Generally I don’t have a problem with organisations that promote a reality-based worldview and anybody who funds such, whereas I do have a problem with organisations that promote a fundamentally anti-reality worldview or an obviously pro-big business at the expense of ordinary people worldview, and anybody who funds such.
The George Soros thing is well known as a thinly veiled appeal to the worst sort of anti-semitism and I’m surprised you’ve resorted to such.
You don’t have a problem with things that subscribe to your worldview.
Can you name me a person that does?
Why would anybody have a problem with the worldview of people or organisations that have a broadly similar one to one’s own?
If, for argument’s sake, I was of a KKK persuasion, why on earth would I have a problem with Donald Trump, when he keeps making thinly veiled overtures towards such people?
Your statement. Your criticism is that it makes a joke out of the idea of freedom and democracy.
But you have admitted that you have no problem with it if it subscribes to your worldview. Just like your mental gymnastics over the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes, when you use emotive language to lambaste regimes of a political persuasion you don’t like but ignore their failings and look for “balance”, it isn’t hard to find your hypocrisy on most political topics.
If one promotes a worldview that is fundamentally compatible with the idea of freedom and democracy, you aren’t harming freedom and democracy.
If one promotes a worldview that is fundamentally at odds with freedom and democracy, you are harming freedom and democracy.
I would have thought it’s abundantly clear to anybody with a reality-based worldview that the Republican party and their backers have a proven track record in the latter, not the former.
Utter nonsense.
The issue is not the ideas, the issue is that people use their money and by extension the media to manipulate and influence people towards personal ideas or a group’s agenda. Ideas or beliefs live and die by debate in open democracies.
This is you editorialising on what freedom and democracy is. Your beliefs, and hijacking loaded phrases like freedom and democracy for your own agenda. This happens more often on the right, and you’ll happily call it out, but are just so blind to your hypocrisy on the matter (as you are with most things with politics).
Many people believe that higher taxes inhibits personal freedoms. Many people believe that higher public spending and borrowing to do so robs from future generations and limits their freedom. You are going to come back here and argue those things with some study you’re going to google to align to your political POV, but all those are in fact beliefs and opinions themselves.
Again, why on earth would I have a problem with the worldview of people whose worldview broadly aligns with mine?
This was one of your “points”, remember. It’s a very strange one indeed.
The kernel of all this is about what reality is and the ability to decipher reality. It’s a shame the “debate” in the US has reached such a stage but that’s the way it is now.
The Republican party has long since passed the point where any reading of its policy agenda and those of its backers, and the topics they use to manipulate and motivate their easily suckered base could be said by any sane person to be in any way to the benefit of society or in touch with the reality of the world we live in.
Its policies on climate change being the most obvious example of such but throughout its policy agenda pretty much everything is focussed on how to benefit big business as much as possible and how to smash any concept of a welfare state.
The terms “freedom”, “democracy” and “debate” have indeed been hijacked, and in the US it’s quite obvious who the primary culprit is - the Republican party and its shameless backers both private and in the media.
There are or were regulations governing media ownership, bias and political donations. Republicans have fought tooth and nail to destroy these - Reagan destroyed the fairness doctrine which enabled much of the US media to become “conservative” infotainment. I use the word “conservative” in inverted commas because US “conservatives” tend in reality to not be conservative at all but anarcho-capitalists. Using the most basic definition of the word “conservative”, ie. to conserve, man-made climate change and the health of the population at large should be conservative issues, yet US “conservatives” tend to be obsessed with railing against any measures which would conserve the climate or people’s health.
I don’t have a problem with people who have a lot of money using it privately to advance progressive causes which actually do promote freedom, democracy and tolerance, as Soros and the likes of Chuck Feeney do.
How he got that money in the first place is another matter, but that’s a different debate to this one.
I have a problem with people who promote fundamentally anti-reality views and use their money to advance them, I have a problem with anybody who uses any sort of a platform to promote fundamentally anti-reality views.
Al Gore is dead right - US “conservatism” is engaged on a war on reason and it has successfully cultivated a very large cohort of people who are willing to believe any old nonsense simply because their “side” promotes it. And clearly some people who live in Ireland are happy to consider themselves part of that cohort.
You’ve written a short essay there but have reinforced your hypocrisy.
The Koch brothers are now supporting Trump’s tax plan because it aligns with their views, despite not supporting him in the election. Those views are likely selfish, but also could come from a genuine moral feeling about the rights and wrongs of taking people’s money.
George Soros is funding various causes internationally that align with his views.
I have a problem with both. This isn’t football to me.
I never defended the American right for appropriating phrases like freedom. I’m just pointing out your utter hypocrisy here in doing the same. You’re using words like “reality” and “freedom”, appropriating them to your worldview.
I’m expecting another essay now with you just showing once again what a hypocrite you are on this topic.
The fact that you would (deliberately) confuse both as equivalent shows the intellectual and moral black hole you and other Republican supporters have fallen into.
There is no confusion here. You want to suppress spending by billionaires and the wealthy on promoting values/positions you disagree with, but believe that the ones you believe in are fine. In your head this is absolutely fine, as your political positions are the only way to true freedom.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength
These cops are living in the Hollywood world. Total unreality from them. I hope she sues those fuckers for what she can get. Those cops involved on-scene and their superiors if justice is to be done will getting their walking papers. That’s a real blood boiler there.
I never said that, mate. Having a problem with something isn’t the same as saying people can’t spend money as they wish. They have a right to spend it privately as they wish as long as it is within the law. Others have a right to not take seriously nonsense like so called “independent research” funded by such money which attempts to prove that man-made climate change is a hoax, and call it for what it is - a shameless attempt to pass off fiction as fact and corrupt politics for their own ends - a deeply malign influence.
So you don’t have a problem with it turns out. What a waste of time.
Yes, it’s usually a waste of time debating with you.
Nice back and forth with @Malarkey yesterday, by the way.
It’s always much more entertaining when one is on the sidelines looking on when you’re involved.
Hurricane Irma is now a category 5, current projections are it has a good chance of hitting Florida, and a very good chance of it absolutely destroying a few Caribbean islands in it’s path along the way. As a category 5 it’s even stronger than Harvey currently.
Could Haiti get flattened again?
They may as well put a for sale sign on the place if it’s flattened again.
I don’t know if they ever got around to unflattening it after the last few disasters, but if they have the poor bastards are scheduled for destruction sometime Thursday. A few smaller islands going to get smashed from tomorrow.
Be a black person in America…part three.