Thought for the Day

[trish]

"Colored" was a common term for a "black person" going all the way back to the U.S. Civil War. It's usage as such is even older. It can be found with this meaning in the 1796 Oxford Dictionary. At the time the French actually used the term "gen de couleur" which translates "people of color". In the US the meaning of the phrase in was expanded in the mid-twentieth century to include anyone who wasn't considered "white." It's usage competed with the hyphenated word "non-white." Words move to reflecting the habits and thoughts of those who use them. Eventually "non-white" fell out of usage and today we have "people of color."

It would be interesting to know if there will ever be a time or a place when (or where) we need make no distinction. But currently, we need to demarcate those we're allowed to jail and shoot without cause from those we're not.

[holzz]

how guilt by association is Trump's major campaign tactic...."oh, i groped women? what about slick Willy? he's not running for POTUS and constitutionally never can again, but it's her husband, it makes Hillary look bad!"

[holzz]

How some old woman thinks her story of Trump putting her hand up her skirt on an aeroplane, without any real evidence to back her up, is newsworthy.

Trump should sue her arse in bankruptcy.

[holzz]

"Colored" was a common term for a "black person" going all the way back to the U.S. Civil War. It's usage as such is even older. It can be found with this meaning in the 1796 Oxford Dictionary. At the time the French actually used the term "gen de couleur" which translates "people of color". In the US the meaning of the phrase in was expanded in the mid-twentieth century to include anyone who wasn't considered "white." It's usage competed with the hyphenated word "non-white." Words move to reflecting the habits and thoughts of those who use them. Eventually "non-white" fell out of usage and today we have "people of color."

It would be interesting to know if there will ever be a time or a place when (or where) we need make no distinction. But currently, we need to demarcate those we're allowed to jail and shoot without cause from those we're not.

Both are stupid terms. i am black. call me black, since compared to most other people, i DO have darker skin! not PC bullshit like people of colour.

[Stavros]

I have been wondering what it is that some people, apparently quite a lot of people, find so attractive in the 'strong leader'. Two of my Ts friends from the Philippines, neither of whom live there now, have defended the Presidency of Rodrigo Duterte on the grounds that the drug problem in the Philippines is now so out of control that only desperate measures can deal with it, and Duterte is the 'strong man' who will deliver results.

I have also noted the volume of people writing comments on the grim reports from Aleppo in the press, and they can't all be Russian trolls, who extol the virtues of strong man Vladimir Putin, who they seem to think is 'getting results' by doing what strong men do in power - making bold decisions that are executed without compromise.

Typically, these strong men are contrasted with the weak ones, where the strong man is individual and decisive, the weak man a hostage to his liberal faith and a collegiate decision-making process. Or to put it another way -Dictators produce results, Democrats produce problems. I wonder if in fact it is the other way round. The short-to-medium impact of Napoleon's dictatorship of France was war and its ruin, not least in France itself, following as it did a destructive revolution that retarded the development of the French economy.
Bismarck may have been a strong leader and a major force in the creation of the German Empire, yet he left a unified Germany whose ambitions when transferred to another strong man, Caesar William II led that Empire to ruin through the catastrophe of the First World War, and one need hardly debate the truly dismal impact of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Mobutu, Saddam Hussein and Mu'ammar Qadhafi.

And yet, whether it is 'the Iron Lady', or the 'Great Communicator', that is, leaders operating in democracies or dictatorships, the end result does not appear to confirm that only strong leaders can get things done. And that is because in most cases, what they 'got done' was either a disaster or less radical change than their supporters like to think.

And still people want to believe in the strong man, as if he were a redeemer, a messiah whose entry into office will end the pain, and make everything great again. And no matter how hard I try to convince people that Duterte is one such disaster, the support for him is solid, and I am unable to persuade them to change their minds.

[sukumvit boy]

"And still people want to believe in the strong man, as if he were a redeemer, a messiah..."
Alas , when will we ever learn... these very same issues have been much on my mind lately . Prompted , no doubt , by the US and Philippine elections .
I am not prepared at this time to address the first issue , that being where this need for a redeemer is coming from . It would be glib to blame our Judo-Christian mind set since history shows that it predates that and is seen across many cultures even tribal hunter-gatherers. Good subject for further reading.
However , with regard to the psychology that drives these 'strong men' to me the answer is plain.They are text book psychopaths. I addressed the issue of these personality in post # 31 of this thread . So rather than getting back on that soap box here are a few interesting links.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/masters...-world/5383706

http://www.naturalnews.com/036112_so...influence.html

Perhaps by the time we are all dead and gone governments will require a personality test for office holders.

[sukumvit boy]

Than there is Evolutionary Leadership Theory:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_leadership_theory

[martin48]

Than there is Evolutionary Leadership Theory:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_leadership_theory

Here it is ....

[Stavros]

"And still people want to believe in the strong man, as if he were a redeemer, a messiah..."
Alas , when will we ever learn... these very same issues have been much on my mind lately . Prompted , no doubt , by the US and Philippine elections .
I am not prepared at this time to address the first issue , that being where this need for a redeemer is coming from . It would be glib to blame our Judo-Christian mind set since history shows that it predates that and is seen across many cultures even tribal hunter-gatherers. Good subject for further reading.
However , with regard to the psychology that drives these 'strong men' to me the answer is plain.They are text book psychopaths. I addressed the issue of these personality in post # 31 of this thread . So rather than getting back on that soap box here are a few interesting links.
Perhaps by the time we are all dead and gone governments will require a personality test for office holders.

I re-read post#31 but I do not agree that all political leaders are psychopaths.
If we set aside the kinds of 'strong men' I named in my earlier post, I do think that there have been political leaders who may be classified as liberal and collegiate, in the sense that they canvassed opinion from advisers and others before making decisions, who did not make rash or risky decisions involving life or death for thousands if not millions, and who entered public office out of a genuine belief that public service for the good of all is a positive thing for humans to do. It may relate to the comment Aristotle makes somewhere about the meaning of being a 'citizen' where by definition it means someone who acts in the public good, bearing in mind that in his day, a 'citizen' was someone distinct from others in Athenian society, such as women, slaves and 'barbarians'.

For example, however flawed he might have been, I don't think most people would class Nelson Mandela as a psychopath, and I don't think the label applies to the assassinated Swedish Prime Minister, Olaf Palme; President Jimmy Carter; the former President of the Irish Republic, Mary Robinson; or the Labour leader and Prime Minister Clement Attlee -to name a few politicians of note. Indeed, I would suggest that in politics these individuals offer a counter-example to those supreme egos who cannot be wrong no matter what damage they cause. And consider Ronald Reagan who, for all his Cold War rhetoric, was pragmatic enough to see that a deal could be done with Gorbachev that would make real, and positive changes to international politics. By contrast, in 2001 when John Bolton was the USA's Ambassador to the UN he rejected out of hand an appeal by Iranian President Khatami for a rapprochement between the USA and Iran, indeed in 2003 supported a proposal by Israel to bomb Iran's emerging nuclear facilities.

I don't think Obama is a psychopath, he inherited a long-established policy on the Middle East that dates back at least to the Johnson administration, or that murky period between the intervention in Lebanon in 1958 and the support for the Saudi Arabians in their war in the Yemen in the early 1960s; and until the US engages in a deep and serious review of its policy and in particular, asks who its allies in the region are and what they can achieve together, the military option whether it is overt or covert will always be on the agenda. I don't see psychopathology being an element in this so much as politics.

Trump is just a foul-mouthed jerk who has no business being in politics, and is lucky to still be in business.

[sukumvit boy]

Yes , I whole-heartedly agree that not all political leaders are psychopaths . And thank you for that excellent enumeration of counter -examples.
No , I don't think Obama is a psychopath . I did notice that the first link I posted in post # 116 above suggested that Obama was and using that link was a mistake . I went ahead and used it anyway because I liked it's scholarly approach to the subject and wanted to "stir the pot" a bit . Must be my psychopathology showing through.
However , based on what I have been able to gather from various sources , I still think Trump is a text-book psychopath.
Those sources include the excellent New Yorker article / interview with Tony Schwartz who was the ghostwriter for Trump's "The Art of the Deal" and spent 18 months with trump starting in 1985 . Schwartz opined that the prospect of a President Trump terrified him. He said that it wasn't because of Trump's ideology , he doubted that Trump even had one, the problem was Trump's personality which he considered pathologically impulsive and self-centered.
Schwartz said that if he were to write "The Art of the Deal" today it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, "The Sociopath" .

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...iter-tells-all