Thought for the Day

[buttslinger]

Jerry Lee Lewis blew England's mind when he visited with his 13 year old wife who was also his cousin........Remember that, Stavros? ha ha.
Just 75 years ago we were dead center in a war that killed millions of people, we were pals with "Uncle Joe" Stalin because he was better than Hitler. Stalin made Putin look like a choir boy. Outside of New York City, the USA was Hicksville, and if you get far enough outside the cities, it still is.
Time has flown, but let me get to my two pressing thoughts of the day:
1) Will Trump's hair ever turn grey?
2) Will Oprah buy me a new car when She's President?

[broncofan]

I wanted to address the points made in the other thread about political labels sometimes being used to lump dissimilar views together. Sometimes this tactic of labeling a person's viewpoint, which might otherwise be described granularly, is really an attempt to engage in guilt by association. One might say, "you are a Republican and therefore are responsible for what other Republicans believe, even if you hold an exception or two." Further, it often greatly simplifies the analysis to place views on a left-right axis when the tenets of right wing politics for instance are not necessarily coextensive with each other. It is possible to pick and choose without contradicting one's self.

On the other hand, one is responsible not only for their particular views but for the principles that underpin those views. If a person holds out too many exceptions because they find their political allies too extreme, it's possible they really do not want to follow their principles to their logical conclusion. In that case, maybe the principle is wrong. Therefore, I think it's sometimes reasonable to say, "look at what those who agree with you believe. They are the ones being consistent. You are the one who wants to make too many ad hoc exceptions."

Any thoughts?

[buttslinger]

...Any thoughts?

“Either lay off politics, or get out.” -Rick Blaine, Casablanca

The US Constitution never talked about a two party system, if an Administration does a fantastic job, watch out, because the party on the outside is going to use every trick in the book to get back into power. Rock Paper Scissors.
The Republicans lost the 2016 election. Even more bizarre is that the white working class males who voted for Trump by all rights should be Union Men. AKA Democrats. Bizarrer still is that Trump is the LAST person that should represent poor white working class lost souls.
I'll let Stavros and Trish answer your question thoughtfully, Broncofan, but unless you're from the planet Vulcan, nothing makes sense anymore. Republicans were supposed to fall in line while Democrats were supposed to fall in Love, the opposite happened, and now the rules have changed. Insanity Rules. (maybe literally)
When Coach Jim Valvano was dying of cancer, he said he didn't really mind going himself, it was about the people around him, you can't separate yourself from others. You can't really be a good debater unless you can win over the opposition, and on that thought, it's not the Democratic Party, It's the Republicans that are guilty as sin and are to blame. Them and Fox News, Jesus hated hypocrites most of all.

[trish]

...On the other hand, one is responsible not only for their particular views but for the principles that underpin those views. If a person holds out too many exceptions because they find their political allies too extreme, it's possible they really do not want to follow their principles to their logical conclusion. In that case, maybe the principle is wrong. Therefore, I think it's sometimes reasonable to say, "look at what those who agree with you believe. They are the ones being consistent. You are the one who wants to make too many ad hoc exceptions."

... You can't really be a good debater unless you can win over the opposition..

To be a good debater you only have to know how to win over the judges. In this forum the judges are the people who are reading (or those who will read) these threads. The obvious misapplication of labels to those who argue rationally and with integrity will be easily spotted by most observers as a dishonest and shallow ploy to win the applause of other small-minded, viewers; it won’t do much to persuade minds worth winning.

When using labels, try to use them fairly. If someone objects to the way you labeled them it may be time for a discussion why they don’t feel comfortable, what they believe and how that compares to what the label implies they believe.

Sometimes this ‘implication’ can be interpreted as ‘logical implication’; e.g. if you are a flat-Earther, then you believe the Earth is flat (because that’s what it means to be a flat-Earther). But it follows from the flat-Earth hypothesis that still water has a tendency to flow down drains in the same direction everywhere on Earth. So when I meet a flat-Earther (I very rarely do) I assume they believe water flows down drains the same way in both the Northern and the Southern hemispheres. The same would apply to the directions in which cyclones and hurricanes rotate. If a flat-Earther insisted cyclones rotate oppositely to hurricanes, I would point out the logical inconsistency with his initial presumption. I would insist upon this point until he modified his Flat-Earthiness in such a way as to allow for the observed phenomenon.

Other times this ‘implication’ is more probabilistic. E.g. if you are a U.S. citizen and a gun collector, it might be assumed you’re a member of the NRA, or that you hunt, or that you’re Republican and yet none of these things need be true. These associations derive from a census but not from any principle to which gun collectors universally subscribe - at least not one I have discerned.

Sometimes people like to work both the implication and the converse. If someone is liberal they must believe in global warming. If someone endorses the science behind global warming, they must be liberal. Of course neither of these is a legitimate deduction because neither follows logically from the other. It may be reasonable to make an assumption based on census, but when someone replies that you presumed wrong, it seems a bit silly to insist otherwise.

The other situation is when someone insists that they are - say - lovers of abstract expressionism and when engaged they seem to dislike every painting or sculpture that came out of the movement, except for three compositions by Willem de Kooning. The rest just don’t measure up the ideal espoused in the imaginary manifesto that lives in their head. Then you’re just dealing with a loon we’d all do better to ignore. By loon I just mean a species of water fowl that...

[Stavros]

The Republicans lost the 2016 election. Even more bizarre is that the white working class males who voted for Trump by all rights should be Union Men. AKA Democrats. Bizarrer still is that Trump is the LAST person that should represent poor white working class lost souls.

In fact this has happened before with the so-called 'Reagan Democrats' who voted for him in the 1980s. Blue collar workers may have felt alienated from the Democrats at a time when 'identity politics' had appeared to become more important to the Party than bread and butter issues like jobs, the sad fact being that Clinton won the blue collar vote back but took the Democrats even further away from their immediate concerns, or at least, by failing to bridge the gap between rich and poor, perpetuated the sins of the Republican party. The centre ground of politics shifted under Reagan and Clinton didn't think an election could be won if they moved if back to where it had been under LBJ.

That the two party system has such a problem with taxes may be the one indicator that begs the question: why have we become so terrified of taxes? Because it is as true of politics in the UK as it is in the USA.

It seems to me that American Conservatives have always had to deal with an internal contradiction. On the one hand you have the rational Conservatives who believe in a small state, low taxation, little or no regulation, and maximum individual liberty -think William F. Buckley, Bill and Irving Kristol along with Robert Nozick's challenge to Rawls. But there are also the Conservatives for whom the Bible is more important than the Constitution, who do not base their policies on reason but faith, and who believe individual liberty should be subject to the 'laws of God' and thus are opposed to same-sex relations as indeed they were opposed to inter-racial relations and marriage which was at one time illegal in the USA. Thus, for some Conservatives, a liberal view of individual freedom has no problem with same-sex marriage, where for others it is anathema. There may also be a North-South factor where Northern Conservatives are 'liberal' on race, where the South with its legacy of slavery and a romantic attachment to Dixie believes Civil Rights were and are a mistake.

That the Republican Party chose a candidate who is, in reality, an independent, suggests that they could not decide among the other candidates which one was closest to their position, be it the Constitution or the Bible, a choice if you prefer, between Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, or between John Kasich and Marco Rubio. Sadly for American politics, the Democrats are also confused as to what direction they should be heading in. At some point, taxes will have to be addressed as the key mechanism for paying off the debt and reducing disparities in income, but can either party promise that jobs and income will return to what they are thought to have been in the good old days?

It is because neither party appears to have answers to basic questions that democracy is under challenge in the US as it is in the UK but for different reasons. The proposition that 'drastic measures' are needed to fix a 'broken' system is a gift to unconventional politics as we see in the White House today. But suppose those drastic measures only makes things worse? 2018 will be a fascinating year, but I don't see much coherence returning to either Republicans or Democrats.

[buttslinger]

If we all had law degrees, we could have a good discussion about Post #492.
But just like the debate for President, or the Decision to leave the European Union, the final decisions here are made by folks who are more interested in deciding which Tranny has the best dick, or does digging a transsexual make me gay?
Mob Mentality used to be contained by a Political Party that chose their best Candidate available, and a 4th Estate that fairly refereed the fight. It could be that the NYSE is actually running the Country, I don't know. All I know is hearsay.

[broncofan]

A man named Johann Hari has recently written a book about depression that he has advertised by writing an op-ed in the Guardian about. Johann Hari is a journalist who a few years ago was accused of plagiarism and of making pejorative edits to the wikipedia entries of various other journalists. From his article in the guardian, it seems Mr. Hari does not understand even the most basic things about depression and spends the entire article arguing against strawmen. Nowhere in the article does he mention the current theory of what is taking place in the brains of depressed people but instead focuses on the advertisements by pharmaceutical companies that are more than a decade old. He doesn't appear to acknowledge that depression is not a single disease, that there are subtypes of depression that each respond differently to different treatment modalities.

He makes highly misleading statements about temporary mood shifts in response to adverse life events that he thinks bolster his argument that depression is simply the way a completely healthy person's brain responds to adversity. It is true that a person who does not have depression can develop depression if you expose them to an unceasing stream of calamities. But what makes it depression and not simply grief is that the symptoms are not extinguished long after the adverse circumstances disappear. If the symptoms persist in the face of circumstances that should not in any objective sense cause distress, the person has depression.

What he does not realize is that doctors recognize that adverse life events can cause depression, but that once a person has depression, it is in many ways self-reinforcing and highly resistant to interventions. As a result, it has settled in and is a biological condition; one caused by a combination of genetics interacting with life circumstances. The depressed person may have difficulty finding anything fulfilling until the condition is treated.

I can only hope that he agrees to debate the issue with doctors and researchers who have studied depression and can expose him as someone who doesn't understand the condition.

[broncofan]

If we all had law degrees, we could have a good discussion about Post #492

No prerequisites required

[Stavros]

One speech and the rest is history. One can only hope Oprah Winfrey does not take the bait, it is not as if she needs the money like the current incumbent charging Americans for his golfing trips, or his daughter getting free publicity for her brand when she is not referred to as Ivanka Kushner -and let us hope she too decides not to run for the White House; ditto 'The Rock'.

Or maybe this could just relegate the Presidency to a game show, as long as Congress changes the Constitution to make the Presidency a ceremonial rather than an Executive post. I expect Nikki Haley (should that be Nimrata?) will run, Julian Castro for the Democrats.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...ident-analysis

[buttslinger]

....I can only hope that he agrees to debate the issue with doctors and researchers who have studied depression and can expose him as someone who doesn't understand the condition.

When I was 41 I got a new house, right after a job transfer that set me up to finally rake in some good money. Two years later I had a bigshot Johns Hopkins Doctor who wrote articles in JAMA telling me not only would I be ill for the rest of my life, I've been sick all my life. The NEURALLY MEDIATED HYPOTENSION I have translates to fatigue and depression, which always go hand in hand, the trick is to find out which came first.
I've had a few psychiatrists, most of them cost $500/hour. Some were better than others, the guy I liked most ..I asked him how did he even know I have depression, he answered because he saw depressed people every day and could see it in my face. He had not only a degree in psychiatry, he had a degree in neurology. At the end of the day they all just give you one of the latest drugs to treat depression. It's the psychologists that you talk to for hours to help you out of your bad behavior. Bad Behavior is what got me to 41.
The Psychiatrist I liked gave me a 5 minute mini-test to see how "with it" I am. I had to name all the US Presidents backwards and explain what "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" means.
I suggest you all take that test for your own amusement.

IMO We have no clue who will run in 2020. These are remarkable times.
PS I did take the recommendation of the Johns Hopkins Doctor's one amendment from twenty years ago and cut wheat and dairy from my diet. It has made a difference.