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ndawg

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by ndawg

  1. 4 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    I think that McConnell has largely achieved his political objectives. The major political miscalculation I see from him is fucking up the stimulus pre election.  He cost himself the Senate with that one.   

    Yes, but I bet all of his political victories taste bittersweet in the aftermath of Trump taking over the political party he dedicated his career towards advancing.

  2. 5 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    Trump has a broken brain. He has about as much control over his narcissistic impulses as the schizophrenic does over his belief that his dog is transmitting recipes for lasagna into his brain via radio waves. McConnel otoh knows exactly the game being played. One of the most effective politicians of the 21st century, if not the most. 

    Sure but the fact that Trump is an imbecile and McConnell is intelligent doesn’t change the fact that Trump owns McConnell. Shamelessness, not intelligence, is the characteristic that sorts out the GOP pecking order. Trump has Mitch beat there.

  3. Heard a lot of this over the last four years: "just you watch, McConnell is playing along just until he gets all the judges and deregulation he wants, and once he's had his fill he's going to knife Trump in the back."

    McConnell -- and the other Republicans in Congress who aren't batshit -- are like a python trying to digest a pig that is Trump/fascism. At this point, the meal has been eaten, and there's nothing they can do at this point except hunker down and wait, hoping the pig doesn't rupture the python's gut before it passes through.

    Spoiler alert: the python doesn't survive this one.

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  4. 2 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

    This reminds me of the time I had to give an oral book report in front of my entire English class, but I didn't read the book...So I got high at lunch and skimmed the comic book version. 

    One of my favorites was in 6th grade when I was supposed to give an oral report about the Houston Astros in front of the class and I coolly explained (with the most professorial delivery that I could muster) that they got the name in 1918 as a shortening of the word "astroturf" -- to highlight the new kind of artificial grass installed at the stadium.

    The teacher, evidently a baseball fan, was not amused and called me out instantly. I checked my watch and noticed I was two minutes in to a ten minute report. I have no memory of the next eight minutes whatsoever.

    This guy is on my level of bullshitter.

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  5. 10 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

    I’d also say that the collapse in organized religion wouldn’t concern me so much if it was accompanied by people rushing out to join the Elks, or the Secular Society of Mutual Aid and Discussing the Big Questions of Life.

    But you’re not seeing that, you’re seeing a collapse in civic engagement overall. And it’s not people switching to cool rationalism, it’s people groping for meaning alone, often on the internet, outside of a community with guardrails and support, even if that support and guardrails are flawed.

    For three generations, we've increasingly subjected Americans from an early age to a constant barrage of 1. superhero fantasies, 2. seeing everyday schlubs "making it" via reality shows or popular youtube channels, and 3. a cultural identity around entrepeneurship and exceptionalism that punishes the weak.

    It's no wonder adults aren't joining organizations greater than themselves, they're stuck as adolescents in grown up bodies, still indulging the delusion that they are individually great. We've been high on our own supply for about 70 years and poisoned our culture with toxic narcissism.

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  6. Most discussions that find themselves in orbit of religion devolve into a dispute about their plausibility, which I think a lot of us probably find kind of dull and reductive at this point. I read an interesting thread on twitter a few weeks ago that argued for religion -- irrespective of its truth -- as an undeniably valuable coordinating technology. When you have something like a shared belief in the ten commandments, you've got a system for elevating the common good above someone's own impulses, particularly during antiquity. Religion goes far beyond a code of laws in this sense, though, as it provides a common narrative for interpreting the human condition. This in turn produces stability, which then begets a degree of prosperity that is far beyond what humans can achieve when we have no communal trust. Religion was therefore a key ingredient to enabling small tribes to band together and form a prospering civilization.

    When I look at religion in this light, and then consider today's landscape, I immediately notice something of a paradox. Evangelicals are some of the most individualistic and least trusting members of our society. Their religion appears to be leading them towards becoming fundamentally uncivilized, as they don't really seem to hold themselves to any moral code whatsoever. Conversely, on the left, there's an attempt to impose something akin to a secular version of religious law. The latest example I can think of is the high school in San Francisco that is apparently renaming itself from Lincoln High School because, evidently, it's not just confederates whose legacy is being dismantled. If I squint hard enough, I can almost see a kind of religious zealot emerging on the left. It's as if our society as a whole is turning itself upside down trying to figure itself out.

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  7. 5 minutes ago, Hank Chinaski said:

    Richard Dawkins has long argued that we should not respect people's religious beliefs because it gives them credence; it basically says "OK, if you believe that, great, your belief is just as valid as that which we can actually observe in the natural world."

    Well, this was kind of his point. This is how you get to a place in which people believe that their totally absurd, baseless ideas about reality are just as valid as actual reality. The crossover into politics and power is as old as time itself. 

    World views have to be rooted in something; when groups of people cannot agree on basic facts - even those that are observed, known, etc. - then there is no reasoning, there is no logic; only chaos and barbarism. 

    I think the problem is more nuanced. When religiosity was the norm, religions had to adapt to accommodate everyone, including both the fanatics and sensible folk. Every now and then, the fanatics would take control (i.e. Oliver Cromwell), but the sensible folk wouldn't tolerate it for long. Now that sensible folk are largely abandoning religion, we aren't providing a counterbalance to the fanatics.

    Religion is looking more and more batshit because of an exodus of sensible folk. We see Kenneth Copeland types on TV, but Thomas Aquinas or Kierkegaard types are nowhere to be found.

    So the solution I see is to respect religious beliefs that stay contained within the realm of metaphysics, and remain disrespectful of the batshit. Otherwise the batshit will inherit the earth.

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  8. 1 minute ago, hobbes2702 said:

    Cockaholic

    Wait that didn’t work. Wtf surly now everyone knows my password.

    No, it did. It just shows you your password, since you already know it, but all it shows us are asterisks. Trust me, all we saw was **********.

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  9. 1 minute ago, longhornmatt said:

    I liked “I put on my robe and wizard hat” memes a lot more before it meant putting on actual Klan robes and wizard hats.

    The internet of 1999 still lives on in message boards, if you know where to look for it. For instance, even surly's message board software can automatically hide your password by replacing each character with an asterisk just in case you accidentally type it out in a post. Try it an see:

    *******

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  10. 24 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

    Lol not living in reality?  Like thinking 74m people are OK with storming the capitol?  Like thinking 74m people are racist? Like claiming 74m people want AOC murdered?  Yeah you are living in reality, sure. 

    All 74m of the people you're describing are narcissists who can't make the basic connection that their decision not to solve this problem does, in fact, mean they are perfectly OK with it. They're all so full of shit that they can't see what is obvious to everyone else around them. Do you somehow think that merely deciding to file Jan 6th in the "things that are wrong" drawer in one's brain is enough to put somebody on the right side of history? That is narcissism. Nobody gives a shit how people internally taxonomize world events. Our personal opinions about the world around us are of no consequence to anybody else but ourselves. Other people only care about what you do.

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  11. 9 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

    Just because some wacky bitch believes in a Jew laser doesn’t mean I want to replace her with someone who will go against every idea that I vote for.    I care that she votes along party lines of the party I think is best for me and my particular beliefs.

    In your version of reality, who is it that gets actually tasked with drafting legislation?

  12. 23 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    What we haven't done is had any sort of plan/backstop for the inevitable pressures of globalization and automation.  We're not alone in that regard - it's a broadly western problem.

    As our economy becomes one where the best path to economic security requires relatively high intelligence and education (yes, there are paths that can be done via trades and such, but as a percentage of opportunities, they are dwindling), then our economy does a poor job of accounting for what's going to happen to our less-intelligent brethren and sistren.  I say that as no insult -- literally half of Americans are necessarily of below median intelligence.

    There used to be a lot of decent opportunities for them to make a good and dignified living.  The number of those opportunities are shrinking.  The party that SHOULD have been paying attention to that was asleep at the wheel, meaning that NOBODY is actually offering any solutions (the GOP offers only an outlet for grievance and blame, which appeals to angry people, so it's been a politically successful path.....even though it hasn't actually helped anyone).  The Dems very much should offer a counter-narrative to that, and man, talk about convenient -- expanding both broadband access (should be a national utility effort) and expanding access to education, including affordable higher education, is a plum right there for the picking.

    Agreed with all this. If I were magically appointed to be in charge of Dem policy on jobs, I'd definitely look at broadband/infrastructure. Longer term, I'd like to see government sponsor and/or subsidize capital expenditure of CNC milling and 3D printing. In the mass production age, it made sense for a factory to be single-purposed (i.e. pump out steering wheels all day). Now that the internet and computer automation have taken over consumer logistics (i.e. shopping, delivery), and we have technology that can produce whatever components the computer tells it to produce (with no changeover time), there's a real opportunity in front of us. Imagine placing an order for, say, a toaster on Amazon on Monday, a nearby plant worker printing out all the components and assembling them on Tuesday, and the toaster being delivered to the customer's hands on Wednesday.

    This would be a big win for the consumer, because it would strip the inventory cost from the product's entire lifecycle and eliminate having to sometimes wait for backorders. The worker would frankly enjoy their job a lot more, because there would be a lot more variety (they get to assemble anything that customers purchase), and because they're adding more value, their compensation would rise. Good for the planet, too. Where I suppose the government could help is funding research in developing these fabrication technologies to make them cheaper and more broadly available. There's also a green play, too -- if your shit is assembled at a nearby plant from raw materials, the nearby plant becomes an attractive place to dispose of shit you don't want anymore (by turning it back in to raw materials, we conserve resources while lowering the bottom line even further).

    Of course, this is just naive, pie-in-the-sky dreaming.. the batshit insane QAnon conspiracy theory will see to it we never get a break..

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  13. 16 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

    Plenty of evidence to the contrary:

    Democrats Paid a Huge Price for Letting Unions Die

    How Democrats Lost Union Workers (article by Chuck Jones, Former President of United Steelworkers Local 1999 (Indianapolis)

    The Democrats’ Labor Pains: How can unions rebuild their alliance with a party warming to free trade?

     

    The DNC, as usual, shifts blame to the GOP for the destruction of unions, but they have been extremely complicit.

    The unions, both rank and file and leadership, can see this, and so they went over to Trump in droves. Of course he didn't do shit for them but he at least understood their plight and addressed them in speeches, and he dreaded running against Sanders because Sanders also understands this, or more accurately, is willing to stump about it. Trump repeatedly crowed about how he just hammered the Dems on the issue of foreign trade -- one of a few ways he actually ran to the left of the Democrats. 

    Not that long ago, Galveston and Jefferson counties would go blue because of all the union jobs.  Now that relationship has been severed, that's no longer the case. Repeat that across the Rust Belt 500 times.

    American manufacturing was always doomed by globalism. American companies tend to solely focus on cost reduction, and since wages are the principal expense, this leads to essentially designing as much skill out of the labor as possible. But we have a minimum wage much higher than what Chinese workers earn, so they'll always be cheaper on paper.

    I'd like to see the Democrats win over more union workers, but l don't buy that the Democrats policies have actually hurt union workers. They certainly haven't helped, I'll admit, but I don't see how the government can do much to help American manufacturing. Not unless it can somehow pry shareholders away from their fixation on quarterly earnings reports long enough for companies to start realizing the benefits of upskilling their labor force -- the lynch pin to increasing compensation without inadvertently making offshoring more attractive.

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  14. 34 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

    I may not have been paying attention, but for the last month or two, at least, you have been making some really solid posts: well-written, clear, with some really solid insight.

    This is yet another one.  Props!

    Thanks! This board has a fascinating cross section of very intelligent people. Just doing my best to rise to the level of the group.

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  15. 1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

    There is no piloting really involved.  The course just is what it is. Oceans rise, empires fall. The cycle plays out. It's arrogant to think that this turns out any other way.

    I mean it maybe could, but we are not really capable of liberty.  

    I don't think an inability to self-govern is actually our root problem. Our political dysfunction is just a manifestation of a cultural one.

    We simply can't be the America that our education system tells us we used to be. American liberals are largely rejecting the American identity altogether, and while Trumpists cling to it with a desperate but futile zeal, they don't really understand it as anything more than a costume to put on. Very few people are actually stopping to look at the real problem, which is that we've grown up consuming massive amounts of passive entertainment, fast food, and entitlement -- and so none of us really knows how to keep the American machine that we inherited running anymore.

    I'm an optimist, though. I like to think there's a way through this mess that doesn't lead to our ruin, if we keep looking for it.

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  16. 8 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

    The continued push for HCQ just boggles the mind.  Either there is a giant conspiracy at play, or people are just plain stupid.

    Both. Smart people sharing a secret for a nefarious purpose? Smart conspiracy. Dumb people sharing denial of the same aspects of reality? Dumb conspiracy. Same / same.

  17. 12 minutes ago, tantric superman said:

    If either Dem wins in GA I'll be absolutely stunned.  I'm buying that this election was about fear - fear of four more years of Trump and fear of socialist squad members donning serrated strap-ons and sodomizing white patriots in the GA suburbs  because no police. 

    America in 2020: "uh, yeah, turns out 'blow up the system' was a bad idea and boring gridlock isn't so bad after all."

  18. 47 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

    This is what it looks like when a stupid person tries to write a sentence that sounds smart. 

    Uses a reflexive pronoun incorrectly because they think it sounds smart - check. Has heard of a fancy word (inasmuch) but has no idea how to use it - check. 

    I actually wish y'all would make it harder to show everyone how dumb you are. At least make me work. 

    The only thing it's missing is the reference to their diverse group of friends, to hide the fact that their social life consists solely of other batshit crazies. An example:

    "Look, I get it, you're looking out from inside a bubble trying to make sense of a reality you have only recently been proffered. It's hard for anyone to educate oneself when they've been taught how to think by our liberal education system. A lot of my dem friends are going through the same thing right now."

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  19. 4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Thus....the ledge.

    What they break every minute they stay in power cannot be repaired.

    What they break as they leave power -- IF the leave -- cannot be repaired.

    The GOP core value is "if we can't have this country for ourselves, and only for ourselves, nobody can have it."  They are the jihadist suicide bombers of political parties.

    But... but... when we outlaw abortion and gay marriage, then we'll have aligned our laws with what God wants, and God will see to it that our nation prospers!

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