2020 Presidential Election

[Martina]

Lol. Freudian slip. I guess I knew what you were really thinking.

The y'all comment is ever so slightly rude too. Why do you despise us Yanks so much? That was abundantly clear in your original post, and has been clear in hundreds of previous posts. Surely, you have some planks to remove from your own Canadian eyes first.

[C0LLETTE]

I don't despise all Yanks. I am, however, not overly fond of someone who would misquote me and then veer off into an irrelevant tirade in reference to my nationality.

[Martina]

Like "cowering wimps" was so much more civilized.

[C0LLETTE]

It is.
Good for you for finally getting it right.

Now let's move on to your understanding of what constitutes a "Freudian slip".
Parapraxis refers to what is in your unconscious mind (the speaker), not mine, no matter how clairvoyant you believe yourself to be.

[FireSignFemme]

Looks like the shows about to start

[Martina]

Originally Posted by FireSignFemme

Looks like the shows about to start

No. I'm done. It's silly.

[cathexis]

Originally Posted by Martina

So you quote me, ask me direct questions and then continue to use the word "you," referring to folks on the left, to say "why are so many of YOU cowering assholes." Then you continue to use "you," in the imperative, saying stop hating on Hillary. That's pretty fucking direct.

But that's not a personal attack? The entire post is dripping with disdain and disrespect. Just charming. An example to us all.

And before you or someone calls me out for parsing your post, YOU reposted it so we could all see how you expressed yourself.

The reference to "you" when used towards folks on the left can be applied to many of us, currently. In this country, we have often been wusses because of the American political system.

We think of ourselves (Americans) as being so damned accepting, but that's a big fat myth. The Left has been persecuted in the name of "democracy" many times in our history. In the past century, we've endured the 1920s-50s Red Scare (incl. anti-unionism, Communists being executed on faked treason charges), McCarthyism, Pro-Cuban Revolution citizens losing jobs and homes, peacefully protesting students shot and killed on a college campus in Ohio by US National Guardsmen (most students were just passing to classes-not even involved), voter registrants brutally killed in MS, on and on.

We (leftists) have every reason to be very cautious given the current political climate; however, a survey of history should give those believing us to be meek, proof that we are anything but.

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by charley

"Trump has made 9,014 false or misleading claims over 773 days"

"As of the end of Sunday, March 3, the 773rd day of his term in office, Trump has reportedly accumulated 9,014 suspicious claims, Washington Post reports, citing The Fact Checker’s database. According to the American newspaper, the US president averaged nearly 5.9 false or misleading claims a day in his first year in office. In his second year, Trump reportedly hit nearly 16.5 a day and so far in 2019, he is averaging nearly 22 claims a day."

https://www.legit.ng/1226115-fact-ch...ys-report.html

All these lies are indicative of the dark cancer spreading over a certain sector of the American population.

As i mentioned ion a previous post, the US suicide rate has increased 30% since 2000:

Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.

The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.

The increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The rate rose by 2 percent a year starting in 2006, double the annual rise in the earlier period of the study. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999.

Yesterday i was on the Galveston Daily News website and i was reading the comments under a story on projected sea level rise, and 90% of commenters (most of whom can see the Gulf of Mexico from their houses) were calling climate change a liberal hoax perpetuated by money-hungry academics.

The reason US evangelicals are so rabid about Israel is because they need for the geopolitics of the situation to go a certain way so the apocalypse and rapture can hurry up and get here.

What i am saying is that the "dark cancer" is a death wish that has taken over about half of the population.

Our species as a whole is suicidal.

We've always had a suicide switch hiding inside of us-- you can see this in the apocalypse prophecies that feature in so many religions. Those are there because we know there has to be an ending to our story, because we also know, instinctively and subconsciously, that our existence is unsustainable-- just the mathematical fact of exponential population growth within a finite environment has a bad ending coded in from the beginning.

I think the suicide switch in our evolutionary makeup was triggered in 1945 when we dropped the first nuclear bomb. Our ending began that day-- as soon as it became possible for man to destroy life on earth, it also became inevitable on a long enough timeline. We know that, deep down, and we've been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since.

What's happening now is that more and more people are tired of the suspense and just want to get it over with.

That is why we have Trump/Brexit/Marine le Pen, Bolsnaro, etc. If enough countries slide off the rails and into nationalism, the cooperation we need to save ourselves becomes impossible.

Deep down, a lot of people want that. We can't save ourselves without some discomfort and a big slice of the population would rather we all die instead of cutting consumption of anything at all.

Its not Rs vs Ds, or progressives vs liberals-- it's Team Apocalypse vs Team Carry On-- except all of the infighting and purity testing we have in certain corners of Team Carry On makes me think the suicide bug has bit a lot of us, too. Like, let's take a decade-long time-out right here, with one minute to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, and throw a couple of elections so we can break the back of the two-party system.

[charley]

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

As i mentioned ion a previous post, the US suicide rate has increased 30% since 2000:

Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.

The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.

The increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The rate rose by 2 percent a year starting in 2006, double the annual rise in the earlier period of the study. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999.

Yesterday i was on the Galveston Daily News website and i was reading the comments under a story on projected sea level rise, and 90% of commenters (most of whom can see the Gulf of Mexico from their houses) were calling climate change a liberal hoax perpetuated by money-hungry academics.

The reason US evangelicals are so rabid about Israel is because they need for the geopolitics of the situation to go a certain way so the apocalypse and rapture can hurry up and get here.

What i am saying is that the "dark cancer" is a death wish that has taken over about half of the population.

Our species as a whole is suicidal.

We've always had a suicide switch hiding inside of us-- you can see this in the apocalypse prophecies that feature in so many religions. Those are there because we know there has to be an ending to our story, because we also know, instinctively and subconsciously, that our existence is unsustainable-- just the mathematical fact of exponential population growth within a finite environment has a bad ending coded in from the beginning.

I think the suicide switch in our evolutionary makeup was triggered in 1945 when we dropped the first nuclear bomb. Our ending began that day-- as soon as it became possible for man to destroy life on earth, it also became inevitable on a long enough timeline. We know that, deep down, and we've been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since.

What's happening now is that more and more people are tired of the suspense and just want to get it over with.

That is why we have Trump/Brexit/Marine le Pen, Bolsnaro, etc. If enough countries slide off the rails and into nationalism, the cooperation we need to save ourselves becomes impossible.

Deep down, a lot of people want that. We can't save ourselves without some discomfort and a big slice of the population would rather we all die instead of cutting consumption of anything at all.

Its not Rs vs Ds, or progressives vs liberals-- it's Team Apocalypse vs Team Carry On-- except all of the infighting and purity testing we have in certain corners of Team Carry On makes me think the suicide bug has bit a lot of us, too. Like, let's take a decade-long time-out right here, with one minute to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, and throw a couple of elections so we can break the back of the two-party system.

My jaw dropped when reading everything you wrote. OMG, where does one start?

The suicide stuff, omg, women, how tragic. I have read about suicide genes in simple organisms... Personally, have never felt suicidal, but am very aware of how things have changed from the time and in the way the Americans ended WWII - I would call it a a wrong turn - yes, indeed. It is the epitome of self-destruction.

As one see it (extensional awareness) this wrong turn has its own momentum, and events are moving in a way that cannot be reversed. Nothing one (or others who see it) could do or say will reverse this trend. There is a possibility of a new movement (one would call it a new seed) only in 200-300 years.

Personally, life protects me. One doesn't have to do a thing. Because of one side-effect of meditation, one observes with dispassionate indifference that the horrific tragedies that are impending with the resulting loss of millions of lives are inevitable.

One's one extensional awareness is such that one is wary to move, goodness in Canadians having dropped dramatically and exponentially. The movement away from the land to urban areas has greatly affected this drop.

There is also the fact that people do not realize that there is only one human brain, and like birds flying in a flock, they are moving in one direction. Even the more sentient fish, dolphins and whales, are beaching themselves - not to mention how so many animals are moving towards extinction.

Personally, one skips from rock to rock, along the stream of sorrow, which has become way to much to bear. Every time one rests (makes any kind of connection with someone involved in this dark trend) - even for a second, one senses the impending doom.

Such people have made everything involved in life an entertainment, an endless repetitive pleasure. (One would add that one has nothing against pleasure per se.)

One shudders in horror at the thought of even having someone like that come into close physical contact...

Not being into power, one is powerless, and can only observe. Enough said...

[Martina]

I actually heard a journalist use the phrase "late Capitalism" on the radio the other day. My mouth fell open. The leftist critique of Capitalism is going mainstream. I think because it's hard to deny anymore. The end result of Capitalism is that it consumes itself, destroying everything for short term gain.

I don't think Capitalism is an expression of some inherent human impulse although elements of it are. Early humans wiped out large mammals when we moved into new environments, and we wiped ourselves out in some places due to deforestation. But cooperation is also in our DNA. Think of bonobos. Even chimpanzee troops over time have as many cooperative peacemaker alphas as they do warrior Kings. Evolution makes sure there's always both to choose from. That doesn't mean we won't go extinct. We surely will at some point.

I honestly don't know if we'll survive on this planet. I don't care that much. I do know that the planet will survive anything we do to it. Some life will remain, and there will be a reboot. We'd have to completely burn the atmosphere off and boil the oceans to destroy 99 point whatever percent of life, and while we're fucking with them, we're not yet capable of that. (I googled, and even if all the nuclear weapons were detonated creating a long long nuclear Winter, scientists say only 75% of life on the planet would die. It's gonna take an asteroid to kill the planet until we invent something worse than nuclear weapons.) I think we'll kill ourselves long before we destroy the planet. I am not saying we won't cause a mass extinction. We already are. But life will go on.

I'm wandering. What I think we're seeing is the late stage of Capitalism. But something different will emerge. Even if inequality gets much worse, and the super rich arm themselves, etc., I think that something different and more egalitarian will emerge. There is too much information, there are too many smart people, for the one tenth of one percent to continue in power once our very lives are at risk (water rationing, for example).

But who knows? The Nazis were very successful where they ruled. Eighty percent of Germans supported them. Because the Nazis wiped out entire towns when there was resistance, resistance really was futile. The French resistance was meaningless. All resistance movements were except Tito's in what became Yugoslavia. A really determined Fascist regime, or group of regimes, could create some kind of temporary dystopia.

I agree it's not Republicans versus Democrats because liberals have been destroying our economies and the planet at a furious pace. It's the one tenth of one percent versus the rest of us. People who continue to support mainstream Dems, along with Republicans, remain blind to this and are part of the problem. The lesser of two evils will not save us from a nasty resolution to these global economic and evironmental changes.

[kittygrrl]

I think we should split the country down the Mississippi River-eastern half-conservatives
western half-progressives..it's kinda happening already. I think they should be separate countries. The North & South tried it once but i think people may be more interested in it considering the political divide that exists now. I have heard California would like to be it's own country..I like the idea but they have one huge problem. Water.

[C0LLETTE]

Originally Posted by kittygrrl

I think we should split the country down the Mississippi River-eastern half-conservatives
western half-progressives..it's kinda happening already. I think they should be separate countries. The North & South tried it once but i think people may be more interested in it considering the political divide that exists now. I have heard California would like to be it's own country..I like the idea but they have one huge problem. Water.

If California wants to join up with Canada, we'll give them all the water they want.

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by Martina

What I think we're seeing is the late stage of Capitalism. But something different will emerge. Even if inequality gets much worse, and the super rich arm themselves, etc., I think that something different and more egalitarian will emerge. There is too much information, there are too many smart people, for the one tenth of one percent to continue in power once our very lives are at risk (water rationing, for example).

i really feel like the concepts we have of freedom and liberty, by now several centuries old, become less feasible as the population grows. There are just too many of us now for freedom to mean anything except the right to choices in consumption (capitalism) and the right to harm oneself/others/the planet without government interference (libertarianism.)

The planet is getting too full for everyone to just do what they want. It is too full for every nation to just do what they want. As we get more crowded, we have less freedom, and it gets harder to exercise the freedoms that remain without impacting everyone around you.

We have to redefine freedom as security, despite what Ben Franklin said ("Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.")

The first time i ever understood the difference between joy and happiness was when i read a negative definition of joy-- describing joy as the sense of well-being that arises from the removal of worry.

That is what freedom will mean in the 22nd century, for the 20% of humanity that remains. "Freedom" will mean "food, health, and housing security with sufficient opportunities for creating meaning."

[kittygrrl]

your post reminded me of what happened after the plague...those that remained did enjoy more opportunity and more food...the upside of calamity...hm, food for thought

[cathexis]

With all the environmental destruction, we'll be left with scarce resources. All the wild areas that have been opened for unconscientious hunting practices and exploitation of minerals and coal/oil, the turning back of fairly good environmental regulations, ice cap melting, and plastics in the ocean, etc. are signs of Capitalism decay.

One day we will have a Great Depression (1929) or Great Recession (2008) that cannot be resolved, a perfect opportunity for a Global Fascist takeover.

Individual countries need to be ready with an acceptable alternate form of government lest Fascism move in to fill the void. The most negative force will always invade and prevail like an untended lawn going to weed.

[Martina]

Well, Beto has declared. I like this Buttigieg guy. That meme of his reaction to the idea of Pence as President was a riot. And so real. It sounds like Biden's going to announce soon.

Tulsi Gabbard's apology/explanation for her homophobia did not strike me as heart felt. Who knows?

[dark_crystal]

Dear Beto:



signed, someone who voted for you for Senate

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by Martina

Well, Beto has declared. I like this Buttigieg guy. That meme of his reaction to the idea of Pence as President was a riot. And so real. It sounds like Biden's going to announce soon.

Tulsi Gabbard's apology/explanation for her homophobia did not strike me as heart felt. Who knows?

I really like Mayor Pete! The CNN Town Hall he did on Sunday was amazing-- so intelligent, thoughtful, and authentic.

He said he has 85% of the donors he needs for the debate stage.

[C0LLETTE]

A Canadian POV: Read at your own risk

Watching Beto in Iowa. Turns every question into a speech full of "anecdotes" of meeting this person or that; uses first name of his son Ulysses repeatedly. Sure is slick.

This Canadian much prefers Mayor Pete...no bombast, no arms waving, just thoughtful intelligent, often charming responses.And no two handed thumping handshakes.

[MsTinkerbelly]

Originally Posted by C0LLETTE

A Canadian POV: Read at your own risk

Watching Beto in Iowa. Turns every question into a speech full of "anecdotes" of meeting this person or that; uses first name of his son Ulysses repeatedly. Sure is slick.

This Canadian much prefers Mayor Pete...no bombast, no arms waving, just thoughtful intelligent, often charming responses.And no two handed thumping handshakes.

I thought i was the only one that doesn’t care for Beto! The disjointed arm waving and spastic movements are unbearable to watch, and he manages to say nothing and still talk ceaselessly.

From what I have seen so far, we don’t have a winner among the bunch of candidates queuing up for the Democratic nomination...i’m starting to feel that beating Trump is going to take a miracle.