Makes me wonder about his Civil War documentary. I dont know enuff about the civil war to critique the burns doc on it, but I imagine there were ‘marxist’ angles he didnt include.

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Zooey wrote:

….70% favor universal healthcare. That’s HUGE. You can’t get 70% of people to agree that eggs are great for breakfast…

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I like raisin toast.

Where did you read this ?
“…The DNC has literally donated money to Republican candidates running against progressives…”

Every time i think my opinion of the Democrats cant get any lower…geez.

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Side issue.

“…because “The Emmy Award is a powerful recognition of truth in art,” Emmy judges are asked to consider whether….”

Um…no. the Emmy Award is not a “powerful recognition of truth in art.”

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Ozoneranger wrote:

Decided to stop by and saw this. That’s a shame.

I left there 17 years ago and never looked back. Same issue, authoritarianism. I was against registration and how the admins were increasingly suppressing posts. After all this time, I now agree with reg. People change. Or they get old. I think everyone here is old. Haha!

Sometimes I check the site out and I’m glad I left. The place is like Borg collective, all those thoughts going through your head so fast.

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

Well, not to get too fill-o-sophical but…every board is different. We are all ‘compatible’ with some boards and incompatible with other boards (i find its a lot like dating, btw).

There’s people that love the Herd Board and people that dont. And so it goes.

The great thing iz…the INTER-NET. The big, beautiful, hideous, monstrous, cacophonous, beyond-words, INTERNET. I mean look at us. Here we are. Strange people, from all over the place, talking to each other. Its awesome. I think.

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Ramsey Glissadevil wrote:

… I didn’t want politics mixed with my Rams….

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The “national anthem” IS political. Everytime its played, and people stand up they are making a political statement.

So if you dont want “politics” mixed with football you should boycott any game where people stand for the “national anthem”.

Everytime they have soldiers at half-time its a “political” statement as well. Etc, and so forth.

What you are really saying is you dont like politics you disagree with being introduced into football 🙂

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Well, my own view is that it doesn’t make much sense to reduce an election down to one thing. It would be like reducing a football game down to one fumble or the last INT or somethin like that.

There’s more than one reason why Trump won and Hillary lost. I would be surprised if the rural female WV voters voted for Trump for the same reason the male country club Texans voted for him, etc and so forth.

Race is always a big factor though, aint it. Whether its Obama or Trump or whoever.

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RamsMaineiac wrote:

Any words from Kroenke on this yet. He obviously voted for it.

I am at a point where I may be done with watching the games at all. I forget where I read it, but someone wrote that it used you be the American ideal to stand up to authoritarianism, and now we seem to allow for it and, in many cases, embrace it. All I can say is if this was my local restaurant behaving like this, I would stop going to my local restaurant. How is providing support to the NFL any different.

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

Well, I hear ya, but there’s the Corporation-aspect of football and then there’s the football-aspect of football. Ya know.

The Corporate part of it has always been loathsome. I mean just look at the concussion issue and how it was handled by the money-people…

But the football aspect of it, is still fun to me. I can separate em.

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Cal wrote:

Jeezus that’s a dark perspective.

But he gets a lot right from my view. I tend to worry more about America’s demise stemming from the increasing debt and costs associated with Social Security and Medicare when America doesn’t have a solid foundation of good jobs to support the country’s needs.

And Climate Change. What do we do when/if climate change presents more and more challenges?

On a different note, as I was driving to work behind a co-worker with a “Hillary for jail” & “Retired Coast Guard” I couldn’t help but think about something Gandhi said.

“Everywhere was are fought and millions of people are killed. The consequence is not the progress of a nation but its decline…Pride makes a victorious nation bad-tempered. It falls into luxurious ways of living. Then for a time, it may be conceded, peace prevails. But after a short while, it comes more and more to be realized that the seeds of war have not been destroyed but have become a thousand times more nourished and mighty. No country has ever become, or will ever become, happy through victory in war. A nation does not rise that way; it only falls further. In fact, what comes to it is defeat, not victory.”

I wonder how many military members are Trump supporters. Almost all of the people who are in the military really like trump.

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Dark view? Yes. Jeffers looked at humans and was purty disgusted. So he decided to not be so ‘human-centric’ and he widened his outlook. Purty common approach among mystics and misanthropes 🙂

He gave up humans and tried to experience the love of….the Universe. The ‘wholeness’. I try and do that too, when I’m in a misanthropic mood. Which I’m usually in these days.

…i keep thinking of Trump sitting in his office getting briefed from deep-staters (CIA/NSA). They tell him a ‘terrorist’ is in this or that building in the middle-east. (Not Europe of course) And Trump sends a drone-bomb to blow up the suspected terrorist (No trial, no jury, no due process). And of course ‘innocents’ are always killed too in the blast. Or maimed.

And we dont call that mass murder. Murder is legal in America as long as the President does it.

And Obama did it. And Bush. And Clinton. And on and on. (though they didnt have drones way back when and so they had to use CIA assassination, etc)

And so every week, while we have our coffee, that goes on.

Dark times. And its got nuthin to do with Trump.

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—-
Answer

Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history… for contemplation or in fact…
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.
Robinson Jeffers

Zooey wrote:

About 10% of the population has a fairly reasonable grasp of what’s actually going on, and where we are headed.
…..
…..

….There is absolutely nothing you can do about that..

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

I dunno, but i think yer being optimistic. I think its less than ten percent.

As for what we can ‘do’ about it? I dunno that either. But I suggest we all find a…’grounding’ or an existential spark or a code or a spiritual center or…some fucking reason to have a cup of coffee in the morning. 🙂

Personally i tend to always drift back to Robinson Jeffers. He soothes me, for whatever reason.

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“Nature knows that people are a tide that swells and in time will ebb, and all their works dissolve … As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves. We must unhumanize our views a little and become confident as the rock and ocean that we are made from.”
― Robinson Jeffers
———————-
——————–

“As for me, I would rather be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man. But we are what we are, and we might remember not to hate any person, for all are vicious; And not to be astonished at any evil, all are deserved; And not to fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.”
― Robinson Jeffers, Selected Poems
————————–
————————–

“Justice and mercy/ Are human dreams, they do not concern the birds nor the fish nor eternal God.”
― Robinson Jeffers
——————-
——————-
“What is this thing called life? I believe
That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,
Only we do not call it so–I speak of the life
That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-
Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy
Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow
From a chemical reaction?
I think they were here already, I think the rocks
And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies
have their various consciousness, all things are conscious;
But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain
Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass
To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:
It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth
From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals
Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard
Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,
As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,
Like the cells of a man’s body making one being,
They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”
― Robinson Jeffers, The Selected Poetry

“Does it matter whether you hate yourself? At least love your eyes that can see, your mind that can hear the music, the thunder of the wings.”
― Robinson Jeffers
—————-
—————-
“You have perhaps heard some false reports
On the subject of God. He is not dead; and he is not a fable. He is not mocked nor forgotten–
Successfully. God is a lion that comes in the night. God is a hawk gliding among the stars–
If all the stars and the earth, and the living flesh of the night that flows in between them, and whatever is beyond them
Were that one bird. He has a bloody beak and harsh talons, he pounces and tears–
And where is the German Reich? There also
Will be prodigious America and world-owning China. I say that all hopes and empires will die like yours;
Mankind will die, there will be no more fools; wisdom will die; the very stars will die;
One fierce life lasts.”
― Robinson Jeffers, The Selected Poetry
———————–
———————

“Never blame the man: his hard-pressed
Ancestors formed him: the other anthropoid apes were safe
In the great southern rain-forest and hardly changed
In a million years: but the race of man was made
By shock and agony…
… a wound was made in the brain
When life became too hard, and has never healed.
It is there that they learned trembling religion and blood-
sacrifice,
It is there that they learned to butcher beasts and to slaughter
men,
And hate the world.”
― Robinson Jeffers

Jets taking a different approach:http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/23585906/new-york-jets-ceo-discourage-players-kneeling-nfl-new-anthem-policy

“…..Despite a unanimously approved league policy that requires players to stand if they’re on the field during the national anthem, New York Jets CEO Christopher Johnson said Wednesday he won’t discourage players from kneeling even if it results in the club being fined by the NFL.

“As I have in the past, I will support our players wherever we land as a team,” Johnson said in a statement, adding that he intends to meet with coach Todd Bowles and the players to discuss the league’s decision. “Our focus is not on imposing any club rules, fines or restrictions.”..see link