Triumph is going to destroy the 'BUSA :(

[One Man Banned]

Separate but related, there has been a trend in MMA to not interview fighters immediately after they had been knocked out. Kind of feel it's similar with the media interviewing people right after a trauma, doesn't sit right.

[theprotester]

Raven I have literally no idea why you started talking about a nightclub I was talking about the massacre from Monday. That's where cops waived their supreme court protected right to run away from the scene and instead piled on top of people to try and shield them from gunfire. As even if they had a rocket launcher on their hip they had no idea where the bullets were coming from.

[theprotester]

I got my info from live eye witness stuff on the news. I'm twelve hours in front so I'd just sat down to lunch when it popped off.

 

How accurate that is is anybodies guess

[Guest]

I've watched a shit ton of footage from Vegas and didn't see cops piling on anyone. The ones I saw were running like everyone else.

.

 

 

 

Trump shooting free throws with Paper towels made me shake my head. That fucking guy don't give a fuck. I hope at the end of all this people wake up and demand acceptable candidates. The lesser of two evil system is fucking dog shit.

[theprotester]

He should have thrown tinned ham

[Hua Guofang]

Old colleague, great thinker, even better writer.

 

Manners and Political Life

Oct 11, 2017

 

By George Friedman

 

I married a woman born in Australia, of that class that emulated English culture. Loving her as I did, I did not understand the British obsession with table manners. For her, eating a bowl of soup was a work of art, a complex of motions difficult for me to master, and to me incomprehensible in purpose. From the beginning of our love, dinner became for me an exercise of obscure rules governing the movement of food to my mouth. It was a time when conversation was carefully hedged by taboos and obligations. Some things were not discussed at dinner.

 

Meredith, my wife, grew up elegant and restrained. The enormous body of rules she called good manners rigidly shaped and controlled her passions, which were many. She followed the rules she learned as a child partly out of a desire for others to think well of her, partly because she regarded these manners as the laws of nature. Restraint and propriety were the outward sign of a decent life. The dinner table was where children learned that there were rules to a civilized life. For many, the powers of good manners crushed their souls, leaving them with little but the arrogance of having mastered the rules. For the best, manners provided the frame for a life of free will and self-confidence. Good manners allowed her to be both free and civilized, in the English manner. Her obsession with manners imposed a civility that shaped the way in which people disagreed.

 

I grew up in the Bronx, a place of fragmented cultures, of immigrants under severe and deforming pressure. There were many cultures – few any longer authentic, all in some way at odds with each other. Meredith’s table was a place of restraint. Mine was a place of combat. The hidden message about food was to eat as much as you can as quickly as you can, because who could really know when you would eat again? The table was a place of intellectual and emotional combat, where grievances were revealed, ideas were challenged and the new world we were in was analyzed for its strangeness. The grammar of debate took precedence over digestion.

 

She and I appear to many to be mismatched. She has never lost her belief that one must show restraint to appear to fit in. I have never lost my belief that the world is a dangerous place that must be confronted vigorously. Yet underneath these differences we formed a bond, based on a will to live as we will, but distinguishing carefully between who we were in private and who we were in public. This distinction is the root of both sanity and civility. I learned from her that there was a time and place for everything. I learned that without manners, however arbitrary they might be, life was chaos. I learned that combat, in speech and deed, might sometimes be necessary, but that it must be bound by the rituals of civility, or everything is destroyed. I am not sure she learned much from me.

 

Public Life

 

Manners make it possible to disagree within a framework of ritual that the disagreement does not lead to unhealable breaches. They allow you to live much of your life in unthinking patterns, freeing you to devote your thoughts to matters more pressing than how to greet someone, or whether to put on a tie. A tie is an example of this. It is a pointless piece of cloth. Yet, in putting it on, the act of dressing becomes complex and focuses you on the task ahead. You are putting on a tie because what you will now do has some importance – at least for me.

 

I grew up in the 1960s, when manners were held to be a form of hypocrisy, the sign of a false and inauthentic time. When Mickey Mantle hit a home run, he trotted around the bases as if his excellence was incidental and required no celebration. His undoubted elation was contained within ritual. Today, success in sports has fewer limits, and success and contempt for the other side frequently merge. When I was very young, courtship and marriage rituals were ringed with things you did not do. Of course, all these things were done, but they were hidden from the gaze of others. Part of it was shame, but part of it was also respect for manners, even in their breach. It had the added and urgent dimension that the most precious parts of growing up were private things.

 

The argument was that honesty was the highest virtue. Manners restrained honest expression and therefore denied us our authenticity. What came of this was an assault on the distinction between what we are in private and what we are in public. The great icon of this was Woodstock, where the music was less important than the fact that things that had been ruthlessly private had become utterly public. The shame that is attached to bad manners was seen as dishonesty, and unrestrained actions as honesty. The restraint of manners became mortally wounded.

 

Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower had come to despise each other by the time of Eisenhower’s inauguration. They hid this in public. The press, undoubtedly aware of the tension, chose not to focus on it. The ritual that was at the heart of the republic – the peaceful transfer of power – was the focus, and the personal feelings of each were hidden from view. They were dishonest in their public behavior, and in retrospect, the self-restraint with which they hid their honest feelings was their moral obligation. These were two dishonest men, honoring their nation in their dishonesty.

 

The U.S. flag flies at half-staff above the White House on Dec. 15, 2012. MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

The press was in on the act. The press is an institution specifically mentioned in our Constitution. Implicitly it is charged with telling the truth. The press minimized the fact that Franklin D. Roosevelt was disabled. The New York Times refrained from publishing that the Soviets had deployed missiles in Cuba. Reporters did not make public the rumors that Eisenhower might have been having an affair in England. All of these might have been true, but the press saw its role as that of an adversary to the state, but not an enemy.

 

Members of the press saw themselves as carrying out three roles: They were journalists, they were citizens, and they were well-mannered. As journalists, they published “all the news that’s fit to print.” As citizens, they wanted the U.S. to win World War II and would do nothing to hinder it. As ladies and gentlemen, they knew there were things that were true but did not warrant telling. There were always exceptions, but the prestige press, as they were then called, did not see these roles as incompatible.

 

It is important not to overstate the comity that existed, or neglect the exceptions, but the idea that good manners required certain behavior did matter. It is not clear to me that the republic suffered from the restraint of good manners and the ability of politicians and journalists to feel shame.

 

Authenticity

 

Today, we are surrounded by politicians who have decided that honesty requires that they show how deeply they detest each other, and a public that feels free to display its contempt for any with whom it disagrees. Our opponents have become our enemies, and our enemies have become monsters. This has become true for all political factions, and all political factions believe it is true only for their opponents. The idea that it is proper to hide and suppress our malice because not doing so is bad manners has been lost on all levels. With this has been lost the idea that it is possible to disagree on important matters, yet respect and even honor your opponent. Or, put another way, what has been lost is the obligation to appear to feel this way. Manners, after all, do not ask you to lie to yourself, but merely to the rest of the world.

 

The obsession with honesty over manners hides something important. Depending on who you are, depending on what you say, and depending on why you say it, honesty can be devastating. The idea that manners create inauthentic lives, lives in which true feelings are suppressed, is absolutely true. But it forgets the point that many of the things we feel ought to be suppressed, and many of the truths we know ought not to even be whispered. Indeed, the whisperer, when revealed, should feel shame. Without the ability to feel shame, humans are barbarians. It is manners, however false, that create the matrix in which shame can be felt. When we consider public life today, the inflicting of shame has changed from the subtle force of manners, to the ability to intimidate those you disagree with. As Francois de La Rochefoucauld said, “Hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue.” Today, vice feels little need to apologize.

 

I am not here speaking of issues. The issues must be debated. I am speaking of the aesthetics of debate, of restraint and respect. I am speaking of the ability to believe something deeply, yet hold open the possibility that you have much to learn from those who disagree – or at least pretend to, which is almost as good.

 

What I have written here would seem to have little to do with geopolitics. It has everything to do with it. A nation has as its foundation the love of one’s own. That isn’t a saccharine concept. It is the idea that we are born in or come to a country and do not merely share core values with each other, but honor each other for being our fellow citizens, that our mutual bond is the fellowship of the nation. Underneath there may be much malice, but good manners require it be hidden. The collapse of manners undermines the love of one’s own and weakens the foundation of the nation. And since nations rise and fall, this is very much a geopolitical question.

 

In the end, being well-mannered in the highest sense is a personal obligation. It rests on the desire to be well-thought-of as a human being, and on caring what others think of you. Many of us lack that virtue. We lack the ability to be ashamed, or we have convinced ourselves that feeling shame is a weakness. We appear on television saying things to each other that decent human beings would not reveal they feel, and our viewers applaud. There is no federal program to resurrect pride in our bearing. It flows from each of us doing it. But that requires a common code of behavior, not fully rational but fully respected, and that has been eaten away. This is the place where I should mention social media, but what more is there to say on that, so consider it said. We all know that there is a terrible problem. But most of us think it is the person we dislike who is the problem, not us.

 

There is a concept worth ending on, which is the principle of intellectual rectitude, the idea that one must be cautious in thought and in speech. That we should know what we know, and know what we feel, and draw a sharp line between the two. There is a place for feelings, but passion can lead to recklessness, and societies crumble over the massive assault of passion. One of the things I try to do – frequently failing – is to exercise intellectual rectitude in my writing. Restraint in public life – that life that you live with others – is not a foundation of civilization. It is civilization.

 

There is a time to tell the truth, and a time to withhold it. In the Bible, two books are thought to be written by Solomon. One, Ecclesiastes, is about the fact that there is a time and place for everything. It is a book of manners and of despair. Manners and despair are linked, but if you don’t know there is a time and place for everything, then you are not human. Solomon also wrote the Song of Songs. It is a poem about love and the erotic. It allows us to see that while there is a time and place for everything, and eros in the public space is unacceptable, a life without the erotic is not worth living. The Song of Songs is our solace for the rigors of Ecclesiastes.

 

The loss of time and place is the loss of propriety and proportion. It is the destruction of both the public and the private, of the life of duty and the life of pleasure. Pleasure cannot live without duty nor duty without pleasure. Neither can exist without good manners. And this applies to the relationship of lovers, of citizens and of nations. And the beginning of the path to it is intellectual rectitude.

[Hua Guofang]

Mueller is stirring, his awakening nears. 

 

Fear the all who collude. 

[glorydays]

either way this goes...this is the most embattled administration I have ever seen

[One Man Banned]

[Hua Guofang]

Yeah, shit is a mess.

 

Trumps approach to running a nation is treating it like a business, which is the wrong approach, in my opinion.  Values matter to society and you need friends in the world, not everything should be seen in financial terms. 

 

However, not every thing he does is bad and if he goes so will the positive elements of his administration. 

[glorydays]

I believe trump's issue is his concern with "winners and losers" on a global scale

 

there's no system, in and of itself, that can exist as a "winner" when all the systems within a global chain economy depend on each other

 

I think trump wants it so that America is "on top" reaping all these rewards from "loser" nations....that is a very child-like grasp of economics

[Hua Guofang]

Agreed, also a superficial and short term electoral platform that plays on a lack of knowledge by the average person- knowledge they should not be expected to have. 

[glorydays]

Just now, Hua Guofang said:

Agreed, also a superficial and short term electoral platform that plays on a lack of knowledge by the average person- knowledge they should not be expected to have. 

I have a slew of complaints on electoral college democracies....one being towards gerrymandering being the sole arbiter of deciding who is the winner depending on geographic sizes of voting blocks

[~KRYLON2~]

Random thought. I believe the soul purpose of the electoral college was rooted in fear of freed slaves out voting white land owners. Taking away the popular vote was a way of maintaining the status qou. It was not developed for protecting less populous regions of the U.S. like they tought us in grade school. In fact thats why we have states rights and home rule. 

[misteraven]

Not correct. 

 

Slaves obviously couldn’t vote. But the founding fathers set it up as a hedge, which part of the compromise of giving up their independence as a state that regulated itself, to being part of a nation with a centralized governing body. Even at that time, there were specific population centers very much like we continue to see today. Most often, ports exponentially outgrew rural areas and it was just as obvious then as it is now that if it was based off mob rule - popular vote - you’d see a vastly different outcome in which densely populated ports would swing every vote, every time. Back then states still had complete independence, not to mention differing needs / values / priorities, so it took a lot of compromise to bring them to the table to give some of that up by forming a union. 

 

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin, 1759

[Kults]

Never heard that quote before, love it.

[morton]

Popular vote is not equivalent to mob rule, they define fundamentally different political concepts.

[Mercer]

How so?

 

Unless you live in a completely stateless society, somebody has to rule, and in a democracy it's the Citizens that are ultimately responsible. The citizens behave exactly like a mob of people do. Thee mob is fickle, ignorant,  and normally just votes for compelling presentations. Politicians bend to the mob soothing their sense of confirmation bias regarding topics they'd never be qualified to make a decision on in any other setting.

[morton]

By definition.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochlocracy

[misteraven]

Thinking mob rule and tyranny of the majority are in fact, pretty much the same, but I suppose the two terms exist and you in fact point to a definition that explains the nuance between them. 

 

That at being said, that’s my bad for the mistake, however subtle, but doesn’t change the point I was making. 

 

“Rule of the majority” was the concern of the founding fathers that led to implementing an electoral college. And this remains as valid a concern today as it did then, if not more so. Problem is that the Federal government has vastly outgrown its charter with exponentially more power in governance being consolidated under it. So now we find ourselves in ever increasing conflict that grows along side it. 

 

Had we kept government in check, most governance would exist at the state level, so there’s at least an option to move to another state should you find yourself disagreeing with the ideology your being governed by. 

 

Seeing the realities of life between NYC and NW Montana first hand, I can tell you for fact that they exist worlds apart from each other. I’m not implying in any way that one is better than the other, only that the concerns / priorities / (and often) the values are vastly different. Just because NYC has significantly more people should not allow them to exert their will on those in Montana (and vice versa). If government was kept in check, most the concerns would be moot. Instead, we’re debating the merit of the electoral college because we now live in an era where the outcome has profound implications in our day to day lives. 

 

Anyhow, there’s definitely a lot of problems but the electoral college itself really isn’t one of them. The focus should be on why a bunch of asshats in Washington DC are dictating nearly every facet of day to day life for 320 million people spread across the entire country. 

[Mercer]

Aside from a violent revolution, there's no proven method  in place to slow, or stop democratic expansion of a constitutional government. This is the plight of the minarchists, when writing a constitution that can adapted through democratic process for future needs.

 

Give the government a narrow set of responsibilities, and within a generation or two, the original libertarian/minarchist values of freedom are diluted away. Next thing you know, we're asking the government to tell us when it's safe to cross a road, define things like genders for us, or enforce which bathroom we're allowed to use, what we can smoke, poke, and etc.

 

It's so bad these days. The fucking TSA has a shot of my wife's Vag from her last flight screening. I don't even have one to rub one out to. Everything I do is recorded, and traced. Every voter has a freedom or two they're not using themselves. They're usually more than willing to force everyone to give those unused freedoms up if it can serve some other purpose. Every problem we face, even the ones created by the government, warrant more government intervention.

 

The controls for an almost autonomously functioning republic are handed down, with the best intentions. Step by step more controls, and expansions are then put into place. This is the natural process for the state's power to corrupts it's way towards becoming more absolute, and you know what they say about absolute power.

[Hua Guofang]

@MercerI agree with much of what you’re saying (except for the violent revolution but), but there’s a lot of complexity in there as well. All new regulation isn’t always an imposition on a liberty once held. New technology creates new challenges, increased concentrations require new rationalizations, etc. 

 

secondly, many people willingly give away some liberties for social rationalism, it’s their preferred choice and a values based call that no one can says is wrong. 

 

Anyway, this all moves into an area of philosophy that sees me well out of my depth. I work in a regulatory space and I just know that some - many areas I deal with are completely novel with brand new challenges, not part of a whole creep within a zero sum game of liberty v. Regulation = security 

[Mercer]

Understood, my only point was that the currents of government intervention tend to flow toward expansion, and away from liberty. It takes a lot of serious rowing just to stay in place and not get swept into the current. Unfortunately, the general public isn't that interested in rowing.

 

 

 

[glorydays]

thinking that voting will protect you

is like depending on the government to protect you against itself

[Hua Guofang]

8 hours ago, Mercer said:

Understood, my only point was that the currents of government intervention tend to flow toward expansion, and away from liberty. It takes a lot of serious rowing just to stay in place and not get swept into the current. Unfortunately, the general public isn't that interested in rowing.

 

 

 

Yeah, no argument from me on that point. 

[misteraven]

Been saying this for a while... Government power comes at the expense of individual  liberty. One grows at the expense of the other in a dynamic system that never reaches equilibrium. 

[Mercer]

You should check out Man Economy, and Sate by Rothbard. Audible has the scholars edition (57 hours, 48 minutes, and 16 seconds.) which is complete, and essentially identical to this free copy:

 

Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market.pdf

 

It was the culmination of work from 3 generations of study by Austrian School Economists, and Rothbard's Magnum Opis. It breaks down how destructive government is from a study of human action, or praxiology. Probably the most influential work regarding economics I've ever read, and very eye opening in regards to cryptocurrency, and understanding marginal values of capitol.

[Hua Guofang]

President making major strategic decisions about mil deployments based on politics and without consultation,, SecDef resigning in public protest. 

 

 

So much winning. 

[Mercer]

As for the troop pullout itself, it's a good move in the big picture. Granted, I do feel bad for the Kurds for the third time now,  but fixing things for them is not our job to begin with.

[Hua Guofang]

Having troops anywhere sucks, but once they are there you have to play it right otherwise things only get worse. 

 

Making decisions about deployments based  on domestic politics is about as bad as it gets.