'scapegoat' him, her response will be negative. The command has a negative undertone towards the son.

Positive double binds
Bateson also described positive double binds, both in relation to Zen Buddhism with its path of spiritual growth, and the use of therapeutic double binds by psychiatrists to confront their patients with the contradictions in their life in such a way that would help them heal. One of Bateson's consultants, Milton H. Erickson (5 volumes, edited by Rossi) eloquently demonstrated the productive possibilities of double binds through his own life, showing the technique in a brighter light.

Science
One of the causes of double binds is the loss of feedback systems. Gregory Bateson and Lawrence S. Bale describe double binds that have arisen in science that have caused decades-long delays of progress in science because the scientific community had defined something as outside of its scope (or as "not science")—see Bateson in his Introduction to Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972, 2000), pp. xv–xxvi; and Bale in his article, Gregory Bateson, Cybernetics and the Social/Behavioral Sciences (esp. pp. 1–8) on the paradigm of classical science vs. that of systems theory/cybernetics. (See also Bateson's description in his Forward of how the double bind hypothesis fell into place).

Work by Bateson
Schizophrenia

The Double Bind Theory was first articulated in relationship to schizophrenia when Bateson and his colleagues hypothesized that schizophrenic thinking was not necessarily an inborn mental disorder but a pattern of learned helplessness in response to cognitive double-binds externally imposed.

It is helpful to remember the context in which these ideas were developed. Bateson and his colleagues were working in the Veteran's Administration Hospital (1949–1962) with World War II veterans. As soldiers they'd been able to function well in combat, but the effects of life-threatening stress had affected them. At that time, 18 years before Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was officially recognized, the veterans had been saddled with the catch-all diagnosis of schizophrenia. Bateson didn't challenge the diagnosis but he did maintain that the seeming nonsense the patients said at times did make sense within context, and he gives numerous examples in section III of Steps to an Ecology of Mind, "Pathology in Relationship". For example, a patient misses an appointment, and when Bateson finds him later the patient says "the judge disapproves"; Bateson responds, "You need a defense lawyer". Bateson also surmised that people habitually caught in double binds in childhood would have greater problems—that in the case of the person with schizophrenia, the double bind is presented continually and habitually within the family context from infancy on. By the time the child is old enough to have identified the double bind situation, it has already been internalized, and the child is unable to confront it. The solution then is to create an escape from the conflicting logical demands of the double bind, in the world of the delusional system (see in Towards a Theory of Schizophrenia – Illustrations from Clinical Data).

One solution to a double bind is to place the problem in a larger context, a state Bateson identified as Learning III, a step up from Learning II (which requires only learned responses to reward/consequence situations). In Learning III, the double bind is contextualized and understood as an impossible no-win scenario so that ways around it can be found.

Bateson's double bind theory has not yet been followed up with any known published research, as to whether family systems imposing systematic double binds might be a cause of schizophrenia. The current understanding[who?] of schizophrenia emphasizes the robust scientific evidence for a genetic predisposition to the disorder. Psychosocial stressors, including dysfunctional family interaction, are secondary causative factors in some instances.

Evolution
After many years of research into schizophrenia, Bateson continued to explore problems of communication and learning, first with dolphins, and then with the more abstract processes of evolution. Bateson emphasized that any communicative system characterized by different logical levels might be subject to double bind problems. Especially including the communication of characteristics from one generation to another (genetics and evolution).

"...evolution always followed the pathways of viability. As Lewis Carroll has pointed out, the theory [of natural selection] explains quite satisfactorily why there are no bread-and-butter-flies today."

Bateson used the fictional Bread and Butter Fly (from Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There) to illustrate the double bind in terms of natural selection. The gnat points out that the insect would be doomed if he found his food (which would dissolve his own head, since this insect's head is made of sugar, and his only food is tea), and starve if he did not. Alice suggests that this must happen quite often, to which the gnat replies: "It always happens."

The pressures that drive evolution therefore represent a genuine double bind. And there is truly no escape: "It always happens." No species can escape natural selection, including our own.

Bateson suggested that all evolution is driven by the double bind, whenever circumstances change: If any environment becomes toxic to any species, that species will die out unless it transforms into another species, in which case, the species becomes extinct anyway.

Most significant here is Bateson's exploration of what he later came to call "the pattern that connects"—that problems of communication which span more than one level (e.g., the relationship between the individual and the family) should also be expected to be found spanning other pairs of levels in the hierarchy (e.g. the relationship between the genotype and the phenotype):

"We are very far, then, from being able to pose specific questions for the geneticist; but I believe that the wider implications of what I have been saying modify somewhat the philosophy of genetics. Our approach to the problems of schizophrenia by way of a theory of levels or logical types has disclosed first that the problems of adaptation and learning and their pathologies must be considered in terms of a hierarchic system in which stochastic change occurs at the boundary points between the segments of the hierarchy. We have considered three such regions of stochastic change—the level of genetic mutation, the level of learning, and the level of change in family organization. We have disclosed the possibility of a relationship of these levels which orthodox genetics would deny, and we have disclosed that at least in human societies the evolutionary system consists not merely in the selective survival of those persons who happen to select appropriate environments but also in the modification of family environment in a direction which might enhance the phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of the individual members."

Girard's mimetic double bind
René Girard, in his literary theory of mimetic desire, proposes what he calls a "model-obstacle", a role model who demonstrates an object of desire and yet, in possessing that object, becomes a rival who obstructs fulfillment of the desire. According to Girard, the "internal mediation" of this mimetic dynamic "operates along the same lines as what Gregory Bateson called the 'double bind'." Girard found in Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory, a precursor to mimetic desire. "The individual who 'adjusts' has managed to relegate the two contradictory injunctions of the double bind—to imitate and not to imitate—to two different domains of application. This is, he divides reality in such a way as to neutralize the double bind." While critical of Freud's doctrine of the unconscious mind, Girard sees the ancient Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, and key elements of Freud's Oedipus complex, patricidal and incestuous desire, to serve as prototypes for his own analysis of the mimetic double bind.

Far from being restricted to a limited number of pathological cases, as American theoreticians suggest, the double bind—a contradictory double imperative, or rather a whole network of contradictory imperatives—is an extremely common phenomenon. In fact, it is so common that it might be said to form the basis of all human relationships.

Bateson is undoubtedly correct in believing that the effects of the double bind on the child are particularly devastating. All the grown-up voices around him, beginning with those of the father and mother (voices which, in our society at least, speak for the culture with the force of established authority) exclaim in a variety of accents, "Imitate us!" "Imitate me!" "I bear the secret of life, of true being!" The more attentive the child is to these seductive words, and the more earnestly he responds to the suggestions emanating from all sides, the more devastating will be the eventual conflicts. The child possesses no perspective that will allow him to see things as they are. He has no basis for reasoned judgements, no means of foreseeing the metamorphosis of his model into a rival. This model's opposition reverberates in his mind like a terrible condemnation; he can only regard it as an act of excommunication. The future orientation of his desires—that is, the choice of his future models—will be significantly affected by the dichotomies of his childhood. In fact, these models will determine the shape of his personality.

If desire is allowed its own bent, its mimetic nature will almost always lead it into a double bind. The unchanneled mimetic impulse hurls itself blindly against the obstacle of a conflicting desire. It invites its own rebuffs and these rebuffs will in turn strengthen the mimetic inclination. We have, then, a self-perpetuating process, constantly increasing in simplicity and fervor. Whenever the disciple borrows from his model what he believes to be the "true" object, he tries to possess that truth by desiring precisely what this model desires. Whenever he sees himself closest to the supreme goal, he comes into violent conflict with a rival. By a mental shortcut that is both eminently logical and self-defeating, he convinces himself that the violence itself is the most distinctive attribute of this supreme goal! Ever afterward, violence will invariably awaken desire...

— René Girard, Violence and the Sacred: "From Mimetic Desire to the Monstrous Double",
Neuro-linguistic programming
The field of neuro-linguistic programming also makes use of the expression "double bind". Grinder and Bandler (both of whom had personal contact with Bateson and Erickson) asserted that a message could be constructed with multiple messages, whereby the recipient of the message is given the impression of choice—although both options have the same outcome at a higher level of intention. This is called a "double bind" in NLP terminology,[14] and has applications in both sales and therapy. In therapy, the practitioner may seek to challenge destructive double binds that limit the client in some way and may also construct double binds in which both options have therapeutic consequences. In a sales context, the speaker may give the respondent the illusion of choice between two possibilities. For example, a salesperson might ask: "Would you like to pay cash or by credit card?", with both outcomes presupposing that the person will make the purchase; whereas the third option (that of not buying) is intentionally excluded from the spoken choices.

Note that in the NLP context, the use of the phrase "double bind" does not carry the primary definition of two conflicting messages; it is about creating a false sense of choice which ultimately binds to the intended outcome. In the "cash or credit card?" example, this is not a "Bateson double bind" since there is no contradiction, although it still is an "NLP double bind". Similarly if a salesman were selling a book about the evils of commerce, it could perhaps be a "Bateson double bind" if the buyer happened to believe that commerce was evil, yet felt compelled or obliged to buy the book.

[Diabolical Boids]

Lol. That's quite an exercise to accuse the simple chemical processes of animal behavior.

Now do how a two year old thinks it's a good idea to cut off their genitals.

[Emil El Zapato]

Lol. That's quite an exercise to accuse the simple chemical processes of animal behavior.

Now do how a two year old thinks it's a good idea to cut off their genitals.

I don't know about cutting off but I've heard of many very young ones that want to grow one. Double-bind that situation and only God knows what you get. Anyway, isn't it all lefties that want to shwang their peepees. Actually, I believe it to be a problem that originates early in fetal development. If the hormonal wash doesn't occur as expected then you end up with males with a confused genetic result. What causes the hormonal wash to go awry? Maternal stress is a very big factor. Besides, it is the ones that make a moral issue of problems which nature should be blamed for (genetic development) that are making the big fuss... i.e. Double-binded righties. And, I assure you, it isn't a funny issue.

[Emil El Zapato]

I was driving for lunch to Taco Bell (bean burrito) and I had a flash of insight or perhaps one could call it synaptic misfiring but this is what hit me. The Jewish people may represent a 3rd contemporary subspecies. Think about it, their historical trek has been very different than most others. Take it step-by-step and see for your self. Socially, they are a different animal. I worked with a white guy that was Christian on his father''s side and Jewish on his mother's. Man, he was f*cked up, immensely hostile but quite talented in different ways. And completely philosophically blind, there is no doubt that came from his daddy. :) Historically, you don't see many such pairs. Perhaps it is a volatile mix.

[Diabolical Boids]

I don't know about cutting off but I've heard of many very young ones that want to grow one. Double-bind that situation and only God knows what you get. Anyway, isn't it all lefties that want to shwang their peepees. Actually, I believe it to be a problem that originates early in fetal development. If the hormonal wash doesn't occur as expected then you end up with males with a confused genetic result. What causes the hormonal wash to go awry? Maternal stress is a very big factor. Besides, it is the ones that make a moral issue of problems which nature should be blamed for (genetic development) that are making the big fuss... i.e. Double-binded righties. And, I assure you, it isn't a funny issue.

Given the number of liberals, and LGB groups crusading against child mutilation I'd say not all lefties are for child mutilation. Not even most. A fringe minority of left extremists are responsible for that. It's just their illness mutates very fast.

I could saved you a lot of writing and copy and paste and referred you to a subject called social programming. People didn't become collectively insane over night.

[Emil El Zapato]

Social programming like most things is a necessary aspect of civilization...it can be used for good and bad.

I observe that lefties that don't behave as such, don't realize that genetically they are righties. My ex is a prime example of that.

And there are those that pretend in order to undermine the reality.

[Diabolical Boids]

Social programming like most things is a necessary aspect of civilization...it can be used for good and bad.

I observe that lefties that don't behave as such, don't realize that genetically they are righties. My ex is a prime example of that.

And there are those that pretend in order to undermine the reality.

So basically, if you are a Democrat and you disapprove of what your party is doing that automatically makes you a biological and genetic conservative?

You realize that is an emotional and mental illness wrought from a social programming imposing pressure on emotionally arrested people?

I sometimes think you make these statements to be deliberately disingenuous and for attention.

[Emil El Zapato]

So basically, if you are a Democrat and you disapprove of what your party is doing that automatically makes you a biological and genetic conservative?

You realize that is an emotional and mental illness wrought from a social programming imposing pressure on emotionally arrested people?

I sometimes think you make these statements to be deliberately disingenuous and for attention.

It depends on whether or not it is a pattern. A pattern speaks for itself. A pattern is a template to be used for guidance. And it works magnificently. My pattern is to search for patterns. Not joshing at all.

[Fred Steeves]

I sometimes think you make these statements to be deliberately disingenuous and for attention.

Bingo!

[Emil El Zapato]

Bingo!

Bongo...you should read the posts first, Freddie my good buddy. I only tease about important things.

[Emil El Zapato]

If necessary, I will go into a more involved explanation even though I'm not inclined to do so. I gave up as a teenager trying to make sense to those that don't grasp my reasoning. I can only say my history regarding rightness and wrongness speaks for itself. As Aragorn and a life long friend would say, "I rest my case, for now!"

A book to read is this one, to understand the characteristics of the dynamic brain:

https://img.thriftbooks.com/api/images/m/77dcd62686f0f3a2c39cc709ab6caa19c4131098.jpg

The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey Into the Dark Side of the Brain by James Fallon

[modwiz]

Bingo!

My vote is junk DNA.

[Emil El Zapato]

lol, I know I'm hard to take but only when I'm challenged. Part of that junk DNA impels me to rise to whatever I'm challenged with. It has served me pretty well, though it has sacrificed more than one relationship. But then when one wants to invalidate another they should expect the rebound of their own hard feelings, feelings they cannot sublimate. I never aim to hurt anyone but then aren't alts invulnerable, so there is nothing to worry about, right?

It ain't supernatural, it is having a reasonable level of intuition, reason, and logic.

It took a second for it to descend from the cosmic source: It is a classic example of the double-bind mindset.

[Wind]

Do Northern Europeans have no guns at all or restricted access by special license?

I am not sure about other countries, but actually here in Finland there are a lot of guns, but bear in mind that this is a country of five million people and ten percent of the people are living in the capitol or near it and rest are scattered across the country.

Mainly hunters and collectors have them though, shotguns and rifles.

Back still in early 2000's it was fairly easy to get guns, even handguns.

That changed after two deadly school shootings. Common story?

What do these numbers tell you?

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/2851/production/_124912301_optimised_guns_per_country-nc.png

US shootings: Norway and Finland have similar levels of gun ownership, but far less gun crime (https://theconversation.com/us-shootings-norway-and-finland-have-similar-levels-of-gun-ownership-but-far-less-gun-crime-183933)

"In the wake of the most recent US mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 pupils and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old armed with an assault rifle, a comparison considering how the US compares with other countries on children’s deaths caused by guns is compelling.

As the independent non-profit US organisation the Children’s Defense Fund has pointed out, gun violence is now the leading cause of US children’s deaths. It reported that there are nine fatal shootings of children per day, that’s one killing every two hours and thirty six minutes. A minority of these killings involve school or mass shootings, the majority are killings of individual children and link to routine crime and gang violence, and overwhelmingly result in the deaths of African-American and minority children.

The US stands as an extreme outlier among high income countries. The number of children killed by guns is 36.5 times higher in the US, compared to many other high income countries including Austria, Australia, Sweden, England and Wales, according to analysis recently published by the New England Journal of Medicine. In recent years international research has also proven conclusively that greater levels of gun ownership are closely associated with higher rates of gun violence.

An audit by the Democrat-leaning policy and research organisation the Center for American Progress of all 50 US states found a close correlation between the states with the toughest gun laws and states with the lowest gun crime rates. Meanwhile, international research has compared national gun laws, rates of firearm ownership and gun violence rates. The results are striking as the graph, below, suggests:

International levels of gun crime

https://images.theconversation.com/files/465757/original/file-20220527-19-wje4t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1

Interestingly, European societies that come close to US rates of gun ownership, in terms of gun owners per 100 people, (but with hunting rifles and shotguns rather than handguns), such as Finland and Norway, are among the safest societies internationally with regards to gun violence.

Researchers talk about “civilised” and “de-civilising” gun cultures, cultures where gun ownership is associated with traditional values of respect and responsibility, and others where gun availability largely empowers the criminally minded and unstable, adding to the violence and chaos. High levels of social cohesion, low crime rates and internationally high levels of trust and confidence in police and social institutions do appear to reduce levels of gun homicide.

The flipside to this finding, however, is that high gun ownership in countries including Finland, Sweden and Switzerland do have significantly higher rates of suicide using guns. The UK and Japan, with some of the toughest gun laws in the world, always record the lowest rates of gun homicide, chiefly by virtue of their virtual prohibition of handguns, the criminal weapon of choice. By contrast, the death tolls in recent US mass shootings have been very much exacerbated by perpetrators using assault rifles, with their larger magazines and rapid fire capabilities.

Society as a factor

As a result of the new international focus in gun control research (there was a time when the only academic research on firearms took place in the US, and a large part of it funded, directly and indirectly, by the influential US lobbying group National Rifle Association) wider questions came under the spotlight. Researchers started to focus less upon the gun as an independent variable and instead began to address contexts and the different cultures of gun use. They also began to acknowledge, as criminologists have always known, that introducing new laws seldom changes anything on its own – offenders break laws.

Gun researchers now focus increasingly upon wider “gun control regimes” which have a big part to play in increasing or reducing levels of gun violence. These regimes include policing and criminal justice systems, systems of political accountability, welfare safety nets, comprehensive education provision and cultures of trust and confidence. And as the diagram above suggests, although the US is seen as the most exceptional gun culture among affluent democratic nations, in terms of death rates it is dwarfed by many other poorer and more conflicted societies, such as South Africa, Jamaica and Honduras.

Attempts in the US to confront shootings, but without restricting gun ownership in recent years include scaling up surveillance – especially in schools where pupils, parents and teachers form part of a network keeping a watching eye on colleagues and pupils. They look for signs of trouble and are able to sound the alarm. More ambitiously, the Violence Project has sought to compile evidence profiles, learning from what we already know about rampage killers and trying to predict where their behaviour, social media engagements and utterances might ring alarm bells.

However, the evidence is now indisputable that more guns in a given country translates directly into more gun violence.

It is significant that the immediate reaction to the Ulvade school massacre has tended to focus on narrow questions of school security and an apparent delay in police intervention, rather than the many underlying factors which make the US such a comparatively dangerous place for children."

[Diabolical Boids]

If necessary, I will go into a more involved explanation even though I'm not inclined to do so. I gave up as a teenager trying to make sense to those that don't grasp my reasoning. I can only say my history regarding rightness and wrongness speaks for itself. As Aragorn and a life long friend would say, "I rest my case, for now!"

A book to read is this one, to understand the characteristics of the dynamic brain:

https://img.thriftbooks.com/api/images/m/77dcd62686f0f3a2c39cc709ab6caa19c4131098.jpg

The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey Into the Dark Side of the Brain by James Fallon



Attempting to reason with feelings or emotions is likely why so people don't understand your reasoning because it's not reasoning.

[Wind]

A reminder that rude ad hominems result in infractions here.

:watch:

[Emil El Zapato]

Attempting to reason with feelings or emotions is likely why so people don't understand your reasoning because it's not reasoning.

if you insist...I don't know why you're miffed though... Ok, not really, I do know why you are so miffed. Hey, opinions, theories, bullshit can all be seen from the same source through the eyeballs of different viewers.

I will continue to argue that I get corroboration the more research I do, which is something I do continuously... Particularly, in the above book. He even has a chart mapping out what I have posed theoretically here on more than one occasion. What can I say?

[Fred Steeves]

My vote is junk DNA.


Huh. Kind of reminds me of the ongoing disagreement Phil (donk) and I have had over the years concerning BR and his ongoing Project. I've always maintained that said behavior is intentional, a well thought out and purposeful tactic born out of not only Scientology, but the network of Intel types like Kit Green and company he was suddenly immersed in with the Serpo releases - whereas Phil always maintains said behavior is a result of just not being all that bright.

It's an ongoing conversation concerning political big wig types as well - are they actually in on it, or just excruciatingly oblivious?

Concerning the junk DNA viewpoint, for years dating back to the "Universal Spectrum" forum I've been undecided between utter incompetence, or intentional troll. After this most recent tranche that was invited back in, I'm now firmly in the camp of it's all along been intent to infect and dilute whatever conversation of any significance is in sight.

Overall of course, the results are the same so it doesn't really matter. :)

[modwiz]

Huh. Kind of reminds me of the ongoing disagreement Phil (donk) and I have had over the years concerning BR and his ongoing Project. I've always maintained that said behavior is intentional, a well thought out and purposeful tactic born out of not only Scientology, but the network of Intel types like Kit Green and company he was suddenly immersed in with the Serpo releases - whereas Phil always maintains said behavior is a result of just not being all that bright.

It's an ongoing conversation concerning political big wig types as well - are they actually in on it, or just excruciatingly oblivious?

Concerning the junk DNA viewpoint, for years dating back to the "Universal Spectrum" forum I've been undecided between utter incompetence, or intentional troll. After this most recent tranche that was invited back in, I'm now firmly in the camp of it's all along been intent to infect and dilute whatever conversation of any significance is in sight.

Overall of course, the results are the same so it doesn't really matter. :)

Well said.

One way for me to express it is simple terms.

There are arsonists and fecalists.

Getting gnostic about it. Jealousy seeks tp destroy and despoil.

DNA does factor in. Nous requires a capable circuitry to brings Its gifts.

The ungifted respond with envy.

[Diabolical Boids]

if you insist...I don't know why you're miffed though... Ok, not really, I do know why you are so miffed. Hey, opinions, theories, bullshit can all be seen from the same source through the eyeballs of different viewers.

I will continue to argue that I get corroboration the more research I do, which is something I do continuously... Particularly, in the above book. He even has a chart mapping out what I have posed theoretically here on more than one occasion. What can I say?

You do research and I do more observation based on what I know so I'm not at the mercy of the opinions of people forming arguments for me. That goes a lot towards emphasizing not seeing eye to eye, because it's an entirely different point of perception.

You aren't sure why I'm miffed because you have no way of knowing I'm miffed so that probably accounts for your uncertainty.

However assuming anyone is having a feeling is :

Projection. Thinking with feelings. Which I already knew in the first place so didn't need any substantiation but ...thanks.
And wishful thinking: Taking a blind shot in the dark to see if the desired emotional reaction was achieved.

All unconscious behaviors.

[Diabolical Boids]

Well said.

One way for me to express it is simple terms.

There are arsonists and fecalists.

Getting gnostic about it. Jealousy seeks tp destroy and despoil.

DNA does factor in. Nous requires a capable circuitry to brings Its gifts.

The ungifted respond with envy.

Junk emotions and junk thoughts begin resulting in a junk biology which results in junk genes that results in physical diseases but.... not political conversions.

Genetics only accounts for 1 percent of diseases as the actual cause. That's usually racial inclination towards a disease not inclinations in individuals. Like Sickle cell anemia, etc.

The rest they claim is genetic although it cannot be found anywhere in family line is our minds altering our genetics. We create toxic chemistry in ourselves with our thoughts and emotions. Again, resulting in disease. Not political conversion.

Politics is psychological divide. Not a genetic one. We don't have a political divide in the nation we have really bad mass mental health issues.

I told myself post op if the oncologist suggested genetic counseling, I'd have triple affirmation that some unconscious ugly thought/ emotion had created the condition because they could find no other reason for it nor its abnormal behavior. And I was right.

But after all these years I'm still socially liberal and fiscally conservative. So in spite of some really nasty genetic expression I'm still politically intact.

[Emil El Zapato]

Junk emotions and junk thoughts begin resulting in a junk biology which results in junk genes that results in physical diseases but.... not political conversions.

Genetics only accounts for 1 percent of diseases as the actual cause. That's usually racial inclination towards a disease not inclinations in individuals. Like Sickle cell anemia, etc.

The rest they claim is genetic although it cannot be found anywhere in family line is our minds altering our genetics. We create toxic chemistry in ourselves with our thoughts and emotions. Again, resulting in disease. Not political conversion.

Politics is psychological divide. Not a genetic one. We don't have a political divide in the nation we have really bad mass mental health issues.

I told myself post op if the oncologist suggested genetic counseling, I'd have triple affirmation that some unconscious ugly thought/ emotion had created the condition because they could find no other reason for it nor its abnormal behavior. And I was right.

But after all these years I'm still socially liberal and fiscally conservative. So in spite of some really nasty genetic expression I'm still politically intact.

For whatever its worth: Epigenetics has proven to be more impactful than genetics. I have discussed that with my bio-sister regarding family. Incidentally from a scientific perspective there is no junk DNA...which substantiated my intuitive notion that nature or God (take your preference) would not be so wasteful.

Wow, talk about projection...The question of the day is who is envious and who isn't. Myself, I can surely be envious on occasion, but it doesn't involve intellect, no reason for that. All of us can attain that.

Strangely enough, I feel very unmoved emotionally about this entire exchange. In truth, the only one that continues to trigger me is Fred for a number of reasons. Mostly because he by family training is a double-bind influence which naturally is a disruptive force in any social exchange. Which bodes not well between me and him. A donkey can never change its spots.

[Emil El Zapato]

You do research and I do more observation based on what I know so I'm not at the mercy of the opinions of people forming arguments for me. That goes a lot towards emphasizing not seeing eye to eye, because it's an entirely different point of perception.

You aren't sure why I'm miffed because you have no way of knowing I'm miffed so that probably accounts for your uncertainty.

However assuming anyone is having a feeling is :

Projection. Thinking with feelings. Which I already knew in the first place so didn't need any substantiation but ...thanks.
And wishful thinking: Taking a blind shot in the dark to see if the desired emotional reaction was achieved.

All unconscious behaviors.

Ok, time for some straightforward dialogue. I admire anyone that can formulate a solid logical argument. You do that extremely well, as for me I philosophically disagree with your 'attitude' towards humanity and that is why I counter. The better the 'opponent's' argument the further I need to reach to effectively demonstrate why I disagree. It's give and take and I find it stimulating, if not sometimes infuriating but not now. I have looked forward to this for awhile. Don't ask me why but I think it is because I find you 'challenging'. Move, counter-move...it's like boxing (which my biological father was) Actually became the commissioner of professional and amateur boxing for the state of Nebraska. Multiple educational degrees, so forth and so on. (just a little contextual info)

Anyway, I do tire of constant drama, battles, etc. The kibitzers are not without their own resources, but they bring very little to this arena beyond their efforts to throw beer and peanuts and to yell, kill the bum. Useless it is.

It was one of the reasons I became so fond of Chris (use to hang around quite a bit). He had strong opinions but many of them sourcing from the negative. His rare personality enabled him to 'listen' and absorb. I don't know what allowed him to function that way but I think it was 'spirit' And, of course, everyone took potshots at him which ostracized him, flung poopoo at him, I really didn't get it...but it was the usual social result.

[Diabolical Boids]

After all that you are just now being straightforward and serious?

Ibelieveyou.

[Emil El Zapato]

After all that you are just now being straightforward and serious?

Ibelieveyou.

I learned early that one never leads with their chin! :)

[Wind]

The writer of the book Dune talked about unworthy leaders and cults of personality, beware of them.

-NMOoOD2wp8

https://loveexpands.com/wp-content/uploads/quotes/vbq/frank-herbert/governments-if-they-endure-always-tend-increasingly-toward-aristocratic-forms-275848.png

[Octopus Garden]

For whatever its worth: Epigenetics has proven to be more impactful than genetics. I have discussed that with my bio-sister regarding family. Incidentally from a scientific perspective there is no junk DNA...which substantiated my intuitive notion that nature or God (take your preference) would not be so wasteful.

Wow, talk about projection...The question of the day is who is envious and who isn't. Myself, I can surely be envious on occasion, but it doesn't involve intellect, no reason for that. All of us can attain that.

Strangely enough, I feel very unmoved emotionally about this entire exchange. In truth, the only one that continues to trigger me is Fred for a number of reasons. Mostly because he by family training is a double-bind influence which naturally is a disruptive force in any social exchange. Which bodes not well between me and him. A donkey can never change its spots.

Just scanned this quickly. Junk DNA exists as potential and actualizes through epigenetics, imo, due to any number of conditions. I don't think our thoughts alone can alter our biology enough to have an epigenetic impact. The genome has to have some degree of stability, and if our every 'toxic' thought had the power to alter it, we would cease to be a viable species.

[Emil El Zapato]

Just scanned this quickly. Junk DNA exists as potential and actualizes through epigenetics, imo, due to any number of conditions. I don't think our thoughts alone can alter our biology enough to have an epigenetic impact. The genome has to have some degree of stability, and if our every 'toxic' thought had the power to alter it, we would cease to be a viable species.

There is truth to that...it is external psychological and most likely environmental factors that activates the process and it takes time. So, one might speculate that there could be a synchronous action between the two that is just a correlation but not a 'cause'. I prefer to take the viewpoint that I have some latitude over my genetics. And, I encourage family to think that way especially when there is no reason to look at genetics for 'answers'

[Diabolical Boids]

Just scanned this quickly. Junk DNA exists as potential and actualizes through epigenetics, imo, due to any number of conditions. I don't think our thoughts alone can alter our biology enough to have an epigenetic impact. The genome has to have some degree of stability, and if our every 'toxic' thought had the power to alter it, we would cease to be a viable species.

Actually sustained thoughts and emotions of a negative value are stress. Think of stress equating a heart attack or an ulcer. The thoughts and emotions if generated enough to create stress then create stress hormones and chemicals. That changes the biology and the genes then your health.

So its not every negative thought; its persistent, repeat and conditioning thoughts accompanied by toxic emotions which makes the thoughts toxic. It's basically the law of attraction.

But you are correct that if you have a transient negative thought today you aren't going to have an ulcer tomorrow. It's repeat negative thinking, negative emotions, and then unconscious core beliefs and buried emotions that causes it. Entrenched thinking as it were.


It's called nocebo effect.

It takes a duration of time for it to result in an actual physical disease. A change of thought and emotion however prompts a much faster reversal interestingly enough.

Nocebo effect is like the placebo effect but results in bad chemistry, then bad health. The placebo effect causes beneficial, and healing chemicals which has been demonstrated over and over by double- and triple-blind studies of regular pharmaceutical drugs. This is where it becomes less about psychology and more about the body being a giant pharmaceutical manufacturer. Certainly there's external environmental factors that play a supporting role but in epigenetics psychology is considered as an environmental factor.

Science had a great deal of hope invested in the Human Genome project. They thought it would bring some clarity into terms of junk dna but it didn't and reveal the sequences for all genetic diseases. But it didn't. Junk dna is probably individual to the person and science really doesn't know what they do. An individual may activate the dna causing some sort of effect, good or bad or it may remain dormant.

[Emil El Zapato]

Actually sustained thoughts and emotions of a negative value are stress. Think of stress equating a heart attack or an ulcer. The thoughts and emotions if generated enough to create stress then create stress hormones and chemicals. That changes the biology and the genes then your health.

So its not every negative thought; its persistent, repeat and conditioning thoughts accompanied by toxic emotions which makes the thoughts toxic. It's basically the law of attraction.

But you are correct that if you have a transient negative thought today you aren't going to have an ulcer tomorrow. It's repeat negative thinking, negative emotions, and then unconscious core beliefs and buried emotions that causes it. Entrenched thinking as it were.


It's called nocebo effect.

It takes a duration of time for it to result in an actual physical disease. A change of thought and emotion however prompts a much faster reversal interestingly enough.

Nocebo effect is like the placebo effect but results in bad chemistry, then bad health. The placebo effect causes beneficial, and healing chemicals which has been demonstrated over and over by double- and triple-blind studies of regular pharmaceutical drugs. This is where it becomes less about psychology and more about the body being a giant pharmaceutical manufacturer. Certainly there's external environmental factors that play a supporting role but in epigenetics psychology is considered as an environmental factor.

Science had a great deal of hope invested in the Human Genome project. They thought it would bring some clarity into terms of junk dna but it didn't and reveal the sequences for all genetic diseases. But it didn't. Junk dna is probably individual to the person and science really doesn't know what they do. An individual may activate the dna causing some sort of effect, good or bad or it may remain dormant.

and that is what hastens an early demise (relatively speaking, of course).

[Octopus Garden]

I do think that there is a lot to epigenetics we don't know. I also think that people misconstrue hormonal change (from stress) in pregnant women, affecting their young, as epigenetic, when it's just the effects of aberrant hormones on developing embryos. Could it be epigenetic in some cases. Quite possibly, but nobody really knows yet.`It's really hard to pinpoint the origin of a random mutation.

[Wind]

Are Texans (https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/06/allen-shooting-outlet-mall/) all right in the head? Or it's just another monday there.

[Emil El Zapato]

I do think that there is a lot to epigenetics we don't know. I also think that people misconstrue hormonal change (from stress) in pregnant women, affecting their young, as epigenetic, when it's just the effects of aberrant hormones on developing embryos. Could it be epigenetic in some cases. Quite possibly, but nobody really knows yet.`It's really hard to pinpoint the origin of a random mutation.

true dat...


Are Texans (https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/06/allen-shooting-outlet-mall/) all right in the head? Or it's just another monday there.

No Wind, Texans are not alright in the head...My argument for decades...long before I moved here. As a teenager I was literally afraid to travel through Texas. Even white friends were in fear. Like the mentally deranged state motto says: "Don't mess with Texas". There are only a few areas that I would live in. Houston area is one. Of course, the farther from the city the higher that peculiar madness of the redneck broils.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I saw a scene of Putin this morning and I was reminded that he is human despite it all. I felt sorry about how forlorn he looked. He has always been driven by his animal instincts and they are leading him nowhere and that reality is starting to sink in.

[Emil El Zapato]

heh heh, Fred wins his 2nd point on the board:

Taken from a CriGenetics free report. I"m not so impulsive that they can squeeze money out of me.

Impulse Control
Your genotype for Impulse Control shows that you are...

More Likely to be Impulsive

Impulsivity refers to acting spontaneously and without much forethought prior to your actions. Being impulsive can have positive and negative outcomes, depending on the situation and may play a role in influencing other thoughts and behaviors. Your ability to control impulsive behavior is called impulse control. Your results show that you are MORE LIKELY TO BE IMPULSIVE. Higher impulsivity can be associated with increased levels of spontaneity, boldness, quickness in thinking, unconventionality, and courageousness. Impulsivity in appropriate situations can result in desirable consequences. However, lower impulse control can also make certain situations harder to navigate. If you worry about your impulse control, we recommend that you speak to your doctor. (My doctor wouldn't give a flying you know what).

How Did You Get This Result?

The SLC6A3 gene codes for a dopamine transporter protein (DAT) that helps carry dopamine through your brain’s nerve cells. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, or chemical messenger, that plays an important role in your control of movement, thought, motivation, and behavior.

A change in your SLC6A3 gene at rs460000 may affect the action of dopamine in your neurons, causing changes in response inhibition. Thus, it is likely that individuals with this change in their genes may be more prone to following their impulses.

[Emil El Zapato]

Word for the day: schadenfreude

"the emotional experience of pleasure in response to another's misfortune. Schadenfreude is a German word that combines Schaden, which means “damage,” and Freude, which means “joy.” The concept is common to people across cultures, but some languages do have comparable words."


Tomorrow's lesson will be on psychological methods to avoid the above.

[Octopus Garden]

Word for the day: schadenfreude

"the emotional experience of pleasure in response to another's misfortune. Schadenfreude is a German word that combines Schaden, which means “damage,” and Freude, which means “joy.” The concept is common to people across cultures, but some languages do have comparable words."


Tomorrow's lesson will be on psychological methods to avoid the above.

I like that, Chuck. I mean I like that Germans have an actual word for it.

This one is lovely too.

Weltschmerz (German: [ˈvɛltʃmɛɐ̯ts]; literally "world-pain") "a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz


Also like this word, Weltanschauung

--The term is a calque of the German word Weltanschauung [ˈvɛltʔanˌʃaʊ.ʊŋ] , composed of Welt ('world') and Anschauung ('view' or 'outlook').[3] The German word is also used in English.

[Wind]

I like that, Chuck. I mean I like that Germans have an actual word for it.

This one is lovely too.

Weltschmerz (German: [ˈvɛltʃmɛɐ̯ts]; literally "world-pain") "a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz

I've heard of that before and it must be something I'm suffering from.

Words like that made me buy this book.

Yq62Ej5iUI8
AkoML0_FiV4

[Aragorn]

I like that, Chuck. I mean I like that Germans have an actual word for it.

We have a word for it in Dutch too: "leedvermaak". "Leed" means "sorrow, suffering", and "vermaak" means "joy, entertainment". ;)


Also like this word, Weltanschauung

--The term is a calque of the German word Weltanschauung [ˈvɛltʔanˌʃaʊ.ʊŋ] , composed of Welt ('world') and Anschauung ('view' or 'outlook').[3] The German word is also used in English.

We have a word for that too: "wereldbeeld". "Wereld" means "world", and "beeld" means "image, view". ;)

[Emil El Zapato]

I like that, Chuck. I mean I like that Germans have an actual word for it.

This one is lovely too.

Weltschmerz (German: [ˈvɛltʃmɛɐ̯ts]; literally "world-pain") "a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz


Also like this word, Weltanschauung

--The term is a calque of the German word Weltanschauung [ˈvɛltʔanˌʃaʊ.ʊŋ] , composed of Welt ('world') and Anschauung ('view' or 'outlook').[3] The German word is also used in English.

Indeed that is a good one, OG

[Emil El Zapato]

I've heard of that before and it must be something I'm suffering from.

Words like that made me buy this book.

Yq62Ej5iUI8


wow, that is one that I have to have.


I've heard of that before and it must be something I'm suffering from.

Words like that made me buy this book.

AkoML0_FiV4

Really nice stuff, Wind

[Wind]

wow, that is one that I have to have.

This is a very good presentation by the author. I love the English language too and imagine how much words and language define us. We can't even fully explain with words all that we feel sometimes, we just might say we are happy, sad, bored, anxious, depressed or whatever. Yet there's so much more to us. People box themselves into categories which is somewhat understandable because we want to find meaning in all of the chaos, but sometimes we define things or ourselves even too much and at worst it can turn into hate, over words. Or for example we imagine that we can understand or describe God which is literally all that is just with a few words. I prefer the word Creator, but even that fails to do justice to all that is. Absolute Being, consciousness (https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/5838/sat-chit-ananda) bliss and joy? When we say "I am a human Being", what does that truly entail? What is a human being and what really is a humane Being with all of it's thoughts and feelings?

ANFQPEkczYc

[Aianawa]

RAGS, rough as gutS lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L7j6-SQq6A


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L7j6-SQq6A

[Emil El Zapato]

Truth is, my daughter who is now working as a paramedic confronts 'victims' and 'neediness' every day. A couple of weeks ago I asked her how she 'felt' about that because I always fear that she will lose her sense of compassion and empathy. I love my daughter but she has always had a 'cold' edge to her that I believe she inherited from her mother. Anyway, I digress as is my want...she said that it didn't matter to her because they are in need and she has the tools to help. One takes it all in stride to help. I loved her answer.

Does anyone see the value in that?

[Aragorn]

Truth is, my daughter who is now working as a paramedic confronts 'victims' and 'neediness' every day. A couple of weeks ago I asked her how she 'felt' about that because I always fear that she will lose her sense of compassion and empathy. I love my daughter but she has always had a 'cold' edge to her that I believe she inherited from her mother. Anyway, I digress as is my want...she said that it didn't matter to her because they are in need and she has the tools to help. One takes it all in stride to help. I loved her answer.

Does anyone see the value in that?

Doctors and nurses do have to have a certain degree of detachment to them in order to be able to do their jobs and not go insane. Not too much detachment, of course — unfortunately, such doctors and nurses exist as well, and they are quite commonly easily identifiable by their cynicism — but there has to be just enough detachment for them to stop themselves from drowning in the suffering.

My own inability to detach myself was one of the reasons why I wasn't fit for the job.

[Diabolical Boids]

Doctors and nurses do have to have a certain degree of detachment to them in order to be able to do their jobs and not go insane. Not too much detachment, of course — unfortunately, such doctors and nurses exist as well, and they are quite commonly easily identifiable by their cynicism — but there has to be just enough detachment for them to stop themselves from drowning in the suffering.

My own inability to detach myself was one of the reasons why I wasn't fit for the job.

Yep, I feel you. I was Psych Lpn once. I drew labs on children that were so mentally retarded that they were the living dead. Literal vegetables. Six to 12 years old and never out of crib. They lay there all alone all day comatose and the only response they showed was crying in pain when I had to draw blood from their little atrophied limbs and teeny teeny tiny veins like little hairs. I couldn't deal with the idea that they had no stimulus all day except me administering pain. They are so sensitive from lack of exposure the merest pin prick was painful for them. In hindsight if I had known what compassion really was, I would have stuck it out and served them better by being the excellent, fast picker I was. Practice detachment and I know I was serving them better being good at what was instead of letting my feelings swamp me. But I was too lacking in emotional intelligence at the time to know better.

Me personally if I'm an ER I do not want to see doctors and nurses caroming around sobbing and yearning at my plight. I've been in and out of hospital and offices the last two months and I would have died of fright seeing people act that way. I want medical help not feelings. Pity doesn't stem the flow of blood. Most professionals act that way. They are in environment of reality, a hospital: People live, people die, people get sick. Its people outside that environment that can't get with the reality of it. People who cry they aren't compassionate unless they are showing gross displays of emotions never work in reality environments and that's good. They are too arrested emotionally to be there and all those patients laying around to feed off of is too tempting.

Real compassionate professionals act with great warmth, concern, attentiveness, reassurance without ever having to go into the emotional state because they have to stay present and they have to keep their patients present. If you get all wired on emotions no one is present.

I get the creeps thinking about a nurse starting a pic line or an IV or injection on me weeping and shaking hands. It's kind of like a sick fantasy to think people should be like that in order to fulfill someone's distorted idea of compassion. The reality of person who is jacked on emotions is they can't do their job very well and certainly can't act efficiently in an emergency.

Staying present is how they keep the ACTUAL victims comfortable, and stress free. Only the self-imagined needy victim mentalities (which is just EPIDEMIC in America) fantasize that doctor, nurses and the entire world need to be oozing sympathy and pity and rank emotion. Thats not what is required that is what then need personally. It's not compassion they want, they need emotional people to vampire off of and if making them guilty for having cool head compassion that is what they will do. It's all about punishing the hand that won't feed you. It's a really sick dynamic that has been growing in America these last 20 years or so.

Actual compassion can be brutal. It means some nurse is making you get out of bed two hours post op when you'd curl up, sleep, and take pain killers.

[Emil El Zapato]

While my daughter was training she was doing transport for pediatric patients. When she started telling me the stories, I confess, at first it nearly brought me to tears. My instincts screamed to me that children should not have to endure that kind of existence. She did say once that one of her most non-functional patients had the greatest attitude. I felt a sense of relief, if only temporarily.


Yep, I feel you. I was Psych Lpn once. I drew labs on children that were so mentally retarded that they were the living dead. Literal vegetables. Six to 12 years old and never out of crib. They lay there all alone all day comatose and the only response they showed was crying in pain when I had to draw blood from their little atrophied limbs and teeny teeny tiny veins like little hairs. I couldn't deal with the idea that they had no stimulus all day except me administering pain. They are so sensitive from lack of exposure the merest pin prick was painful for them. In hindsight if I had known what compassion really was, I would have stuck it out and served them better by being the excellent, fast picker I was. Practice detachment and I know I was serving them better being good at what was instead of letting my feelings swamp me. But I was too lacking in emotional intelligence at the time to know better.

Me personally if I'm an ER I do not want to see doctors and nurses caroming around sobbing and yearning at my plight. I've been in and out of hospital and offices the last two months and I would have died of fright seeing people act that way. I want medical help not feelings. Pity doesn't stem the flow of blood. Most professionals act that way. They are in environment of reality, a hospital: People live, people die, people get sick. Its people outside that environment that can't get with the reality of it. People who cry they aren't compassionate unless they are showing gross displays of emotions never work in reality environments and that's good. They are too arrested emotionally to be there and all those patients laying around to feed off of is too tempting.

Real compassionate professionals act with great warmth, concern, attentiveness, reassurance without ever having to go into the emotional state because they have to stay present and they have to keep their patients present. If you get all wired on emotions no one is present.

I get the creeps thinking about a nurse starting a pic line or an IV or injection on me weeping and shaking hands. It's kind of like a sick fantasy to think people should be like that in order to fulfill someone's distorted idea of compassion. The reality of person who is jacked on emotions is they can't do their job very well and certainly can't act efficiently in an emergency.

Staying present is how they keep the ACTUAL victims comfortable, and stress free. Only the self-imagined needy victim mentalities (which is just EPIDEMIC in America) fantasize that doctor, nurses and the entire world need to be oozing sympathy and pity and rank emotion. Thats not what is required that is what then need personally. It's not compassion they want, they need emotional people to vampire off of and if making them guilty for having cool head compassion that is what they will do. It's all about punishing the hand that won't feed you. It's a really sick dynamic that has been growing in America these last 20 years or so.

Actual compassion can be brutal. It means some nurse is making you get out of bed two hours post op when you'd curl up, sleep, and take pain killers.

Good point about the impression that patients get when looking at staff. I had to pause and think when I was listening to a shrink talk about 'overprotection' of children (the converse of a lack of empathy). Guilty as charged. But I always did my level best to seem attentive but not 'distressed'. It was hard work for me, her mother on the other hand was completely missing in action.

[Aragorn]

While my daughter was training she was doing transport for pediatric patients. When she started telling me the stories, I confess, at first it nearly brought me to tears.

No offense, but over here in Belgium (and possibly all of Europe), the code of conduct for medical and paramedical professionals forbids them from discussing anything work-related with anyone from outside of their work environment except for the patient themselves.

Of course, one can mention a certain event, but the privacy and anonymity of the patient must at all times be respected.

[Emil El Zapato]

No offense, but over here in Belgium (and possibly all of Europe), the code of conduct for medical and paramedical professionals forbids them from discussing anything work-related with anyone from outside of their work environment except for the patient themselves.

Of course, one can mention a certain event, but the privacy and anonymity of the patient must at all times be respected.

Sure, we always have that discussion as well, no names, places, or things.

I always sort of coerced her because I was concerned to see how she was emotionally handling things. Of course, my concerns were basically wasted.

[Diabolical Boids]

While my daughter was training she was doing transport for pediatric patients. When she started telling me the stories, I confess, at first it nearly brought me to tears. My instincts screamed to me that children should not have to endure that kind of existence. She did say once that one of her most non-functional patients had the greatest attitude. I felt a sense of relief, if only temporarily.

Thats the point where we make it about ourselves rather than the patients. That isn't compassion. Or empathy. If we stop looking at children through the lens of our own injury one can see their amazing resilience and inner resource. It amazes me that a child can embrace challenges like that while alleged adults are crying about words, or someone misgendered them or people aren't touchy feely enough or no one feels sorry enough for them. I would actually prefer to know what is going on inside of those kids instead of listening to able bodied people crying about how injured they are by them. That mentality steals the bandwidth away from the actual victim.

[Diabolical Boids]

No offense, but over here in Belgium (and possibly all of Europe), the code of conduct for medical and paramedical professionals forbids them from discussing anything work-related with anyone from outside of their work environment except for the patient themselves.

Of course, one can mention a certain event, but the privacy and anonymity of the patient must at all times be respected.

We had that here at one time. Not anymore. Covid and the Transgender movement did away with patient privacy. Didn't take much for children to be encouraged to disregard their own privacy and show their transsexual surgery scars in public, plaster them all over social media. All their, surgeries, all their genitals before during and after, things we found totally offensive and abhorrent just a few years ago exposing children in public.

Parents, doctors nurses all encouraged the waiving of privacy and shared photos, stories, names, and details themselves. As far as Covid the hysterics felt that anything about your health could be revealed if someone might maybe have a tiny chance of Covid or Covid exposure. All your co morbidities out in the open without a care. Nothing is sacred. . It's all drug out into public and savaged like a dog with a piece of meat.

Nor is medicine the only place privacy is violated.

When I was in school you knew virtually nothing about your teacher's personal life. Now its civil liberties suit if a parent objects to a teacher discussing their sex life and sexual preferences with grade school children.

That's why I say emotional addiction is far more dangerous than drug addiction.

[Emil El Zapato]

Thats the point where we make it about ourselves rather than the patients. That isn't compassion. Or empathy. If we stop looking at children through the lens of our own injury one can see their amazing resilience and inner resource. It amazes me that a child can embrace challenges like that while alleged adults are crying about words, or someone misgendered them or people aren't touchy feely enough or no one feels sorry enough for them. I would actually prefer to know what is going on inside of those kids instead of listening to able bodied people crying about how injured they are by them. That mentality steals the bandwidth away from the actual victim.

Ok, i get your sense of perspective but one doesn't always need to carry that 'feeling' in the forefront of one's mind. In my estimation that is what causes so much strife in the first place, Assume the best and if there is failure on the point then start kicking. Then if that fails either disengage or go for the throat, it is one's choice, of course. It is just they way I look at it.

Another point to ponder and it seems you realize this: On death and dying, interestingly, my new found bio-sister also specializes in end-of-life mental health but we haven't discussed that...I don't think either one of us wants to...seems a lot like what a sister would be like. Anyway, as usual, I digress...A lot of research substantiates what we intuitively know (some of us, in any case) Death and dying is easiest on the participant, it is family and friends that suffer. It is human and whenever I am close enough to someone to point that out I do. "Believe me, it is harder on you than it is them"

[Emil El Zapato]

On the great surge across the southern border that didn't happen:

I didn't want to say it, but I knew it wouldn't happen. Seriously, journalists are suppose to know how to at least count to 100 (they have consultants), the general public not so much.

[Emil El Zapato]

Here we go again. This guy is in the news as a upcoming star in the Republican party. As I said, watching the world go round is very much like reading a script. Programming? Mind control raygun? Derivate of nature? Meta-subconscious? Or just the basic, sumpin' is very very wrong with those people:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E73yVIdXoAI_C6n?format=jpg&name=large

[Diabolical Boids]

On the great surge across the southern border that didn't happen:

I didn't want to say it, but I knew it wouldn't happen. Seriously, journalists are suppose to know how to at least count to 100 (they have consultants), the general public not so much.

The hundreds of National Guards sent to the border might have something to do with that.

[Emil El Zapato]

The hundreds of National Guards sent to the border might have something to do with that.

Crocodiles, alligators, tanks...none of it makes a difference to those that represent Darwin's fittest. The National Guard are serving as admins, none of them are equipped with tanks or even water pistols. One still has to be able to count.

Have I ever mentioned that my adopted dad's twin brother drowned when crossing the river.

[Emil El Zapato]

Here we go again. This guy is in the news as a upcoming star in the Republican party. As I said, watching the world go round is very much like reading a script. Programming? Mind control raygun? Derivate of nature? Meta-subconscious? Or just the basic, sumpin' is very very wrong with those people:

I think I figured it out and now I am able to feel a little empathy because they have no choice to adapt the role that nature/nurture has given them, either that, or live an entire life of self-denial:

Trans-Identityism! Yup, I rule!

[Diabolical Boids]

Crocodiles, alligators, tanks...none of it makes a difference to those that represent Darwin's fittest. The National Guard are serving as admins, none of them are equipped with tanks or even water pistols. One still has to be able to count.

Have I ever mentioned that my adopted dad's twin brother drowned when crossing the river.

It's called a psychological deterrent.

The administrative paperwork the NG is doing denying asylum to those who cross the border without documentation that states they can. Denial or granting of asylum is all administrative.

My brother-in-law works in the customs & immigration: "A convoluted way of checking the flow of the border of those who may not be licit without admitting there is a problem at the border. That it took this long to accomplish is basic DC red tape and bureaucracy. I yearn for the day when laws were written sparingly."

[Emil El Zapato]

It's called a psychological deterrent.

The administrative paperwork the NG is doing denying asylum to those who cross the border without documentation that states they can. Denial or granting of asylum is all administrative.

My brother-in-law works in the customs & immigration: "A convoluted way of checking the flow of the border of those who may not be licit without admitting there is a problem at the border. That it took this long to accomplish is basic DC red tape and bureaucracy. I yearn for the day when laws were written sparingly."

If you insist...

[Diabolical Boids]

If you insist...

It's not really up to me. The hard reality is that policies we have in the US aren't made of feelings, smiles, ecstasy, puppy dog tails, cinnamon toast, rainbow dust and unicorn horns. They are all part of an administrative process.

[Emil El Zapato]

It's not really up to me. The hard reality is that policies we have in the US aren't made of feelings, smiles, ecstasy, puppy dog tails, cinnamon toast, rainbow dust and unicorn horns. They are all part of an administrative process.

Have you noticed that the World War Three thread seems to be a little off topic. (I hate to be a sissy bitch but ...) and I hate to spout platitudes and worn out expressions but doesn't the herd instinct seem to manifest in a prominent fashion. It's a circle jerk... Things like that are why I'm here frustrating as it is. The mundane negative thoughtless mind is what is destroying this country, this world.

[Emil El Zapato]

It's not really up to me. The hard reality is that policies we have in the US aren't made of feelings, smiles, ecstasy, puppy dog tails, cinnamon toast, rainbow dust and unicorn horns. They are all part of an administrative process.

really? I got a call from an old friend the other night. He was just checking in and during the course of the bs'ing, he remarked that he doesn't follow politics and he really doesn't but he was curious about what I thought about it all and I just responded that, yes, it is fucked up as it seems.

He is a very good guy, funny as hell, but doesn't like black people, his wife is white and they have 3 kids. I have threatened to walk away from him when he started bashing black people in public. He was brought up that way and doesn't see anything wrong with it, it is natural for him.

Why do I write that, because your comment is so obvious it doesn't need saying.

[Diabolical Boids]

(I hate to be a sissy bitch but ...) but doesn't the herd instinct seem to manifest in a prominent fashion. It's a circle jerk... Things like that are why I'm here frustrating as it is. The mundane negative thoughtless mind is what is destroying this country, this world.



(I hate to be a sissy bitch but ...)

Yes, alors. Self-loathing is powerfully destructive.



Have you noticed that the World War Three thread seems to be a little off topic.


It was a lot off topic before admin removed certain disruptive elements, so a little off topic now would be an improvement.


and I hate to spout platitudes and worn out expressions

Because they predictably preface a sissy bitch verbal release of hate, frustration and resentment?


but doesn't the herd instinct seem to manifest in a prominent fashion.


You weren't very concerned about herd mentality when you were in thread, yes?


It's a circle jerk...

But it wasn't before you were banned from the thread?


Things like that are why I'm here frustrating as it is.

I think most have come to that conclusion.


The mundane negative thoughtless mind is what is destroying this country, this world



You are comparing exclusion from a thread as having the same catastrophic impact as the destruction world?

Yes, well I suppose Satan felt the same way when he was cast into hell.

[Wind]

Yes, well I suppose Satan felt the same way when he was cast into hell.

Okay, don't you think that's taking it a bit too far now?

I should tell you two to get a room, but it would appear that you already have one.

[Emil El Zapato]

Yes, alors. Self-loathing is powerfully destructive.




It was a lot off topic before admin removed certain disruptive elements, so a little off topic now would be an improvement.



Because they predictably preface a sissy bitch verbal release of hate, frustration and resentment?



You weren't very concerned about herd mentality when you were in thread, yes?



But it wasn't before you were banned from the thread?



I think most have come to that conclusion.



You are comparing exclusion from a thread as having the same catastrophic impact as the destruction world?

Yes, well I suppose Satan felt the same way when he was cast into hell.

I thought you understood the English language?


Okay, don't you think that's taking it a bit too far now?

I should tell you two to get a room, but it would appear that you already have one.

I think I'll start a new very creative thread room. I'll call it 'Saw' ... :) Carrying too far, yes, I would call it 'twisted' in fact. I don't really feel 'that' frustrated...I just wish people had 'nicer' natures. Ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

[Diabolical Boids]

You got me. I didn't give the topic the seriousness its poster deserved.

Honestly. Did anyone really expect me to join in arbitrarily attack and castigate half a dozen forum members because...why? You get what you put out there. It's the law of attraction.

[Emil El Zapato]

You got me. I didn't give the topic the seriousness its poster deserved.

Honestly. Did anyone really expect me to join in arbitrarily attack and castigate half a dozen forum members because...why? You get what you put out there. It's the law of attraction.

No, I didn't what I 'hoped' is that you would see the responsibility that you held for getting me banned from that thread by mocking my honest admission that I felt bad for Putin. He's an unmitigated narcissist but that doesn't render him unworthy of a commiserative nod. You should have been banned as well. Instead what you got was kudos for putting me in my place and then a joyous pile on. That seems unjust and injustice makes me 'rage' if I don't bridle it. And before you answer back with your well-honed nastiness, let me add that doesn't just apply to me. I would defend anyone that is treated unjustly, even you.

[Diabolical Boids]

No, I didn't what I 'hoped' is that you would see the responsibility that you held for getting me banned from that thread by mocking my honest admission that I felt bad for Putin. He's an unmitigated narcissist but that doesn't render him unworthy of a commiserative nod. You should have been banned as well. Instead what you got was kudos for putting me in my place and then a joyous pile on. That seems unjust and injustice makes me 'rage' if I don't bridle it. And before you answer back with your well-honed nastiness, let me add that doesn't just apply to me. I would defend anyone that is treated unjustly, even you.

It's all about you.

[Emil El Zapato]

It's all about you.

depends on the context... In my general context, it is all about the dignity provided by nature (for you nature lovers)/God (for me). It's not really that hard to comprehend but it does require a receptive soul energy (I hope that doesn't sound to new-agey).

[Diabolical Boids]

depends on the context... In my general context, it is all about the dignity provided by nature (for you nature lovers)/God (for me). It's not really that hard to comprehend but it does require a receptive soul energy (I hope that doesn't sound to new-agey).

Ok. I'll talk about dignity. My soul receptivity is not dependent on your opinion of it.


First. If you want dignity? Act like it. Speak like it.

Treat yourself with some dignity and respect. Self-loathing and making a mockery of oneself to an unwillingly audience as a practice of habit means hatred of self, and thusly hatred of spirit, Creator and Creation. You do yourself and the people watching disservice. And that is all it is a habit. One you learned when your survival depended on it. All this manipulation and clownish ploys for attention just in-dignifies you, your soul, your spirit, or Creation. It's not respecting yourself, its indulging yourself at the expense of that substance that is greater than wounded ego.

The primary difference between you and the rest of the active population here is that they treat themselves respectfully. They behave and speak as if they respect themselves and not as if they were just objects of ridicule and only worth inviting the same in.

They speak as if they know their own mind, instead of flip flopping all over, casting vague and circular arguments based in intangibles that are liable to change at any moment. People can neither agree nor disagree with you before you are taking up the opposite POV from the POV you exercised them with and then bludgeoning them over the head with. No matter how much someone attempts to treat you like an adult capable of comprehending adult matters you reframe yourself as a victimized child.

You might think its cunning and chameleon-like but it’s an obvious pattern of behavior and you just end up looking like an someone without any dignity or respect for yourself before blaming others for your inability to treat yourself with respect.

You pose diametrically opposite views that switch every moment as if you do not know your own mind and broadcast constantly to others that you do not take you or your shifting views seriously, or honestly, or dignify or respect them but.... others are expected to.

Sorry but that makes you diametrically and in constant opposition to people who know and respect themselves better.

That is very disrespectful to yourself and to people who give an honest try at interacting with you civilly. People know when they are being used.

Yes it is frustrating for you not to have control over how people feel and think about you. Try exercising some control over yourself and see how that changes.

[Emil El Zapato]

Ok. I'll talk about dignity. My soul receptivity is not dependent on your opinion of it.


First. If you want dignity? Act like it. Speak like it.

Treat yourself with some dignity and respect. Self-loathing and making a mockery of oneself to an unwillingly audience as a practice of habit means hatred of self, and thusly hatred of spirit, Creator and Creation. You do yourself and the people watching disservice. And that is all it is a habit. One you learned when your survival depended on it. All this manipulation and clownish ploys for attention just in-dignifies you, your soul, your spirit, or Creation. It's not respecting yourself, its indulging yourself at the expense of that substance that is greater than wounded ego.

The primary difference between you and the rest of the active population here is that they treat themselves respectfully. They behave and speak as if they respect themselves and not as if they were just objects of ridicule and only worth inviting the same in.

They speak as if they know their own mind, instead of flip flopping all over, casting vague and circular arguments based in intangibles that are liable to change at any moment. People can neither agree nor disagree with you before you are taking up the opposite POV from the POV you exercised them with and then bludgeoning them over the head with. No matter how much someone attempts to treat you like an adult capable of comprehending adult matters you reframe yourself as a victimized child.

You might think its cunning and chameleon-like but it’s an obvious pattern of behavior and you just end up looking like an someone without any dignity or respect for yourself before blaming others for your inability to treat yourself with respect.

You pose diametrically opposite views that switch every moment as if you do not know your own mind and broadcast constantly to others that you do not take you or your shifting views seriously, or honestly, or dignify or respect them but.... others are expected to.

Sorry but that makes you diametrically and in constant opposition to people who know and respect themselves better.

That is very disrespectful to yourself and to people who give an honest try at interacting with you civilly. People know when they are being used.

Yes it is frustrating for you not to have control over how people feel and think about you. Try exercising some control over yourself and see how that changes.

omigod ... I have but one purpose really, and that is to impress upon people that there is a better way... that of receptive soul energy to the positive. everything that I despise has a negative soul energy, that is about the most fundamental world view one can have and it is nearly un flip floppable. Fred is here to cheer you on. I will give you an example...I have been told before by him and probably you, that I've been around for years and have neither learned anything nor ever changed an opinion and do nothing but troll.

So, I have to ask? Should I value your opinion for its authenticity and 'headiness' and stability? Should I value Fred's? Should I value anyone's that has never let MY 'message' sink in to even the most superficial level because the capacity doesn't exist within them? I've said it before and I'll say it again, it ain't rocket science.

I always try to give people the latitude to think on their own, I can't do it for them and in any case it is way to cumbersome to spoon feed, I have never had the disposition to belabor points or things.

If one wants to have a civil dialogue, I am always open to that. As long as it isn't about the right...I have long lost my patience and ability to remain equanimous in the face of what they represent.

The fact that you have been messaging with Fred is obvious by the way...Look, I know what is up, but I don't care about that, I care about people seeing the world as it is (not to mention themselves) and trying to live up to a better self.

I rarely if ever lower a conversation unless it is imposed upon me...and then either the frustration or the ludicrousness nature of it causes me to lose a serious attitude about it.

Kind of like this last post of yours! I feel like I'm lowering myself by even responding to the whole bunch. Is that better?

[Diabolical Boids]

omigod ... I have but one purpose really, and that is to impress upon people that there is a better way... that of receptive soul energy to the positive. everything that I despise has a negative soul energy, that is about the most fundamental world view one can have and it is nearly un flip floppable. Fred is here to cheer you on. I will give you an example...I have been told before by him and probably you, that I've been around for years and have neither learned anything nor ever changed an opinion and do nothing but troll.

So, I have to ask? Should I value your opinion for its authenticity and 'headiness' and stability? Should I value Fred's? Should I value anyone's that has never let MY 'message' sink in to even the most superficial level because the capacity doesn't exist within them? I've said it before and I'll say it again, it ain't rocket science.

I always try to give people the latitude to think on their own, I can't do it for them and in any case it is way to cumbersome to spoon feed, I have never had the disposition to belabor points or things.

If one wants to have a civil dialogue, I am always open to that. As long as it isn't about the right...I have long lost my patience and ability to remain equanimous in the face of what they represent.

The fact that you have been messaging with Fred is obvious by the way...Look, I know what is up, but I don't care about that, I care about people seeing the world as it is (not to mention themselves) and trying to live up to a better self.

I rarely if ever lower a conversation unless it is imposed upon me...and then either the frustration or the ludicrousness nature of it causes me to lose a serious attitude about it.

Kind of like this last post of yours! I feel like I'm lowering myself by even responding to the whole bunch. Is that better?

I'm just ducky so I don't need 'better'. I'm not out here crying for people to define me and paint me in a better light. People draw conclusions from what they receive from you and what are they receiving from you. What are the wonderful gifts that you spread all over?

The fact is numerous people told me that after I got a clue on my own after giving you numerous benefits of the doubt that you are an energy suck. So you proved them right.

You have a choice. You got advice that costs other people 50 dollars an hour. The difference is they value it, clearly you don't. You make it clear you don't respect or value anyone's engagement with you.

If you keep demanding people define you then that is what you get. You get your feelings hurt. You keep asking people for advice and why they can't be XYZ to accommodate you and it just never works out for you even though you do it over and over. Stop asking people they are not living your life.

You might be lowering yourself but heroin addicts lower themselves to get their fix and so do emotional junkies. You'll lower and disrespect six more times before the day is done even though I'll be off at my schoolwork solving a thousand page equation.

And just quit it with the "Oh you are such a bad person" spiel and come up with something original. That's the first clue someone isn't speaking from the heart, the soul or spirit they are working from place damaged in the 2nd grade. You are stuck in a program that's why the same thing happens to you over and over and you spout the same thing over and over. Pick up the remote and turn it off. Go sit in some silence for a while.

You think anyone with half an ounce of self-awareness feels good about how you use them to suck energy from? Or is it, as noted earlier, all about you? You don't think even for one moment about others, the threads you shit all over and disrupt, the constant interruptions for attention. Take what you can scrounge from people but you can't take the moral high ground.

So you have let yourself go unchecked for so long you need people to define you and now you don't like the result.

You could define yourself. Take control back instead of once again blaming someone else.

YOUR CHOICE.

You know who is damaged when you blame Me or Fred? When you mischaracterize and slander?

Not me or Fred.

That's our Choice.

It's your life, its not the choice of anyone in here. It's either risk exchanges like this or be ignored, checked, censored or banned. YOUR CHOICE.

Or take some advice and quit seeing everyone through the lenses of your own dreck. YOUR CHOICE.


Your choice, Your choice, your choice.

If it's yours to fix, it's yours to control. Clearly you don't want to.

So you are stuck with the same old same old.

But that's YOUR choice.

[Aianawa]

I'm just ducky so I don't need 'better'. I'm not out here crying for people to define me and paint me in a better light. People draw conclusions from what they receive from you and what are they receiving from you. What are the wonderful gifts that you spread all over?

The fact is numerous people told me that after I got a clue on my own after giving you numerous benefits of the doubt that you are an energy suck. So you proved them right.

You have a choice. You got advice that costs other people 50 dollars an hour. The difference is they value it, clearly you don't. You make it clear you don't respect or value anyone's engagement with you.

If you keep demanding people define you then that is what you get. You get your feelings hurt. You keep asking people for advice and why they can't be XYZ to accommodate you and it just never works out for you even though you do it over and over. Stop asking people they are not living your life.

You might be lowering yourself but heroin addicts lower themselves to get their fix and so do emotional junkies. You'll lower and disrespect six more times before the day is done even though I'll be off at my schoolwork solving a thousand page equation.

And just quit it with the "Oh you are such a bad person" spiel and come up with something original. That's the first clue someone isn't speaking from the heart, the soul or spirit they are working from place damaged in the 2nd grade. You are stuck in a program that's why the same thing happens to you over and over and you spout the same thing over and over. Pick up the remote and turn it off. Go sit in some silence for a while.

You think anyone with half an ounce of self-awareness feels good about how you use them to suck energy from? Or is it, as noted earlier, all about you? You don't think even for one moment about others, the threads you shit all over and disrupt, the constant interruptions for attention. Take what you can scrounge from people but you can't take the moral high ground.

So you have let yourself go unchecked for so long you need people to define you and now you don't like the result.

You could define yourself. Take control back instead of once again blaming someone else.

YOUR CHOICE.

You know who is damaged when you blame Me or Fred? When you mischaracterize and slander?

Not me or Fred.

That's our Choice.

It's your life, its not the choice of anyone in here. It's either risk exchanges like this or be ignored, checked, censored or banned. YOUR CHOICE.

Or take some advice and quit seeing everyone through the lenses of your own dreck. YOUR CHOICE.


Your choice, Your choice, your choice.

If it's yours to fix, it's yours to control. Clearly you don't want to.

So you are stuck with the same old same old.

But that's YOUR choice.


Well there we go, the amazingness from ww3 thread is now over in this thread.


omigod ... I have but one purpose really, and that is to impress upon people that there is a better way... that of receptive soul energy to the positive. everything that I despise has a negative soul energy, that is about the most fundamental world view one can have and it is nearly un flip floppable. Fred is here to cheer you on. I will give you an example...I have been told before by him and probably you, that I've been around for years and have neither learned anything nor ever changed an opinion and do nothing but troll.

So, I have to ask? Should I value your opinion for its authenticity and 'headiness' and stability? Should I value Fred's? Should I value anyone's that has never let MY 'message' sink in to even the most superficial level because the capacity doesn't exist within them? I've said it before and I'll say it again, it ain't rocket science.

I always try to give people the latitude to think on their own, I can't do it for them and in any case it is way to cumbersome to spoon feed, I have never had the disposition to belabor points or things.

If one wants to have a civil dialogue, I am always open to that. As long as it isn't about the right...I have long lost my patience and ability to remain equanimous in the face of what they represent.

The fact that you have been messaging with Fred is obvious by the way...Look, I know what is up, but I don't care about that, I care about people seeing the world as it is (not to mention themselves) and trying to live up to a better self.

I rarely if ever lower a conversation unless it is imposed upon me...and then either the frustration or the ludicrousness nature of it causes me to lose a serious attitude about it.

Kind of like this last post of yours! I feel like I'm lowering myself by even responding to the whole bunch. Is that better?

Realllly enjoying your views n feels Chuckstirr, and that your continuing the engagement, bless you

[Emil El Zapato]

I'm just ducky so I don't need 'better'. I'm not out here crying for people to define me and paint me in a better light. People draw conclusions from what they receive from you and what are they receiving from you. What are the wonderful gifts that you spread all over?

The fact is numerous people told me that after I got a clue on my own after giving you numerous benefits of the doubt that you are an energy suck. So you proved them right.

You have a choice. You got advice that costs other people 50 dollars an hour. The difference is they value it, clearly you don't. You make it clear you don't respect or value anyone's engagement with you.

If you keep demanding people define you then that is what you get. You get your feelings hurt. You keep asking people for advice and why they can't be XYZ to accommodate you and it just never works out for you even though you do it over and over. Stop asking people they are not living your life.

You might be lowering yourself but heroin addicts lower themselves to get their fix and so do emotional junkies. You'll lower and disrespect six more times before the day is done even though I'll be off at my schoolwork solving a thousand page equation.

And just quit it with the "Oh you are such a bad person" spiel and come up with something original. That's the first clue someone isn't speaking from the heart, the soul or spirit they are working from place damaged in the 2nd grade. You are stuck in a program that's why the same thing happens to you over and over and you spout the same thing over and over. Pick up the remote and turn it off. Go sit in some silence for a while.

You think anyone with half an ounce of self-awareness feels good about how you use them to suck energy from? Or is it, as noted earlier, all about you? You don't think even for one moment about others, the threads you shit all over and disrupt, the constant interruptions for attention. Take what you can scrounge from people but you can't take the moral high ground.

So you have let yourself go unchecked for so long you need people to define you and now you don't like the result.

You could define yourself. Take control back instead of once again blaming someone else.

YOUR CHOICE.

You know who is damaged when you blame Me or Fred? When you mischaracterize and slander?

Not me or Fred.

That's our Choice.

It's your life, its not the choice of anyone in here. It's either risk exchanges like this or be ignored, checked, censored or banned. YOUR CHOICE.

Or take some advice and quit seeing everyone through the lenses of your own dreck. YOUR CHOICE.


Your choice, Your choice, your choice.

If it's yours to fix, it's yours to control. Clearly you don't want to.

So you are stuck with the same old same old.

But that's YOUR choice.

hmm, an energy suck, huh ...No, what really pisses me off is people trying to define me and being so hopelessly wrong.

Energy flows, yes it does...and by the 2nd law of thermodynamics it flows from one pole to the other. So, ok, you know what I'm not inclined to argue that point because I am sure that is a true statement?

Is that chameleon-like enough to satisfy the energy exchange that you cite? One should see that what you describe is a natural process. I could bore myself to death by hanging out at a like-minded place but where is the challenge in that. I've faced mobs before when others have run, I am more than willing to take that on. Don't ask me why? I think the chance for a productive exchange is worth the risk, but I've failed a time or two, such is life. What is demoralizing is to be around people for years without the simplest of breakthroughs. For me, that one is hard to believe possible. Just call me Chuckie, the eternal optimist.

[Aianawa]

hmm, an energy suck, huh ...No, what really pisses me off is people trying to define me and being so hopelessly wrong.

Energy flows, yes it does...and by the 2nd law of thermodynamics it flows from one pole to the other. So, ok, you know what I'm not inclined to argue that point because I am sure that is a true statement?

Is that chameleon-like enough to satisfy the energy exchange that you cite? One should see that what you describe is a natural process. I could bore myself to death by hanging out at a like-minded place but where is the challenge in that. I've faced mobs before when others have run, I am more than willing to take that on. Don't ask me why? I think the chance for a productive exchange is worth the risk, but I've failed a time or two, such is life. What is demoralizing is to be around people for years without the simplest of breakthroughs. For me, that one is hard to believe possible. Just call me Chuckie, the eternal optimist.

For years, either a sainthood you desire or self sabatage some would say.

[Emil El Zapato]

For years, either a sainthood you desire or self sabatage some would say.

LOL, I had been tagged as a future saint by friends (but not really, Aianawa)...good post though. Would you believe that I just received an emal inviting me to do a commercial for a local company, that came out of thin air. Still deciding whether to accept or not...I've been asked before...I don't think I have the courage for that.

[Aianawa]

Why, ?, what is the fear ? being out there as such ?

[Diabolical Boids]

You are stereo typing yourself.

And that's it. That's all you get.


Why, ?, what is the fear ? being out there as such ?

Can you trust or depend on something you hate? Or do you fear it?

[Emil El Zapato]

Why, ?, what is the fear ? being out there as such ?

long story ...

[Aianawa]

Oh yes indeed, think torture.


long story ...

Well tisa all about you our here engagement, sing away

[Emil El Zapato]

Why, ?, what is the fear ? being out there as such ?

After thinking about it for a few seconds...probably one mob too many. I did respond and ask for more info...we'll see. My dad was a narcissist, constantly belittling me...I have never been able to resolve it completely...but I keep pushing forward.

One thing in favor is that it would take place in my natural habitat...that's always a big plus.

[modwiz]

This thread title is living up to the name.

[Aianawa]

Well Dia B's gifted you some doozies imo regards the hard yards of dad stuff imo.

Natural habitats a go, face it, do it lol or poke your tounge out and wave your hands lol

[Emil El Zapato]

https://www.crigenetics.com/hubfs/AdobeStock_358347758.jpeg


Tales From The Tooth: How Ancient DNA Revealed A Personal History Written by André La Crout

A deer tooth, once worn as a pendant almost 20,000 years ago, is a time machine that connects us to a Stone Age woman.

I'm sure you've been to a museum where an ancient artifact caught your eye and inspired your imagination...

Who did this artifact belong to? What was their life like? These are questions born out of the curiosity that brought us to the museum in the first place.

Bones, pots, and ancient jewelry pieces are physical echoes of our ancestors' lives. They whisper stories of cultures long gone, of traditions passed down through generations. Yet, the people who carried, crafted, or used these objects have remained largely anonymous, their identities blurred by the millennia.

Fortunately, cutting edge advancements in ancient DNA analysis continues to unlock some of these long lost stories, effectively giving a face to otherwise nameless individuals of the past.

The Limitations of Traditional Archaeology and the Promise of Genetic Analysis

Traditional archaeological methods have always been crucial in piecing together our understanding of human history. The collections of artifacts unearthed give us clues to the cultures of past societies. In some cases, such as the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, we can piece together religious beliefs and entire stories.

The advancement of genetic science now offers a new avenue of exploration. DNA, the blueprint of life, carries detailed information about the individual it belongs to. By studying the DNA from ancient remains, we can gain a more personalized view of history.

Even better: DNA can now be extracted from ancient artifacts as well without damaging the artifacts. A recent study, published in Nature, accomplished this very feat. Scientists successfully employed a non-destructive method of DNA extraction to analyze the DNA of a woman from the Stone Age.

The Science Behind Non-Destructive DNA Extraction

The ancient artifact in question (this time) was a deer tooth that a woman wore as a pendant. She lived roughly 19,000 to 25,000 years ago.

Bones and teeth are generally porous in nature. This means there are many small holes for liquids and other substances to travel through, even if you can't see them. Given this feature, it's quite easy for sweat, blood, saliva, or other bodily fluids to seep into the material when an individual handles it. These fluids carry the individual's DNA, leaving a genetic mark on the artifact.

The researchers from the Max Planck Institute developed an innovative DNA isolation technique using a sodium phosphate buffer, a compound known to preserve DNA. This buffer is carefully applied to the artifact, and then, through a series of temperature-controlled incubations, the DNA is gradually released. The process is akin to a gentle coaxing, teasing out the genetic material without causing damage.

The beauty of this method lies in its respect for the artifact. The surface features remain intact, preserving the object's historical and cultural value while gifting us a glimpse into the lives of the people who crafted or wore it.

Tales from the Tooth: A Piece of Ancient Siberian History

This groundbreaking method was applied to the deer tooth pendant mentioned, which was discovered in Denisova Cave (pictured above). This artifact, crafted thousands of years ago, was about to reveal a tale spanning millennia.

The results were astounding. Along with identifying the species of the animal from which the tooth came, the scientists were able to recover human DNA. Researchers confirmed that the human DNA was ancient, indicating that it belonged to the person who wore the pendant rather than being a result of modern contamination, such as a researcher handling it.

The genetic analysis suggested that the pendant's maker or wearer was a woman with genetic ties to Ancient North Eurasians—a group known to exist in Siberia around the same time. This is the first evidence of their presence in the Denisova Cave region, a discovery that adds a new layer to our understanding of human migration patterns during that era.

What's more: the individual has genetic ties to Native American peoples.

Implications on the Past, Present, and Future of DNA Research

The next time you visit a museum and gaze upon an ancient artifact, remember that it might hold more than just historical significance.

It could potentially tell a personal story, thanks to the magic of DNA. The science of the past is becoming increasingly personal, and the line between 'then' and 'now' is growing ever more blurred.

The discovery of ancient DNA in the deer tooth pendant is not just a breakthrough in the field of archaeology; it's a testament to the tenacity of life. DNA, the code of life, has endured through thousands of years, waiting to tell its story.

As we look forward to the future of DNA research, we continue to unlock the past. The stories waiting to be told are countless. As this study shows, even the smallest pendant can whisper the tales of millennia.

[Aianawa]

This thread title is living up to the name.

lol n you couldnt a help but join Moddy

[Emil El Zapato]

Well Dia B's gifted you some doozies imo regards the hard yards of dad stuff imo.

Natural habitats a go, face it, do it lol or poke your tounge out and wave your hands lol

lol, true enough my good fellow, true enough

[modwiz]

lol n you couldnt a help but join Moddy

Must be my pain body talking.:hilarious:

[Aianawa]

I raise you a hurt truth lol

[Emil El Zapato]

I see the humour and I raise you one...later, though.

[Aianawa]

You tease you hurt soul, i conferskate your chuckle and raise you a slug of butterfly tears

[modwiz]

I raise you a hurt truth lol

OK. You win the hand with a royal flush.

King Chuckie the lll comes to mind.

[Aianawa]

Such a harsh lad

[modwiz]

Such a harsh lad

Trying to flush out my pain body.:grin:

[Diabolical Boids]

Well Dia B's gifted you some doozies imo regards the hard yards of dad stuff imo.

Natural habitats a go, face it, do it lol or poke your tounge out and wave your hands lol

The work is EFFING hard. There's two kinds of people. Those who will do the work. And those who won't. That's it.

It goes like this.

You need someone to keep you on track. It's addiction work. Addicts always need a sponsor. To show them how not to drink or do drugs and why they are addicted in the first place.

Then you find the Daddy-Mommy-whatever issues. Release the story and the emotions that go with it. Easier said than done. That means hypnosis, sticking your head into the unified field, squeezing your pineal gland, meditation, breathing, and energy work dragging our sorry arses to the past, to the present, into the future and back again. Nailing anxiety, breathing and tapping through it at odd moments until ever single bit of that dreck is gone. Maybe lots of times.

Now that that is gone on the mental and emotional level and cellular level we never ever revisit that again. It's gone. It's released. Don't invite it back in again.

But the mind is addicted to the story and the body is addicted so it wants to go back there to the old thoughts and the old emotions so you always have to be mindful and present of where your thoughts and emotions are wandering off and self correct until this new state is your new normal. Say three weeks or so. You don't go off returning to it, soliciting advice, or attention for it, or put yourself in positions where its triggered over and over, because you've released it. Why invite it in again. You reinstall it by revisiting it and that is why people stay stuck. It's just like someone who stops drinking, gets on the right track and falls off the wagon into old narrative.

Once its released, you replace the old behavior of soliciting attention with a new one. Doesn't matter what it is. Tap dancing or riding the flying spaghetti Monster. Change the mind, change the body. Then you have this awkward transition time where you are integrating and feeling ungrounded. It's tempting to fall back into old habits to feel normal or yourself. The point isn't to feel yourself again. Your old self sucks. You want a new self, new mind, new body which means a new healthy life where you aren't undermining and sabotaging yourself all the time.

It's not fun, it's not easy, it's doable and it's worth it. And once you start it, you show the universe that you are willing to like yourself to do the work (mind, body, soul, creator) and willing to like life and life will start liking you back. Then it becomes a game. Change all your habits. You won't be able to do anything without life popping up to show how much it loves you back.

Some people's very lives depend on this work cause it could be the choice between living and dying of some terminal disease instead of being afflicted with a bad case of butthurt we don't want to let go off because it gives us some superficial attention instead of life. And they do it. Cause they found something to live for instead of constantly sulk about. Life is so much more vibrant than wallowing in old emotions and old stories. It wants to like you, it wants to love you, if you let it.

And believe me you I have seen people choose death, just choosing to drop dead on the spot rather than let go of their pain, and their self-inflicted victimhood when an actual cure for it was presented.

Two kinds of people. Those who make the choice to do, and those who make the choice to not do. There's no half way. There's just people who catch on faster, or move more slowly but they keep moving. And then the other kind. They can't let loose of death.

[Diabolical Boids]

My dad was a narcissist, constantly belittling me...I have never been able to resolve it.



It's not resolved because your Dad belittling you isn't your issue anymore. You belittle yourself here and your Dad isn't around presumably. Not the issue. Narcissists make their targets hate themselves. The issue is self loathing. So once Dads is out of the picture the victim hoists the petard and continues Dad's work by belittling themselves and others in public, in private, wherever. That's what people who hate themselves do.

Your secondary issue is that you hate your father. Because he made you hate yourself. That's natural. Let the self hate go so you can let Dads go.

Rinse and repeat: the reason you hate him is because he made you hate yourself and you express that self loathing nine ways to Sundays by belittling yourself just like he did. So it will never resolve until you put the brakes on that. You have to like yourself enough to do that though.

Just. Stop. It. Stop belittling yourself constantly. Stop in dignifying yourself. Those are behaviors you learned from your dad.

Your dad. And then you turned it into a habit.

Not me, not Fred.

[Diabolical Boids]

lol n you couldnt a help but join Moddy

He didn't join. We summoned him.

[modwiz]

Posted without comment.:dan:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxiLUEgN6vQ


He didn't join. We summoned him.

Thought I smelled gas and should check on things.:ha:

[Wind]

This is some Fight Club level stuff here.

-tCY_G-kadg

[Octopus Garden]

Oh dear Lord,

Diabolical, Chuckie doesn't agree with you. He thinks differently, forms opinions differently. He shouldn't have to defend himself against your charges of being completely unreliable due to what? He had a Narcissitic father therefore, yada yada yada?

The premise being that his personality flaws make it impossible for him to think clearly. No. Just no.

[modwiz]

Oh the dilemma of it all.:drama:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSMQx9ZT8mY&pp=ygUmc2hvdWxkIGkgc3RheSBvciBzaG91bGQgaSBnbyB0aGU gY2xhc2g%3D


This is some Fight Club level stuff here.

-tCY_G-kadg

Ragnarok rages.

Pour a round of mead.

[Diabolical Boids]

Oh dear Lord,

Diabolical, Chuckie doesn't agree with you. He thinks differently, forms opinions differently. He shouldn't have to defend himself against your charges of being completely unreliable due to what? He had a Narcissitic father therefore, yada yada yada?

The premise being that his personality flaws make it impossible for him to think clearly. No. Just no.

He does have to back up his accusations of others though which is all about him actually being unreliable. Which is what initiated this entire conversation.

If he wants to play with people then there's consequences to that. I will reiterate people don't like being used and we don't owe ourselves to anyone.

I deeply regret that people cannot grasp that. Perhaps they have the same problem. People are just there to to amuse others.

He's had his fun and now he's angry that that someone provided what he was asking for ?Total and complete attention to him. Except it wasn't flattering. He wanted to drag everyone down the same old route again and someone said no. Take it or leave it.

Don't beg, wheedle and prod for answers and then cry when they are given or deny they were given. If we don't like answers, think about that before we ask the question.

[Aragorn]

Okay now, everybody relax and take a deep breath. Chuckie has his flaws, but so does everyone else, and there's no need to keep on bashing him over the head about it. You've all had your say by now, and so now it is time to let things cool down again — for him as well as for the rest of you.

Don't make me lock this thread, guys. :unsure:

[Fred Steeves]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhBM_Yay6w

[Emil El Zapato]

Okay now, everybody relax and take a deep breath. Chuckie has his flaws, but so does everyone else, and there's no need to keep on bashing him over the head about it. You've all had your say by now, and so now it is time to let things cool down again — for him as well as for the rest of you.

Don't make me lock this thread, guys. :unsure:

Don't sweat it, Aragorn. They have the right to release their frustrations...no one likes the leader (intellectual) and it has always been like that. Really, it is my responsibility to be kind. It is my bad really...but they're not completely innocent in that regard...things build unto they blow.

In the past as a child really, I handled things poorly. In truth, that was when I learned that leadership is a thankless role and eschewed it at every opportunity.

And especially don't lock my thread...it is my thread isn't it?


Oh dear Lord,

Diabolical, Chuckie doesn't agree with you. He thinks differently, forms opinions differently. He shouldn't have to defend himself against your charges of being completely unreliable due to what? He had a Narcissitic father therefore, yada yada yada?

The premise being that his personality flaws make it impossible for him to think clearly. No. Just no.

Hi OG, thanks for being almost normal... :)

[Emil El Zapato]

here's one that will make you all happy...

When I was 12 years old this girl in my class nicknamed me 'King Rat' (she stole the term to reference 'Lord of the Flies')... She never stopped wanting to hook up with me but I wasn't interested.

When I was 17 years old another girl, highly intelligent and an escapee from the funny farm (I very much enjoyed our existential conversations) dubbed me, "Chucky Wucky demon of the underworld"...She actually went through the verbal ceremony of dubbing me that. I wasn't sure what to think about it.

When I was old enough to know better a true crazed woman dubbed me "Chuckie the Serial Killer Clown"

I forgot to mention my ex-wife...she called me ' arrogant asshole' but I confess, I nicknamed her 'bowling ball head'

yes, it has been an interesting road.

[Emil El Zapato]

In an effort to demonstrate that I don't know everything, I am hoping I am allowed to ask a question, rather just taking 3 minutes to research it myself:

What is this 'Convergence' thing people are referring to? I'm going to refrain from saying I've already formed a number of 'impressions' about it. But I don't recall anything?

[Catsquotl]

Chuckie has his flaws, but so does everyone else

I wasn't bashing anyone, But I would like to say that I am pretty much Flawless.
Just sayin

[Emil El Zapato]

I wasn't bashing anyone, But I would like to say that I am pretty much Flawless.
Just sayin

YES! Now that's what I'm talkin' bout!

[Aianawa]

Not getting it is ok Chuckstirr, a mirror is the root. yeah yeah broken record. The harmonic convergence 11 11 n venus transit 12 12 n 21 12 2012 which was 13 13 window , all in the past now, now is its conclusion and the future is what it was, simple better put 40.000 foot or eagle kahu arkeytypal splain may be = joy love truth is gods connection, lol your here on TOT so your searching at least the truth.

Oh the not getting it was Dia B's gifts

[Emil El Zapato]

Not getting it is ok Chuckstirr, a mirror is the root. yeah yeah broken record. The harmonic convergence 11 11 n venus transit 12 12 n 21 12 2012 which was 13 13 window , all in the past now, now is its conclusion and the future is what it was, simple better put 40.000 foot or eagle kahu arkeytypal splain may be = joy love truth is gods connection, lol your here on TOT so your searching at least the truth.

Oh the not getting it was Dia B's gifts

yeah, I couldn't wait. I was surprised. It was a worthy effort in my opinion, but like the rose on the butt, a bit of a failure.

[Aianawa]

Yeah hiding is very difficult, vulnerable the hardest feeling rising atm, you may do well to ignore this facet of the hidden Chuckstirr, death of many types and abandonment share that this bed, eggysample may may may be when you lose one with great love, bam they gone, bam abandonned, while very easy to ignore, deep roots of this truama rise often. Hiding from who you nare not is very easy, the opposite can be livetimes.

[Emil El Zapato]

Yeah hiding is very difficult, vulnerable the hardest feeling rising atm, you may do well to ignore this facet of the hidden Chuckstirr, death of many types and abandonment share that this bed, eggysample may may may be when you lose one with great love, bam they gone, bam abandonned, while very easy to ignore, deep roots of this truama rise often. Hiding from who you nare not is very easy, the opposite can be livetimes.

Amen to that, Aianawa...honest truth it be.

[modwiz]

I think this is a good fit for the thread title.:)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDaECVmd2gk

[Emil El Zapato]

I think this is a good fit for the thread title.:)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDaECVmd2gk

A bit of confusion with this guy? Is he Jewish? Because he isn't describing Christianity. And I wonder what Biden himself thinks/feels? Biden works for the people not himself, it is his greatest asset as a public servant. A true leader has the strength to do what is right for those under his bailiwick. And yet, there are those that would call that weakness. We really have to decide what we want.

[Emil El Zapato]

On the other hand, he might be demonstrating that in a cosmic fashion, everyone gets what they want...which is kind of a nice solution OR not.

[Emil El Zapato]

Not getting it is ok Chuckstirr, a mirror is the root. yeah yeah broken record. The harmonic convergence 11 11 n venus transit 12 12 n 21 12 2012 which was 13 13 window , all in the past now, now is its conclusion and the future is what it was, simple better put 40.000 foot or eagle kahu arkeytypal splain may be = joy love truth is gods connection, lol your here on TOT so your searching at least the truth.

Oh the not getting it was Dia B's gifts

personal truth, Aianawa

[Emil El Zapato]

Guam is being hammered by the worst storm in decades and so far no deaths. The U.S. could take some valuable lessons from that.

[Emil El Zapato]

I just received this notice from my neighborhood forum group. Scammers are taking over the world!

"I just received a call from a well spoken lady collecting for Autism. She wanted to send me a collection envelope. I have an Autistic grandson so I told her sure….just as soon as I confirm her organization is legit. I then hear “Put on no call list.” And then she hung up………what kind of scumbag people do this….please beware!

[Aragorn]

I just received this notice from my neighborhood forum group. Scammers are taking over the world!

"I just received a call from a well spoken lady collecting for Autism. She wanted to send me a collection envelope. I have an Autistic grandson so I told her sure….just as soon as I confirm her organization is legit. I then hear “Put on no call list.” And then she hung up………what kind of scumbag people do this….please beware!

Yes, phone scammers are a plague these days. I've had several such calls myself already, but as soon as they get even the slightest hint that I don't trust them or that I know what game they are playing, they just bluntly hang up. And reporting the number to the authorities is futile, because it'll be a spoofed number.

Who knows how many decent people the fucking scumbags have already conned... :ireful:

[Emil El Zapato]

Yes, phone scammers are a plague these days. I've had several such calls myself already, but as soon as they get even the slightest hint that I don't trust them or that I know what game they are playing, they just bluntly hang up. And reporting the number to the authorities is futile, because it'll be a spoofed number.

Who knows how many decent people the fucking scumbags have already conned... :ireful:

Amen to that: they have no shame at all...One has to fall pretty low to be able to face a mirror under those circumstances.

[Aragorn]

Amen to that: they have no shame at all...One has to fall pretty low to be able to face a mirror under those circumstances.

And no conscience. I often wonder how these people can live with themselves. :unsure:

[Emil El Zapato]

CNN headline: Trump left classified documents open on his desk!

My reaction is omigod that deserves the death penalty. I'm serious a headline?

I once wrote on a security log that the reason I was there was to lie, cheat, and steal. I was reprimanded for not taking things 'seriously'.

[Diabolical Boids]

What were they classified as?

Don't bother to answer, you don't know. No one knows.

It's a hoax. Just the spread of a media generated hoax.

That's the spread of propaganda and the more it is spread the stupider the population grows. And while the simple minded may think I'm mounting a defense of Trump (because they are SO Predictable) I'm summing up an indictment of the rampant gleeful ignorance in America. Our rate of illiteracy is appalling and seemingly people revel in it. The National Inquirer Folks. T

Literally every document and piece of paper in the District has a classification. Everything is a classified document. A gum wrapper could be a classified document. I have a pile of classified documents on my desk. They are receipts from lunches with some information scribbled on the back. Anyone who has worked for a governmental agency knows this and to state otherwise makes them a liar.

These people like to pretend they know what top secret documents are, but doesn't that rather defeat the purpose of classifying them as top secret if everyone knows their importance?

From menus to temporary direction placards to daily staff memos and inhouse itineraries. That doesn't mean they are secret, top secret, matters of national, economic, or martial importance, or even remotely important or even interesting. Any place else 90 percent of them would be disposable like junk mail.

Legally and governmentally speaking classification refers to a filing and accounting system. It's how the mass of paper generated daily is filed--everything is given a classification from not important to the highest secret security. All classified. The term classified document means nothing because it never reveals the actual classification. Most of the classified documents are known to the public and pose no threat.

The system is set up that way because every scrap of paper may potentially end up in an archive or a judicial proceeding. Not because they are potentially dangerous. There's very little danger in the Russians seizing a White House lunch menu. Which is classified as "slated for the National Archive' or library of Congress.

Classification does not mean importance or security. It means 'where to look for a document.' Or 'Where the document is going.'

Importance like secret or top secret are the GRADE of the documents. How much of a danger they pose is graded.

Matters of national security are curated by different agencies depending on grade. A president really cannot walk off with really important documents that put the nation at risk. Not Trump nor Biden. That is why nothing has ever come from this 'classified document' nonsense. The media and its hapless brainwashed audience keeps the classified document hoax in play.

Leaving a classified document on a desk could mean they left the minutes of a daily staff meeting out. Because the media twists things and people in America are willing to be THAT ignorant. But boy do we have a lot of Karma rebounding back at us. Or cause and effect if you prefer.

One of the closely kept REAL classified top secret artifacts is the US Nuclear codes. Yet the woke and the ignorant seem to know all about them!!! Who has them, who shouldn't have them, and how easily they can be deployed. Isn't that amazing?

Nuclear Codes. No one knows them. No one is an actual possession of them. They are like a bank account. You can have the means to access the account but the bank can cut off access anytime.

It doesn't matter who has them. The Ignorant have a favorite bed time story they are some numbers typed out with an old fashioned type writer and the president carries them around in his pocket, carelessly leaves them on his desk, ready to be stolen by a spy. Like a combination to a locker or a safe. Seriously you cannot be any dumber than the media who spreads this stuff and people who pick it up and run with it.

This is the only thing we know about Nuclear Codes and its twice as much as what they think they know about classified documents:

They exist. Maybe.

The Codes change, daily, perhaps every 12 hours or randomly.

They are codes randomly generated by a computer, then imbedded on something called the Gold card. No one ever knows what they are in that way.

The nuclear codes are less important than the security number of the card. Which also changes.

The card is only read by a digital reader. No one knows the codes on the card. Losing it means nothing. No one knows what the card looks like or the precise technology associated to it.

It isn't a document, or classified, no matter how much they'd like to convince you other wise. Its's a key and falls under military jurisdiction.

Anything else is just disinformation pushed by people who want anyone who disagrees with them to be jailed and suffer the death penalty because someone hurt their feelings. Why don't they just put their brown shirt on and have at it?

I don't know if we can return to Nazi Germany as fast as the current war mongers in America would like but it's not for lack of trying.

[Emil El Zapato]

From publication Responsible Statecraft:

Could the war in Ukraine spoil US-South Africa ties?
The conflict has been tough for bilateral relations, but some experts see opportunities for cooperation amid the tensions.


by Connor Echols

In the early days of December, 2022, a Russian ship docked at South Africa’s largest naval base. The Lady R had turned off its transponders as it neared the port, where it arrived under the cover of darkness.

Despite the Cold War-esque precautions, word of the ship’s arrival in Simon’s Town quickly got out, provoking a backlash from Western states eager to isolate Russia. South Africa, as it often has in the past year, defended its right to maintain ties with all superpowers as part of its policy of neutrality, and the controversy seemed to blow over as quickly as it had begun.

But then a new allegation emerged: The United States started to say behind closed doors that South Africa had loaded weapons onto the Lady R during its three-day port call. Knowing that such an allegation could prove disastrous, Pretoria dispatched a high-level delegation to Washington in early May.

The goal of the trip was to show that South Africa was taking the allegations seriously and wanted to avoid damaging its ties with the United States, according to Stanley Makgohlo, the counsellor political at South Africa’s embassy in Washington.

“As a supporter of peace [in Ukraine], we cannot leave something like this unattended,” Makgohlo argued, noting that the envoys told U.S. officials that President Cyril Ramaphosa planned to open an investigation into the incident.

But, just as the delegation returned home, the U.S. ambassador to Pretoria called a press conference and took the allegation public.

“We are confident that weapons were loaded onto that vessel, and I would bet my life on the accuracy of that assertion,” said Amb. Reuben Brigety, adding that he would like to see Pretoria start “practicing its non-alignment policy.”

The allegation had an immediate effect on the South African rand, driving the currency’s value down by nearly five percent against the U.S. dollar — a record low. According to South African officials, Brigety later “apologized unreservedly” for the accusation, but his regret appeared to be more about the public venue in which he announced his claim rather than its substance.

After the press conference, Ramaphosa, who leads the National African Congress (ANC), publicly announced an official inquiry into the allegation and appointed a retired judge to lead it. Experts have expressed doubts about the accusation, noting that Pretoria has an onerous and transparent process for arms transfers and that the country’s biggest weapons maker is largely owned by Rheinmetall, a European company. But the possibility remains that a clandestine arms transfer may have taken place.

Regardless of the truth behind Brigety’s claims, the episode highlights the extent to which the war in Ukraine has strained U.S.-South African relations. Pretoria has particularly frustrated Washington with its consistent abstentions during UN votes that condemn Russia’s invasion. (Makgohlo argues that his country’s decisions were more of a “yes, but” than a no, adding that the resolutions put too little emphasis on diplomacy and peace talks.)

“American sentiment that has been expressed behind closed doors has now been made public, to the surprise and perhaps shock of South African government officials, ANC officials, and so on,” said Priyal Singh, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria. “I would say it was a long time coming.”

The split, experts say, comes down to a fundamental difference in worldviews. While the United States considers the war an unprovoked act of aggression by a revanchist power, South African leaders believe that its roots go much deeper. For the ANC, which has led the country since the 1990s, the conflict is little more than the latest proxy battle between East and West, and it is in Pretoria’s best interest to avoid picking a side.

Given the level of trade between the two countries, this seemingly academic split could have major implications, according to South African journalist John Matisson.

“It seems to me that, in all sorts of areas, we’re losing clout, we’re losing influence,” Matisson argued. “Our defense of our position is just weak.”

The battle over how to approach the war in Ukraine is far from the first touchy topic in U.S.-South Africa relations. Many in the ANC, which first took power under President Nelson Mandela in 1994, view the U.S. as a key facilitator of the former apartheid regime.

“There has always been an inherent tension in the sense that South Africa has viewed the U.S. as having been on the wrong side of history when it came to the liberation movement,” said Philani Mthembu of the Pretoria-based Institute for Global Dialogue.

This perception only grew as the U.S. “War on Terror” became a globe-spanning crusade. When South African officials told their U.S. counterparts in 2003 that they had conclusive evidence that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, Washington ignored their warnings and went forward with the invasion anyway. By the late 2000s, officials in Pretoria had grown more certain than ever that the U.S. was no better than the superpowers that had come before it.

Despite these political problems, economic ties between the two countries have flourished. This is largely thanks to South Africa’s inclusion in the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, which allows certain African countries to export a range of products to the U.S. without tariffs. (Notably, AGOA is set for a renewal in 2025, and U.S. lawmakers will get to decide if Pretoria gets to stay in the program.)

When it comes to Russia, the story is largely flipped. Economic ties between the two countries have always been weak, but the Soviet Union actively opposed apartheid and often allowed ANC officials to live and study in exile in Moscow, meaning that many of the party’s top figures have decades-old connections with the country. This is particularly true of military officials, as Gustavo de Carvalho of the South African Institute of International Affairs explained.

“Colleagues at the Department of Defense tend to have a very pro-Russia approach,” said de Carvalho, whose work focuses on Russia-South Africa relations. “The Ministry of Foreign Relations tends to be, in principle, more committed to the idea of non-alignment.”

This may help to explain why Pretoria made the particularly controversial decision to hold military exercises with Russia on the anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine. Notably, Makgohlo argued that these exercises were planned “way in advance” and noted that his country had also held exercises with the U.S. in recent years. But such explanations have largely rung hollow in Washington.

Some see a more sinister reason for Pretoria’s insistence on maintaining close ties with Moscow. Earlier this year, reports emerged that a firm owned in part by a prominent Russian oligarch had given the ANC a donation of more than $800,000. A spokesperson for the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party, said at the time that the money “flies in the face of South Africa’s quest for and respect for human rights.”

The response to the revelation was a stark reminder that not everyone in the country is so eager to maintain ties with Russia. As Matisson noted, business leaders and many regular South Africans fear that taking a stand against the United States at this moment risks doing more harm than good, especially when it comes to trade. And a poll from last year showed that 74 percent of ANC supporters viewed the invasion as “an act of aggression that must be condemned” — a far cry from the ANC’s position.

These controversies could become sharper as South Africa gears up for elections next year. Experts say the race is shaping up to be the closest one ever, with the ANC facing the possibility of losing power for the first time since the end of apartheid.

Foreign policy appears likely to play a larger role in these elections than it has in previous years. But the pressure is not only coming from those who want more condemnation of Russia, as Mthembu noted. If the ANC ends up having to form a coalition government, its most likely partner would be the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) — a party with an explicitly pro-Russia, anti-U.S. platform.

In other words, South Africa’s position on the war in Ukraine is unlikely to shift in ways the United States would approve of. But that doesn’t have to mean a break in relations if each side can learn to live with the other’s views on the conflict.

From a U.S. perspective, this means avoiding drastic steps like cutting South Africa out of AGOA, which would only push ANC officials further toward Russia, according to de Carvalho.

“The more one pushes South Africa to do something, the more South Africa pushes back,” he argued. “South Africa tends to be very reactive when it feels that an external power is imposing a position on the country or forcing South Africa to make choices.”

On the other hand, experts say South Africa would do well to avoid incendiary moves like its poorly timed military exercises with Russia. Some argue that Pretoria should also step up its contacts with officials in Kyiv in order to underscore the country’s neutral stance.

Improved relations could have major upsides for both countries when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine. South Africa recently joined five other African states in sending a peace mission to eastern Europe, a move that has been in the making for months, according to Mthembu.

Despite their bitter conflict, Moscow and Kyiv have reacted to the delegation with cautious optimism, a potentially promising development for Washington given recent reports that the Biden administration is considering a push for peace negotiations later this year.

As Mthembu notes, South Africa is also hosting a BRICS summit later this year that Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely try to attend, though Pretoria would no doubt face pressure to arrest Putin given the case against him for war crimes at the International Criminal Court. The BRICS grouping — a counterweight to the Western-led Group of 7 made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — will bring together many of the most powerful leaders from the Global South.

If the U.S. can avoid overly harsh condemnation of the talks and quietly influence their substance, the meetings could provide an opportunity for nations friendly to Russia to push Putin to drop some of his most ambitious demands and come to the negotiating table with Ukraine.

“All of those avenues give an opportunity to [have] a serious discussion with Russian counterparts about the potential to bring this conflict to an end,” Mthembu said.

[Emil El Zapato]

Are we careful about how we align our philosophy and worldview?

South Africa Has Not Been Immune to Right-Wing Populism
BY
NIALL REDDY

Since the end of apartheid, South Africa's ANC has held a firm grip on power. In recent years, the party, plagued by accusations of clientelism and corruption, has been met with opposition from populist forces seeking to advance an ethno-nationalist agenda.


Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) supporters at the Siyabonga Rally in Tembisa, South Africa, 2021. (Papi Morake / Gallo Images via Getty Images)

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BRIC Nationalism Is No Alternative
GRACE BLAKELEY

Twenty-eight years in, South Africa’s democratic order is in a bad place. Warning signs are to be found everywhere one looks. Several years after Jacob Zuma’s kleptocratic presidency, the state remains mired in corruption and mismanagement and is failing to reverse a catastrophic decline in basic services and infrastructure. Its security apparatus, deeply penetrated by criminal and seditious elements, seems powerless in the face of growing political violence and gangsterism. Populist parties are gaining ground, while demagogic, anti-constitutional voices increasingly dominate social media and fuel a new wave of xenophobic violence. Polls show collapsing support for democracy and growing receptiveness to authoritarian forms of government.

All of these morbid symptoms are well chronicled in a now daily stream of commentary issuing earnest warnings and dire prognostications about the fate of our democracy. These concerns are made far more acute by the gloomy international backdrop against which they are set. According to a growing consensus among political scientists, the world is in the midst of a “third wave of autocratization” ushered in by the 2008 financial crisis. That crisis definitively concluded the long expansive phase of democratization that had begun in the 1970s. Since then, fewer and fewer countries have seen any improvement in the health of their democratic institutions, while the number of places experiencing democratic “backsliding” has shot up.


Democracy’s retreat is conterminous with the globe-spanning rise of right-wing populism. Populists now control the government in numerous countries of the Global South, including major economies such as Brazil, India, the Philippines, and Turkey. In most cases, they assumed power through free and fair elections. But they’ve wasted little time in turning on and undermining those democratic freedoms once in office. Coups and full-blown dictatorships have been rare in the current authoritarian wave — its modal form has been the hollowing out of democratic institutions from the inside by incumbent governments. Populists have also claimed power in a handful of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, and have become a major electoral force in most others, often ending decades of duopolistic control by centrist parties.

The scope of these trends suggests that they are being propelled by deep structural forces. On the Left it is common to see populism as an expression of the intractable crises of the current, neoliberal stage of global capitalism. Neoliberalism’s most salient hallmarks have been soaring inequality and petering growth. It has given rise to both an unprecedented, decades-long stagnation in living standards at the bottom of the class ladder and a historically novel scale of wealth accumulation at the top. In this reading, populism is at root a reaction to the iniquities of our current Gilded Age, one that has assumed nativist forms due to the Left’s inability to offer meaningful alternatives to market-led globalization.

If it’s true that hard-edged economic forces are driving forward the populist tide then there is every reason to fear deeply for the fate of South African democracy. Even when measured against the subpar averages of the neoliberal era, post-Apartheid South Africa’s economic record has been exceedingly dire. Growth over the last decade has been negative in per capita terms. Inequality still registers higher than any other large economy. So does unemployment, by extraordinary margins. A jobless rate hovering for decades at levels normally only seen in the most severe recessions is the grimmest and most distinctive feature of South Africa’s economic malaise.

According to most analysts, the populist turn is already well underway here. Its main incarnation until now has been the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) led by Julius Malema. When the EFF launched in 2013, its “Marxist-Leninist-Fanonian” program combined appeals to class and ethnicity in roughly equal measure. Since then, class issues have gradually fallen off in its agenda, while the racial identities it invokes have grown narrower and more chauvinistic, bounded by anti-Indian and now anti-foreign vitriol. It increasingly converges with the populist movement that gestated within the African National Congress (ANC) during Zuma’s tenure, now organized under the banner of “Radical Economic Transformation” (RET).

The “Radical Economic Transformation” faction also garbs itself in the symbolism of the Left, but its true nature is plain to see: it represents the most voraciously corrupt elements of the ANC, intent on reviving the Zuma model of statecraft in which the fiscus is treated as a giant slush fund for the accumulation of “tenderpreneurs.” In the course of the last year, the RET faction lost several key battles in its fight with the group aligned to the ANC’s current president, Cyril Ramaphosa. But its continued vitality, and capacity for disruption, were demonstrated last July when it unleashed several days of chaos on the country following Zuma’s arrest for contempt of court.

Last November’s local government elections, in which support for the ANC sunk to its lowest levels yet, saw the sprouting of smaller new populist formations and ethnic parties. Notable among them is ActionSA, led by former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba. Mashaba is a self-made businessman and an open admirer of Donald Trump. He first took office in 2016 as a member of the center-right Democratic Alliance (DA), the dominant white party, but split from it three years later, after it veered into culture-war politics and began purging most of its black leadership. In 2020 he formed ActionSA around a more conventional right-populist platform of anti-corruption and strident xenophobia. That message proved popular in November, winning the party an average of 16.1 percent in the wards that it contested in Johannesburg.

With South Africa’s economic and social crises magnifying each year, and with the populist tide sweeping forward unabated around the world, even in places of far less economic distress, it’s not hard to see why so many analysts feel that it’s only a matter of time before South Africa succumbs to an authoritarian movement promising order amidst the chaos.

Populism There and Here
But as Adam Przeworski reminds us in a recent book on the global crisis of democracy, structural pressures emanating from the world system are always refracted through national political contexts. The populist wave has not been monolithic but has comprised distinct variants of populism, rooted in different social bases and developing along distinct political trajectories. It’s not clear that any of these provide a clear signposting of where South Africa is headed.

Take Northern Atlantic countries for example. Populist successes there have plainly been connected to economic polarization. Plenty of micro-level evidence links growing populist support to trade shocks and deindustrialization. But these forces have been at work for decades. We could not understand why the response to them took the form it did, when it did, without looking at the transformation of political institutions, in particular the declining vitality of party democracy and the crisis of representation to which it has given rise.

Plenty of micro-level evidence links growing populist support to trade shocks and deindustrialization.
The last several decades have seen the decline and hollowing out of mass-based political parties, on both sides of the spectrum but particularly the Left. Membership rolls have shrunk, participation has grown more fleeting and electoral turnout has diminished. Affiliated civic organizations, such as social clubs, newspapers, mutual aid societies, and, crucially, trade unions, have withered — part of a broader decline in associational life that extends down to the neighborhood and community level, leaving Western societies far more atomized. This has produced a deep “void” where once a dense thicket of institutions mediated the relationship between states and individuals.

These trends are themselves closely linked to the way that neoliberal globalization attenuated democratic life by cordoning off large areas of economic policy behind technocratic control. Social democratic parties collaborated fully in this process, which lent momentum to “Brahminization” — their parting of ways with the working class and reorientation to highly educated urban professionals. It’s no surprise that populists, who’ve harnessed the anger stoked by a detached and unrepresentative political elite, have made their largest gains in blue-collar towns and rural areas, particularly those most devastated by globalization.

It’s striking to consider how different the dynamics of mass politics have been in post-Apartheid South Africa. If one measures it from the high-water mark of popular mobilization following the downfall of Apartheid, one would of course detect clear signs of decline in the vibrancy of civil and political organizations. But no “void” has ever yawned at the center of our political space. Where one might have been, the ANC has continued to loom large.

Indeed, even as its own electoral support has slowly declined, the ANC’s membership rolls have ballooned. Between 2002 and 2007 total membership climbed from four hundred thousand to 1.2 million and has since crept higher. Some fraction of these are ghost members or passive clients, added to the rolls to inflate the delegate power of one or another faction. But even accounting for these distortions the numbers suggest a vast expansion of the ANC’s reach. And that reach doesn’t end at the boundaries of the party. The trade unions and civil society bodies in its orbit may have ceased to be organs of grassroots democracy, but many continue to operate at some kind of mass scale, with fairly deep penetration into workplaces and communities.

While mass parties were disappearing from the scene in Europe, the ANC was fusing itself with the state and using its control over public employment and procurement to become a giant engine of class formation among the historically disadvantaged. It facilitated a vast lateral flow of rents through tenders and state contracts, creating a client business class. But it also ensured a steady flow of patronage downward in the form of public jobs, smaller-scale tenders, and service delivery.

Local ANC branches, often supported by civil society groups like South African National Civic Organization (SANCO), have assumed a key brokerage role in this — interfacing with communities and managing the exchange of resources for the political support that undergirds the ANC’s hold on power. To some extent they also allow grievances to be conveyed upward, facilitating some responsiveness of the state to local needs. So rather than the citizenry being entirely cut off from political life through the loss of mediating organizations, in South Africa there has been a proliferation of local points of (indirect) contact with the state, affording representation through clientelist arrangements.

The situation is changing — fiscal constraints and factionalization are throwing the party-state into crisis and eroding the ANC’s support, but these are still nascent trends. It’s thus no surprise that the dominant expressions of populism that we’ve so far seen have emerged not in the vacuum of an emptied political space, but from within the dominant party. The EFF and RET are often likened to right-wing populisms abroad because of their authoritarian, nationalistic and increasingly xenophobic tendencies. But beyond identifying a few common traits these analogies tend not to be especially helpful. The EFF and RET are distinctive beasts occupying a very unique political niche.

Populism has not generally been the preferred choice for most large-scale capitalists, but neither has it been viewed as any kind of first-order threat.
If we’re concerned primarily with assessing their prospects, then two key points of distinction are worth highlighting. The first is that the two are offshoots of the governing party, the latter still formally a part of it. After Malema’s split from the ANC, he managed initially to maneuver his new party into a very strategic position: able to claim a provenance in the Congress movement with all the symbolic benefits that entail, but independent enough to avoid association with its dismal record in power.

The EFF sought to cast itself in the traditional role of the ANC Youth League, which Malema once led, as the radical conscience of its mother body. That position has now been lost. Driven by the sheer venality of its leadership, the EFF has re-enmeshed itself into the patronage networks of the party-state and started to openly align with the RET faction. The two are increasingly seen by commentators, and likely by the electorate, as manifestations of the same social essence.

The ties of both of these formations to the party-state will naturally limit the extent to which they are able to capitalize on anti-political and anti-elite sentiment. Outsidership has been an essential ingredient of the success of populist movements abroad, even when led by bona fide elites like Donald Trump or career politicians like Narendra Modi. They’ve almost universally put anti-corruption and demands to “drain the swamp” at the center of their platforms. Neither the EFF nor RET will have successful recourse to the same tactics. Indeed, both are already themselves tainted — quite accurately — with a stigma of corruption and this probably goes far in explaining their inability, so far, to muster broad public support beyond a militant core.


The EFF’s growth in 2021 was largely due to the post-July fallout in KwaZulu-Natal.
The EFF grew extremely rapidly in its early days, and has shown a consistent capacity for impressive street-level mobilization, but has been stagnating at the polls for the last several years. The 10.5 percent it netted in local government elections last year, a 2 percent bump from five years prior, is a poor result given a context favorable to populist messaging.

Its growth in 2021 came overwhelmingly from KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, where it benefitted — along with all other opposition parties — from the ANC’s hemorrhaging support in the wake of the July unrest (Table 1). In Gauteng and other provinces, it proved as susceptible as other major parties to collapsing turnout, which reflects poorly on its ability to capture anti-political sentiments.

Leaders of the RET faction, for their part, appear to be broadly disliked by the general public. Zuma’s approval rating when he left office was 25 percent (net -48 percent). Suspended ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule, the second most high profile RET figure, has an approval rating of around 11 percent while Malema’s is 26 percent. Compare this with Ramaphosa, whose approval rating has fluctuated between 60 and 80 percent.

The second thing that distinguishes these groups from populist authoritarians abroad is the enmity they face from dominant sections of capital. Populism has not generally been the preferred choice for most large-scale capitalists, but neither has it been viewed as any kind of first-order threat. As typified in Trump’s tax breaks, populists in government have generally shown a willingness to offset potentially harmful protectionist policies with other kinds of giveaways to big business. In some cases, like Modi’s India, the relationship between the two has been deeply congenial from the start.

Parties that don’t kowtow to ‘business confidence’ risk being branded as economic wreckers.
That won’t be the case for the EFF or RET. Both have made opposition to so-called “white monopoly capital” a defining part of their agenda. Whether it’s one they would actually stick to in power is a different question. They are in the end oligarchic movements, dominated by elites whose ability to extract rents from the state will ultimately depend on there being some measure of economic stability, which will deter any inclination to tamper with property rights. Still, a return to the untrammeled looting of state resources is not an agenda they are likely to divert from, and that means there will be no easy accommodation between them and large-scale capital.

In this sense, the EFF and RET are radical movements, even if there’s nothing progressive about them. They are a threat to dominant economic interests. Unfortunately, for them, this means they will confront the same challenges as other radical movements. In addition to facing powerful counter-mobilization from big business, they will have to contend with the latter’s structural power, stemming from its control over investment and unemployment. Parties that don’t kowtow to “business confidence” risk being branded as economic wreckers, which makes it far harder for them to appeal to middle-ground voters. In this way, capitalist opposition will not only constrain what RET populists are able to do with power, but their ability to lay hold of it in the first place.

The Limits of Middle-Class Populism
Perhaps a better place to look for precedents in trying to gauge populism’s local prospects is South Africa’s BRICS partners, Brazil and India. The populist turn in those countries has taken a very different form than that of the West. Neoliberalism shaped the broader context in which it unfolded. However, the sociologist Patrick Heller argues that the proximate causes of the realignments that brought Jair Bolsanaro and Modi to power have more to do with the ways that previous governments deviated from orthodox neoliberalism.

The Workers Party (PT) government in Brazil (2002–2018) and Indian National Congress (INC) (2004–2014) both blended neoliberal macroeconomic fundamentals with elements of welfarism and efforts to expand citizenship rights to marginalized constituencies. In India, this took the shape of a series of rights-based laws enshrining access to information, basic education, and, most important from a redistributive standpoint, the right to a hundred days of paid public employment for every rural household.

The PT’s flagship piece of welfare legislation was the famous Bolsa Familia program of conditional cash transfers. But, in fact, its most effective weapon against inequality was the progressive increases in the minimum wage, which rose by 75 percent between 2003 and 2013. Coupled with a favorable global environment, these demand-boosting policies helped to unleash rapid growth and elevate a large section of the poor into the lower rungs of the middle classes.

According to Heller, the eventual result of this was a furious political backlash from elites and the more established middle classes. This was animated by fear of intensified competition for traditionally hoarded jobs and opportunities and also by resentment at the breakdown of status hierarchies. Elites for their part resisted social policies for conventional reasons — their tendency to drain fiscal resources and weaken market dependence. The joining of these reactionary impulses produced what Heller calls “retrenchment populism” characterized by attacks on welfare and right-based legislation, but also by efforts to repress civil society and confine marginalized groups.

Recent data on voting patterns from Piketty’s World Inequality Lab seems to bear out this argument. It shows that the poor in Brazil largely remained loyal to the PT, while the party’s electoral decline was driven by the rapid desertion of voters in the top half and the top 10 percent of the income distribution. In India, the data reflect Modi’s success at consolidating the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s bases among the wealthy and upper castes ahead of his 2014 victory. But it also reflects a sudden swing toward the BJP of a significant segment of the lower castes, won largely on the basis of appeals to religious conservatism charged with anti-Muslim bigotry. Bolsonaro achieved a similar result at a smaller scale in Brazil, garnering a beachhead of poorer voters through an alliance with conservative evangelical churches.

There are tempting comparisons to be made between ANC policy and welfare-neoliberalism (ME: this explains the definition of neoliberalism) of the PT and INC. The ANC also combined extensive liberalization and macroeconomic conservatism with social policies that, in comparative terms, have been generous and highly redistributive. However, the ANC never succeeded in unlocking the kind of rapid growth that Brazil and India achieved. Its social policies have had a more palliative quality — they’ve worked to temper the extremes of South African inequality without providing a strong springboard for middle class advancement. Consequently, resentment toward social entitlements for the poor has not been a lightning rod of middle-class politicization in the ways it has in other “emerging economies.”

Nevertheless, there are signs of fairly deep middle-class discontent coalescing around other issues that are potential pressure points for populist agitation. Corruption is a key one, extreme crime rates are another. And although usually associated with working class communities, anti-immigrant sentiment appears to have gained a good deal of cross-class resonance. These are all core issues around which Mashaba’s ActionSA mounted its highly successful first campaign last November. Ward-level data suggests that Mashaba managed to appeal to an impressively diverse constituency, with ActionSA voters fairly evenly spread across suburbs and townships (Table 2).


ActionSA’s populist message drew diverse support in Johannesburg.
Despite these early successes, Mashaba and other aspiring populists will face major challenges in assembling the same kind of coalition that has powered authoritarian populisms elsewhere in the Global South. The first hurdle they face is that their potential middle-class base, which is small to begin with, is heavily segmented by racial divisions which were only deepened in these latest elections. Notwithstanding Mashaba’s small inroads, the DA’s pivot to color-blind, culture-war liberalism allowed it to recoup earlier losses and maintain its dominance of the white vote. Colored voters defected in large numbers from the party, but largely to their own race-based parties.

It’s not really clear what strategy a party like ActionSA might muster for surmounting the deep racial loyalties of the middle-class electorate. It was virulent Hindu nationalism that yoked together Modi’s middle-class coalition across regional and caste lines, providing him not only voting fodder, but also disciplined cadres. Bolsonaro similarly draws his most fanatical, street-fighting battalions from chauvinistic, military-worshiping currents of nationalism with deep purchase in the middle class. There’s no equivalent force that could play the same role in South Africa — a pan-racial nationalism has never existed here.

Yet, when we subtract white, Indian and colored voters, the South African middle class starts to look like a far flimsier foundation on which to try and build mass-based populism. What remains — the black middle class — is itself heavily divided. It comprises large parvenu layers that owe their class position to the party-state, to which they will have strong residual loyalties. Anti-corruptionism will have little traction among them. They’re likely to give far greater salience to continued opportunity hoarding by whites, but any pandering to those concerns will only alienate Mashaba from high-turnout suburbs.

Anti-immigration and tough-on-crime stances will be powerful tools for making inroads into poor constituencies.
What this means is that, for aspiring populists, plebeian votes will have to be a far larger part of their electoral math from the start. Anti-immigration and tough-on-crime stances will be powerful tools for making inroads into poor constituencies, and Mashaba has shown an ability to wield them effectively. Yet, while there is plenty of room for populist expansion among the poor, there will be strong limits to achieving the kind of majoritarian support that could subtend a full-blown “populist turn.”

In urban areas, Mashaba’s more conservative brand of populism will be contesting for space with the ethno-nationalist, class-inflected messaging of the EFF. Its growth potential will be closely governed by the pace of decomposition in ANC support. While clearly in decline, the latter remains overwhelmingly the dominant force within poor communities. Party realignment within the working class looks set to be a protracted process.

In the countryside, the dilemmas for new parties are magnified. The vast majority of the rural population lives under traditional authorities, which were originally the colonial state’s instruments of indirect rule. Today they’re a somewhat mixed bag: some abide by certain principles of consultative democracy while others, perhaps most, remain firmly in the colonial mold of concentrated patriarchal authority. For whatever reason, they’ve retained far greater legitimacy than other spheres of government (Table 3).

Because they facilitate access to mining rights and influence the voting behavior of their “subjects,” they’ve become important cogs in the ANC’s patronage machinery, helping to secure its hold over the rural population in exchange for a share of the mineral rents and supportive legislation. Excluding KZN, where the party lost considerable ground to another ethnic formation, ANC support in 2021 held up far better in traditional areas than other parts of the country, declining at half the rate it did in large metros (Table 4).


Traditional authorities have retained far greater legitimacy than other spheres of government.
Bypassing chiefly influence and re-tooling a populist message to directly appeal to rural constituents will be a significant challenge for new parties. It’s one that already seems to have deterred the EFF. Consistent with their open reversion to a politics of the belly, the party resorted to bribing a notoriously violent and corrupt Xhosa chief ahead of last year’s elections, and bragging about it on their social media.

A Parcelized Polity
In short, the dilemma facing populists, and indeed all political newcomers, is that the South African polity is parcelized by deep, cross-cutting cleavages. These have been to some extent obscured by the ANC’s expansive coalition, but will come to the fore again as that coalition fragments.

Three cleavages in particular have been highlighted in this analysis. The first and most primordial are racial and ethnic divisions. Two and a half decades of formal equality has sadly done little to erode their salience. They present the most immediate challenge to parties trying to establish a base in the more diverse urban middle classes, but may come to assume wider relevance as the bonds of the ANC’s encompassing nationalism start to wither.

Second, are the deep divides created by the party-state. The ANC’s “cadre deployment” and procurement policies have created huge supporting constituencies and undergirded the construction of sophisticated political machines with extensive reach into poorer communities. But, inevitably, they’ve also fomented intense opposition. The corruption associated with the party-state is a source of profound outrage spanning all socioeconomic fault lines and even cutting through the elite sphere. Large-scale capital views the “tenderpreneurial” business class as a pronounced threat to the integrity and partiality of the state.

Finally, there are the cleavages created by South Africa’s “bifurcated state.” These are cleavages of conscious design, originating in the colonial era but maintained and reinforced by the democratic state. The ANC’s efforts to shore up traditional authorities as little archipelagos of despotism are continuing today through two major pieces of legislation on the traditional court system, one recently passed, the other nearing enactment. Whether conscious or not, this has proven an effective electoral strategy, helping the party to secure its bases in the hinterlands as it loses its grip on the cities.

Of course these cleavages are not immutable. Political parties don’t simply reflect divisions in the society but help to shape and remake them. In the longer term it’s not at all impossible that some new populist formation will manage to cobble together a majoritarian coalition that cuts across and starts to erode these various fault lines. But for now the populist turn in South Africa looks to be a splintered one.

A takeover of the ANC by RET or some other faction remains by far the most likely near-term route to populist government. Patrimonial groups have the structural dynamics on their side — the ruralization of the party increases its relative clout at national congresses, which may well allow it to reverse the setbacks recently experienced. An RET victory, however, would immediately send the ANC’s electoral support further south and could even occasion splits in the Tripartite Alliance. The party would have to assume power in coalition (perhaps with the EFF) or with a wafer-thin majority. Unlike Modi or Bolsonaro it would have no green light from big business for undermining democratic institutions, so any movement in that direction would trigger capital flight and economic collapse.

That would create a dangerous dynamic. It could radicalize RET, forcing them to try and rapidly subvert the constitutional order rather than chipping away at it as other populists have done. But they’d likely be doing so from a position of weakness, heading a divided movement and with low levels of public support. Their success is far from guaranteed.

Ending the ANC’s unassailable electoral advantage might bring some welcome changes but it won’t deliver the structural reforms needed to seriously address poverty and unemployment.
On the other hand, fragmentation may mean stasis. The same deep political cleavages make it harder for parties to find common ground and form functioning coalitions — as we’ve already seen at the local level. Even if they could do so, none of them have a serious vision of how to lead South Africa out of the intersecting, mutually reinforcing crises in which it’s become embroiled. Ending the ANC’s unassailable electoral advantage might bring some welcome changes — like a roll back of the party-state — but it won’t in and of itself deliver the structural reforms needed to seriously address poverty and unemployment.

Those crises have the potential to force South Africa down a path toward democratic breakdown very different from the ones that other countries have followed. The most acute danger is that the country gets trapped in a downward spiral of cumulative causation, in which mounting social disorder and disinvestment feed off each other. StatsSA’s recent announcement of a 1.5 percent retraction in GDP following weeks of unrest in July already gives us a foretaste of that frightening scenario. Self-reinforcing dynamics of this kind call for bold public action to break the cycle and set the country on a new path. But it’s not clear where the agency for such action would come from.

As ever there is an alternative. The wider processes of realignment underway also create the potential for realignment on the Left. For the whole democratic period the socialist movement has been weakened by its own cleavages, which have divided an “independent left” rooted in social movements and small radical parties, from an ANC-aligned “official left” with a base in the unions and the Communist Party. The fracturing of the ANC’s coalition is making it possible for these two halves of the Left to find each other once again and instill new life into class struggle politics.

For the marriage to work, both partners will have to be prepared to make major changes. The independent left will have to move quickly past the sectarianism and movementism that have plagued it in its years of marginalization. It will have to learn to think in bold political terms. As William Shoki argues it will have to take a large leaf out of the populist book, eschewing old doctrines and crafting a message capable of relating to people’s immediate demands for political inclusion and material redress.

But, unlike other left populists, it cannot afford to confuse the message with the movement. If it is to keep its sights on the big structural changes we need, then it has to also remain committed to reviving and scaling up mass organizations, particularly those rooted in the structural power of labor. For that to happen, the organizations of the “official left” not only have to be reclaimed from the ANC, but also fundamentally reformed. Historic traditions of shop-floor democracy and social movement unionism provide models for how this might be done.

The Left may only have a very limited window in which to put class politics back onto a mass footing. As we should know all too well in this country, parties have ways of institutionalizing themselves and establishing durable bonds of loyalty within their support base. If the Left fails to secure a seat at the table as the ANC coalition gets carved up it may find itself excluded for a generation or more.

Republished from Africa Is a Country.

[Emil El Zapato]

Reports have surfaced that say the Wagner group is in the Sudanese conflict? What should the U.S. do? Or any vested European country, or China?

The Wagner Group (Russian: Группа Вагнера, tr. Gruppa Vagnera), also known as PMC Wagner[6] (Russian: ЧВК[a] «Вагнер», tr. ChVK «Vagner»[55]; lit. 'Wagner Private Military Company'), is a Russian paramilitary organization.[6] It is variously described as a private military company (PMC), a network of mercenaries, or a de facto private army of Russian President Vladimir Putin.[6][56] The group operates beyond the law in Russia, where private military companies are officially forbidden.[57][58][56] Because it operates in support of Russian interests, receives equipment from the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) and uses MoD installations for training, the Wagner Group is said to be a de facto unit of the MoD or Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU.[59] While the Wagner Group itself is not ideologically driven,[60][61] various elements of Wagner have been linked to neo-Nazism and far-right extremism.[6][62][63]

[Emil El Zapato]

Ethnocentrism is alive and well:

Damn, this year's winner of the National Spelling Bee speaks the usual native language with an average word having 35 characters in it. He's going to be on TV and I can't even bring myself to watch it.

[Emil El Zapato]

It seems Putin is using the Hitler approach...as one leaves destroy everything?

[Wind]

Scorched-earth tactics (https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/news-museji/crimes-of-russian-totalitarianism-stalin-s-and-putin-s-scorched-earth-tactics-in-ukraine/) in Stalin's footsteps.

"The Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is playing out the war in Ukraine according to Stalin’s rules and may blow up the Kakhovka HPP, as Stalin blew up the Dnipro HPP, which was the most powerful hydroelectric plant in the USSR, 82 years ago. In a recent televised address, Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian forces had planted explosives inside the enormous Nova Kakhovka dam, which holds back the giant reservoir, and were planning to blow it up. Russia accused Kyiv of missile strikes on the dam and planned to destroy it. Ukrainian officials called this a sign that Moscow could undermine it and blame Kyiv for that. Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to warn Russia against blowing up the Kakhovska dam, which could cause flooding of a large area of southern Ukraine.

The Stalinist crime was committed on August 18, 1941, at 8:00 p.m. to stop the advance of German troops — to make it impossible for them to cross the Dnipro and to paralyze the work of the largest hydroelectric power plant before the invaders entered Zaporizhzhia. On August 13, the engineering department of the Southern Front received a cypher message from Joseph Stalin and Borys Shaposhnikov, the Chief of the Red Army General Staff: “In case of extreme necessity, allow destruction.” Three days before the event, the engineer colonel of the Red Army, Borys Epov, who led this operation, arrived in the city. Under instructions from above, he ordered an NKVD engineer battalion to plant approximately 20 tons of explosives on the dam and blow it up and the railroad bridge across the river. Oleksiy Petrovsky, the head of the military engineering department of the headquarters of the Southern Front, carried out this criminal order.

The specific cynicism of the incident consisted of the spontaneity of its implementation and ignoring the need to inform residents about it. Moreover, even the party leadership of the city and even its military units, which arrived under pressure from the front, were not informed of Stalin’s intentions. “We were in Zaporizhzhia, when suddenly the ground shook under our feet, the air shuddered from an explosion of enormous force,” the commander of the Southern Front, Ivan Tiuleniev, remembered.

Due to the massive wave that formed after the explosion and the flood, which lasted for 2-3 days, many Red Army soldiers who were crossing to the left bank of the Dnipro at that time, as well as residents of the Dnipro villages and towns that were flooded in a few hours, died. As the residents of Zaporizhzhia, who lived along the Mokra Moskovka river, which flows into the Dnipro from the left bank, recall that after the explosion, the water did not flow into the Dnipro channel, but in the other direction. We will never know the exact number of victims because, at that time, no one counted the number of victims. According to contemporaries, from three to 100 thousand people died as a result of the destruction of the dam. Data on several thousand victims are considered more likely.

Fragmentary memories of the tragedy are preserved. A woman who lived not far from Dniprovsky Plavni recalled that the residents of this area “heard terrible screams and wails. Then everyone got boats, and almost everyone had boats there, and started rescuing the soldiers who were clinging to the tops of the trees. Many people were saved.” In this area (15 km from the dam down the Dnipro) the force of the water was almost not felt anymore because of the huge number of different lakes and small rivers, and islets that existed in this low-lying part before the constructing the Kakhovsky reservoir, took over the flood, which was formed due to undermining the dam. As it usually happened during the melting of snow in the spring.

It is a certain irony of fate that this explosion did not hinder the German troops and did not cause them any significant losses. In fact, it was not the Germans but the Soviet crossings demolished. The German military observed the consequences of the explosion through binoculars. However, the dam destruction made it difficult for the Wehrmacht to advance further in the Zaporizhzhia region.

For some time, they concealed information about the circumstances of the dam’s destruction. Even they spread false rumours about sabotage and the Wehrmacht’s responsibility for what had happened. However, later it became known who were the real executors of the DniproHPP explosion. Borys Epov and Oleksiy Petrovskyi were arrested by the counter-intelligence as saboteurs. However, after the military leadership intervention, they were released because Stalin had given the order to blow up the dam personally.

The undermining of the DniproHPP was not just the liquidation of an industrial facility but also the destruction of the major electricity supplier to the regional centre. However, after the power plant was blown up, the dam was rebuilt by the Germans less than two months later, and the power plant was operational a year later. In 1943, when the German troops were retreating, they blew up the power plant again, but only its technical part. The dam was not destroyed. Later, at the Nuremberg trials, the Soviet side tried to insidiously shift the blame for undermining the dam to the Germans, but no convincing evidence was provided.

The destruction of the DniproHPP in the summer of 1941 is one of the most tragic incidents of the “scorched earth” policy, carried out during the retreat of the Red Army to the East. The number of tragedy victims is impressive, as well as the scale of the campaign to destroy everything of value in cities and villages without the slightest need to worry about the fate of the civilian population, which was left without food supplies (fields with crops were also burned) and with destroyed infrastructure before the approach of the cold season."

Olha Movchan,

leading researcher

Holodomor Research Institute

[Emil El Zapato]

Scorched-earth tactics (https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/news-museji/crimes-of-russian-totalitarianism-stalin-s-and-putin-s-scorched-earth-tactics-in-ukraine/) in Stalin's footsteps.



exactly...weird people, man, weird.

[Wind]

BbPiIwFOQtU

[Fred Steeves]

Has the Western jury reached a verdict on the morning after? No investigation required we have all we need, just like Nord Stream...

Book 'em Danno. :thup:

[modwiz]

Has the Western jury reached a verdict on the morning after? No investigation required we have all we need, just like Nord Stream...

Book 'em Danno. :thup:

More sober minds comment on the dam situation.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-5f2LKY_y0

[modwiz]

Scorched-earth tactics (https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/news-museji/crimes-of-russian-totalitarianism-stalin-s-and-putin-s-scorched-earth-tactics-in-ukraine/) in Stalin's footsteps.

"The Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is playing out the war in Ukraine according to Stalin’s rules and may blow up the Kakhovka HPP, as Stalin blew up the Dnipro HPP, which was the most powerful hydroelectric plant in the USSR, 82 years ago. In a recent televised address, Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian forces had planted explosives inside the enormous Nova Kakhovka dam, which holds back the giant reservoir, and were planning to blow it up. Russia accused Kyiv of missile strikes on the dam and planned to destroy it. Ukrainian officials called this a sign that Moscow could undermine it and blame Kyiv for that. Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to warn Russia against blowing up the Kakhovska dam, which could cause flooding of a large area of southern Ukraine.

The Stalinist crime was committed on August 18, 1941, at 8:00 p.m. to stop the advance of German troops — to make it impossible for them to cross the Dnipro and to paralyze the work of the largest hydroelectric power plant before the invaders entered Zaporizhzhia. On August 13, the engineering department of the Southern Front received a cypher message from Joseph Stalin and Borys Shaposhnikov, the Chief of the Red Army General Staff: “In case of extreme necessity, allow destruction.” Three days before the event, the engineer colonel of the Red Army, Borys Epov, who led this operation, arrived in the city. Under instructions from above, he ordered an NKVD engineer battalion to plant approximately 20 tons of explosives on the dam and blow it up and the railroad bridge across the river. Oleksiy Petrovsky, the head of the military engineering department of the headquarters of the Southern Front, carried out this criminal order.

The specific cynicism of the incident consisted of the spontaneity of its implementation and ignoring the need to inform residents about it. Moreover, even the party leadership of the city and even its military units, which arrived under pressure from the front, were not informed of Stalin’s intentions. “We were in Zaporizhzhia, when suddenly the ground shook under our feet, the air shuddered from an explosion of enormous force,” the commander of the Southern Front, Ivan Tiuleniev, remembered.

Due to the massive wave that formed after the explosion and the flood, which lasted for 2-3 days, many Red Army soldiers who were crossing to the left bank of the Dnipro at that time, as well as residents of the Dnipro villages and towns that were flooded in a few hours, died. As the residents of Zaporizhzhia, who lived along the Mokra Moskovka river, which flows into the Dnipro from the left bank, recall that after the explosion, the water did not flow into the Dnipro channel, but in the other direction. We will never know the exact number of victims because, at that time, no one counted the number of victims. According to contemporaries, from three to 100 thousand people died as a result of the destruction of the dam. Data on several thousand victims are considered more likely.

Fragmentary memories of the tragedy are preserved. A woman who lived not far from Dniprovsky Plavni recalled that the residents of this area “heard terrible screams and wails. Then everyone got boats, and almost everyone had boats there, and started rescuing the soldiers who were clinging to the tops of the trees. Many people were saved.” In this area (15 km from the dam down the Dnipro) the force of the water was almost not felt anymore because of the huge number of different lakes and small rivers, and islets that existed in this low-lying part before the constructing the Kakhovsky reservoir, took over the flood, which was formed due to undermining the dam. As it usually happened during the melting of snow in the spring.

It is a certain irony of fate that this explosion did not hinder the German troops and did not cause them any significant losses. In fact, it was not the Germans but the Soviet crossings demolished. The German military observed the consequences of the explosion through binoculars. However, the dam destruction made it difficult for the Wehrmacht to advance further in the Zaporizhzhia region.

For some time, they concealed information about the circumstances of the dam’s destruction. Even they spread false rumours about sabotage and the Wehrmacht’s responsibility for what had happened. However, later it became known who were the real executors of the DniproHPP explosion. Borys Epov and Oleksiy Petrovskyi were arrested by the counter-intelligence as saboteurs. However, after the military leadership intervention, they were released because Stalin had given the order to blow up the dam personally.

The undermining of the DniproHPP was not just the liquidation of an industrial facility but also the destruction of the major electricity supplier to the regional centre. However, after the power plant was blown up, the dam was rebuilt by the Germans less than two months later, and the power plant was operational a year later. In 1943, when the German troops were retreating, they blew up the power plant again, but only its technical part. The dam was not destroyed. Later, at the Nuremberg trials, the Soviet side tried to insidiously shift the blame for undermining the dam to the Germans, but no convincing evidence was provided.

The destruction of the DniproHPP in the summer of 1941 is one of the most tragic incidents of the “scorched earth” policy, carried out during the retreat of the Red Army to the East. The number of tragedy victims is impressive, as well as the scale of the campaign to destroy everything of value in cities and villages without the slightest need to worry about the fate of the civilian population, which was left without food supplies (fields with crops were also burned) and with destroyed infrastructure before the approach of the cold season."

Olha Movchan,

leading researcher

Holodomor Research Institute


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCGD9dT12C0&pp=ygUadGVsbCBtZSBsaWVzIGZsZWV0d29vZCBtYWM%3D

[modwiz]

Kiev's Long-Term "Last Resort" Plan To Blow-Up The Kakhova Dam Exposed


The partial destruction of the Kakhovka Dam on early Tuesday morning saw Kiev and Moscow exchange accusations about who’s to blame, but a report from the Washington Post (WaPo) in late December extends credence to the Kremlin’s version of events.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/kievs-long-term-last-resort-plan-blow-kakhova-dam-exposed

[Emil El Zapato]

yeah, that's possible...it could be part of the counter-offensive...it's another one of those 'up in the air' things

I watched a video last night that is based in a 'military' framework that made me wonder though. It looks like a propaganda forum but they have blasted the Ukrainians also??

[Emil El Zapato]

Anybody know anything about this part of the world...

My mother's side relatives and ancestors come from this and surrounding areas.

Cumbria (somewhere in England/Scotland)

[Emil El Zapato]

Curious if Europeans or New Zealanders :) have much exposure to historical education in their growing-up years?

[Aragorn]

Curious if Europeans or New Zealanders :) have much exposure to historical education in their growing-up years?

I cannot speak for the Kiwis, but here in Europe, yes, absolutely. We learn all about history throughout elementary school, and then once again but in far greater detail throughout middle and high school. And I do mean global history, going back all the way from the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire, China, and so on, up into the present times, politically, geopolitically, culturally — by which I mean the arts and architecture — and sociologically. Kings and queens, emperors and empresses, dynasties — you name it, we've learned about it.

Also, when I was young, there were several Flemish and Dutch television series that were aimed at children, and that were set in Antiquity or the Middle Ages. Some were about imaginary and/or fantastical events or characters, while others were more true to actual historical events and characters. There were also other historical and pseudo-historical television series that delved more into character development — based upon the work of a famous local author who lived in the first half of the 20th century — and that were aimed at a maturer audience of teenagers and adults.

One of the key differences between European culture and US American culture is that US American culture is incredibly insular, and intentionally so, because an insular culture feeds into feelings of nationalism and cultural self-importance, and both of those things are considered essential for supporting the self-deceiving, corporately controlled and consumerist society that the USA as a country is based upon. It is also this very alienation from what is happening in the rest of the world that makes the USA as a nation so paranoid and so militarily, geopolitically and economically aggressive towards other nations.

If countries could be represented in the form of individual characters in a school building, then the USA would be a neurotic and narcissistic teenager in self-denial, constantly running away from his own reflection in the mirror, playing-pretend that he's somebody else, and acting like a paranoid and arrogant bully towards other kids and even teachers, because he knows he's got enough members in his bully mob to be able to get away with it. He's the brawn that thinks it's a brain, because nobody questions his authority.