Billy_T wrote:

It is incredibly depressing. Clinton or Trump.

You guys may well be right that Trump won’t be quite as bad. But I just don’t trust him to be not as bad. I think he’s going to be every bit under pressure from the neocons as Clinton, and his own rabid fans endlessly say “America needs to get tough,” and all too many of their political rallies just smell like German Beer-hall putsches to me.

This election seems to be a choice between losing your arm or losing your leg.

Futile or not, I’m voting for Stein.

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Its not that he “wont be as bad” exactly. Its more weird and nuanced than that, I’d say.

He will be a very very mixed bag, I’d guess. Worse than Hillary in some ways, Equal to Hillary in some ways, and better than Hillary in some ways.

Its like….oh…Hillary is like the Jack Nicholson version of The Joker.
And Trump is the Heath Ledger version of The Joker.

I mean, which was worse? Well, Nicholson was more consistently evil, but Ledger was more unpredictably evil. I think. Maybe. …maybe Hillary is more like Magneto….then again, Trump may be more like King Kong, and Hillary is more like Godzilla…..these are difficult times..

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Zooey wrote:

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18998/neocon-war-hawks-want-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump.-no-surprisetheyve

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That was like a who’s-who of evil, lining
up for her.

Man, they like her more than i thought, too.

“the warrior queen”

Lord.

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Billy_T wrote:

that pretty much encapsulates what i think of life.

you’re right too. i wouldn’t WANT to see this planet destroyed. can’t punish other living things for our mistakes.

i do think what will ultimately happen is the rise of the machines type scenario where robots become sentient and become the dominant life form on this planet. but it won’t be a violent uprising like the terminator. and then they will live in the peaceful communist regime billy_t has been yearning for. hahahaha!

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Communist sentient-machines?

Well damn. What about football? What about the Rams?

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“In fact, I suspect that our only hope is disaster. Cruel tho’ it is to say it, there has got to be a vast die-off in the human population — likely including us and our families — before the survivors find themselves in a world where a new and humble and ‘religious’ adaptation with nature is possible. Disaster is not necessary; the better world could be achieved through reason and common sense and a sense of fellowship — but most of the present human world is dead set against us…” Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

waterfield wrote:

< To get where you want do we just abandon the Constitution and simply start all over? I assume you would agree that is not in the works. If not then what do we do? My answer is we do the best we can to keep the wolves at bay. I mean what else can we do?

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Well, who knows.

I would say, in general you can always fight a multi-front-war. You can TRY to educate and organize like-minded folks for real core fundamental revolutionary change, using the internet or whatever.

But that doesn’t rule out practical, incremental, ‘reform’ activities where you join groups and vote for ‘relatively progressive’ policies, etc.
You do what you can do. Case by case. Issue by issue. Policy by Policy.
“Widening the cage” as, I think Chomsky called it.

For you that would mean helping Hillary. For someone else it would mean helping Jill….etc.

There’s the broad ‘vision’ work. And there’s the “start where we are” reform work. Maybe. I dunno.

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Is he worth it?

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Zooey wrote:

He’s rotating.

The liberals who murdered him put him on a spit, and buried him in a grill.

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He tastes like chicken.

Just so you know.

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waterfield wrote:

I understand your philosophy of the subject and the clear end game. I just don’t ever see that happening in this country. For better or for worse we are a country of wolves-at least in the economic sense. It is the price we pay for what we perceive as “freedom”. Unfortunately, that price is often devastating to the disadvantaged. No system of governance has perfected a way to prevent the wolves from eating the sheep or even their young.

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Well, thats an interesting paragraph. Lots of food for thot/disagreement/agreement there.

If we are a ‘nation of wolves’ how did we get that way? Does the system teach people to be wolves or nurture that kind of wolfishness? Is there a kinder-gentler system that would be more sustainable and biosphere-friendly?

You would probly say, “Capitalism is the best we can do. Its far from perfect but its the best we can do.”

I’d probly say, “Corporate-capitalism is destroying the biosphere, crushing and dehumanizing the poor, obliterating meaningful democracy, and fostering a culture of Lies”

I do think there’s a better approach. Guess I’m an idealist 🙂

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Good addition I think. He wasn’t ready to be a Head Coach,
but Singletary can help them this year.

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Billy_T wrote:

WV,

Going back to your mention of lots of “socialisms,” which is spot up. Makes me think of the knee-jerk reaction I always hear:

“Every time it’s been tried, it’s been a disaster!! Look at Russia!!” etc. etc.

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Yup, thats the mainstream-meme. And its a powerful one.

Its in the heads/hearts of joe and jane citizen. Especially the college-educated citizens.

Try finding a major corporate-newspaper that even covers stories on the little nations that have strong socialist policies.

Otoh, the newspapers do keep up on Prince, Bowie, Abortion, and Horoscopes. So there’s that.

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Billy_T wrote:

Great quotes. All of them. But especially the first. I read Malraux’s Man’s Fate and Man’s Hope a long time ago. Favorites of mine. Took a class on French Existentialism and the Age of Alienation when I went back to school in the 1980s, too. He was a big part of that class. The man also walked the walk and fought fascists, bravely. Risked his life, constantly, like Orwell and Camus.

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Some folks around here know i save quotes. I’ve saved over a thousand of em, i suppose.

Bout a year ago, i decided to try to classify them ‘hierarchically’. Ie, list about a hundred of them in order of how much i liked’em. My favorites, in other words.

Them three made the top 20 🙂

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“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that
in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human
problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than‘try to be a little kinder.’ “ Aldous Huxley

“We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.” ― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

InvaderRam wrote:

i think we’re at a point of no return. this world has 2 options.

either we somehow get off this planet which i think is a real possibility. and somehow humanity is able to keep stumbling forward.

or we destroy this planet. or the planet is destroyed by some cataclysmic non-human event.

right now i’m hoping for the latter.

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Well, i am not rooting for a cataclysm, because it would destroy the innocent luna-moths, tapirs, and banana-slugs. Plus it would wipe out all recordings of ‘the tackle’.

As far as getting off the planet, Nittany and his science-people are working on that. From what i’ve heard the latest testing involves a giant frisbee (that will hold over ten thousand people) and a great-big catapult.

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Billy_T wrote:

As for Chavez. I think you’re portraying him as the American media want him portrayed, and, again, while adding metaphors like wolves and sheep straight out of 1950s red-baiting. That said, he took over a terrible economy, with massive inequality and unemployment — something his critics conveniently forget. It wasn’t as if he inherited some thriving, prosperous nation and then destroyed it.

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Whats really happened in Venezuela, btw. I havent kept up.

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