Originally Posted by B Butler

Doesn't this level of omniscience imply a breach of privacy? Wouldn't that be immoral?

No, because the notion of privacy only applies between separate beings, not to yourself.

Originally Posted by playwrite

He can buy a few mediocre radio stations with that, but that doesn't mean people will listen. He could also get behind the line of actual billionaires buying GOP presidential candidates, but he would be second tier and not likely driving much of anything.

He's done as a national political force.

I agree that vain glory is now in the past, but hanging with the Big Boys is still possible. He's always been a sock puppet, so playing one IRL should be an easy transition.

He still has a large network of radio stations in all states, unless this list is out of date.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/stations/all_stations/

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

No, because the notion of privacy only applies between separate beings, not to yourself.

Does this imply that I'm God?

No wonder the world is so messed up.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Limbaugh has a net worth of 350-400 million dollars. He can do whatever he wants to do, and not have to worry about it. He may not able to be vain-glorious, but he can be a player ... and I suspect he will.

He is now on Clear Channel/Capital Cities/ABC/Disney.

He's an obvious candidate for replacement. He is going off the air on WLS in Chicago, so I wonder what follows.

Originally Posted by B Butler

Does this imply that I'm God?

Yes indeed, sir God

The Landlord is everywhere, all the time.

No wonder the world is so messed up.

It is messed up mostly because we don't realize who God is. As I have pointed out many times, there is no separate God; we are IT; and you said this notion is held by folks who are out of touch with the world. But, anyone who is sincere about understanding what's going on in life, is well-advised to go beyond conventional opinion. That certainly applies to conventional notions of God. Again, I think Deepak Chopra is about the best around for elucidating a more meaningful and sensible conception of God. His ubiquitous PBS program is called The Future of God.

We do not want government by globalist bureaucrat, this is something baby boomers simply don't understand. Baby boomers have always had as a generation, naïve ideas about how the world works: they are hostile to any manly-values in policy. They hate the very idea of strong government. WE NEED A STRONG GOVERNMENT TO REVITALIZE THE NATION.

Originally Posted by cynic hero '86

we do not want government by globalist bureaucrat, this is something baby boomers simply don't understand. Baby boomers have always had as a generation, naïve ideas about how the world works: They are hostile to any manly-values in policy. They hate the very idea of strong government. We need a strong government to revitalize the nation.

I don't think you are capable of defining the terms you're using.

AND STOP SHOUTING.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

We do not want government by globalist bureaucrat, this is something baby boomers simply don't understand. Baby boomers have always had as a generation, naïve ideas about how the world works: they are hostile to any manly-values in policy. They hate the very idea of strong government.

I have thought that many in the newer generations, those who haven't really seen the last Crisis or Awakening, who haven't experienced what the GIs and Boomers did, simply don't comprehend what it takes to really get things done, to really understand cultural transformation. Too many just don't want to be taxed and don't want to bother with strong emotional commitment to an issue. They just don't get it. They shun intensity and commitment and wonder why nothing ever happens, blaming everyone but themselves.

Well, duhh.

I am also not impressed at all by those who don't bother to distinguish between Blue Boomers and Red Boomers. Their shallow stereotypes that allegedly fit all Boomers are generally laughably inaccurate when applied to one group or the other.

Originally Posted by B Butler

I have thought that many in the newer generations, those who haven't really seen the last Crisis or Awakening, who haven't experienced what the GIs and Boomers did, simply don't comprehend what it takes to really get things done, to really understand cultural transformation. Too many just don't want to be taxed and don't want to bother with strong emotional commitment to an issue. They just don't get it. They shun intensity and commitment and wonder why nothing ever happens, blaming everyone but themselves.

Well, duhh.

I am also not impressed at all by those who don't bother to distinguish between Blue Boomers and Red Boomers. Their shallow stereotypes that allegedly fit all Boomers are generally laughably inaccurate when applied to one group or the other.

Good points. I'm of a similar mind. I think the lack of an acute threat to their future is limiting the intensity of Millennial response to the challenges of this crisis, and, to some extent, the response from Gen X. Instead, they've had a steady grinding of one burden after another. Between the underperforming economy and their overpriced educations, They feel taxed rather than threatened. Millennial response has been passive-aggressive so far, which is a change from Xer snark, but a change without a real difference.. No one is mounting the barricades and calling for revolution. Instead, the cry is for more autonomy and less pressure. I'm not sure those traits will yield anything ... at least anything important. Boomers are rapidly becoming a spent force, so it's the Xers and Millies or nothing gets done.

Originally Posted by B Butler

I have thought that many in the newer generations, those who haven't really seen the last Crisis or Awakening, who haven't experienced what the GIs and Boomers did, simply don't comprehend what it takes to really get things done, to really understand cultural transformation. Too many just don't want to be taxed and don't want to bother with strong emotional commitment to an issue. They just don't get it. They shun intensity and commitment and wonder why nothing ever happens, blaming everyone but themselves.

Well, duhh.

I am also not impressed at all by those who don't bother to distinguish between Blue Boomers and Red Boomers. Their shallow stereotypes that allegedly fit all Boomers are generally laughably inaccurate when applied to one group or the other.

Well said! Amen, blue boomer!

Originally Posted by B Butler

...I am also not impressed at all by those who don't bother to distinguish between Blue Boomers and Red Boomers. Their shallow stereotypes that allegedly fit all Boomers are generally laughably inaccurate when applied to one group or the other.

Once said, that is so patently obvious that it is brilliant.

Very well said.

When the restorationist revolution comes, the current corporate and political elites would largely be purged, they simply would be lined up and shot. The assets assembled by the big corporate elites would be seized and parceled out among the new meritocratic class and the rising entrepreneur businesses. The military would be reformed with the current boomer top brass being sacked wholesale, and younger more dynamic and aggressive leaders allowed into managing our national defense. The supreme court would be abolished and the executive branch strengthened, the legislative branch would be strengthened and would be molded so that it could advise the executive branch, although the filibuster would be abolished, the legislative branch would be allowed veto power over the executive in certain circumstances. Elections would be of meritocratic leaders and would be based on proportional representation and of a parliamentary type multi-party system. The military would be built up to 15 million troops and over 100,000 nukes. This would be followed by the vassalization of Latin America followed by the general pacification of the middle east and north Africa. After the pacification of the Mideast is completed the region would be divided into military administrative regions, settlement zones administrative cities and settlement cities would be constructed and populated by American, Anglophone, Latin American, Indian, African and Israeli settlers. Although construction of these proposed cities would be carried out by Arab Muslim labor. This would be the beginning of a Bright and glorious chapter in Human history.

Originally Posted by B Butler

I have thought that many in the newer generations, those who haven't really seen the last Crisis or Awakening, who haven't experienced what the GIs and Boomers did, simply don't comprehend what it takes to really get things done, to really understand cultural transformation. Too many just don't want to be taxed and don't want to bother with strong emotional commitment to an issue. They just don't get it. They shun intensity and commitment and wonder why nothing ever happens, blaming everyone but themselves.

One would now need to be 80 or older to remember even the latter part of the last completed Crisis. But we have no shortage of film clips from the time, and historical reality makes excellent drama with some of the most clear-cut villains and heroes ever. So not knowing about World War II first-hand is no excuse for ignorance about it. Hasn't everyone seen images of the great destruction of European cities and of so many deaths at concentration camps?

With the Boom Awakening, reality is much more ambiguous. It is easy to understand why people younger than 55 might have visceral hatred for the cultural output of the time. I am fully satisfied that one could have missed the culture of the 1960s and 1970s and be little hurt.

I am also not impressed at all by those who don't bother to distinguish between Blue Boomers and Red Boomers. Their shallow stereotypes that allegedly fit all Boomers are generally laughably inaccurate when applied to one group or the other.

No Idealist generation has ever been a monolith. Boomers are no exception. Boomers are as polarized Left and Right as any generation has ever been. So far in politics and economics Red Boomers overwhelm Blue Boomers. Faults of the Red Boomers are obvious enough, at least among America's bureaucratic and political elites.

The sort of political and economic leadership that got America into the sordid Double-Zero Decade will not get us out of our current mess. It has made a comeback without having learned anything except to be more ruthless, devious, and repressive the next time. A reprise of the economic and foreign policies of the Double-Zero Decade will surely bring nothing but calamity in the end.

Blue Boomers cannot rule without support. They will need the political support of people who want something very different from neo-con politics and an economy that depends upon a speculative boom. They will need to appeal to the ice-water realism of X adults (especially 'model minorities') who have nothing to gain from an economic order that serves only economic elites and to Millennial adults for not contradicting their legitimate concerns. Boomers cannot win the Culture War; such should be the least of their concerns. But offering a vision of a just, workable world? That should work far better than the marriage of convenience between the most materialistic b@stards that any of us could ever know and those who traffic in superstitious fear.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

When the restorationist revolution comes, the current corporate and political elites would largely be purged, they simply would be lined up and shot. The assets assembled by the big corporate elites would be seized and parceled out among the new meritocratic class and the rising entrepreneur businesses. The military would be reformed with the current boomer top brass being sacked wholesale, and younger more dynamic and aggressive leaders allowed into managing our national defense. The supreme court would be abolished and the executive branch strengthened, the legislative branch would be strengthened and would be molded so that it could advise the executive branch, although the filibuster would be abolished, the legislative branch would be allowed veto power over the executive in certain circumstances. Elections would be of meritocratic leaders and would be based on proportional representation and of a parliamentary type multi-party system. The military would be built up to 15 million troops and over 100,000 nukes. This would be followed by the vassalization of Latin America followed by the general pacification of the middle east and north Africa. After the pacification of the Mideast is completed the region would be divided into military administrative regions, settlement zones administrative cities and settlement cities would be constructed and populated by American, Anglophone, Latin American, Indian, African and Israeli settlers. Although construction of these proposed cities would be carried out by Arab Muslim labor. This would be the beginning of a Bright and glorious chapter in Human history.

As usual, rather than respond to criticisms of one of your rants that you have posted many times before, you reprint another of your rants that you have posted many times before. I've already critiqued this one enough times to have no desire to repeat myself. As you couldn't defend your pontifications then, I assume you still can't.

I do see a green military problem as possible, though. Some of the poorest and heaviest populated land masses are low lying costal planes, subject to rising ocean levels. The displaced will have to be pushing for land somewhere. The highland countries are apt to be having enough problems without accepting mass migration. As climate shifts, once productive farmland might become useless while previously unproductive land with poor topsoil might have to be put into use.

The Pentagon considers global warming to be a security problem, and with good cause. Anticipating such possible conflicts is under study, much as a hypothetical war with Japan was studied in the 1930s. A war of the haves to prevent the have nots from getting dry feet is plausible and not entirely unlike the Restoree daydream. This doesn't seem likely in the immediate future, but might become real several decades from now.

What baby boomers like B Butler and Pbrower don't understand is that if they want a government that allows reform and a country where the have-nots can prosper; Restorationism is that Future. Its a future where equitable government would exist and where the American people can prosper and have security from foreign threats. Restorationism is a future where our country would have real industry once again.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

What baby boomers like B Butler and Pbrower don't understand is that if they want a government that allows reform and a country where the have-nots can prosper; Restorationism is that Future. Its a future where equitable government would exist and where the American people can prosper and have security from foreign threats. Restorationism is a future where our country would have real industry once again.

We don't agree on a lot on these forums. We have lots of mostly Blues, lots of Mostly Reds, some rogues and Eric's psychedelic spinning rock n roll flowers. At a base level, I think a lot of us will agree on a few basics. Today's government and elite culture is badly broken, stagnated, and not addressing real needs. However, there will be serious disagreement on what precisely is most broken, what needs are the greatest.

Of course, the answer is for the country to adopt the personal values and world view of the person writing the post. In that, you (Cynic) are no different from any of the rest of us, including myself.

As far as I know there is no one else contributing to these boards that advocate autocratic military values and government? (Well, Virgil Saari would advocate the return to power of this or that royal dynasty, but he seldom if ever advocated militarism.) I have encountered no one in the real world who is looking for a return to military autocratic rule.

Does anyone else have any interest at all in the country going that way? Is Cynic the Only Restoree?

Originally Posted by B Butler

We don't agree on a lot on these forums. We have lots of mostly Blues, lots of Mostly Reds, some rogues and Eric's psychedelic spinning rock n roll flowers. At a base level, I think a lot of us will agree on a few basics. Today's government and elite culture is badly broken, stagnated, and not addressing real needs. However, there will be serious disagreement on what precisely is most broken, what needs are the greatest.

Indeed, our economic and political elites are largely corrupt and without any restraint in their voracity. They are out for themselves and themselves alone. The contradiction of "the pursuit of happiness" with "all for the few" is in no way subtle. Democracy and severe inequality also contradict. Contradictions do not resolve themselves, and in a political order in which compromise is not a part of the culture, the political order might resolve differences at the point of a gun.

I cannot yet rule out a scenario reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War, and in the event of such a scenario I cannot say who wins. Those on the losing side might want to learn some foreign language.

Contradictions rarely resolve themselves without conflict.

Of course, the answer is for the country to adopt the personal values and world view of the person writing the post. In that, (Cynic) (is) no different from any of the rest of us, including myself.

I have enough imagination to contemplate the worst. I can imagine the Right winning because it controls the food and water, and it can offer the choice to a besieged city "peonage or starvation". When one considers that America's economic elites generally have no moral compass but untrammeled greed, one can see them tightening the noose on any comparatively liberal refuge until nothing is left. Victory of the Right will be a nightmare, one in which mass dying does not end with the settlement. One of the best-paying jobs (if one has no conscience) will be as an enforcer of the will of a Franco-like leader.

Now what if the Left prevails? Maybe we get our post-plutocratic paradise even in Kentucky. People get to adjust to the reality of surfeit of services as well as material objects. We probably end up with high consumption taxes on anything other than obvious necessities and the sorts of activities that wise leaders promote for our good. Fitness and culture? One consequence of material surfeit will be that we will not have to work so many hours. Unlike the situation with a Right-wing takeover in which wages will be depressed to near-starvation levels for toil that wears people down from exhaustion before middle age, life will be worthy of living.

As far as I know there is no one else contributing to these boards that advocate autocratic military values and government? (Well, Virgil Saari would advocate the return to power of this or that royal dynasty, but he seldom if ever advocated militarism.) I have encountered no one in the real world who is looking for a return to military autocratic rule.

Those who seek autocracy generally know enough to keep their intentions well hidden. The Birch Society is still active, and its reactionary thought is close to the mainstream of the Republican Party. (Reactionary but not clearly fascist -- fascism implies violence, something for which Americans show little tolerance, which may yet save American democracy). The Koch brothers may just be more blatant than any other plutocrats in America.

One thing that I would share with Virgil Saari -- I would prefer the benign dominion of some foreign dynasty -- let us say the Japanese imperial family -- to American fascism. I would prefer that American children wear kimonos and learn flower arranging than sell out to some Great and Infallible Leader.

Does anyone else have any interest at all in the country going that way? Is Cynic the Only Restoree?

We have some right-wingers, but nobody who wants to re-establish America as a modern version of Plato's Republic.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

We have some right-wingers, but nobody who wants to re-establish America as a modern version of Plato's Republic.

We need a strong government and strong leaders. Baby boomers by supporting gridlocked government and being strong supporters of such institutions such as the supreme court and the electoral college have largely aligned themselves with the elite against the wishes of the people. We need to establish proportional representation and a multiparty system. We need to establish the ability to call for elections instead of having to wait for 4 to 8 years for even minor policy changes.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

We need a strong government and strong leaders. Baby boomers by supporting gridlocked government and being strong supporters of such institutions such as the supreme court and the electoral college have largely aligned themselves with the elite against the wishes of the people. We need to establish proportional representation and a multiparty system. We need to establish the ability to call for elections instead of having to wait for 4 to 8 years for even minor policy changes.

Modified to make sense and fit my values:

We need a strong government but firm restraints on despotism and strong leaders still responsible to the rule of law. (Right-wing) Baby boomers by supporting gridlocked government unless those institutions do their specific will at the expense of all else (material excised for irrelevance) have largely aligned themselves with the elite against the wishes of the people. We need to establish proportional representation and a multiparty system which implies a parliamentary system that now works well in the Federal Republic of Germany. We need to establish the ability to call for elections instead of having to wait for 4 to 8 years for even minor policy changes.

(OK, so a parliamentary system would work better than what we now have, and it would not be "restorationism")

Originally Posted by B Butler

Well, no. The economy did just fine during the tax and spend liberal era, but has been going steadily down hill since Reaganomics. If the government tunes the economy to the benefit of Main Street, Wall Street does just fine. The opposite isn't true.

This whole thread is very confusing to me. The first post presents an external article. 58 Flat shifts to this idea that economic liberals should accommodate social conservatives. There is nothing in the article about that. And Bob's response here seems like a total non-sequitur, it's like there's posts missing or this is a continuation of a discussion begun on another thread. What gives?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

This whole thread is very confusing to me. The first post presents an external article. 58 Flat shifts to this idea that economic liberals should accommodate social conservatives. There is nothing in the article about that. And Bob's response here seems like a total non-sequitur, it's like there's posts missing or this is a continuation of a discussion begun on another thread. What gives?

The "social conservatives" believe in chest-beating nationalism and sexual repression. Those people think that they can mollify the Corporate Right even if the Corporate Right has no desire for constraint upon the sybaritic excess of our economic elites. Profit maximization (including from wars for profit) and the sybaritic excesses of our economic elites, after all, are the objectives of contemporary capitalism.

Corporate America can most fully profit if the political order can successfully repress the hedonistic tendencies of people other than themselves. But of themselves? Whom does anyone think expects a class accustomed to unbridled indulgence to accept restraints by law? The social conservatives may think that they can get more goodies from the elites if people would just quit thinking of their happiness and economic security. Such is pure folly.

The 4T deal could be posed social justice in return for sexual repression. The Right may pose it that way -- but the reality will be that elites will get the abortions that they want through visits to abortion mills outside the United States. The poor will be priced into having children that they can ill afford as wages continue to plummet to starvation levels. The repression of working people is more likely to happen than any social justice. Inequity pays well those who now reap rich benefits from it.

The Right wants cheap, pliant, expendable labor. If it can't get it through immigration it will get it through an enhanced birth rate.

Liberals get it on abusive behavior. They recognize that the images of prisoner abuse in Iraq indicate a sick order in need of change. But such is empathy and not prudery. We liberals have accepted homosexual rights to the extent of what consenting adults do together in return for protecting children from sexual abuse. This is a fair deal.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

This whole thread is very confusing to me. The first post presents an external article. 58 Flat shifts to this idea that economic liberals should accommodate social conservatives. There is nothing in the article about that. And Bob's response here seems like a total non-sequitur, it's like there's posts missing or this is a continuation of a discussion begun on another thread. What gives?

A little bit of dyslexia on my part, perhaps. If this is a thread about how left-liberals don't get it, how does this differ from a thread about how right-conservatives don't get it?

Arguably, all threads on this forum are about how the other guys don't get it. In what way are you confused?

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

The "social conservatives" believe in chest-beating nationalism and sexual repression. Those people think that they can mollify the Corporate Right even if the Corporate Right has no desire for constraint upon the sybaritic excess of our economic elites. Profit maximization (including from wars for profit) and the sybaritic excesses of our economic elites, after all, are the objectives of contemporary capitalism.

Corporate America can most fully profit if the political order can successfully repress the hedonistic tendencies of people other than themselves. But of themselves? Whom does anyone think expects a class accustomed to unbridled indulgence to accept restraints by law? The social conservatives may think that they can get more goodies from the elites if people would just quit thinking of their happiness and economic security. Such is pure folly.

The 4T deal could be posed social justice in return for sexual repression. The Right may pose it that way -- but the reality will be that elites will get the abortions that they want through visits to abortion mills outside the United States. The poor will be priced into having children that they can ill afford as wages continue to plummet to starvation levels. The repression of working people is more likely to happen than any social justice. Inequity pays well those who now reap rich benefits from it.

The Right wants cheap, pliant, expendable labor. If it can't get it through immigration it will get it through an enhanced birth rate.

Liberals get it on abusive behavior. They recognize that the images of prisoner abuse in Iraq indicate a sick order in need of change. But such is empathy and not prudery. We liberals have accepted homosexual rights to the extent of what consenting adults do together in return for protecting children from sexual abuse. This is a fair deal.

My question was about how this article 58 Flat posted was interpreted, which seems to have been the original topic of the thread. It seems to me that people who actually have quite a lot of common ground are talking past each other.

To me it seemed the point of the article was that people who are social liberal really should also be economically liberal. Seemed to me she is calling out "socially liberal, but fiscally conservative" folks as poseurs. They say they are for equality, they support gay marriage, use pc language the whole nine yards. That is, they talk a good game. But when it comes to walking the talk, they demure, claiming they are "fiscally conservative" intended to mean fiscally responsible. Her point is that what they are really saying is that they are tight-fisted assholes.

That's how I read it. Did I get it wrong? Because 58 flat seems to think that people who believe as she does would embrace socially conservative, but economically liberal (what Mike Lind calls national liberals, or a recent Vox article categories as "hardhats"). I do not get that at all from her piece.

And Bob Butler talks about the shift in economic policy over 1979-81 using the metaphor "favoring main street to favoring wall street". This seems to have no bearing on either the original piece or 58 Flat's unusual interpretation. And now Brower responds to my post with something along the lines of What's the matter with Kansas?, also having nothing to do with the original piece or 58 Flat's interpretation.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

My question was about how this article 58 Flat posted was interpreted, which seems to have been the original topic of the thread. It seems to me that people who actually have quite a lot of common ground are talking past each other.

To me it seemed the point of the article was that people who are social liberal really should also be economically liberal. Seemed to me she is calling out "socially liberal, but fiscally conservative" folks as poseurs. They say they are for equality, they support gay marriage, use pc language the whole nine yards. That is, they talk a good game. But when it comes to walking the talk, they demure, claiming they are "fiscally conservative" intended to mean fiscally responsible. Her point is that what they are really saying is that they are tight-fisted assholes.

That's how I read it. Did I get it wrong? Because 58 flat seems to think that people who believe as she does would embrace socially conservative, but economically liberal (what Mike Lind calls national liberals, or a recent Vox article categories as "hardhats"). I do not get that at all from her piece.

And Bob Butler talks about the shift in economic policy over 1979-81 using the metaphor "favoring main street to favoring wall street". This seems to have no bearing on either the original piece or 58 Flat's unusual interpretation. And now Brower responds to my post with something along the lines of What's the matter with Kansas?, also having nothing to do with the original piece or 58 Flat's interpretation.

Like many threads here, this one has grown a life outside itself. The main difference is how quickly it veered from the topic. I think Bob did the appropriate mea culpa on his first response, which was admittedly confusing for being aimed in the wrong direction. Then, Anthony overlaid his personal beliefs on the article, and we were off topic. It usually takes a page or two of posts to drift that far, making this a record of sorts.

FWIW, I agree with the original article. I doubt that matters at this point.