thedoorsareopen

23 Nobel Prize-winning economists call Harris’ economic plan ‘vastly superior’ to Trump’s This is lazy strawmanning that relies on hazy unconscious feelings that the guy who says "You're fired" is a better business man than the touchy feely effeminate Democrat, and is not supported by anyone who's run the numbers. The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that Harris's economic plans would add $3.95 trillion through 2035, vs. Trump's $7.75 trillion. Harris's Opportunity Economy policies would directly lower costs for working and middle class Americans, increase access to entrepreneurship and homeownership for the average person, increase economic activity in the working and middle class economy, and would likely return more in taxes to the federal budget than Trump's plans. Trump's plans hinge mostly on continuing tax cuts to corporations and the top 1%, which after 40 years of trickle down economics, has been shown doesn't actually trickle down to the vast majority of Americans. And kinda flies in the face of your idea that somehow Trump is the anti-corporate dominance candidate. Oh, and one big cost of Trump's plan? Deporting 16 million people don't come cheap, least of all to our values.

I love this format. But I'm only 3 minutes in and disagreeing with Ben Shapiro so hard, lol. He frames the discussion about inclusivity as inherently zero-sum, i.e. to raise up so-called "DEI" people (barf), it necessarily comes at the expense of other groups (white men, obviously). I have such a different take on this. I have a parent who came to the US from a far more racist and homogenous country, where discriminatory attitudes are just considered normal, part of how social taboos regulate their society. Part of the miracle of America is that we have figured out how to accommodate so many different types of people, not just legally, but socially. For example, within our lifetimes, we went from a society where average people held mocking and discriminatory attitudes towards LGBT. And we went from that, to a society that has mainstreamed LGBT (or at least LGB). It turns out, it's totally possible to share company with a gay couple, or a lesbian couple. It's basically the same as spending time socially with a straight couple. Like, how do you treat a man and woman in a relationship? Great, do that, but for gay couples. This is part of what makes our shared national character so great -- we are able to accommodate vast amounts of difference between people, and make it work. It's not about pushing one group down to lift up a minority, it's not even about accusing some strawman of a big mean racist guy keeping the poor minorities down. Racism and discrimination are inherently unconscious, primal behaviors. It requires a little engagement of the pre-frontal cortex to transcend that, but we've collectively done it before as a nation, with racism, with sexism, with discrimination against the mentally ill, with homophobia, and with the disabled. It turns out, with a little forethought, we are capable of including everyone in the mainstream of our society, not just legally, but socially. And on the national stage, a black and brown woman in the highest office of the land is going to mean so much for an entire generation of women and black and brown people. That inclusivity really makes a difference in a way someone like Ben Shapiro will never directly experience. Obama becoming president completely changed the way I saw myself as a person, and as a member of American society, in a good way. But Ben says that a woke academic wants us to push whites down to lift up others, and that simply is not the case. That's not happening. Arguments in good faith are one thing, conservative strawmen laced with dogwhistles are another. Still, it's engaging to see some face to face debate!

"In this episode, Michael reveals a key source for his reporting on Donald Trump: Jeffrey Epstein. Through behind-the-scenes stories and never-before-heard recordings, Michael recounts Epstein's candid insights into Trump’s rise, revealing a world of power plays, unsettling competitions, and twisted allegiances. The conversation unearths Epstein’s perspective on Trump’s character, ambition, and his relentless pursuit of power."

I liked this clip of Harris talking about issues with real people. I imagine that if you are someone in the Black community doing volunteer work or mentoring, and a credible presidential candidate comes in spouting statistics that you're familiar with about the challenges African Americans face in the US, it's gotta make you feel heard.

One of the reasons I'm so bullish on Biden and Harris is that Biden made a marked shift in policy for the first time in my lifetime from the previous neoliberal era, and yknow what? It worked. It worked really really well. He proved that Keynesian economics and industrial policy had good effects on the economy. Instead of Obama's austerity and giving in to the Republicans, leading to a slow recovery that took approximately 8 years, Biden proved that stimulus bounced the economy back immediately, saving untold years of middle class misery. We take that for granted, but it was decidedly not the standard policy in the neoliberal era, since at least Bretton Woods and the 70s, if it ever was. Biden Just Declared the Death of Neoliberalism

I see it more as the American left, psychedelicized by the consciousness revolution of the 1960s, began naively reaching for a morality based on cosmic consciousness. And this strain is still a powerful motivator of liberal thought in American politics. However, mediated through the news cycle and party politics, this can't really be stated explicitly without being laughed out of the discussion. So there isn't enough explicit awareness of that cosmic origin and holistic nature of liberal morality that represents stage Green. On top of that, many naive hippies and radicals of the 1960s shipped off to Africa and southeast Asia, thinking that like the Beatles told them, "love is all you need," and that plus a little elbow grease would solve world hunger and whatever inequities existed around the world. However, they didn't realize they were looking at the world through a lens of white western paternalism, and had no awareness of the ongoing histories of the rest of the world. So it turned out that their idealistic attitude, and lack of awareness of their own privilege, couldn't on their own solve world inequality. So by the 80s, there was a sense that the entire movement had failed. They thought that holistic, cosmic thinking would erase borders and unite the brotherhood of man into a beautiful, technology assisted utopia, but trustafarians reached the limit of what they could accomplish without having to turn the lens of inequality back onto western society as a whole, which the US power structure had already rebuked with Nixon, and by the 80s these idealists reached middle age and retreated back into the power structures of American capitalism. Despite this, one of the enduring legacies of the 1960s has been western society incorporating more and more minorities closer to the mainstream of society, whether it's women, racial minorities, gender and sexual minorities, mentally ill, and the disabled. So by the 2010s, a new generation that had benefitted from this generational work, armed with good intentions, reached for the echoes of this cosmic, holistic consciousness that reverberated through the Sixties, but they didn't really acknowledge its origins as that, as they had filtered through society through academia -- feminism, critical theory, philosophy, and art. So in effect this became the "woke" movement, but love and light can only go so far without acknowledging the darkness of duality, and it has its imbalances. I still think of it as an admirable effort, but one we would all benefit from pursuing more consciously. And one we'd benefit from thinking about outside of the duality and realpolitik of American party politics.

More traditional wholesomeness from the party of family values...

Yeah this discussion of "leftist wokeism" is a total strawman that conflates a lot of dynamics on the left. When I think of the broad spectrum of people I've met working and volunteering in Democratic politics over the years, they were mostly NPR listening, Subaru driving normies. I met political activists who adopted more extreme social positions, but these only really find expression in subgroups. Someone in one of these threads showed a picture of a woman holding her husband on a leash in a party area of a vacation city, and boy what a red herring that is. If you're trying to portray LGBT = BDSM, you don't know what you're actually talking about. There's a false duality being equated here, based entirely on fuzzy conflations -- liberals are supposedly immature hedonists heralding the fall of Babylon, and conservatives are supposedly the adults in the room who adhere to the essential wisdom of heteronormativity. But what I actually see in real life is more that you have liberals, centrists, and some conservatives financially, and then you have the Dorito munching ATV riding rural Trump followers. Basically people who don't live around diversity are more likely to vote for Trump. And nothing I've seen from these people -- whether in media, on the internet, or in my experience in political canvassing -- has shown me any evidence that these people are really the mature ones in the room. In fact, the duality is completely flipped: the liberals, centrists, and financial conservatives are more mature and open to differences of opinion, while the culture warrior conservatives demonstrate ignorant and undeveloped bigotry, sexism, and crassness. How can these conservatives claim to represent the party of traditional values when they're voting for a candidate who talks about dick size? How can they claim to represent traditional values when they have all those posters of Kamala Harris's face grafted onto a porn star's body? How can they claim to represent traditional values when they engage in such hateful displays as this picture of Kamala Harris being led in chains at a pro-Trump "Halloween parade" from last night, seen below. The proof is in the pudding, and the current movement on the right can't seem to produce anything but grievance and hatred. Democrats want to give you healthcare. These geniuses want to build walls, chain people up, and take away rights. You guys are aware of Spiral Dynamics, yes? How do you not see this movement on the right is largely driven by primal stage Red instincts believing themselves to be stage Blue, all taken advantage of by a big ol' Orange demagogue? These are not the people of Christ. These are not even the Christian conservatives of the 1970s and 80s.

I experienced firsthand that experiencing nonduality does not directly lead to being a genius in all affairs, lol. But in the context of nonduality, don't you find it interesting the world you come back to? Let's say I am being imagined in the mind of God. I, am an idea, a mentalization. My being is fundamentally mental, not fundamentally physical. Oh hey, I live in a country that is defined not just by a physical territory, but by a set of ideas. The idea of "America," and all that entails. It's quite a rich set of ideas. There are many empowering ideas and concepts embedded in the conceptual, moral, ethical, governmental, societal, entrepreneurial, and psychological make up of this country's national character. These ideas, such as the idea of self-determination, or the idea that all people are created equal, are just laying around. They wait for us to pick them up and see what we can do with them. Previous generations did the same for their time, and now it's our time. What I see at play in this election, from the lens of epistemology, is that questioning authority has always been a central theme in American thought. But too many people do it reflexively. Being charitable, it seems Donald benefits from this, somehow positioning himself as the outsider candidate. But from where I'm standing, it seems like since the 60s there has been this reflexive cynicism latent in American society that's so prevalent, people engage in this cynicism without questioning why. I say the real subversive act these days is believing that government can actually work for citizens rather than for capital or for the so-called "elites." What I see in Kamala is a candidate who's worked in public service her whole life, and like Biden, that makes her more qualified to run the government competently for the average citizen, not hopelessly bought out by special interests. I say we as citizens should try to be cynical of those who want us to believe that government can't work, and work harder to demand that our politicians work for us. Be more engaged with the political process as it actually stands in this country, rather than being so ready to take a sledgehammer to the whole thing out of frustration. I mean hello, the guy who's hobnobbing with billionaires like Elon Musk, and ready to sell out US foreign policy to the highest bidder is the one who's more beholden to special interests, no matter how he branded himself.

Hope I'm not barging in, but as a counterpoint, I wanted to input my experience at a Saudi-funded elementary school in southern California, that I attended from preschool to 6th grade. At this school I was taught American mandated history, alongside a highly political ideology that was taught as spirituality and religion. Wahaabiist Islam. I was taught that my faith in God equaled waging holy jihad against the American government. I was taught explicitly that the most noble goal I could have in life was to study hard and ascend as high as I could into American government at the state or federal level and help subvert American democracy. I was taught explicitly to work to turn the American government into a Muslim institution. This is the difference between these two sides. The main component of Islam, salat, is performed five times a day, and as a method of prayer, essentially amounts to a method of self-hypnosis that if I'd gone through with it, would have driven this political ideology into the deepest part of my mind and soul. As it stood, it was the work of decades for me to deprogram and decondition my mind from this ideology masquerading as a spiritual discipline. Even though I never consciously agreed to it, I found it incredibly difficult to shake and feel as though my mind was colonized by this ideology. The only reason I didn't get completely mind controlled by it was because I have American family and as corny as it sounds, it was literally the power of love that held me apart from this ideology. I support the cause of Israel, and I support Israel becoming a more democratic, more equitable nation. I hope this war ends as soon as possible, and Israelis can manage to hold Netanyahu accountable for the crimes he was under investigation for before the war started. Whenever I see people resort to both-sides-ism on the Israel Palestine conflict, it rings so hollow to me. There would be peace if the Palestinians had agreed to the negotiated terms decades ago. And who has always been the broker for peace between these two? The supposedly warmongering US. I know for a fact that Joe Biden spent more days and hours stressing over the plight of the Palestinians in the past year than the billionaire leaders of Hamas.

My point is that as a leader, whether of a country, a company, or just a work team, to a large extent, the medium is the message. A large part of a leader's job is the messaging they engage in, and to some extent there is no "inside" on that. You are messaging outwardly and presenting an outward persona that sets the tone for the millions of people and organizations within and outside the US, and other people make decisions based on that messaging. Leadership is how large groups of humans operate quickly and efficiently, and to a meaningful extent, a leader's messaging is the content of their leadership. Especially in a role like the presidency, where the people being affected will never meet that president personally. This is why I value Kamala's choice of message, and why I consider Donald's so dangerous. This is also why, even if Kamala's messaging is measured and worked on with her staff, I don't consider that a negative. She's not writing a personal journal. Competent presidents work with large speechwriting teams to convey their agenda thoughtfully, and with nuance a single person may not be able to bring to bear in such a busy position. I'm not looking for Kamala to have a heart to heart with me, but the fact that the thesis of her message is one of dignity and opportunity, regardless of how genuine you think that is, shows that she recognizes the immense soft power the role of the presidency carries. It's not just about the policies of this institution known as the federal government, it's about what side of this nation, and the larger world, she is able to invoke merely through her word choice. Her inspiring choice of words shows she has an understanding of the gravity her prospective position holds, and that's what I make hiring decisions on as a voter.

I'm going to ignore the lazy both-sides-ism latent in this comment so I can point out that the words a leader uses are important. The tone a leader sets through their words, how they handle and channel emotions, and the message they convey to those who follow them, is what defines a leader. Listen to Kamala's rally speeches, she is a truly inspiring and unifying leader. She speaks of dignity, opportunity, and lifting all people up. Dismissing that out of hand as mere "lip service" is about as disingenuous as seeing Donald praising Hitler and instead of criticizing him, you get mad at the people pointing out his fascist, Nazi-baiting tendencies. The tone a leader sets defines the kind of leadership they employ. Part of the reason we are criticizing Trump's authoritarian ways is because most of us DO NOT WANT an authoritarian government. We want our country to become more democratic and representative, not less. This fascist playbook is un-American, and you show the lack of respect you have for the collective shared heritage of our society's institutions by supporting this self-serving sleazeball. For fuck's sake people, didn't any of you see the Star Wars prequels? The Blues Brothers? V for Vendetta? This is basic ass shit. When a conman politician comes along using hateful rhetoric and promising to shred the institutions of our society, we as educated and engaged citizens use the power of our voice and our vote to knock him back. This election cycle has shredded my impression of this forum as an enlightened place. Yall took some psychs and think you're geniuses as you sip the conservative koolaid.

This thread is how I know you guys don't go outside. This is literally NOT A THING. "LGBT restrooms." This is the only way you can make arguments in favor of red hat guy, you gotta come up with complete strawmen and argue them ignorantly and in bad faith.

Kamala has done so many podcasts. To say nothing of all the media appearances she's made in the MSM that Trump was too chickenshit to show up for. Kamala Harris - Courageous Leadership and Winning - Brene Brown Kamala Harris on Club Shay Shay Kamala Harris - Bret Baier Podcast Kamala Harris - All the Smoke Podcast Kamala Harris - Call Her Daddy Podcast Full list of Kamala Harris podcast appearances

Yeah, I don't know what country you're in, but this is what bothers me about Trumpism. It's not just raw materials and goods, it's not even just the systems and institutions. There is a collective shared ethos, a spirit, that we unconsciously rely upon every time we walk into a library, a post office, a courthouse or a state building. Every time we watch the fireworks on July 4th, or participate in elections. It's ephemeral, and it was developed through the collective shared history of the people of this country. And even having this jackass as a credible candidate for a major party cheapens that. It's not both sides man, it's just not, if you can't see that I don't know what to tell you. There was a big difference between your John McCains and Mitt Romneys, and this guy. People fought and died for this country, regardless of how cynical we are about it now. 12 generations of Americans lived through something like 14 billion manyears to deliver the country I was born into. They invented technology and social systems, fought wars and upheld principles. And by the time I was born, they'd perfected a standard of living the richest kings of yesteryear would have envied. Literally the only way we can fuck it up is by destroying ourselves. Over what? The number at the supermarket went up? Well I don't know where you've been but the number on my paycheck went waaaay up too. I made $7.15 an hour my first job. Now I see Panda Express paying $22/hr to start. It's hard to believe it all comes down to a matter of vibes within something called the "manosphere."

I support Kamala and oppose Trump because I believe a leader can choose to foster and nurture the system they lead, and that has a lot of benefits. I have a hard time believing that people really can’t see the difference between Trump and Harris, or Trump and Biden, in character. Whatever you want to say about policies, the example Trump set as a leader was pretty dark and a lot more people in this world were scared when he was in office. Biden is definitely aged, but whenever I’ve listened to him speak beyond a sound byte, whether in speeches or interviews, he’s genuinely inspired me with how he’s talking about lifting people up, or his relatable family background. He genuinely respects the spirit of America, and I do too. Everything about Trump is so cynical, from the fact that his main motivation to get back in office is to save his own ass from prison, to the way that when he was in office, the general feeling in this country was far more divided and self-interested. He is like some kind of human personification of realpolitik, but if you look at the way other presidents have governed, it’s with a sense of the dignity, respect, and solemnity of being a leader, not just of a government or an organization, but of a large group of people. Harris and Biden’s life journeys make true on the idea that we ARE a shared nation with shared goals and interests, while Trump’s life journey comes with the message of “tough shit, should been born rich enough for the rules not to apply to you.” My grandpa served in WW2, and back then they told themselves they were fighting to keep the world safe for democracy. I respect that service a lot. Whether you believe that’s naive, or that the US is a flawed democracy or that democracy isn’t worth it, you have to admit that the most ignominious way it could end is by a felon upending democracy and the rule of law simply to save his own ass from prison.

When Rust Cohle said "time is a flat circle," he was missing a dimension. The spiral is literally how you transcend that circle.

Doing acid at Burning Man a couple months ago felt like reaching into some high SD stage -- reality became a dynamically generated eternal now manifesting directly from my thoughts, or blurring the lines between "my" thoughts and just psychically absorbing into the thought space around me. I.e. did I really manifest that neon elephant art car, or did I psychically sense it a moment before subjectively becoming aware of the thought in my head? It really was at levels of -- wave my hands and create exactly what I'm thinking about right out of the dust, on the fly, moment to moment. Hungry? A nearby group hands me a grilled cheese. Wanna dance? A dance floor materializes out of the dust just by turning my head. Feeling ecstatic? Someone suddenly appears next to me and gives me a hug. But most of the time when I'm sober I'm still mostly stage Green, some stage Orange, even 5 years after learning about SD. I'm reaching towards Yellow but all the Yellow people I'm aware of are deep thinkers I can't meet in my daily life, and it seems that Yellow social structures don't exist yet, or maybe you can consider they exist on the internet only for now.

"If you're not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at 50, you have no brain."

Actually I did the math again, and turns out you're right, you don't exist. Pack it up, boys.

When I was a kid I thought gender was meaningless. But the masculine/feminine polarity is an interesting distinction to draw. I find it interesting from a metaphysical perspective that this is one of the polarities of our existence. I mean, on one level it's the difference between "I am everything," and "I am something."

"You," as in the arbitrary conglomeration of mind identifications that you're currently feeling in your nervous system, doesn't really exist in a coherent way. But life is a paradox, a strange loop. "You" don't exist, and yet, you exist! Here you are! This thing is happening! Heart is beating, lungs are breathing, a physical location is seen. And the most fundamental truth that can be apprehended is, "I am." Don't fall for the neo-Advaita stuff. That is a very naive understanding. Who believes he doesn't exist?

I was born in California and raised by a white lady. I believe in American values even if they're an illusion. I was beaten and brainwashed by Muslims as a kid and have spent my entire life unraveling that experience. First I tried to go to college, get a job, etc. But every day I lived in a dark hole of loneliness because everyone in my world told me I was Arab. I'm half Egyptian genetically, but I grew up with American friends. I visited relatives in Egypt a couple times, but they were basically like full burka foreign Trump voters, it was very alienating. Okay, well, all my worldly plans blew up as I got older and the loneliness and self-alienation engulfed me. By the time I was 30, I was drinking 30 beers a day or a handle of vodka a day, but still I couldn't even die. So then I got into nonduality and learned virtually everything I could about comparative religion and spiritual practice. I can induce a nondual state at will now. And still, I am constantly inundated with inexplicable references to the Middle East wherever I go. I left the Muslim school I attended in 1996, and spent the next couple years being beaten and abused by my Egyptian dad. It got bad enough that I was put in foster care and my parents divorced. So he wasn't in the house anymore, which was a relief. But then 9/11 happened. So then Muslim violence was the topic of the news for the next 15 years. My dad remarried an Egyptian woman and had another family. But I was still kind of in contact because my full brother still lived there. He's pretty American, but plays into a lot of narc abuse dynamics with my dad, so I finally just cut them all off. Then Oct 7 happened. I just went to Burning Man, which should have been the height of free American hedonism, and instead it was plastered in tributes to the poor Palestinians. By the middle of the week, a Muslim guy camped right next to me. I fully believe reality is an illusion. The thing I don't get though, is like, if Muslims have God on their side, if this transcendent force of creation is rubbing these people in my face for a reason, why are Muslims generally stupider than Americans? Like, when I was a kid I was still brainwashed by the school I went to, which told me that Americans were evil, decadent and stupid. So I spent many years wondering if that could be true, and contemplating different value systems trying to determine look, is America really evil? It's no more evil than anywhere else in this human world, in the end. But Americans are generally smarter, savvier, and FOR SURE more in touch with their humanity. I feel that way, sometimes. When the constant references to the Middle East in my life aren't flaring up my alienation. I could go talk to any stranger on a bus and experience more genuine connection than I felt with my estranged Egyptian relatives. And man, those people did nothing but disrespect, abuse and marginalize me when I was still around them. I've been trying to move on, but if this is how reality is, I'm not sure how that would be possible. I live on the western edge of a continent on the other side of the earth from these people. By any rational accounting of things, there should just not be this much presence of that energy in my life. I never liked their culture, even when I was a little kid I thought of Islam like IngSoc from 1984. I thought I was doing the right thing fighting authority. But somehow I live in this middle place where Middle Easterners think I'm an asshole for rejecting their culture, and Americans think I'm racist for criticizing that culture. I feel completely alone in the universe. I thought nonduality, meditation, samadhi, forgiveness, fucking SOMETHING, would end this, but I forgive and forgive and it doesn't really change. I wouldn't feel so upset if they would just get the fuck off my nuts for a while. They were always trying to brainwash me, bind me, abuse me, demean me, degrade me, capture me, intimidate me. Like if they were just chill, it would be chill. I fucking WISH that heritage was worth a damn. But they're so miserable. I'm at the end of anything that could be termed a spiritual search. There's no more new information. I've read everything, practiced everything, experienced all the insights and awakenings. This fundamental karmic balance never seems to change.

Yeah. It's not about the story. I've untangled so much trauma, but it seems what is distressing me now is the earliest of it. Pre-verbal, and when that gets triggered, I have had no success finding equanimity because it's just, completely irrational. It's emotional and primal. I like the advice to get busy with something passionate. I guess from where I'm at I feel hopeless that worldly appearances could ever really occupy me anymore, but that's probably just incel vibes filtered thru what I think I know about awakening. I guess I need to stop engaging with the mind story and just up my morning meditation. Do the work. I recently did a Vipassana retreat and left early when I started hearing Arabic words. I never spoke Arabic. It's distressing to feel like my mind and body are totally porous to this thing I hate so much. After all this time, all the struggle, and it's just coming in from inside my mind. Must I really reckon with this? Is there no escape?