I see I’m the only one who ranks as “Revolutionary” on the Societal Axis. The rest of you are merely “Very Progressive”.

Ya know I don’t think I should be hanging out with the likes of you people anymore. As often happens in relationships, one person grows while the other stagnates. It’s no one’s fault but it happens. So I’m not sure a ‘very progressive’ board like this has anything left to offer a bonafide Revolutionary like myself.

I mean, look at it from my point of view. How would it look if some of the other Revolutionaries came by and saw me slumming it up with a bunch of ‘very progressives’?

Anyhow, it’s over. We can still be friends but if you see me with other Revolutionaries for gawd sakes act like you don’t know me.

Thanks and goodbye.

Well, I agree that abortion rights are an important component of a truly progressive platform and I am disappointed Sanders supported an anti-abortion candidate in OK, but to use that misdeed as evidence that the establishment (Clinton) wing of the Democratic Party has the true progressive platform is ridiculous. This is the wing of the party that deregulated Wall Street and promoted NAFTA under Bill Clinton. This is the wing that supports fracking and is against campaign finance reform. This is the wing that is against universal healthcare, free college education and the $15/hr minimum wage. There’s nothing progressive about the establishment democrats and as Zooey demonstrated in his epic takedown of a ‘party first’ democrat on Facebook, women would be better off under a Sanders presidency than they would be under Clinton.

I don’t dig gardening either.

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

wv wrote:

My sister, wv-ewe, yelled at me for expressing this, but…and i dont mean to piss on protest whether its the womens march or the science march…but….wont these nice folks just go right back to their comfortable-sleep once a Dem gets into office? Where were they when Clinton and Obama were destroying the poor and handing over power to the banks and corporations who then turn around and destroy the biosphere?

Sorry, couldnt help it. Thats how i feel.

w
v

I don’t know.

But the first order of business is to stop the hemorrhaging.

We can worry about long term patient outcomes later.

=================

Well, as i keep trying to tell the evil-liberal-ewe, the fact that i express my feelings about this on a little message board does not mean i have the power to shake up the Womens marchers or the Nerd Marchers. I mean, i cant DO ‘anything’ to help or hurt the marchers. So there’s that. I’m no threat to the ‘movements’ 🙂

The thing that infuriates me is — and you know damn well this is true — the nerds will go right back to sleep as soon as a Hillary or a Biden or whoever-Dem gets elected. They think Trump is the enemy. But Trump did not begin the destruction of the biosphere. Clinton, Obama, Bush, etc all had a hand in it. So where were they when the Dems were giving all this power to those wonderful Corporations and Banks ?

w
v

Yes that is all true and I understand your frustration. I share it.

Things most likely will go back to the way they were.

And there would be no marches or protests if Hillary had won and all those protesters would be happily living their lives while the biosphere slowly died.

All that is true. But right now, to me, that does not matter.

That is tomorrow’s worry. Today we have to address the issues that are right in front of our face. That’s about all we can do.

Or we can give up and wait for the inevitable. Just let it happen. I’m not quite there yet, though.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by nittany ram.

wv wrote:

My sister, wv-ewe, yelled at me for expressing this, but…and i dont mean to piss on protest whether its the womens march or the science march…but….wont these nice folks just go right back to their comfortable-sleep once a Dem gets into office? Where were they when Clinton and Obama were destroying the poor and handing over power to the banks and corporations who then turn around and destroy the biosphere?

Sorry, couldnt help it. Thats how i feel.

w
v

I don’t know.

But the first order of business is to stop the hemorrhaging.

We can worry about long term patient outcomes later.

zn wrote:

I thought McCarthy was talking not about where it came from but what it does. We do not need language to be a functioning biological entity. That’s what I took him to mean.

Yeah, ok. I see that.

He’s right that natural selection doesn’t seem to view language (or the high level intelligence it requires) to be particularly advantageous considering only one species in the history of life on earth has managed to develop them. Flight, on the other hand, developed independently in multiple groups…insects, reptiles, birds. mammals and even fish to an extent. The compound eye evolved independently in arthropods, mulluscs and vertebrates. Since they have arose independently so often the ability to fly and see must represent major adaptive advantages. Super intelligence? Not so much although humans have carved out a nice little niche with it.

Yes that was interesting.

One thing I disagreed with was this…

Just as we dont know how it is that we manage to talk. If I am talking to you then I can hardly be crafting at the same time the sentences that are to follow what I am now saying. I am totally occupied in talking to you. Nor can some part of my mind be assembling these sentences and then saying them to me so that I can repeat them.

I’m not sure why this is so hard to understand unless I’m missing something and I admit to not knowing much about this.

You have a thought – you assemble the words that represent that thought and speak them in whatever grammatical order you have learned that allows the thought to make sense to the listener. It’s seemingly instantaneous – at the speed of a neuron – unless you lack the vocabulary to accurately express the thought. That can happen with relatively more complex or abstract ideas. As I get older I find this happening more and more as I find myself having word recall issues.

But, like I said, unless I’m missing something this part of it doesn’t seem so mysterious.

And it’s questionable how many people even saw that post. This is the part where I ask myself if it’s worth it. How much time and energy did I put into that exchange that day (and am STILL putting into it by thinking about it now) in relation to how much difference it could possibly make. I mean…thanks for the “you may have influenced some hearts and minds with your responses,” but…really?

I dunno. Maybe. We will never know how far ripples will extend from the stones we throw into the pond, I guess.

Well, when we have conversations on message boards or on social media it’s impossible to know for sure how many people are in the room with us. All we can do is represent the leftist/progressive cause to the best of our abilities and try to make a good accounting of ourselves. You more than did that.

I think anyone looking in on that exchange who didn’t have rigid pre-existing beliefs on the subject and was truly interested in learning more would have been swayed by your argument. At least they would have been motivated to investigate it further.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by nittany ram.

Billy_T wrote:

But another thing that worries me, and it’s about that “rigid” thing you mention. I don’t remember another time in our history — at least with my own lifetime — when people have gone back to their own tribes like this. There’s never been this kind of automatic dismissal of opposing views, with retorts like “fake news” at the ready.

Yeah, my brother is one of those of which you speak. The other day I posted a WAPO article about Trump repealing the Clean Power Plan which regulates CO2 emissions from power plants and removing the regulations which prevented coal companies from releasing arsenic and mercury into waterways. His response was simply “the Washington Post lies alot”. No attempt to engage the issue at all. I think he knows the article isn’t fake news. He’s won’t engage the issue because he knows there’s no defense for Trump’s actions in this particular case. How can you argue that an increase of mercury in our water is a good thing? So he’ll ignore this and prepare to cheer on the bombing of Pyongyang or whatever the fuck Trump does next. Another rightie responded to the article with “hey let’s get together and protest this and leave tons of garbage behind when we leave” in reference to the DAPL protests. As if a one time event confined to a relatively small area is equivalent to the entire coal industry fouling the nation’s streams and rivers. Here again, he can’t engage the actual subject without admitting Trump did something that was not in our best interest so he ignores it. It’s incredibly frustrating to get those sort of responses but hopefully someone on the fence about Trump read that and was nudged in the proper direction.

Generally speaking, I don’t go looking for political stuff. I tend to avoid it unless I stumble across a headline that piques my interest or pisses me off (usually the latter) and then I’ll read up on it and generally post about it here and maybe facebook.

Part of me wants to close myself off from it but another part of me thinks it’s my duty to expose the lunacy in any way I can, which for me is posting about it. Here I know I’m pretty much preaching to the choir but I post stuff here to make sure my comrades have heard about the subject and because the great responses often challenge and help inform my own opinion. Once my opinion is crystallized I’ll talk about it someplace where there are a lot of opposing viewpoints in the mostly futile hope that I’ll change some minds. Most people are rigid in their stances and unreachable but there are some people out there on social media who are still trying to figure things out for themselves. My hope is to influence them.

You don’t come back from that.

How good this guy was was always a subject of debate. I thought he was solid player. I think the Rams missed JL’s (and Long’s) leadership when they were released.

Easiest and toughest transitions IMO…

Easiest: Quinn to OLB. If Quinn can stay healthy he can be the Rams’ next Kevin Greene. Given his speed and athleticism he could be even better. I think this is the perfect fit for Quinn given his talents. The only question is can he stay healthy?

Toughest: Robinson to RT. I just don’t think anything comes easily for GRob at the NFL level. Hopefully he’ll respond better to Kromer’s coaching style.

Zooey wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

C’mon, Jack. Suck it up, big guy.

Yeah it’s been a bumpy ride for the last 1.3 decades but I bet if you thought about it, you wouldn’t change a thing.

I know I wouldn’t.

You know as well as anyone that happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction are journeys, not destinations.

Zooey, you don’t have to try so hard.

You’re good enough. You’re smart enough. And doggone it, people like you.

I wish you’d believe that.

JackPMiller wrote:

For us fans, it has been a 13 year process so far.

C’mon, Jack. Suck it up, big guy.

Yeah it’s been a bumpy ride for the last 1.3 decades but I bet if you thought about it, you wouldn’t change a thing.

I know I wouldn’t.

You know as well as anyone that happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction are journeys, not destinations.