The most pernicious doctrine of modernity, which informs Marxism via having been in the air — thanks, Rosseau — when Marx, the synthesizing plagiarist concocted his abortion of a theory, is the idea that all evil must have causes.
The causes can’t be “because this person is broken and enjoys tormenting others.” No, because, again, thanks Rosseau, all babies are born utterly pure and wonderful, and it is only their upbringing and what we’ll call “civilization” that corrupts them and makes them evil, when someone acts in a way that destroys others or everything, it must be the fault of something done to them.
Now, if we’re going to discuss nature or nurture, we’re going to be here all day. I suspect the answer is “yes.” Like most people of my generation, I used to think that it was all mostly nurture. There have been case studies of people brought by adoptive parents where, barring mental impairment, all children mirror the parents high-IQ. Beyond statistical chance. (From something I heard from a psychologist long ago, though I think those cases are highly publicized and…. rare. So it might be luck of the draw. But never mind. We never hear of the rest.) And after all, we all know families that have certain characteristics, that would not seem to be — possibly — genetic.
Then I became a mother. Younger son is, barring small bits, like having my husband’s much more acceptable nose, my father come again. Seriously, it is to the point that if Dad weren’t still alive, or hadn’t been alive at the kid’s birth, I would fully believe he was dad’s reincarnation. It’s not just that their minds run the same way or their gestures and way of being in the world. It’s not even that they have the exact same taste in women (no, really) but that they do things that no one should do unless they’d learned it, in the precisely same way. What convinced my dad was watching my son, then three, eat an egg over easy. Both he and dad eat the white in a spiral towards the yolk, which they eat last. Son had, at that time, not seen dad since before he was eating. We can come up with some truly bizarre subconscious learning explanation, but I don’t think I’d seen dad eat an egg in years, so I even didn’t remember, much less the kid having seen it. (Like many his generation, dad fell victim to the demonization of eggs. Now in the past, fortunately, since it’s favorite food. As it’s son’s.)
Raising that kid was an education in “What is genetic.” Does he cope with the innate differently? To some extent. He’s certainly picked a different path in work, for which I’m grateful, since it seems less stressful, but then what he’s doing is something that is not viable as a career in Portugal, not unless you’re born to it. But that the base on which nurture writes is identical, and that nurture — in a different country, with a different language, with parents that were completely different than my grandparents — had so little effect blew my preconceived notions out of the water with a high depth charge. (Yes, I call him my male clone. Well, dad and I are very similar, but compared to those two I stick out like a sore thumb. Perhaps for being female. They are more like each other than either is like me.)
Anyway, I have to believe younger son is an outlier. Mostly I have to believe it, because I’ve seen people rewrite themselves from the ground up. (As much will power as that takes.) But I also have to believe it because otherwise we’re all just pre-programmed units running through the world, doing our pre-programmed stuff. Like the theory of Predestination, that’s an evil thing to think. Even if it were true, it is an evil thing. Because it robs humanity of meaning. (My apologies to those who believe predestination religiously. It is still an evil belief in a society.)
At any rate, we have proof that nurture does change us, in the movement of humanity through history. We know for a fact that people learn, and people change. That humans are a self-domesticating animal, that learned to live in close quarters with those not of their blood without instant violence.
The error of attributing too much to nature is that it causes us to fall into despair and despondence, and at society level it causes judging people not as individuals, but as units of their family. It establishes a society of castes and punishing the children for the sin of the fathers. It is the doctrine of the Eugenicists. If it were true, killing vast swathes of the population would be the path to progress. Which is why the science fiction books of the 20s are full of nattering about “racial hygiene.
The problem — besides the fact that you have to choose whom you’ll kill based on your inherent biases and what you place value on (more on that later) — is that you kill millions or billions of people. Or at least prevent them from reproducing, which seems the path the WEF would like to take. For many many reasons this is morally unacceptable.
It is also, ultimately, intellectually rock bottom stupid. Look, we don’t know enough about the human genes and what they convey to weed out people with undesirable characteristics. And if we did, we wouldn’t know what characteristics the future will require. And if we did, we would become bananas. No, literally, we would become like bananas.
Here’s the thing: We do not know nearly enough about the human genome. And the truth is we might never, because it’s like studying a novel while it’s being rewritten.
Human genes are constantly recombining and changing and mutating. We do know that. Because that’s the point of gendered reproduction. It’s not one clone reproducing himself forever, like say bananas, but a recombination of characteristics, which then recombine again the next generation.
Whether you believe we got here through evolution or not, we know evolutionary selective pressures work. We know, because we apply them artificially. Before we even became agriculturalists, by simply selecting and propagating the seeds of the plants our gatherers found most useful, we had changed most plants we ate beyond recognition. And we have evidence of species changing all out of recognition as their environment changed for long enough. (Whales. No, seriously, whales.)
So yeah, the mutations and other recombinations get selected for or not, but where’s the thing: every generation there is myriad little changes (unless you’re number two son.) Most of them are neutral. Not good, not bad. Good and bad in relation to survival. They have bloody nothing to do with our own judgements, that’s for sure.
However, an illiterate mathematical genius in the middle ages might be better at making change and calculating his own household usage of various things, but he’s not going to have the impact he’d have in the world today.
And we don’t know what will be needed in the future. Nor what “undesirable” characteristics come with it. We do know geniuses are prickly and tough to get along with — for the most part — but most people don’t know that 99% of them are also not particularly successful at working or making a mark in their chosen field. (Depending on the field.) So if we weed out for lack of agreeableness and inability to make a living, we’ll be taking out that genius in 100 that would make a difference.
Since sometimes a genius can win a war, or feed the world (no, seriously, look it up) the weeding out of such a genius is stupid and will kill millions, no matter how much he might be so annoying we want to drown him in his coffee cup. (What? I am the dumb one in the family, guys. There have been days.)
To make things worse, most of our eugenicists, like the ones of the 20th century are hung up on completely irrelevant characteristics, like the color of skin/hair/eyes. While you can make sweeping generalizations about vast portions of the world based on IQ tests, or how well those regions do, that’s poppycock, not science. IQ tests are relatively useful in a more or less homogeneous culture (even one like ours) and even then not the way most people think. (There’s a sweet spot for success. Up or down from that is bad, bad, bad.) But once you apply it to other cultures where nutrition, early learning, etc. are different, the result will be utter garbage. And yes, nutrition makes a huge difference. One of the ways in which younger son is different from dad is an additional 3 inches, bringing him to 6’4″ a height he doesn’t have any ancestors having on either side of the family. But you know, childhood nutrition, and not being victim to constant infections before the age of six make a difference.
What we do know is that there is no linkage between how dark or light your skin is and your mental prowess, ability to plan, or basic human decency. The moron (real one, though probably not genetic, since her kids are normal) in my elementary school class was blond and blue eyed.
Yes, all cultures make broad assumptions about physical characteristics associated with “smart.” The one that amuses me most, coming from a family of mathematicians and scholars who are built like the hulk, is that all geniuses are tiny and skinny. Every year at the beginning of school, my teachers would ask me how many years I’d been held back, and proceeded to treat me like a dunce until the first test. After which they were very confused.
Is there a relationship? I don’t know. It would seem to be small and slim would select for high functioning intellect, because… well, you have to survive. And I confess that through their schooling career, my kids looked like four of their high-achieving friends glued together. But is the relationship unbreakable? Uh. Obviously not. (And my school friend who coined the “For the love of heaven, just copy my answers. Don’t think. When you think you ruin everything.” Was tiny and very smart looking. Note LOOKING.)
At any rate the human race is not as genetically diverse as you think. I don’t remember right now if we’re more or less inbred than house cats (why, yes, reading someone with ADHD is like micro-dosing wikipedia. Deal.) but we are inbred enough not to have crazy genetic variety. And genetic variety is important because some people will have a natural immunity or ability to survive a pathogen or a cataclism. We take those people away and we become bananas: a species so inbred it can be completely wiped out by any shock.
Which would seem to be the opposite of eugenicist aims.
But I’ve spent too much time on nature — I need coffee — perhaps because antisemitism is rearing its ugly head and giving me 1930s vibes all over again.
The major danger of our age is nurture. If you believe everything is nature and MORE IMPORTANTLY that you can trace defects in character or breaks with civilization to this or that specific action, you’ll distort society beyond belief. Which is what we’ve been doing.
I confess to having believed it at one time. I think most of us did. It was drunk with mother’s milk. To an extent, the Puritans were already trying that, though their belief was that we were broken by trifling too much with the world and being too easy on ourselves. After that came Rosseau and his belief that people were born perfect, and if we just let them be they’d grow to be noble savages. (A creature, that, like the successful communist society has never appeared in the real world.)
This influenced a lot of the way the West developed. And frankly, since their (deranged) revival in the sixties, the Rosseaunians are now the dominant intellectual/political/moral force in the world and what they are imposing on the rest of us is destroying civilization and can destroy humanity. (The fact that they are also eugenicists, often the other way than they claim to be just makes them extra poisonous.)
Right now, partly through being “anti-capitalist” the left believes that our society — capitalism, the demand for civilized behavior, etc — is responsible for everything an individual does wrong.
And therefore “It’s a fair cop, but society is to blame.”
And therefore, no one should be punished for crimes they couldn’t help committing. Hence, the lawlessness in our big cities, but that’s not all.
This belief also feeds our welfare programs, because, you know, if people steal and rob, it’s because they’re poor. If we stop them being poor, there shall be no lawlessness. This is btw impossible to falsify. If they’re not as rich as the richest, this might be what causes them to commit crimes. (Look, seriously, no. It has no correlation. And where it has it it’s the other way. Those who are by nature lawless tend to have other problems that get in the way of staying relatively prosperous. I’m not going to say our legal system treats the poor well. At this point our legal system needs a kick upside its behind, as it doesn’t treat anyone well, but simply that to the extent there’s a covalence, it goes the other way more often than not.)
And this applies internationally. All that foreign aid is 80% “If we give them money, they’ll be as wealthy as we are” they won’t be violent. Letting the “refugees” come in by the bucket load, is ultimately “If they come in here, we’ll look after them, and they won’t be criminals.”
Add to this a belief that all the people who are crazy and can’t function are so because they have been mistreated by “capitalism” and you have all the homeless everywhere, who can’t be punished for anything, because somehow nothing is their fault.
The amazing thing is not that we are breaking down as a civilization, running as we do on a belief that not only hasn’t been proven, but which has been disproved over and over and over again.
What’s amazing is that we still function at all.
And yet, the chasm between the assumption that “People do bad things because bad things were done to them” and reality is a dangerous one.
Take the matter of what the Gazans did in Israel in 10/7. Those horrific actions, to the west, must only mean that these poor people are so horribly oppressed.
In fact, they wouldn’t be completely wrong. These poor people are horribly oppressed by their violent, hateful culture which has institutionalized envy and entitlement to a level even the Marxists can’t conceptualize. Which is why none of their Arab (or Persian) brethren has offered them asylum and instead will do everything to keep them out of their own countries.
Because their culture is evil and broken, and like the mind of a psychopath, urges them to take “revenge” for wrongs that were never committed. In the end what they are taking revenge for is other people’s ability to live sane and productive lives. They are consumed with envy at this and hate everyone who is more productive or happier than them. Which, btw, is not only the Israelis, but all of us. Heck, it’s most of the Arab countries, and most of the East, and probably vast portions of Africa.
They are indeed a vast open air prison, but not through lack of opportunity, or Israeli “oppression.” If you want to weep read up on the aid that has been poured into that hell hole. It could have been used for all sorts of things, including starting industry, educating children to do something, anything other than monomaniacally hate everyone not of them.
However, regardless of money pouring in, regardless of what they’re given, themselves — their unjust wardens over themselves — keep the population focused only on envy and hatred, and have children’s programs glorifying suicide bombing. Which is why all the money goes to weapons and terror tunnels.
I don’t know how that can be solved, short of taking away every child under three and distributing them to sane, civilized families the world over. And thus ending the problem in a generation.
But I know it can’t be solved by giving in and giving them more money, and stopping the retribution for their horrific actions. Because what we have taught that culture is that the more horrific their actions, the more the west will give them and treat them as victims.
And that is destroying them further, and making them a gun pointed at the world’s head.
Envy is a sin for reason. Whether or not you believe in punishment after death, envy destroys people and their ability to live now. Both those who envy and those they envy.
(This is by the way why the deranged leftist fight against inequality is deranged. There is no way of making a society perfectly equal, short of killing everyone. The root of the problem is envy, not inequality.)
I see the Bidenmites, that cursed tribe, have used their sock puppet to call for cease fire. This is ridiculous. No cease fire without total surrender. And the punishment at that needs to be hard enough their grandchildren know about it.
A total ceasing of Western support and cutting off their sources of aid from their terror sponsors would do it. Starvation and lack of modern conveniences has a way of concentrating the mind and making a culture change. And change fast. Oh, not to sweetness and light, maybe, but definitely towards “Will not attack, because that hurts.”
The burned hand teaches best. No, it doesn’t make those who burned their hand go and stick it in the fire because they’re mad. Or if it does, well, maybe the eugenicists have a point there. Such a short circuit in the brain would definitely make survival impossible, and perhaps should be allowed to perish. (Yes, I know that’s not what it means.)
The problem is convincing the Rosseaunians that this is needed.
Their wrong model of reality will kill us all, otherwise.
According To Hoyt 
The terrible thing about those assh*les is that they believe that some people inherit the “sins” of other people.
IE Whites are Evil because some Whites decades ago had black slaves.
And of course, all living American Blacks are somehow “hurt” because some Blacks were slaves of White Americans.
Note, some idiot claimed that Obama wasn’t a Real African-American because his ancestors weren’t Slaves of White Americans.
It was interesting how that idiot idea was memory-holed once Obama became President.
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I would argue that humans are not born evil. They CHOOSE evil.
Some environments and some inherited defects make that choice much more common, but it is still a choice.
Inheritance is also a thing. I’m way out on the +third sigma on quite a few parameters, and down below -second sigma on a couple of others. Aspergers. It runs in the family like a wooden leg. Brilliant at some stuff, useless at other stuff.
It doesn’t make my decisions for me. I make those myself. The same as everybody else.
However there is lately a new refurbishment of the Hobbesian idea that humans are mere mechanisms. https://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2023/10/free-will-itself-now-under-assault.html
Dr. Robert Saplosky a Neurobiologist at Stanford, has a new book. The TL/DR, Humans are fancy meat-robots who run by their programming, so you can’t blame them when they do shit like Hamas did on October 7th. “This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane.”
Of course, the learned Dr. Saplosky uses his pulpit in the Ivory Tower to preach. We must -understand- the poor terrorist or drunk driver, and not seek to punish. Because that would be wrong. The poor things can’t help it.
Sharp eyed Mary Catelli said in my comments: “Witness that our treatment of drunk drivers would also be determined.” Because we are meat robots, right? We don’t get to choose our reaction. We just react. Objecting that we are harsh and horrible for tossing the drunk in jail is ridiculous if we are robots.
Thus it is refuted. But note thee well; Dr. Robert Saplosky, Neurobiologist at Stanford, still has a job even though his mighty theory is refuted in eleven words, and they published his frigging book too.
As far as the Palestinians go, whatever happens to them from here on out, they deserve worse. The shit that they’ve done cannot be allowed to stand unpunished.
I’d be willing to give them all a break if they rose up and put the head of every member of Hamas on a pike in front of the border wall. Act of good faith, right?
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Same on the last one. but why just the heads?
“Bad neighbors make good fences:” — Vlad of Wallachia, probably.
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I don’t see how you could make a good fence out of the neighbors, bad or otherwise. Bodies are just not structurally suited to the purpose. :-D
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That’s why you mount them on those tall, sturdy poles. (evil grin)
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Heads are easier, smell less, and take up less space…
… oh shit. Now I sound like Bob.
Dammit Bob, see what you’ve done?!
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we are all Bob now. THis is Bob’s timeline. We just live in it.
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The Reader thanks you for the AM coffee on his keyboard.
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I’ve been a Bob for almost 78 years; the other one (assuming I’m correct in the ID) sounds eminently rational to me, no matter what nym he uses. :-)
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I’ve just been a little busy to be letting a bucnh of depression spill out onto the page for all the world to see.
Not necessarily productive busy.
Some of it may be fussing in attempt to ignore stuff I may be bothered by.
I earned some of my reputation here for weird and extreme in long ago days. Combination of being very sensitive, and very unhappy.
Rest of society told me ‘no’, and tried to talk me down during my worst years. When society is having a rough time, maybe I owe them the effort to get my end of things in good neough order that I can take over some of the lifting in saying ‘no’, and trying to talk folks down.
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Bob, I am not encouraged that you are the reasonable one here. >:(
I’m screaming for heads on pikes, and you’re “hey bro, take it easy…”
Well, sh-t. >:(
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You made me laugh out loud, and now people are looking at me funny. >:(
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Impaling was an old practice of the Zulu. perhaps they could get some advisors on to properly carry it out.
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You have to have free will to deny free will.
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Skulls/Death send a very important message, “It is bad to do this thing here”. Why do you think Cartels hang the bodies on overpasses? Its not just the death but the message. Our military’s motto used to be “We kill people and break things, you don’t want us to visit” Not “My Pronouns are such and such” .That is why there is so much confusion and terror in this world. We really need to Nuke something again, death and destruction is all they will listen to.
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What happened to Frank Fleming’s Nuke the Moon campaign?
Gist of it was make sure the world thinks the US is crazy.
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Future generations, by comparison, should refer to Tamerlane as “Timur the Gentle.”
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There’s insanity. Then, of course, we lock them up for their own safety.
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To deny free will is to spit in God’s face for giving us it.
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To your initial phrase, I will propose a counterpoint. A slight one perhaps.
If you derive that human nature is what is found without nurture, i.e. without the impact of other humans, what do you find? You find that infants lack the mental capacity for things like empathy, mercy, kindness, and proportionality.
Go a bit further, muddy the waters a bit with some human interaction we call parenting- even good parenting- and toddlers can be some of the most violent individuals around. Selfish little marauders. If a wee child can get his toy back by striking another wee child and toddling away as fast as his short legs will carry him, there’s a darned good chance he will.
Unless he is taught better.
That is civilization, friend. Base humanity may hold the potential for both towering grace and base vileness, but the latter is by far and away the easier path. The history of humanity is an extremely bloody path through the ages, and the trappings of civilization we enjoy today stand upon a towering pile of skulls. Skulls of thieving murdering barbarians, that is.
Say what you will about nature, but civilization depends heavily upon the work of nurture to survive. I am a firm believer in the capacity of the common man for great and terrible evils. To become good, a man must leash the impulses within and sacrifice his own cupidity. To grow the seed of civilization and good moral character means giving up on the easy path to personal power in the moment.
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Saplosky – textbook definition of a lefty who hasn’t been mugged yet. Of course, even by his definition, you can’t blame the Israelis for leveling Gaza since they too are only reacting according to their neurobiology.
As for what state human beings are born into? From my perspective, newborns are simply uncivilized, selfish (in the sense that all that drives them are their immediate needs) creatures – the same as any animal in nature. Based on their biology, they begin by trying to satisfy their immediate ‘needs’, which we then allow over time to become ‘wants’. We layer grace and evil on top of those immediate desires.
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“…by his definition, you can’t blame the Israelis…”
For some strange reason that never seems to apply to those they feel should all die, only to their “chosen ones”. Shooting peop[le or beating them to death is fine, unless you’re defending others; then it’s murder. :-x
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Doctor Saplosky deserves the modification of the old MIT joke (said bitterly at times…)
“You can tell he’s from Stanford, but you can’t tell him much.”
I worked with both MIT and Stanford electrical engineers. Those from Stanford were less of a problem than the MIT folks, but both groups are susceptible to the Good Idea Fairy and prone to falling in love with their own ideas. (Said problems are endemic to being human, but it’s really noticeable for them.)
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I learned that as ‘You can always tell a Harvard man, you just can’t tell him much.’
Any population of the self-anointed homo superior might substitute for Harvard/MIT/Stanford, I suppose.
Are engineers worse than MBAs with ‘good ideas’?
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Can’t say to the last question; my career was mercifully void of exposure to many MBAs. OTOH, the Good Idea Fairy seems to be a universal ailment, so it’s likely to be a flip of the coin. On the gripping hand, if the person’s last name is Spurgle, watch out.
For the unwary: https://amzn.to/3Ptve16
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The Reader has encountered the Good Idea Fairy many times in his engineering career. He has come to believe that Murphy, like Janus, has two faces.
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Apropos of nothing specific, the current spasm of antisemitic hysteria at Harvard gives me that warm, nostalgic feeling. It’s nice to know that Harvard is still keeping up the fine tradition of alumni like Putzi Hanfstaengl.
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I’d say the MBAs are worse. Engineers are usually somewhat constrained by the need to account for things like physics, but there’s no natural laws limiting the fashionable stupidity of MBAs with “good” ideas. Put another way, engineers don’t tend to run entire giant companies into the ground; the achievements of MBAs in that regard are legend.
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To err is human. To really foul things up requires an MBA with a spreadsheet.
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“To err is human. To REALLY fark things up requires a computer.”
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Everyone is susceptible to the good idea fairy.
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Worked at a company which was enamored of Stanford grads, so eventually the group head hired a Stanford new PhD grad. He was agreeable enough in group meetings, but as far as actually producing anything, well… he sat in his cube and thought a lot. To apparently no result. Eventually he left, having done nor made nothing any of us could discern, left no mark, passed like a ship in the night…
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BS = self explanatory
MS = more of the same
PhD = piled higher and deeper
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So, at least he did minimal damage?
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Well, yeah, they didn’t hire him as a director or higher. At least they were not as crazy as some of the startups I have seen, who populated their c-suite jobs with impressively matriculated morons.
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In our modern “western” civilization, proper nurture doesn’t create killers …proper nurture suppresses or redirects the killers into useful members of society … in some non western societies (cough, cough Islam, inner city “communities”) they glorify killers and do little or nothing to suppress them … after all if you are always at war with the tribe up the street/valley/other side of the river hobbling your best killers is not the way to go … killing is part of human nature … domination is part of human nature (the survival of the human species depended on it early, and even recently, in our history on earth)
aggression in human beings (aggression all the way up to killing) is not a “flaw” … its why we dominated planet earth with less muscle and less teeth than other species … its can’t be “cured” … but it can be channeled via proper nurture so that it doesn’t run amok in places we rather it would not … (i.e. shopping malls, schools, etc, etc, etc) …
so when we talk about “nurture” lets be sure we recognize that there are multiple kinds … some better than others depending on the context and scenario …
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^^^THIS^^^
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Anyone who thinks children are ‘born pure’ has not spent time in a church nursery. While most of the children have picked up on what their parents are teaching about sharing and taking turns, there’s always at least one kid that will make the rounds of the room knocking over blocks towers, pushing other kids off the rocking horse, and snatching up the coolest looking car/toy animal/finger puppet, just to hear the cries of outrage, anger, or fear from the others.
Granted, these kids generally settle down eventually, but that is usually due to the efforts of their parents and the enforcing of consistent rules by their teachers than because the child realized that such actions were wrong. No, those children usually learn that such actions are frowned upon and come with punishments they’d rather not deal with.
What we are dealing with in the middle east is a group of overgrown toddlers who like to hear the cries of outrage and pain and fear from others and have not yet run into consequences that are severe enough to deter them from doing it again and again.
Israel needs to supply those consequences, and the rest of the world jolly well needs to shut up and let them do it. The western world needs to stop being the childless wackjob in the store who freaks out because mom slapped the kid’s hand away from something on the shelves. When that happens, you give mom a nod understanding, or you ignore it as none of your business. You sure as hell don’t grab the item off the shelf and hand it to the kid then call CPS on the mom.
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Well put.
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This reminds me of something a lady from Fiji told me about Muslims in her country. She said that a firebrand from the Middle East came to whip up the hatred of the local Muslim community there—and said community told the firebrand off, that what he was saying was ridiculous, and he should go back where he came from.
Unlike the Middle East, Fiji is a land of abundance. The Muslim community there has apparently dropped its emphasis on fighting other tribes, and they think the whole thing is ridiculous.
Speaking of nature vs. nurture, as well as emphasis of cultural upbringing.
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I’m not so sure that’s it. The Saudis are quite well-to-do due to government payments to the citizens due to all of the oil money. Massive numbers of foreign workers are brought into the country to do jobs that the locals refuse to do. And yet the Wahhabi sect comes from Saudi Arabia, and is one of the most violent of the sects.
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“The Saudis are quite well-to-do due to government payments to the citizens due to all of the oil money.”
Being prosperous because of government handouts is a completely different dynamic of prosperity than being prosperous because of your own hard work.
I’m would venture to guess that Muslims in Fiji are more on the “prosperous because of their own hard work” end of the scale.
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I don’t have personal knowledge, but the woman I know definitely has hustle. That may be a Fiji cultural standard or it may not. (She’s Hindu). She’s lived many places in the world.
(I don’t like the cultural carryover of the male-as-golden-child, though. Her daughter is amazing and does not get half the consideration that her younger brother does. Though honestly, the coddling of him is part of why he’s not driven…)
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The House of Saud heavily finances the Wahaabists/Salafists and other radicals, to purchase relative peace in Saudi Arabia and a certain … refrain from assassinations.
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Nature versus nurture, our understanding of where hard wired ends and acquired begins is, in my opinion, rather sketchy, as is our understanding of everything, if we could admit such.
I suspect much, if not just about everything we know beyond a shadow of a doubt is quite doubtful.
Perhaps therein lies the heart of the chaos that is today. The wise man is quite cognizant of his massive ignorance. The fool is blithely ignorant, unknowingly, self assured his path is right and righteous.
Not many wise men, if any, among the movers, makers, shakers and breakers.
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Rousseau was definitely wrong. Humans, like all animals, are born selfish. Sure, we are born innocent, not knowing the difference between good an evil, other than something satisfies a need or causes pain. To be otherwise would just be suicidal. If anything, we appear to be born with a genetic disposition to being able to be trained into civilized behavior of some sort. Said disposition apparantly only reaching a high enough saturation roughly 50,000 years ago when permanent settlements and protocities started developing.
Hmm. That’s 20 to 24 thousand years after the Toba eruption and theoretical population bottleneck. I wonder if that set the conditions for favorable selection of human groups that cooperated together for survival?
“if people steal and rob, it’s because they’re poor”
I disagree. This is demonstrably false. It’s proven daily (just look at Congress.) The rich very much will rob and steal. They just do it somewhat differently than some broke kid in the hood; although in some cases, they’ll just shoplift for no other reason than because they can.
America’s sheer size is one of the reasons we’re stuck with such an Administration of incompetence with a brain-dead figurehead. If we were a small kingdom of 2 or 3 hundred years ago, we’d probably have deposed him already. But then we wouldn’t be the nation of the Constitution either.
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On a related note, I miss the days when the Turkish military deposed Islamist whackjobs to help keep their constitution intact and their country running normally.
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Blame one F-16 pilot who had Erdogan-One locked up and didn’t fire during the last coup.
One little button press.
But nope, didn’t shoot.
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Suspicion at the time (and I’ve yet to hear anything differently) is that Erdogan arranged that whole thing to provide an excuse to purge the military.
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The foreign aid spigot needs to be cut off, the pipes ripped out, and the ground sown with salt.
Quick and “easy” way to make that happen is repeal the sixteenth Amendment. No trimmings, just a new amendment repealing that one. (And heck, since we’re in a repealing mood, let us knock out the 17th as well. Can’t hurt anything but the lobbying ecosystem in the swamp.) No more power to tax us into oblivion, no more money to throw at the rest of the world.
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(And yes, I am likely on all the “anti-government extremist” watchlists. Twice.)
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The family that is on lists together, stays together.
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We will all go together when we go?
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Company is better here. Also, best to sit in the foxhole with the one you know will watch your back. Or the camp, as it were.
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(In the camps.)
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Amen. The “progressive” (spit) 16th and 17th amendments may be the worst thing that has ever happened to this country.
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Basically everything under Wilson, and most of what TR (much as I admire him as a person) wanted to do.
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The purpose of the State Department should be to protect American interests, it has become a way for scum to enrich themselves through kick backs, Joe Biden anyone? The State department needs to be purged and returned top Constitutional boundaries. The only way to do that is to ship all it’s current employees to Alaska and Diego Garcia, They will quit, trust me on this, then turn off the spigots. No money to give out, no kick backs. That branch prunes itself. Then start on the other, Justice, CIA, DHS, HHS, and start eliminating unconstitutional offices.
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CIA and the intelligence community should probably be first in line, but State isn’t far behind.
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I trust the CIA even less than I trust the FBI.
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“Which one do you trust less?”
“Whichever one you’re looking at, it’s the other one.”
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The purpose of every nation’s diplomatic service is to be on the side of its enemies. This seems to be true everywhere except in totalitarian states, where being against the Leader will get you shot even if it’s your job.
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I don’t necessarily think this is true: they are supposed to take the needs of other nations into account, but nonetheless put their own country first.
I’m reminded of a story where a certain President, after appointing an ambassador to a country, would ask that ambassador to point to their country on a globe. If they pointed to the country they were assigned, they failed the test: their country is the United States!
I cannot remember which President this was attributed to. I sincerely doubt it was Pretendant Biden, though — he’d only pass his diplomats if they pointed to Iran.
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Yes, they are supposed to put their own country first. In practice, this seldom happens.
What was that bit about bureaucratic organizations again? ‘Assume they are controlled by a cabal of their enemies’? This applies in spades to diplomatic services.
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With the Department of State, one needn’t assume.
They’ll tell you before you can even ask. State has been thusly since before I was even born. State department needs the ax. Our people over seas need a safe harbor and support, yes. But not from these backstabbing b*astards.
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What do you have against Alaska?
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Rats. The comment was to orphangeorge, above.
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I was going to say that Hamas had already ripped out the pipes, converted them into rockets, and fired them into Israel.
Then I realized you were speaking metaphorically.
If I have to think about it — and thinking about things is encouraged here — I guess I feel about foreign aid much the way I feel about immigration. It’s a good and useful policy at a certain level, a level we have left far behind. Much as I might want simply to reduce it back to that level, our desperate times may require that we stop it altogether for an indefinite period, while we figure out a way to keep it restrained to a proper level once we start it again. If nothing else, the “too little” mistake is easier to reverse.
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As the late, great Will Autism said, “I never metaphor I didn’t like.”
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3 carp. One on each side to keep him in place, and then one right down the middle.
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Make the third one a carplet dispenser round, so even if he gets off the X he still gets it.
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Oooo. Covered in pulverized minnows. Bleah.
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(With apologies to Emily Dickinson):
I never metaphor
Nor ever simile
And yet I know how to compare
to speak figuratively
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As to foreign aid, nope nope nope nope.
Government has precisely two functions: protection of individual rights, and defense of the borders. Foreign aid is just a massive opportunity for graft, every which way.
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Two kinds of governmental foreign aid are justifiable, in my humble but infallible opinion:
Humanitarian relief in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster, when numerous people’s lives are at stake and their own government cannot help them all. Giving such aid is part of being a good neighbour; it should be considered a reciprocal obligation.
Aid in kind (weapons and materiel) to an ally at war.
Anything else ought to be in the domain of private charity.
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Voted on singly and openly in each individual case by Congress, maybe.
In the former case, private organizations probably would do better except in the extreme short term (days).
“Weapons to allies” gets murky really damn fast. On the face of it, a good thing, but then we end up balls deep in Vietnam, and like that.
I grant, contending with communism changes the equation when it controlled more than half the planet. But what we did was mostly the opposite of effective.
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The extreme short term was what I was thinking of for emergency aid, yes.
I also agree that what you did to aid allies during the Cold War was often ineffective and sometimes counterproductive. That’s not a knock against giving such aid, but it is a damning criticism of the principles on which particular decisions were made.
I believe Lyndon Johnson deserves the lion’s share of the blame for the disaster in Vietnam. He seems to have become hawkish on this particular issue because he thought he could outflank Goldwater on the Right while his ‘Great Society’ took care of the Left. He wasn’t satisfied with winning the election; he wanted a landslide, partly so he could eclipse the romanticized memory of Kennedy, partly to feed his own obese ego.
Johnson also had no sense of the limitations of his, or the government’s, power. Somehow there would always be enough money for military escalation and for ‘the beautiful woman’, as he called his welfare-state programs. Eisenhower had explicitly warned against such grandiose schemes: ‘There is no defence for any country that busts its own economy.’ At least some historians believe Johnson declined to run for reelection in 1968 because he knew the bills were coming due and did not want the chore of cleaning up his own messes.
But that is all by the way. My point is that even the most necessary functions of government can turn cancerous when overseen by a politician with a messiah complex. Sometimes the cure is simply not to elect that kind of politician. Alas, it’s a hard lesson for an electorate to learn.
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In the aftermath of the Indonesian tsunami in 2006, we apparently parked an aircraft carrier offshore with one primary purpose: to make drinkable water.
I hadn’t realized the desalinization capabilities of an aircraft carrier, but that really makes sense, when you think about it.
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Entire carrier group, actually. Also provided some power and of course medical services.
We were in it.
Then we organized shore leave by what areas needed an economic boost.
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(Seriously, though, this is one of the big things that America usually does- “there is a natural disaster; let’s move one or two of our mobile cities over to help out with water and emergency services.”)
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And with the size of our defense establishment, we can be there almost before anybody else.
Remember the South Korean ferry Sewol that sank a few years back, took about 200 high school students with it? While that ferry was still capsized but stuck partially on the surface, we had a helicopter assault ship nearby, the USS Bonhomme Richard. An LHA is basically an aircraft carrier, but they carry helicopters and Ospreys (and F-35Bs if needed) and land Marines ashore. They’re big, about the size of a WW II Essex-class carrier. And they’re slap full of Navy and Marine specialists and tremendous amounts of gear–including divers, rescue boats, heavy machinery, etc. The Navy immediately requested to help. The South Korean government turned them down flat. I’m not sure if they could’ve saved any of those kids, but to turn down that level of assistance right on your doorstep is just…criminal IMO.
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No argument from me.
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There was a lot of idiotic backlash, but some folks did “get it” that having a POWER REACTOR & DESALINIZATION system handy was good. And that it came with S&R abilities and more… well…
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:waves in helo and LCAC with Marines for both:
Yep.
The cheap-shot of “dummy sent warships to a natural disaster” backfired BAD!
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Foreign aid is either a bribe to let American businesses operate in that country, or danegeld. The first is unnecessary for selling in that country, since if our product is in demand, they’ll make it happen anyway. Also on the first, is if that nation has resources we want/need, but don’t want them to become independent of us in exploiting them, then bribery may be a more cost effective means. If it’s danegeld, and subsidizing any Muslim majority nation qualifies, then we’re merely decapitating ourselves slowly.
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The thing about any level of foreign aid is… it’s not our job to to make sure that other countries’ citizens have enough to eat or whatever. It’s their job. The job of their own people and government, however that government works.
That is a primary job, which we have taken away – which we have stolen -, in exactly the same way that the US government stole the job of charity from the Church.
If a government (generally construed, not to be understood as “the specific form of bureaucracy and graft currently in power”) does not have to do the job of making sure its people are fed or educated or employed, then that allows it to spend time and effort and money on thing that are not its job. Like starting wars with neighbors who didn’t ask to be attacked.
If all of these governments (specifically construed) were busier with making sure their people were fed enough to not hang their own leaders, they would not have so much time and money to make trouble for everyone else.
Paying these second and third world countries to not make trouble – which is what foreign aid actually is – doesn’t work when they decide they are going to take your bribe and make trouble anyway.
So it is high time that we stop paying them altogether and see if that keeps them busy at home.
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Yep
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Having worked in prisons, where folks that could not follow the “rules” were sent, The vast majority were/are trying to just get by and using the lessons they learned to get what they want. Nurture has a lot to do with it for sure – the stats (single parent home, bad role models, family history of crime, etc.) support that if you look at the numbers. My own philosophy about it evolved into a bell-curve sort of approach where you had some (20%?) on the “good” end who messed up and would figure out how to color in the social lines and would be able to make a life for themselves. The huge chunk in the middle just didn’t get it and many had to have several trips to prison to figure it out. Some of those were also just doing a life sentence on the installment / frequent flyer plan. Then there was/is the far end of the curve – not really 20% so the curve is skewed a bit so say maybe 1-3%? Those people were just not wired right and were really scary too.
The Dr. Hannibal Lecter character from fiction isn’t real but… there are some people in society that are not compatible with “normal” society. They just are unable to meet social norms and consider what they want to be just and proper so everyone else is just wrong. They can work a con faking normal reactions but given opportunity the broken wired wrong type will take advantage and do what they want no matter the social or legal prohibition.
I would submit that many/most people given the chance will do the “right” thing but that is built around the social construct and environment in which they are raised. The people who are taught to do extreme things can unlearn such behaviors however, that takes a lot of effort, time and hard work to do. I don’t know of any effort toward that end yet being applied but simple action/reaction is the current response. With the Hamas issue, there are a lot of the 2-3% types being encouraged and honored so naturally the rest of their group figures this is the way to go. The fact it does not really work and is evil is beyond them as they keep telling us and demonstrating on an ongoing basis.
So be it. It’s time to destroy the leadership, break the general population, vilify the very idea/philosophy and eradicate the ability to support it. How? I’m not sure – it will take a large cooperative effort and a lot of time, work and resources to get it done.
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“Otherhuman”
Look like us.
Sound like us.
Often can pass for us under casual observation.
See everyone else as food and/or toys.
Not even up to “sociopath” human. Alien. Predator.
Otherhuman.
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You remind me that I really need to write an article on the concept of the 60% middle.
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Richard Pryor famously had an eye-opening experience while making Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder.
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“I talked to some o’ them MF’ers.” [Horrified look] “Thank. God. For penitentiaries!”
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Bingo.
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Let’s be honest. We’re all sinners (Romans 3:23). No one, with the possible exception of our gifted Hostess, is perfect. We all sin every day. But God, alone, offered a way out (Romans 6:23). No one is compelled, except “elected” Calvinists, to believe. And we all still pay the same price for coffee.
So anyone who tries that intersectional (i.e., racist) claptrap gets nothing from my family but the door…
God bless you all.
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The idea of my being perfect is horrifying. Maybe a perfect mess?
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Perfect would not be me. Not in any recognizable form. Many of the good qualities I am privately proud of only came from faults, mistakes, and having suffered the consequences.
I cannot even conceive of perfection in that manner. A goal, something unattainable to yet strive for in the process of becoming a better man? Sure. But “unattainable” is necessary. A man who does not or cannot strive soon turns to a bad end.
We, as human beings, must strive. Perfection has nothing higher than it to strive for. Hence it must be false, if it is at all attainable.
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Don’t worry, the Biden* Administration, seeing the rising tide of anti-Semitism has sprang into action to combat the scourge of . . . Islamophobia.
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“has sprang into action to combat the scourge of . . . Islamophobia.”
See if you can imagine how -fast- those grifters are going to turn on the Muslims the second they figure out it doesn’t get them votes anymore. There’s going to be a sonic boom.
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They must think the weapons shipments take care of that Jewish vote, so they can shore up the Islamic vote with the stupid “pause” talk.
Initially I thought it was Joe going off the teleprompter, but it’s been consistent.
There must be internal polling telling them the Jewish vote won’t stay home, and the donations will keep coming in, no matter what he does or says. The neck-straining reversals in rhetoric all seem to come at the same intervals – first the talking mop diversity hire press sec “misheard” and they went all-Israel for a couple days, then Joe’s giving a speech, that rabbi in a dress with a beard conveniently pops up and screech now it’s all Islamophobia.
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I’ve been getting some Schadenfreude reading about the split in the Democrat(spit!) party. The senior Donks are pro Israel, though some seem to be awfully quiet about it (I’m excluding the meat-suit that’s FJB. No reason to consider him a sentient creature…) The junior Donks are following the Squad’s (hurrk, preferably aimed projectile) lead and pro terrorism.
The fun part is the assertion (I don’t have the resources to verify, but it sounds good) that perhaps 50% of the funding for the DNC is coming from wealthy Jews. This promises to be fun. Might have to go long on Archer Daniels Midland and other popcorn adjacent stocks.
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There’s going to be a reckoning with the Dems once the violence against the Jewish students really ramps up.
I am thinking that the next kristallnacht is going to happen here. And if it does any Jew who keeps voting Democrat will be suicidal idiots.
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The Democrats think the vote is fixed and the Blackrock money is fixed, so they don’t need the Jews anymore.
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And they’re wrong.
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They are going to get the pro-Hamas vote by throwing Israel under the bus. Biden (i.e. his handlers) called for a “pause” today, while 2nd seniormost Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durbin, outright demanded a ceasefire.
At the same time, Team ObamaBiden is still actively trying to engineer a coup to oust Netanyahu from power while Israel is at war for its very survivial.
I will be very blunt about it: Team ObamaBiden wants Israel to be annihilated, and with few exceptions, the rest of the Democratic Party is either gleefully on board, or to obsessed with power to care.
This makes them enablers and supporters of those who seek genocide of Jews. There is a term for socialists who hate Jews and seek their genocide, one which everyone knows….
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Frankly, I never expected anything differently. I was surprised when the administration openly and loudly came out in support of Israel. And then I heard the rumors that Caroline Glick was reporting…
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Obama the Muslim wants Israel annihilated and Iran reigning supreme.
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I saw that. Let’s go Brandon.
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There are photographs from the 1800’s of English and American women touring the Pyramids. Why didn’t Muslim men attack and rape them and murder them?
The answer is that any harm done to these women would be answered by swift justice and a public hanging of any involved. Thus, Western women with uncovered hair, dressed in evening gowns, could dine on the banks of the Nile.
We can’t change the Muslim culture. But we can cow them. We did it before and we can do it again.
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I remember the Biblical story in Acts 22:22-29 of Paul being bound up ready to be scourged (lashed) when the authorities in Jerusalem found out that he was a Roman citizen. They absolutely wet themselves because Roman citizens were immune from the “forty lashes minus one” and Paul was able to appeal to Caesar as a right of his citizenship, thus ending up spreading the Gospel to Rome.
That’s what being a citizen of a country should mean. That you have your country’s back and they have yours. Right now, being a citizen of America has been devalued much like paper money. How many American citizens died in Israel last month and Joe and the Hoe did nothing about it? They’re just going to hand it out like candy to millions of people who have been or will be here illegally? In fact they’re caving to the Rashida Tlaib wing of the party and trying to suggest things to Israel that would help Hamas (like a ceasefire)?
Honestly, any terrorist who kidnaps or kills an American citizen should get a visit from either some high-speed low-drag operators who specialize in the removal of such people, or some warheads on foreheads. Or else the country’s government is delegated to handle it under abeyance of US handling it, and you really don’t want that.
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What’s truly sad is the number of homegrown antisemites who just assume that any American killed or kidnapped by Hamas was a dual Israeli–U.S. citizen and therefore had it coming. They appear to truly believe that the U.S. has no business protecting its citizens abroad, because if they were real citizens, they wouldn’t be abroad.
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I’m happy to have Israel taking out the garbage. And paying them for the service. Any moron trying to divert money for “humanitarian” reasons to the Gazans needs to be decorating one of Vlad’s poles.
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“We can’t change the Muslim culture.”
We changed Japan. And Germany. And Korea, for that matter. They’re not like they used to be.
We don’t -want- to change their culture, is more how that goes. Look what it cost our parents and grandparents.
My grandparents thought it was all done in 1918, and had to turn right around and do it AGAIN in 1939. 21 miserable years later. It pissed them all off, and that is why Japan and Germany are not how they used to be.
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Korea wasn’t a problem, although North Korea still is.
Germany and Japan were specific, limited cases; not 2 billion people scattered across the globe.
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fundamentally, all of the cultures are gonna change
We are what, one generation in? On having folks from every culture potentially able to communicate, on top of two or three generations of easier and cheaper travel.
Ain’t nobodies culture equipped them with the tools fro really grasping that.
America’s may be best, but still intuits wrong by default.
Some cultures remember several historical empires, and have very strong opinions about each.
Everyone’s oral history based model is probably wrong in some way.
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Kitchener’s School
1898
Being a translation of the song that was made by a Mohammedan
schoolmaster of Bengal Infantry (some time on service at Suakim)
when he heard that Kitchener was taking money from the English to
build a Madrissa for Hubshees — or a college for the Sudanese at Khartoum.
OH, HUBSHEE, carry your shoes in your hand and bow your head on your breast!
This is the message of Kitchener who did not break you in jest.
It was permitted to him to fulfill the long-appointed years;
Reaching the end ordained of old over your dead Emirs.
He stamped only before your walls, and the Tomb ye knew was dust:
He gathered up under his armpits all the swords of your trust:
He set a guard on your granaries, securing the weak from the strong:
He said: — ” Go work the waterwheels that were abolished so long.”
He said: — “Go safely, being abased. I have accomplished my vow.”
That was the mercy of Kitchener. Cometh his madness now!
He does not desire as ye desire, nor devise as ye devise:
He is preparing a second host — an army to make you wise.
Not at the mouth of his clean-lipped guns shall ye learn his name again,
But letter by letter, from Kaf to Kaf, at the mouths of his chosen men.
He has gone back to his own city, not seeking presents or bribes,
But openly asking the English for money to buy you Hakims and scribes.
Knowing that ye are forfeit by battle and have no right to live,
He begs for money to bring you learning — and all the English give.
It is their treasure — it is their pleasure — thus are their hearts inclined:
For Allah created the English mad — the maddest of all mankind!
They do not consider the Meaning of Things; they consult not creed nor clan.
Behold, they clap the slave on the back, and behold, he ariseth a man!
They terribly carpet the earth with dead, and before their cannon cool,
They walk unarmed by twos and threes to call the living to school.
How is this reason (which is their reason) to judge a scholar’s worth,
By casting a ball at three straight sticks and defending the same with a fourth?
But this they do (which is doubtless a spell) and other matters more strange,
Until, by the operation of years, the hearts of their scholars change:
Till these make come and go great boats or engines upon the rail
(But always the English watch near by to prop them when they fail);
Till these make laws of their own choice and Judges of their own blood;
And all the mad English obey the Judges and say that that Law is good.
Certainly they were mad from of old; but I think one new thing,
That the magic whereby they work their magic — wherefrom their fortunes spring —
May be that they show all peoples their magic and ask no price in return.
Wherefore, since ye are bond to that magic, O Hubshee, make haste and learn!
Certainly also is Kitchener mad. But one sure thing I know —
If he who broke you be minded to teach you, to his Madrissa go!
Go, and carry your shoes in your hand and bow your head on your breast,
For he who did not slay you in sport, he will not teach you in jest.
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https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/grave_of_hundred_head.html
Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more;
For the Burmans said
That a white man’s head
Must be paid for with heads five-score.
There’s a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There’s a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun;
And there’s Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.
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It seems to me that Frankenstein—the novel, not the various movies—did a lot to popularize the idea that criminals are victims of abuse. The creature in the novel is huge and scary looking and people fear him and drive him away violently, starting with his creator finding him hideous and abandoning him (which makes me wonder about Mary Shelley having postpartum depression). And he turns to murderous violence out of a desire for revenge. That’s the “I blame society” theory of William Godwin (Mary Shelley’s father) in a potent myth. In contrast, the first movie, with the creature being made with the defective brain of a criminal lunatic, is the nineteenth century “nature” theory of people like Lombroso who thought criminals were evolutionary throwbacks.
I have read that the genetic diversity of everyone from Palestine to Iceland, Tierra del Fuego, or Tasmania as a pool is a fraction of the genetic diversity of Africa, and in turn most of Africa has a fraction of the genetic diversity of the various indigenous South African tribes (not immigrants like the Afrikaners or the Zulus).
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Nonsense, Frankenstein is no more to “blame” for the idea of being unjustly persecuted than is Les Miserables.
Both of them work, in part, because of the fact that anyone who was ever a child knows what it’s like to be blamed for things not your fault, either by siblings or schoolmates or that one teacher everybody had that was personified by Dolores Umbridge.
It’s a function of empathy. People with the ability to understand how others feel, and see that there is injustice in the world, cannot help but feel for those unjustly persecuted.
And there was a reason the Founders thought it better to let ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted. That reason was manifestly not Mary Shelley’s novel.
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It’s one thing to feel for those who are unjustly persecuted. But it’s a different thing to go on feeling for them when they turn to murder.
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“Revenge as justification for murder” goes back to prehistory, and has an equally long history of ginned-up reasons for that revenge. Still can’t be blamed on Frankenstein.
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Islam as with communism is teaching its brethren that if they defeat the west, they can all be kings over the west. I doubt even they believe it anymore. In any case, our left, their left ultimately want control. Their leadership no longer cares about any dream, most don’t, a few true believers of course, most only care about control and what power they can gain now, and what power they can leave their offspring. We don’t matter, we never mattered to them, we will never matter to them. We matter to each other and the dream of a republic and the freedom we fight for each day. Fight the good fight everybody, every minute of every day. We win, they lose.
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Someone promised them they get to be the house slaves.
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Oh, eventually we’ll matter to them. And when they scream “Stop, Stop” we will completely ignore them.
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Well yeah, the Hama-SS leadership became billionaires out of using the Gazans as their cannon fodder and skimming off the aid — and are living the high life in Qatar.
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The military started using testing to screen draftees for assignment in WWI. By WWII they were looking for draftees they could reliably train to be radio or radar operators or electronics technicians – i.e., they were testing for the ability to learn in structured classroom training.
After WWII companies used testing as pre-hire screening for the same thing, the ability to be reliably trained, until that was made illegal and they had to start using college degrees as a proxy, basically outsourcing the testing to the college entrance process.
“Intelligence testing,” at least the tests they gave me back in the 60’s when dinosaurs roamed the earth, were really testing how fast I could wrap my head around new problems. I remember one thing about wells and buckets. If solving problems quickly is intelligence, I guess they test for that.
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IQ tests measure the ability to solve puzzles involving abstract symbols, whether verbal, numerical, or geometric. This, as you say, has obvious applications to classroom learning.
What the tests do not and cannot measure is the capacity to go beyond the symbols and relate the abstractions to the things in the real world that they represent. I maintain that there is a certain kind of ‘intelligent’ person who is actually an idiot savant – who is very, very good at manipulating the abstractions, precisely because he only perceives them as abstractions and does not waste any brain capacity on things that are merely real.
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Interesting idea. I wonder if those are the people who like anagrams and puns. I’ve always hated them because the purpose of words is to communicate, not obfuscate. But if you view clumps of letters as just clumps of letters, it all makes sense.
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Yes. So measuring a fairly uniform (culturally) population within a country. Not testing random countries with who knows what culture.
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So many things to comment on.
First on the influence of genetics, there’s a famous research institute specifically directed at identical twins raised separately and together. The prof. found hundreds of identical twins that had been “separated at birth”, or, in some instances, close to it. The similarities of the twins habits are striking–on the surface. Like flushing the toilet twice, or both marrying blondes with the same or similar names. It’s almost all very surface stuff. It’s kind of like AI. You see the stuff and go, “Wow, a computer did that?” Then you see 200 of them, and you say, “Yeah, obviously a computer did that.”
Second, yes, the best thing the West could do for civilization would be to stop giving foreign aid. Just stop! At best it props up corrupt dictators. At worst…, well you can see that in the news.
Third, although I condemn Hamas unreservedly as the unredeemed scum of the earth, and any religion (and yes Marxism is also a religion) that teaches envy as a virtue, I also don’t believe Israelis and Ukrainians are saints or remotely saintly. For all the reasons you cite, being attacked and slaughtered does not make you a saint (or a martyr). Sometimes you’re just the unlucky victim of someone else’s greed, lust, or envy. And, if you want to survive, you best not nourish resentment for it. I could tell you stories about Israelis, and my own (Eastern Orthodox) church has suffered great indignities under Israeli rule. I know many families that have christian relatives in Gaza and are bound to suffer for it. Trust me, the IDF won’t stop to make the distinction. Still, as Andrew Klavan says, “Our decisions about our own actions can be moral. Our decisions about others can only be practical.”
That’s already too much, so I’ll stop there.
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NO ONE thinks any nation on Earth is perfect. And Israel certainly started out too socialist for my preferences, and hasn’t snapped out of it fully.
I don’t care particularly how Israel treats Orthodox or Catholic for that matter. Given its history with people professing those religions, (even if in breach of those religions) it’s done pretty well. Everyone I know who visited had no issues, other than the normal tourist ones. I also know that Israel is the only civilized country in the region, and our ally, while Hamas wants to destroy all “infidels” in the service of its founding myths.
NONE OF WHICH MATTERS TO THIS DISCUSSION.
While Israel, and for that matter the Jews aren’t perfect, we all know if Hamas stopped attacking them, there would be peace, while if Israel stopped defending itself, there would be no Israel.
THAT’s the material point, and nothing else needs to be said on the subject.
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You too? Per our son. I was around when dinosaurs roamed. Dad is older than dirt (thus older than dinosaurs).
:-)
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Dinosaur roaming was the real reason why 60’s cars were made of such heavy gauge steel for the body panels. You could sit on a fender and not bend anything!
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There was even that documentary series… The Flintstones, wasn’t it? The real puzzler is what ‘magic’ held that rear axle in place.
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I’ve roamed this Earth for seventy years and a few months. I have been paying a modicum of attention for nearly sixty of those years. I’ve seen LBJ’s War On Poverty (an even greater disaster than his Vietnam War) and The Great Society (which achieved new heights in defining greatness down) … I cannot think of a SINGLE root cause addressed by the Left which has “achieved” anything beyond increased government at all levels and enrichment of do-gooders who prefer to not be held accountable for results.
~
Rgrds,
RES
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Also RES…. Tackle-hug.
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Ach, lassie! Have a care for me puir kneesies!
But thanky for the kindly greeting.
~
Rgrds,
RES
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“The affluent society”
“The effluent society”
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It is notable that the wealthier a society the greater it’s waste stream. (In contemporary America our waste stream has been – like our production, significantly outsourced but that doesn’t make it any less ours, and it is significantly larger for having been relocated outside of our regulatory realm.)
Waste streams in college communities tend to be particularly toxic.
~
Rgrds,
RES
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That was Calvin’s thesis (the 16th Century theologian, not the 20th Century comic strip character) but then he was destined to conclude that.
To accept that is to deny the existence of Free Will, which seems a libel of our Creator, so I say to Hell with John Calvin’s theories. (Not that our Supreme Judge has empaneled me on that jury.)
~
Rgrds,
RES
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There is quite a difference between Protestant predestination concepts, where you worked like crazy to achieve the outward illustrations that you were in fact on of those predestined for good things, and the “there’s nothing I can do” variety that made training marksmanship such a challenge in the various sandy and dusty places such has been tried of the past twenty years, because everything is up to the whim of the almighty, no matter what you personally do, even along the lines of “aiming”, Inshallah.
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https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/pharaoh_and_sergeant.html
It was not a Duke nor Earl, nor yet a Viscount —
It was not a big brass General that came;
But a man in khaki kit who could handle men a bit,
With his bedding labelled Sergeant Whatisname.
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IMHO predestination, or as it’s now called “strict determinism”, is a relic of Newton’s “clockwork universe”, which was effectively destroyed (well, actually not “destroyed”, but like Newtonian mechanics shown to be a simplification of reality with non-universal application) by Planck in the work that led to QM. At bottom, everything is statistical, leaving sufficient room for free will. Just my 20 mills… :-)
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Let us simply agree that your confidence in the limits of human stupidity are vastly more optimistic than my own.
~
Rgrds,
RES
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I recall a post(?) Three Mile Island cartoon. One dog to another, “I blame human error. But then, I always blame human error.”
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It has bemused me for quite some time that the people who most vociferously advocate on behalf of Evolution (even though most seem to have scant idea of what the process actually is, nor how it works, nor even how the theory has evolved since Darwin’s time) generally act and advocate policies that would only make sense if evolution didn’t occur.
They argue that there’s no significant difference between male and female even though evolution would theoretically mandate there must be, if only because immaterial differences tend to get weeded out (or randomly distributed) by evolutionary pressure. They proclaim the Gospel of Bodily Positivity and denounce Fatphobia even though the process of evolution insists there must be consequences to such distinctions.
Frankly, they make the Eugenicists of a century past seem rational and coherent (albeit fundamentally incorrect.)
~
Rgrds,
RES
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Well, they take it as a given that they are the most highly-evolved critters on the planet, therefore everybody different from them is inferior. If they are fat, greedy, corrupt sociopaths, then those characteristics mark them as Good.
———————————
The world is full of self-important, self-righteous, obsessed assholes, endlessly tormented by the conviction that Somebody, Somewhere is Doing Something they don’t approve of, and driven by a compulsion to Do Something About It at any cost.
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You might observe that the people pushing this idiocy are Utopians – meaning they believe in a static future. So they do believe they know what will be needed in the future … that’s one of the problems that occur when you conclude you’re incapable of material error or invalid assumption.
~
Rgrds,
RES
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IQ tests were developed and are calibrated for predicting the likelihood of success in school, particularly college. As such they do not measure certain basics of ‘intelligence’ but rather of academic performance, such as the ability to tolerate hour-long lectures of self-refuting nonsense and, a few weeks later, regurgitate the thesis on an exam
Genius tends to produce insights, intuitive leaps that jump from A to Beyond without showing their work. It is typically the work of years to develop the underlying structures that prove the insight. IQ tests measure incrementalist thought. Great leaps are the work of madmen and are commonly too disruptive to the social order.
As we were advised in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying:
FINCH:
When they want brilliant thinking
from employees…
MR. TWIMBLE:
That is no concern of mine.
FINCH:
Suppose a man of genius make suggestions….
MR. TWIMBLE:
What’s that genius get suggested to resign?
FINCH:
So, You play it the company way.
MR. TWIMBLE:
Oh, company policy is by me ok.
FINCH:
You’ll never rise up to the top…
MR. TWIMBLE:
But there’s one thing clear,
Whoever the company fires
I will still be here!
[The Company Way]
~
Rgrds,
RES
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I think I must slightly disagree. The major danger of our age seems to me the (ill founded) assumption that all cultures are fundamentally comparable. And yet we see in the Middle East that there is at least one culture based on a 6th Century ideology which recognizes no variance from its core principles. To treat that culture as if it were not inherently different in its values than our Western culture is asinine.
The great danger of our age is failure to recognize fundamental distinctions. We approach a bull as if our identifying it as a cow would enable us to milk it.
~
Rgrds,
RES
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My favorite local signage: Do not pet the fluffy cows. Tourists taking selfies with bison often regret it, sometimes very briefly (or eternally, depending upon how one looks at it).
Some signs are too stupid to exist (hairdryer/bathtub being another example). If someone is that stupid, the sign isn’t going to stop him.
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My favorite (if that’s the right term) are the “Do Not Eat” labels on everything from silica gel packets to chainsaws. (Well, maybe not chainsaws; those carry “Do Not Juggle While Running” signs.)
Let’s add the Consumer Protection Agency to the long list of “Abolish These NOW!” bureaucracies – HUD, DoE (both), FBI, HEW, Federal Reserve, IRS, etc, ad nauseum.
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Well, when you get right down to it they’re not so much against inequality as they’re against the wrong people having more. Their redistribution schemes rarely require they sacrifice, after all.
Since most of their proposals distribute decision-making to government and since they mostly staff the government (increasingly as retirement and harassment of lack of ‘collegiality” allows the government mono-culture to purify its ranks) …
~
Rgrds,
RES
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Totally OT: Has anyone else had any trouble getting into MeWe lately? Yesterday and this morning the login screen starts to load, then stops and never finishes. Happened several times.
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I turned off my script blockers, refreshed, then turned them back on.
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It doesn’t seem to be working for me.
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:(
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Emailed their support. Waiting.
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As an aside to our hostess, if she is driving to Tennessee in late February 2024, there are Lebanons in other states so don’t let your GPS steer you wrong. (And congratulations.)
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Many years ago, expecting a shipment to $HOOTERVILLE. And… nothing… and ..nothing … and.. finally get a call. New truck driver.. “I can’t find $WorkPlace anywhere in $HOOTERVILLE!” And after some time, “That’s $HOOTERVILLE, MN, right?” “MINNESOTA!?? I’m in $HOOTERVILLE, KANSAS!” “You need to be in Minnesota.”
I was SO happy to be off that particular night. And the next.
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@ Sarah > “Seriously, it is to the point that if Dad weren’t still alive, or hadn’t been alive at the kid’s birth, I would fully believe he was dad’s reincarnation.”
Number Four Son is a clone of my father. Looks the same, up to a point (matched my dad’s pictures at about the same ages); same professional inclination; some of the same hobby interests. Differences more from zeitgeist and family situations (WWII & sisters vs late 20th c & brothers only).
Spooky!
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Yep
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For me, proof that man (and woman) are not at heart ‘good’, is found in our children.
Which of your children did you need to teach to lie? Yeah, I thought so.
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J.J. Rousseau gets a lot of grief for the “noble savage” idea. But we should remember that Mohamed said it long before him. All children are born with a fitrah (basic nature) given by God. It is only through evil outside influences that they may become degraded (non-Muslim).
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Uh Uh. So, burn them both in the same pyre. I’m okay with that
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