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Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence

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1 hour ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

No; it's because by taking matters into their own clenched fists they did, in actual fact, violate the very principles on which the country they claim to love is based.  The fact that the media says so is just a happy accident.  I mean, the media says things literally all day every day; statistically speaking they're bound to get SOMETHING right EVENTUALLY.

 

If that's a contradiction in terms - violating the very principles of the country they profess to love - then WHY presume they love their country? Sorry, that doesn't fly. Why must we assume they were patriots when their actions conflict with that? Some and only some of all the rioters who entered were just plain angry and vicious, but patriots no. By definition. As you in fact indicate.

The media doesn't function by accident. The Press nearly always calculates what effects their reports will have. 

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1 hour ago, Easy Truth said:

. When it becomes the law to speak against socialism, then I'd be as concerned as you.

A typo? The law to ¬not¬ speak against socialism - seems to better fit the context.

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1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

I will give the Conservatives one thing, morally, everyone I have known is capable of shame. Of remorse and "soul-searching", if you like.

Have you read Andrew Bernstein's new essay? He argues that religious conservatives are better than the left because they have a belief in an individual soul and free will.

Quote

The Christian element of respect for free will is a product of their belief in the soul.  An immortal soul is a faith-based belief, to be sure, but, contrasted to the collectivists, it serves as a limiting boundary to the evil that Christians might perpetrate. For the soul is held to be an individualized phenomenon. Possession of a soul grants dignity and importance to an individual; he is not merely a lump of meat to be slaughtered like a sheep or a goat. But Communists and Nazis loathe individualism. 

 

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1 minute ago, MisterSwig said:

Have you read Andrew Bernstein's new essay? He argues that religious conservatives are better than the left because they have a belief in an individual soul and free will.

 

Thank you! I will read this. His reasoning will be of much interest to me. I have always thought, leaving aside the inherent mysticism, that in its volitional, practical and psychological effects, ¬ knowing¬ one owns a Soul would be a serious responsibility compared with owning a deterministic brain...

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54 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

As far as fatalities, the ones which can be laid on the "insurrectionists", caused directly by someone among them - was: one. And three by natural causes and one insurgent shot. This has been exaggerated (by guess who?) to be 5 casualties committed by the invaders. "Five" reads better in some eyes and the number hasn't been queried by anyone I heard.

I misread what you said, I thought you were just saying only one person died at all. "Natural causes" is misleading, though. The cop who was killed directly by the mob died in the hospital, and would be ridiculous to say that the mob didn't kill him. If somebody beats you up severely, then you die in the hospital, the person who beat you up is at fault. Anyway, another death was completely ambiguous as to the cause and might not be connected, and apparently the fifth death was someone trampled to death. But what does that have to do with the rest of what you wrote?

"If that's a contradiction in terms - violating the very principles of the country they profess to love - then WHY presume they love their country?"

Because it is an error of thinking to psychologize. If someone says that they love X, then take them at their word. Who are you to presume what they really feel? But you can point out if they hold a contradiction in their mind, or you can say that the way that they show their love doesn't match what people mean by love, or that their conception of love is incorrect or invalid. 

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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

Because it is an error of thinking to psychologize. If someone says that they love X, then take them at their word. Who are you to presume what they really feel? But you can point out if they hold a contradiction in their mind, or you can say that the way that they show their love doesn't match what people mean by love, or that their conception of love is incorrect or invalid. 

Well excuse me. Where or when did any or all of the violent perpetrators say "they love X"? How do you know this? (i.e. That they claim to love their country and one takes them at their word). Because they were there? Because they were, purportedly, Trump supporters protesting on his behalf? I don't think one can make quick assumptions about who anyone is with, or the place they are. Especially of what they say they are and in this case NOT say what they are.

If a general meeting of Objectvists had a few among them who didn't self-identify as being one - how would you identify which is which?

I think you make an error of association.

An association fallacy is an informal inductive fallacy of the hasty-generalization or red-herring type and which asserts, by irrelevant association and often by appeal to emotion, that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another.

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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

I misread what you said, I thought you were just saying only one person died at all. "Natural causes" is misleading, though. The cop who was killed directly by the mob died in the hospital, and would be ridiculous to say that the mob didn't kill him. If somebody beats you up severely, then you die in the hospital, the person who beat you up is at fault. Anyway, another death was completely ambiguous as to the cause and might not be connected, and apparently the fifth death was someone trampled to death. But what does that have to do with the rest of what you wrote?

 

A U.S. Capitol police officer died Thursday from injuries sustained after a mob of President Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.

Four other people died Wednesday during the stunning attack at the heart of American democracy as mob members vandalized the building and assaulted police officers. One woman was fatally shot by police and three people died of apparent medical emergencies.

 

 

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I stressed that one person, a police officer, was killed. Of course someone in the mob - a few or one, not "the mob" - killed him. If that murder is not bad enough, in any moral condemnation of the attack it is egregious to insinuate that 5 were killed by the mob. Most media reports have still made no distinction, so are deliberately false.

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1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

Where or when did any or all of the violent perpetrators say "they love X"?

I was explaining the validity of the logic, that if somebody professes to love something, you should take them at their word. And I told you why you should. Earlier I did say that the members of the violent mob did profess to love America, because of the slogans they say and the symbols they hold or wear, and the context of why so many people were there any way. We can't just act like we have autism every time we see a group of people and find it impossible to make inferences about group behavior. 

If you haven't read them yet, I made several comments before to Harrison which explains more fully what I mean by professing to love something yet acting in a manner that goes against what love actually is. 

52 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

it is egregious to insinuate that 5 were killed by the mob

I said I misread what you wrote. The intended meaning was only that 5 people died. I didn't say who killed whom.

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13 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Yes, but it's also true that they were trying to preserve our civilization by destroying its very foundation.  Sort of a "taking someone to an art gallery at the price of his eyes" move.

Can you clarify what you mean by the "foundation"? Sorry if I'm asking you to repeat yourself.

Your point would be valid if what the mob attacked were actually the foundation of our civilization and they were actually trying to preserve it. That would be absurdly nihilistic. But is that the case in reality?

Most concretely they attacked the people in the Capitol. This consisted of representatives (and staff) in the federal legislature and the officers protecting these people. There was also some theft and vandalism, but I wouldn't call that the main motivating factor of the mob.

Most abstractly, the stormers attacked our government (I'd say one branch of it performing a minor, nearly obsolete function, but for now let's stick with the whole abstraction). Are either of these things, or any combination of them, the foundation of our civilization? I would argue, no, the foundation of any civilization is its cities, which are comprised of the citizens and infrastructure of those cities. And that happens to be what the Antifa and BLM mobs attacked last year.  

13 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Sure, I agree that they were trying to preserve something, if we take it concretely. They want to preserve his presidency. I would say that the means to preserve his presidency though, is to attack the Constitution. To attack the process that the government uses. They were not trying to preserve the Constitution, which I argue is the very spirit of America.

That sounds like a fair position, assuming you don't equate an attack on one Constitutional process with an attack on the entire Constitution and thus the entire spirit of America. Then the question becomes: Is that process a good one or is it bad for Americans?

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11 hours ago, Eiuol said:

I was explaining the validity of the logic, that if somebody professes to love something, you should take them at their word. And I told you why you should. Earlier I did say that the members of the violent mob did profess to love America, because of the slogans they say and the symbols they hold or wear, and the context of why so many people were there any way. We can't just act like we have autism every time we see a group of people and find it impossible to make inferences about group behavior. 

If you haven't read them yet, I made several comments before to Harrison which explains more fully what I mean by professing to love something yet acting in a manner that goes against what love actually is. 

I said I misread what you wrote. The intended meaning was only that 5 people died. I didn't say who killed whom.

Eiuol, I believe it's crucial to view any mob behavior as individual, not the will of the collective. True, that individual minds are sacrificed to the mindlessness of a common emotion, fury at a perceived (subjective and collective) injustice - and that they seem to act together as one brutal animal is a distasteful sight. But one does not know each individual's values and disvalues in the mob: the difference between one of them breaking property and another breaking someone's head, or the majority only shouting and pushing, can't be equally condemned by guilt by association. Next false step is to equally condemn thousands and then millions more who weren't even at the site.

There's plain delight I've seen close up in a person losing his individuality to the righteous anger of the mob surrounding him, the unified physical force and self-validation it lends one, and afterwards what is observable, the shame by many reasserting itself. Did I help do this? We went too far. (For most of people in the summer riots also).

 I think certainly we can't make assumptions about each person's ideas and values of this or that, from their apparel and slogans, which appears to borrow from the innocent symbolism of the jerseys and colors people wear to a football game and their team chants (I'm proudly on *this* side). The image-intense movies and media fixate on such symbols for lazy identification. What one wears or proclaims can be deception, a pretext for violence by some, or camouflage for a few provocateurs, and there are the many wearing those colors who got briefly carried away in the moment - in spite of their convictions. Then the self-contradiction of loving that which you've lent a hand to try to destroy.

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What couldn't have gone unnoticed is that the ethno-Marxist ideology of Black Lives Matter quickly found common ground overseas, like in parts of Europe where crowds pulled down statues, remnants of their guilt-ridden past. Here, within a few weeks of Floyd's death the neo-Marxist opposition party in South Africa found a pretext (a perceived 'racist' shampoo advert about hair types, put out by a national chain of pharmacies) to gather mobs at many stores, set fire to and break windows and intimidate customers and staff, proclaiming in mimicry the same slogans. Such as "systemic racism". Where? Not only that the legalized AA race policy of this government is and has long been *against* the small minority of whites, restricting harshly their employment and business contracts, therefore is systemically pro-black, but also that "black lives" are only taken by blacks (by the large number of criminals and the now totally black police force), never or rarely by a white - is what makes an ironic travesty here, of the travesty committed by the movement on the USA. And sure enough, the BLM slogan was made official at sports grounds and other public places for a few months, now quietly vanishing. In the mean time, sportsmen and celebs etc. were pressured by (white) Leftist-intellectuals here also to "take a knee", which some pridefully declined, especially Christians tacitly echoing some US counterparts: An American kneels for no man, only to God. 

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16 hours ago, whYNOT said:

I will give the Conservatives one thing, morally, everyone I have known is capable of shame. Of remorse and "soul-searching", if you like.

Truly, as soon as you say such things as "capable of shame," "remorse," "soul-searching," and so forth, my mind goes to Donald Trump and his sons, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Rudy Giuliani, Bill O'Reilly, etc., etc. These are the folks who "go high." The deep introspectors.

15 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

Ah, something we can agree on. I also think it's a bad idea to take Trump's word about election fraud. Fraud is not the basis for my beef with the election, which is why you don't see me participating in that debate. But if you ever want to discuss voter requirements or mail-in ballots, that's my focus.

So you're lending support (however you want to cast that support) to an assault on the Capitol, against the results of a democratic election, by a frothing, conspiracy-fueled mob, because... you have concerns about mail-in ballots.

There is no way for me to respond to that appropriately.

15 hours ago, whYNOT said:

As far as fatalities, the ones which can be laid on the "insurrectionists", caused directly by someone among them - was: one. And three by natural causes and one insurgent shot. This has been exaggerated (by guess who?) to be 5 casualties committed by the invaders. "Five" reads better in some eyes and the number hasn't been queried by anyone I heard.

Here's an article about one of the deaths by natural causes.

I've found it fascinating to read here that the woman who got shot while trying to break into a location where people were being protected against mob violence didn't "deserve" it, but the people under assault did. But more incredible than that, perhaps, is the notion that people just up-and-died by natural causes during the riot. The discernment on display is breathtaking.

___________________________

I've got to go do better things with my time for a while. This isn't even entertaining or valuable as an exercise. It's just exhausting and sad.

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3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

True, that individual minds are sacrificed to the mindlessness of a common emotion

You already recognize that some sort of common value exists. Indeed, this is how you make inferences about group behavior and individuals within that group. 

3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

I think certainly we can't make assumptions about each person's ideas and values of this or that, from their apparel and slogans, which appears to borrow from the innocent symbolism of the jerseys and colors people wear to a football game and their team chants (I'm proudly on *this* side)

You can actually, that's why people have done it since the beginning of civilization. Apparel and slogans, especially since they are chosen, are the very first indicators of the values a person holds. That somebody might be lying is motivated by the fact that apparel and slogans indicate the values somebody holds.

3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Then the self-contradiction of loving that which you've lent a hand to try to destroy.

What about it? People do it all the time.

 

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1 hour ago, DonAthos said:

Truly, as soon as you say such things as "capable of shame," "remorse," "soul-searching," and so forth, my mind goes to Donald Trump and his sons, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Rudy Giuliani, Bill O'Reilly, etc., etc. These are the folks who "go high." The deep introspectors.

 

I could equally draw up a list of dozens on the Left. I could name many of conservatives who are thinking most excellently. I could point again at the disgusting immorality of the Democrats in media and in office, calculatedly exploiting the summer riots to stoke up racism or politicizing the public fear of Covid and lock downs (right now being ever so conveniently eased**). All for power.

Shameless, is inadequate to describe the left.

Sacrificing the citizens' economic lives and intimidating and 'guilting' them - for an election victory - is unimportant to you, or a necessary evil, and does not bother your righteous sensibilities?

But I am not in favor of the cult of celebrity and 'leaders' and media, I try to identify the character and thinking of individuals and peoples.

My conclusion: The average conservative-religious comes off much better, in individual self-responsibility and liberty values - than do the power-hungry, leftist-collectivists. I say that from decades of knowing both.

**As snipped from this American Consequences article:

"COVID-19 reopenings in New York and California are transparently politicized – an attempt to boost the economy for a glowing Biden's 100 First Days narrative".

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1 hour ago, DonAthos said:

___________________________

I've got to go do better things with my time for a while. This isn't even entertaining or valuable as an exercise. It's just exhausting and sad.

That's fine.

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1 hour ago, DonAthos said:

So you're lending support (however you want to cast that support) to an assault on the Capitol, against the results of a democratic election, by a frothing, conspiracy-fueled mob, because... you have concerns about mail-in ballots.

Do you think democratic elections are sacrosanct? If so, I suppose you would have supported Hitler's election. If not, then there is an important question to be asked: Should the election of Biden be forcefully opposed?

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2 hours ago, DonAthos said:

Here's an article about one of the deaths by natural causes.

I've found it fascinating to read here that the woman who got shot while trying to break into a location where people were being protected against mob violence didn't "deserve" it, but the people under assault did. But more incredible than that, perhaps, is the notion that people just up-and-died by natural causes during the riot. The discernment on display is breathtaking.

 

This "display" is ever so sanctimonious. To repeat, ONE person was deliberately murdered by an insurgent. Which was horrific, as was someone trampled I didn't know of. Mobs are bad places to be, yes? Numbers are what counts most to the collectivists (by definition, numbers people) in media. Also to collectivist viewers. So five killed, no matter each, specific circumstance, apparently collects more righteous anger than does one. They even list one shot insurgent among the fatalities for maximum effect. The evil-doings of Trumpists.

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34 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

there is an important question to be asked: Should the election of Biden be forcefully opposed?

No, because there was no massive fraud and the satan worshiping pedofiles are not in charge. The election was legal and the judiciary can be counted on. What we have is what must be preserved instead of fighting fake imaginary monsters in the name of the dreaded socialism (which nowadays means Sweden or ... California).

Now that's a horrifying fate, let's destroy the country over it.

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1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

My conclusion: The average conservative-religious comes off much better, in individual self-responsibility and liberty values - than do the power-hungry, leftist-collectivists. I say that from decades of knowing both.

 

Who are the people we are talking about? 

  • People who want to destroy the seat of government (pipe bombs and zip ties)?
  • People who want to defund the police? One is much better than the other?

The call to violence/aggression/physical-harm makes them both bad in the same way, and if one has to choose which is worse, it's simply a gamble. There is no point making the claim violent delusional people are good ... or one delusional tendency is far better than another delusion tendency.

"Individual self-responsibility and liberty values" in the religious context means believing in imaginary monsters. Is that taking responsibility? How can one generate hero worship of these people based on that?

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19 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Because it is an error of thinking to psychologize. If someone says that they love X, then take them at their word. Who are you to presume what they really feel?

I'm still not exactly clear on what's erroneous about it, but yeah; it's certainly rude and a very good way to rapidly kill a conversation. You're basically dropping any pretense that the other guy is trying to honestly portray what his own views really are; although I think there are certain settings in which it makes sense (primarily when that is what the other guy is doing) I've been trying to work on my overactive trigger finger.

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3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

Who are the people we are talking about? 

  • People who want to destroy the seat of government (pipe bombs and zip ties)?
  • People who want to defund the police? One is much better than the other?

The call to violence/aggression/physical-harm makes them both bad in the same way, and if one has to choose which is worse, it's simply a gamble. There is no point making the claim violent delusional people are good ... or one delusional tendency is far better than another delusion tendency.

"Individual self-responsibility and liberty values" in the religious context means believing in imaginary monsters. Is that taking responsibility? How can one generate hero worship of these people based on that?

Huh? I was not thinking for one moment about those at the Capitol or any others when I wrote this. You don't still subscribe to that violent crowd as being representative of a 'violent' whole, i.e. 74+ million? This is plainly false. And "hero worship"...

That conclusion I made was a wider abstraction garnered from many individuals over a lengthy period. One needs to distinguish the individual from his belief structure. In their character, self-reliance and responsibility individual Christians are more individualist than Leftists. I have no doubts. The left are, never forget, as much 'religious' in a quasi-mystical manner. The militant atheist/angry agnostic almost always has an equal religious fervor and dogma--merely based upon and applied to other "delusions". Faith and Force accompany one another, whether through mysticism within the Left or within the religious. It is clear the faith-filled Leftists pose a much greater danger to freedoms nowadays. They are, and I think could be seen as, a new, extremely powerful and *competing* religion on the rise  - and so the one-sided condemnation against Christians and their religiosity, including from Objectivist militant atheists, is blind to the full picture. The political and cultural war launched against Conservatives by the Leftists in recent times may be viewed clearer in that light - a religious war.

The essay Swig linked by Bernstein is a must-read. I am in total agreement that the left-collectivists are the biggest threat to civilisation, the religious (Christians, anyway) have lost their zealous appetite and numbers for proselytized dominance.

 

 

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5 hours ago, Eiuol said:

You already recognize that some sort of common value exists. Indeed, this is how you make inferences about group behavior and individuals within that group. 

You can actually, that's why people have done it since the beginning of civilization. Apparel and slogans, especially since they are chosen, are the very first indicators of the values a person holds. That somebody might be lying is motivated by the fact that apparel and slogans indicate the values somebody holds.

What about it? People do it all the time.

 

You look for the quick and superficial route to identify people, there's intrinsicism - revealed knowledge - in that method.

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4 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

No, because there was no massive fraud and the satan worshiping pedofiles are not in charge.

Hitler wasn't a Satan-worshipping pedophile. Would you have forcefully opposed his election?

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