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2020 Democratic Candidates

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21 hours ago, EC said:

I'll add since you fired a semi-closeted shot at me that I have a 165 IQ

A very stable genius!

Come on man, you called Reagan and GWB good presidents. You shouldn't be surprised that you would be called a conservative. 

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22 hours ago, EC said:

I'll add since you fired a semi-closeted shot at me that I have a 165 IQ, am an INTP, along with obviously being an Objectivist. I can use reason better 99.99999999 percent of everyone that has ever existed including also obviously, yourself. I'm also extremely proud to be a dick to people like yourself who deserve it. GFY.

Holy shit he ran the IQ version of the Navy seal copypasta script

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6 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

The lack of transparency about the virus is the ultimate killer. Both with the Chinese and Trump. Trump due to his desire to maintain the economy. The economy would have had a shock but it would have adjusted itself best with deregulation. The problems are systemic but people could have reacted better with accurate information.

His lying is not due to advice he gets, it is a personality trait. It is a trademark of this presidency. In addition to the open nepotism and enrichment without any regard for the laws against it.

As long as he creates jobs, let us be ok with any of his flaws. God uses imperfect instruments to do his work.

You equate in deception the Chinese Premier with the US President? Huh?

"Trump due to his desire to maintain the US economy" -- is/was at fault?!

At least though, you implicitly accept his honest motivation for a 'working America'.

Trump HAD to go with his team of medical 'experts', what did anyone of us know about a 'new' pandemic at that stage; he should have gone with other scientific experts and his instincts. If he'd acted differently, i.e., "herd immunity"- imagine the outrage: the "mass murderer" insults one already hears now from infantile Lefties.

"Creates jobs" you seem to be most cavalier about. Now you and all the rest of us will see the effects of far, far less employment opportunities..

But some await a rationalist-intrinsicist 'Perfection' .

The rest of your comments could have been lifted from CNN.

And I enjoyed your sardonic parting shot.

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8 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

You equate in deception the Chinese Premier with the US President? Huh?

Deception is Deception. Reasons may differ, but ultimately they kept the truth from people.

Let me spell it out: They both deceived us.

Trump, out of his fatherly love (lifted from Fox), and China ... well I don't know. They must have had our best interests at heart (lifted from the Chinese Communist Party Press Operation).

Of course one could also say Trump is an idiot. But the light of that honesty will burn you to a crisp like a virus.

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1 hour ago, Easy Truth said:

The aspiration also became a reality when World War II started.

Now we have the biggest turn toward Socialism. What administration was that under?

These arguments are meaningless, they show nothing, prove nothing. (except that they are meaningless)

Okay, it's all coincidence. No cause and effect. A complete accident that a Trump Admin and the economy took off together....yeah.

The Turn to Socialism was already in the wings, if you'd spotted the signs. I saw the polls of young Americans being attracted that way, several years ago.

Trump wasn't the "cause", his election blocked the opposition's easier passage to Socialism or 'social democracy' or whatever they want to call it. The frustrated anger he receives every day is revealing. In a sense, I think of him as the 'catalyst', who brought to the surface the most vile behavior I have ever seen in US politics and media and from some public .

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26 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

Deception is Deception. Reasons may differ, but ultimately they kept the truth from people.

Let me spell it out: They both deceived us.

Trump, out of his fatherly love (lifted from Fox), and China ... well I don't know. They must have had our best interests at heart (lifted from the Chinese Communist Party Press Operation).

Of course one could also say Trump is an idiot. But the light of that honesty will burn you to a crisp like a virus.

Economic freedom = individual independence = freedom from sacrifices. How Objectivists fail to notice that in action he is anti-altruism, in everything but name, I can't understand. And against collectivism/tribalism.

That's all I need to know about the effects of your president. You others may nit pick every action and failing of his.

 

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15 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

Trump wasn't the "cause"

Your right, he read the same polls that you did and did it because he wanted to be re-elected ... because its good for us.

The the real cause or "cause" (as you and Dr. Evil would put it) is the polls.

4 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

Economic freedom = individual independence = freedom from sacrifices. How Objectivists fail to notice that in action he is anti-altruism, in everything but name, I can't understand.

I see, so Trump is "freedom from Sacrifices". Do I have to say more?

Does being in the Southern Hemisphere cause the law of Identity to sort of flow in a reverse manner?

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2 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

I see, so Trump is "freedom from Sacrifices". Do I have to say more?

 

Right, he is. You make and earn your own money , you're not beholden to anyone. No one's in your (spiritual) debt, nor you in theirs'. Disagree all you like, but that's clearly his vision for a strong nation. I'm always saying it takes strength to be gentle. Don't expect kindness from the weak, and that's where the USA was heading - to be on equal footing with every other altruistic nation.

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22 hours ago, whYNOT said:

n 2017 President Trump reinstated and expanded a policy called the “global gag rule”.  This rule states that any overseas organization which receives US global health funding cannot even mention abortion as part of their counselling or education programs—even if the money for these particular programs does not come from the US.

So much for Agent Orange's campaign promise for 'less government."  In my opinion, this clearly amounts to "more government, more regulation." And since when does America have a say regarding money that does NOT come directly from the US?

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19 hours ago, Eiuol said:

A very stable genius!

Come on man, you called Reagan and GWB good presidents. You shouldn't be surprised that you would be called a conservative. 

I am stable. wtf? Relative to last ~100 years of presidents they were the best. That doesn't imply that I think they were "good" in absolute terms from a capitalist perspective. 

As for why Trump should be in that same grouping it's mostly due to economic things such like lowering taxes, reducing regulation, etc. He also actively attacks the Left and the leftist media, which few actually have the balls to do, calling them out on their bullshit. America as a whole is increasingly trending to the far left and the main cause is the media speaking in lockstep from a leftist perspective, and the unthinking majority not even realizing the possibility that they are nearly always wrong. There has to be a way to limit the leftist media from this decades long crusade to brainwash the populace (that has mostly succeeded) without violating the First Amendment. 

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19 hours ago, 2046 said:

Holy shit he ran the IQ version of the Navy seal copypasta script

Holy shit, you randomly insulted me based on false premises, and attempted to do it in a cowardly thinly-veiled way that wasn't likely to attract the attention of the "be kind to each other" type mods. If you are going to insult someone be a man, and be direct about it while accepting the consequences if they happen. Personally, I think you are an intellectual fraud who attempts to use sophisticated prose to hide a weak mind. A true intellectual doesn't give a fuck how he's perceived by others.

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Interesting, on Top Ten. I incline to favor Harris, Klobachar, and Rice among these. Warren is smart and speaks to substance, but I disagree with that substance mostly. / In the 2008 primary, my first choice was Biden because he was the most fiscally conservative. But he got nowhere in the primary. Just hope he doesn't croak before the 2020 general election is held. / Mr. Trump has proven to be pretty much a Democrat on fiscal matters, just putting balancing the budget off into some vague distant future somewhere beyond his term(s). In April of 2017, with both chambers Republican, he should have not signed the budget that Congress sent to his desk, rather, he should have sent it back to Ryan saying cut it all across the board, keeping all proportions the same, cutting so far as to match expected revenue. That would have been true significance in a good way. Pragmatists are myopic when it comes to what is actually practical. The first Trump administration has reminded me of what happened with so many Republican governors after the 2010 gains of that office: few actually got anywhere on fiscal matters; what they got much more easily was culture-wars wins of this or that. What Mr. Trump got of enduring significance during this first term was appointment of anti-Roe Supreme Court Justices. The rest was circus (such as trying to figure out how to move his hands with "evangelicals" in the office), continue Obama in foreign affairs while shouting NEW, and having yet another conventional-wisdom, greater-than-ever stimulus package designed by his supposedly free-market Treasury man (reminds me of Snow's about-face under G W Bush).

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2 hours ago, EC said:

Relative to last ~100 years of presidents they were the best. That doesn't imply that I think they were "good" in absolute terms from a capitalist perspective. 

You think they are good in relative terms, otherwise you would have not mentioned any president at all (every single president since and  including Wilson has been bad). Not to mention that they are particularly bad presidents: Reagan is the person to thank for the "moral majority" (and the so-called war on drugs), GWB is the person to thank for the Patriot Act. You got mad for being called a conservative, when you say things that make you in-line with a conservative. Then you literally adopted some mannerisms of Trump. 

Then the fact you dropped the ridiculous "I have 165 IQ" was also pretty funny, because it makes you sound like a mini Trump. Hence me calling you a very stable genius, just like Trump called himself. I have no opinion on your stability. But I do have an opinion on how comical your past few posts were. There is so much irony in your past few posts that I don't think you even realize what you did. 

It gets tiring when people talk about "The Left" as some monolith, as if Democrats are part of it, as if all news media has some cabal dedicated to worshiping socialism (did you know that the kind of criticism you are making about the media stems from a lot of leftist thought?), as if anyone not part of the monolith is automatically better in some way. I don't think Yes mentioned anything factually inaccurate. Or anything to suggest addiction to CNN and regurgitating their nonsense.
 

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9 hours ago, Yes said:

So much for Agent Orange's campaign promise for 'less government."  In my opinion, this clearly amounts to "more government, more regulation." And since when does America have a say regarding money that does NOT come directly from the US?

This is an off-shore matter and trivial. This govt. donates money to another country's health program- on condition that that money isn't used to endorse, advise, enable,  etc.,  abortions to patients, over there. Considering that US taxpayers provided the cash, a portion of whom are anti-abortion, the US - probably - has that moral right, and certainly a legal right. The beneficiary either abides by that condition, officially, or doesn't get the money. Anyway, it's like you telling a street person not to spend your dollar on drugs. You suspect he will anyway.

Not enough for strident woman's rights groups, who demand that the health aid sent overseas must NOT be conditional, as those foreign women must also have the right to abortions. So who or what is stopping them? From having abortions? There's altruism for you, you can't win.

"Go ahead, do what you please, just not on my dime" - is the principle.

Best, the US cuts foreign funding altogether, apart from special emergency aid.

But you raised "Trump's anti abortion agenda". Is this, the global gag rule, all it is?

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3 hours ago, Eiuol said:

It gets tiring when people talk about "The Left" as some monolith, as if Democrats are part of it, as if all news media has some cabal dedicated to worshiping socialism (did you know that the kind of criticism you are making about the media stems from a lot of leftist thought?), as if anyone not part of the monolith is automatically better in some way. I don't think Yes mentioned anything factually inaccurate. Or anything to suggest addiction to CNN and regurgitating their nonsense.
 

If one cannot ascertain that The Left is, indeed, monolithic and quite well-organized and complicit, from the university professors to media to politicians, - for instance by deriding the belief in 'conspiracy theories' - one day, one will wake up to a totalitarian, leftist country, and wonder how that happened.

If I similarly could clearly see a constant pattern of events and effects from the Right, and perceived it had evident ambitions (or great numbers) for national or international dominance, I'd pick on them, equally as much.

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3 hours ago, Boydstun said:

In the 2008 primary, my first choice was Biden because he was the most fiscally conservative. But he got nowhere in the primary. Just hope he doesn't croak before the 2020 general election is held. / Mr. Trump has proven to be pretty much a Democrat on fiscal matters, just putting balancing the budget off into some vague distant future somewhere beyond his term(s). In April of 2017, with both chambers Republican, he should have not signed the budget that Congress sent to his desk, rather, he should have sent it back to Ryan saying cut it all across the board, keeping all proportions the same, cutting so far as to match expected revenue. That would have been true significance in a good way. Pragmatists are myopic when it comes to what is actually practical. The first Trump administration has reminded me of what happened with so many Republican governors after the 2010 gains of that office: few actually got anywhere on fiscal matters; what they got much more easily was culture-wars wins of this or that. What Mr. Trump got of enduring significance during this first term was appointment of anti-Roe Supreme Court Justices. The rest was circus (such as trying to figure out how to move his hands with "evangelicals" in the office), continue Obama in foreign affairs while shouting NEW, and having yet another conventional-wisdom, greater-than-ever stimulus package designed by his supposedly free-market Treasury man (reminds me of Snow's about-face under G W Bush).

Pretty much encapsulates it. Especially the fact that he had the congress in the palm of his hand and did not deregulate.

Republicans are into a different kind of authoritarianism. They confuse the issue for people. They come across as being for Liberty but their history shows a different story. When one looks back, income taxes were initiated/instituted by Republicans, wage and price controls by Republicans, going off the gold standard, and now the greatest move toward Socialism.

Right wing intellectuals seem to think it is the fault of the left (because they set the narrative (whatever that means)).

And now a supposedly left leaning Sweden pursues a LIbertarian/Voluntarist position on the virus. Left or right does not predict behavior anymore.

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Interesting how the "Left" has much greater affinity for the Lock Down, subserviently accepting of draconian rules and measures (and such things as snitching on gatherings, to the cops). There's a weight of evidence in recent times that freedoms - like freedom of speech - are taken far more seriously by the "Right".

Especially now, one can see the conservatives desperately want to get back to work. The lefties want to keep the controls in place. The Right are mostly the ones who refer to "herd immunity", science and rationality to deal with all this. The irrationality and much of the paranoia comes from the other direction.

The Left has come to be synonymous with anti-freedom and anti-individualism, and that's in sync in every country and mine I look at.

This controlling, anti-free period is becoming a rehearsal - I am sensing more often - for Leftists to dominate in the vacuum which follows (and after several economies have crashed and therefore, Capitalism has been properly tamed).

"Never let a good crisis go to waste" a political cynic and Leftist said.

"To be free, man must be free from his brother". Rand said. Well, look how that's worked out. This coronavirus has everybody dependent on everybody, by way of some bad epidemiology and media fear-mongering, and I can tell that many of the Left are very pleased with this situation.

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42 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

There's a weight of evidence in recent times that freedoms - like freedom of speech - are taken far more seriously by the "Right".

We saw how incorrect you are when the the whistleblower was being muzzled.

44 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

Especially now, one can see the conservatives desperately want to get back to work. The lefties want to keep the controls in place.

The Swedish are now the conservatives?

45 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

The Left has come to be synonymous with anti-freedom and anti-individualism, and that's in sync in every country and mine I look at.

It is not a left or right thing anymore. Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, even Italy are easing their lockdown.

46 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

This controlling, anti-free period is becoming a rehearsal - I am sensing more often - for Leftists to dominate in the vacuum which follows (and after several economies have crashed and therefore, Capitalism has been tamed).

True, authoritarianism always is accepted by the population in the hopes of having security.

Socialism has a more permeable story, people have seen it with their family, parents that know better, money that just comes in and is equally or justly distributed by the larger higher beings. They want an "enforced" act-as-if family. Conservatives in this country sort of have this vague idea that capitalism is helpful and you should hold your nose regarding the crony parts and accept what we have. There is no full fledged understanding or pure embracing of Capitalism or Liberty here. Mercantilism or even some control of industry is far more appreciated. So on the whole, it is very hard to separate the left and the right.

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7 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

It is not a left or right thing anymore.

 

ET, I wouldn't assume that the two have lost any distinction, as if they've "blended" - but that's me.

What has happened I think is that Leftism has ideologically, if not yet politically (everywhere), swept the board and become "the new normal". That cause has much to do with social and news media. So for only one result, the 'moderate center' has almost disappeared, and the squeezed conservatives are now largely social moderates.

Today you see 'capitalist' businessmen and billionaires who are, ideologically/morally, Left.

Pragmatism always comes with the conservatives, we often point out.

But the Left are as much pragmatic, they are re-inventing themselves also.  The label I use - the new, New Left. And I think they have a distinct metaphysics - if you could call 'social metaphysics' and 'Earth metaphysics' (et al), that - and epistemology, ethics and of course, politics.

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9 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

 

The Swedish are now the conservatives?

Sweden and the Swedes are fascinating. The easy-going Swedes are very aware of the image of their nation as a moral (read, altruist) model to the world. That comes at a cost.

It's highly productive, considering the small population, with some fine industries and creative engineers and designers, as we know, while at the same time has a welfare state and high taxes. Don't be mistaken into believing it's properly capitalist. They accepted a pragmatic model of capitalism in the 40's when they observed the previous socialist policies causing the departure of their industrialists, and the loss of an essential tax base. And they have a conservative party which is most supportive of the welfarism, I read somewhere.

We re always being assured that "Sweden is not Socialist"; well, not laissez-faire either.

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14 hours ago, whYNOT said:

If one cannot ascertain that The Left is, indeed, monolithic and quite well-organized and complicit, from the university professors to media to politicians, - for instance by deriding the belief in 'conspiracy theories' - one day, one will wake up to a totalitarian, leftist country, and wonder how that happened.

Noam Chomsky, Hillary Clinton, and Sean Hannity work so well together, how could I forget. 

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36 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

 

Noam Chomsky, Hillary Clinton, and Sean Hannity work so well together, how could I forget. 

You threw a conservative into the mix. From one of the rare conservative channels, Fox. Why didn't you add e.g. Anderson or Lemon instead? Then I'd reckon the three are closer to ideological consistency. 

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1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

Et : here it is

What do you expect me do now, find a news story that says "Even Republicans support the Lock down"? Isn't that too obvious to requires citations?

I grant you that conceptually right and left, philosophically, can and should be differentiated. What I am emphasising is the ascribing, objectively, these labels to groups don't show a match anymore.

For example, I was surprised on Saturday when a Bernie supporter told me he was afraid of Hyperinflation due to the printing of money. One would expect a leftist to embrace the printing of money. There is an infinite amount to be distributed "fairly" based on "need".

Part of the stimulus was to own a stake in the airlines proposed by Conservatives. Very unexpected.

The embracing of the stimulus (redistribution) by Republicans is ascribed to the fact that the Left is in control. While they have the majority in the Senate and the Veto power of the Presidency. 

You are acting like these types of manifestations are reasonable, and fit into philosophical categories, while they act opposite of what they should, without proper reason.

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