trenton

@universe going into politics is the plan b in this case. I remember that there was a messenger candidate who did not intend to win, but wanted to introduce us to universal basic income. I think a very effective way to raise public awareness is to get a messenger candidate like him to run on modern slavery. How effective would it be If a messenger candidate ran on issues like child marriage, slave products, and police brutality toward the mentally ill? I am only 22, so I probably can't do such a thing yet, but I would strongly consider it If nobody else would. The United States imports over 91 billion dollars worth of electronic slave products every year and to this day we are still arguing over slavery 200 years ago being a "necessary evil.". Yet many nations are blind to the corruption of the global supply chain and how they still profit off of slavery today. This would grind the white washing of history to halt when we focus on the present. I would contact anti-slavery organizations to ask them about messenger candidates for anti-slavery. It is the next best thing aside from starting a business that might struggle to compete with Apple which is a trillionaire.

I think that humanity will survive the crisis, but not without a lot of suffering. The most concerning issue for me is the water wars because warmer temperatures can cause droughts and worsen wild fires. As a result, if nothing is done about climate change, humanity can expect a lot of bloodshed in the near future. The Rwandan genocide was linked to water conflicts. The countries that will suffer the most will be the impoverished nations that are the least responsible for it. In the developed world we will experience worsening hurricanes and more heat strokes, but we have the most control over water and oil. It is expected that oil wars will transition to water wars soon. If these predictions come true, it will probably be worse than the holocaust with entire nations falling apart for a lack of water and the genocides it inspires. It will be dire, but I think humanity could survive this worst case scenario because we have proven to be a resilient species throughout history. If oil wars transition to water wars, then the developed world will certainly survive as we address national emergencies like flooding, mass displacement, the spread of malaria, and couple of other things. Unfortunately, many impoverished nations may not survive. Of course I would prefer to avoid the water wars somehow and all of this societal collapse, but the corruption and lobbying in the government is powerful and it does not look like there is the political willpower to prevent the societal collapse because of short term profits. I think climate activists are losing and they now feel powerless to the point that some result to environmental terrorism like destroying pipelines and vandalizing factories owned by big corporations.

@Bob Seeker I see what you mean when you distinguish between charities and worker's benefits. What I am aiming for in the process is human rights which is more than just giving money to charities. The point is that if workers had a taste of freedom with all the benefits they could have, it could one day become the law. Conflating this with charity misses the point. Another reason it sounds like it could be done is some businesses use armed guards to protect dumpsters full of perfectly good food from homeless people. This is a terrible image and it could inspire people to support a brand that gives away extra food to homeless people. This is the alternative to worker's benefits where my point is that companies are so caught up on maximizing short term profits that it leads to insanity for even the smallest profit. I am imagining a company for food or electronics that is willing to give away tiny tiny profits to inspire people to support it. This makes it sound like a company should still be profitable. One problem is that I don't fully understand what competition would do to such a business and why it would be hard to survive. Giving away free products that are being thrown away sounds more realistic then worker's benefits.

@Preety_India that is basically what I'm getting at. There are books written on this subject like white fragility. It was discussed in another thread in this forum. Here is the video which expands on the topic. It is very educational, but many conservatives can't sit through it. Videos like these demonstrate that the problem of racism is deeper than surface biases. @Willie your description of racism through U.S. history is pretty accurate. The blatantly racist policies of the past have consequences that don't disappear overnight. This is what leads to the fight over how history should be taught. Some are trying to teach that slavery was a necessary evil while skipping Martin Luther King and his "I have a dream" speech. I thought it was bad enough that King's position on imperialism was skipped, but now he is skipped entirely. Almost nobody even knows about The white supremacist insurrection in 1898 in Wilmington, North Carolina. The corruption of the educational system is what keeps systemic racism in place. If CRT is taught in schools, then the current system would become untenable. As a result there is strong conservative backlash in which CRT is straw manned constantly. They must stir up a moral outrage by telling people that CRT teaches us that all white kids are racist and morally deficient. Books like white fragility describe precisely this gut reaction against things like white privilege. This has nothing to do with the morality of modern white children because this is not their fault. The issue is deeper than just bigotry and prejudices. By understanding this, the United States could more effectively work to correct the systemic issues created by our ancestors. Unfortunately, this is incorrectly framed as anti-white bias which is the close minded called "white fragility."

@Preety_India critical race theory originated in the 1970's. It is the idea that racism is more than just our biases against skin colors. Racism can be embedded in a society through the legal system as well. The current definition of racism is too narrow and it allows white supremacy to survive in other forms. There can be explicit racism, implicit racism, or racism by outcome. Racism by outcome can also be called systemic racism. Implicit racism may also be called unconscious racism. One way to achieve racism by outcome, even in a mostly race blind society, would be to appeal to the conditions of impoverished whites without exploiting stating that blacks are inferior. This can lead to policies that benefit whites at the expense of blacks economically, thereby maintaining white supremacy. Some consequences of systemic racism include, red lining, blacks living near factories where they are susceptible to pollution, higher crime rates caused by poverty, COVID-19 disproportionately affecting blacks, or voter suppression in Texas by moving polling stations away from black neighborhoods. None of these need to explicit condone white supremacy to achieve it. The proof of CRT is the following quote that sums it up very well. You start out in 1954 by saying, “nig***, nig***, nig***.” By 1968, you can’t say “nig***” — that hurts you. It backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

Thanks for the input. It sounded too good to be true, but I wanted to make sure. The reason it sounded doable was because of the profit margin of electronics in the United States. For example, for the Apple IPhone 12 pro, the production cost is 406$ and the retail price is 999$. This leaves a profit margin of about 60% and most of the products have a profit margin between 60 and 70 percent. It looks like if there were a company that made similar products, there would be room to pay employees more. The result would be a lower profit margin but the business sounded possible.

Replacing people with robots sounds more realistic. In that case a better approach to business than the one I mentioned before would come from engineering. I don't know how soon low skill jobs will be replaced with AI.

As of 2018, there are about 600 white supremacist organizations in the United States. Despite being a clearly foolish ideology it continued to be enforced after the civil war, especially in southern states. White supremacist groups were responsible for lynchings with about 70% of the victims being black. A notable example of violence comes from the Wilmington insurrection of 1898. White supremacist democrats killed as many as 400 blacks, forcing them to flee to swaps as the biracial Republican party was forced out of office by him point. I am not clear as to when the democrats and republicans switched sides on systemic racism. Systemic racism was originally used by democrats to maintain power. Currently there is voter suppression by republicans in Texas to prevent black communities from accessing polling stations. There are still statues standing which honor the men who participated in the violence I described. Josephus Daniels was not taken down until 2020 after the murder of Floyd. I'm not sure if there are some white nationalists who are inspired by how these men are depicted. White supremacy is a persistent and sneaky ideology which can survive in many forms. A common tactic is to appeal to impoverished whites in order to pass legislation that would economically benefit whites at the expense of blacks. This is systemic racism and it can cause blacks to live in polluted environments, making them disproportionately affected by sicknesses caused by factories and air pollution. It is a nicer face that more people find appealing, and not everyone realizes that it is racism because a narrow definition of racism only includes people who use the n-word. What else do you think causes white supremacy to be common and persistent? It seems that it can be caused by white poverty, so what would happen if the United States addressed its homelessness crisis? Maybe a lack of understanding history allows white supremacy to continue into the 21st century as history is being white washed by those claiming to protect it for the benefit of white supremacy. I think the main reason is that politicians depend on any means necessary to keep their power and white supremacy is effective at achieving this goal. This results in an absence of political will to correct out history books that tell us "the relationship between a slave and his master was like that of a father and son."

@Terell Kirby it is disappointing, but critical race theory is constantly being straw manned to the point that it is hard to have a coherent discussion with the right about this important theory. It has nothing to do with an attack on your moral character. It is not the fault of white children that the pollution of factories disproportionately affects blacks as a consequence of hidden biases in the legal system. It is no longer made explicit in the law that the goal is to hurt blacks and this makes denial that much more persistent. Without explicit racism, many assume there is no racism, but in fact our definition of racism is too narrow and it does not allow for the possibility of racism by outcome, regardless of your personal biases.

I have some trauma which is contributing to negative values. It is not nearly as serious as it once was, but it can still get better. The scenario I will give you demonstrates the lessons which I have yet to learn and must learn in order to stop unnecessary emotional turmoil. I am looking for a positive and empowering message. This takes place all the way back in elementary school. I was frequently verbally abused by the teachers and my mother noticed that I was more emotionally sensitive than most. It is worth noting that I have autism and it contributes to abnormal behavior often assumed to be bad. In one instance the children were being scolded again despite me being on my best behavior as usual. I was often punished with the group. I then had the thought that I can think what ever I want and nobody can hear me. This leads to stirring ones own emotional state through negative thinking about others while ruminating about how they are mean to you. Later in life I continued to have self esteem issues in which I blamed myself for my uncontrollable emotional conflicts. It is worth noting that it all stayed in my head but the dark thoughts would not stop. Eventually it got to the point of suicidal thoughts. In many situations I ended up feeling hurt and powerless. If I find the appropriate lessons it would solve a significant chunk of emotional trauma experienced through my life. My brother also has suicidal thoughts and he finds it very helpful when I share various coping mechanisms for weakening suicidal thoughts to the point that they don't bother me anymore. We come from parents who beat each other and abused drugs if that is any indication. I think it has to do with taking all of these things personally. I could take verbal abuse, domestic abuse, my own emotional problems, and my sister who keeps attacking my moral character all personally. When I do, I feel powerless, angry and prone to ruminating. It would be liberating if I did not take these things personally. It makes me want revenge when I do. If I could let this all go I would not be stuck in my own world all the time and I would be far more peaceful, almost like that world did not exist.

@Leo Gura I checked your blog and I found the Nazi Bible. I watched the video and it said that the book does not explain why these people hate the Jews. It assumes that you are already in agreement. It looks like Jews are just scapegoat who never actually did anything to them. This might be similar to men getting angry when they can't get a relationship with women at which point they blame women for being sluts. These prejudices are not really true but they make us angry when we treat them like they are. This turns us into victims. You also mentioned that the lack of a life purpose has the default position of a toxic life purpose in which people can derive joy from hurting others. This reminds me a little bit of the religious argument against nihilism because the lack of any sense of purpose can become self destructive and depressing. I did get some good insights from the life purpose course though. I can't really guess why Jews are the scapegoat and not somebody else. Supremacists hate Jews, Muslims, and any race other than white. If they think of other religions as other races, then they pretty much hate all of humanity anyway. It means they also hate atheists and anybody from a different nation. Maybe a good answer for why they hate Jews is because they hate everybody and will turn anyone into a scapegoat to blame everything on. In that case they really would derive joy from hurting others.

@Leo Gura Please expand on this. I would like to understand why people find this appealing. Maybe it is because the undoing of systemic racism feels like the oppression of whites. If whites feel like they are being oppressed, then they might frame an anti-white bias as a white genocide. For example, if somebody believes in the conspiracy theories of white genocide in Africa, then movements like BLM end up being viewed as black supremacists. I still have no idea why white supremacists blame these things on Jews though. Apparently, they think Jews are a different race of humans who are responsible for giving blacks civil rights. Anyway, the reason white supremacy seems obviously toxic is because of the terrorist attacks it inspires based off of conspiracy theories. It is worth noticing that entire nations like Nazi Germany fell for similar conspiracy theories. I guess it wasn't obvious to them, but why?

@Natasha it is probably too late. But anyway, I think a toxic behavior in politics is placing short term profits above human rights. This involves modern slavery, poverty, starvation, and financial terrorism. Big corporations like Apple are responsible for overseas riots in factories because of a failure to pay workers a minimum wage. The United States imports over 91 billion dollars a year In electronic slave products due to the lack of business transparency in the production of these goods. Grocery stores are responsible for throwing away tons of food rather than giving it to the homeless. In fact there are sometimes armed guards hired by companies to protect dumpsters from homeless people through the threat of violence. There is also a repetitive assertion that people are in poverty because they are lazy and morally deficient. Private militaries are not held accountable for war crimes in the middle East or for vandalism in the United States. Private militaries might tamper with cameras in America or shoot civilians in other countries because profit is frequently placed above human rights. This leads to imperialism and the ones profiting from it are also lobbying the government like exon mobile. According to Trump America should bomb the hell out of Iraq in order to pay ourselves back with oil. Sorry it is late, but I hope your essay was good anyways. Demonizing and fear mongering are also good things to focus on. An example would be Ben Shapiro comparing the democrats and the left to terrorists. This was when he was arguing that republicans were only chipping away at the progress made by the left and it results in a net gain for the democrats when they encroach like terrorists with human shields. Other conservatives criticize Shapiro for making his audience scared to death of the left. I find it insane to think that he actually thinks that badly about the left. I would have to dig to find this particular example of fear mongering, but there are other examples anyway.

@Leo Gura I hear this a lot and there was strong support for taxing corporations to pay for infrastructure. I am curious as to how much you think the rich should be taxed and for what purpose. How much could we pay for it a wealth tax were added? How high should the wealth tax be? After all of the taxes are out on the rich, how much money should we plan on having? forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/10/08/top-1-of-us-households-hold-15-times-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-combined/?sh=6aa17d355179I "According to the latest Fed data, the top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion (or 30.4% of all household wealth in the U.S.), while the bottom 50% of the population holds just $2.1 trillion combined (or 1.9% of all wealth)." This is just the top 1%. I think if there were high enough taxes on the rich while closing various loopholes, we could pay for expensive projects like infrastructure and free medical care for all. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez thinks there should be a 70% income tax on anyone worth over 10 million dollars. Currently, it is only 37% and Warren Buffett thinks the rich should be taxed higher. nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/24/business/economy/wealth-tax-rich.html#:~:text=Yes. Raising the top income tax rate is,70 percent tax on earnings above %2410 million.

@Flowerfaeiry I am definitely working on that. One thing I notice is that if I focus to much on negative habits and why I have them, it tends to amplify these emotions without a clear reason as to their purpose. I go on walks and play in a chess club now. Sometimes we are better off over powering negative thinking and emotions with love. I am here to learn other possible coping mechanisms which I have not applied.

I think a very simple example is modern slavery. There are children born in unstable countries in the middle East and Africa who are forced by ISIS to become child soldiers and fight US troops. Other examples include people captured by human traffickers who never escape, the upcoming famine in North Korea, the Israeli Palestinian conflict, lead and arsenic in the baby food and more. You get the same results out of life assuming an equal effort on equal footing.

middle-east-online.com/en/qatar-institutions-sued-us-financing-terrorism channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-qa-is-saudi-arabia-funding-isis These sites discuss funding of terrorist organizations through Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia describes their efforts to prevent funding of terrorist organizations in their denial of the allegations. There is an on going case in which Qatar is being accused of funneling money from the United States financial system to terrorist organizations. Qatar is accused of funding terrorists on several occasions for nearly a decade. counterextremism.com/countries/kuwait This last site describes some of the accusations toward Kuwait and the measures they have taken to prevent funding for terrorist organizations. It is hard to tell if all the allegations made toward these countries are true or not because there are ongoing lawsuits.

I will be making some threads which seek to understand modern wars. Many people will tell me that it is over oil, but this seems simplistic. It might be hard to understand modern wars objectively because they are ongoing, we are stake holders, and we are bombarded with fake and partial news. If you are up to the task, please share some of what you learned about modern war. This first topic is about private militaries. It sounds extremely corrupt, but here is my research. Oil companies buy private militaries because they seek protection from terrorists in places which have oil they are drilling for. These private militaries still commit war crimes and sometimes kill civilians. If you want to start your own private military, you can check out the following site. profitableventure.com/starting-a-private-military-company/ Where are these private militaries? How are they held accountable for war crimes? Should they exist? How much of the war on terrorism is the United States military fighting terrorists and how much of it is the private militaries trying to maximize profits? most importantly, Which wars are actually necessary to stop terrorist organizations like ISIS, boku harem, Al Queda, and others?

@NoSelfSelf By "pm" do you mean send private messages?

I watched the video. I know the tactic he is talking about. Allegations of sexual misconduct were used to smear Kavanaugh when he tried to become a justice. These accusations are used at opportune moments to destroy people's credibility. These accusations are the liberal equivalent of spinning baseless theories of widespread election fraud. I don't know how to go about changing liberal discourse to prevent baseless accusations. If this runs its course then people could be desensitized to these accusations to the point that they are not taken seriously. One of my childhood vows is that I would not have relationships with women because if I get the opportunity to run for a position of power they will accuse me of sexual misconduct if they don't like the relationship. To this day I am still a virgin. There could be a case of mistaken identity anyway because of the concerns of rape culture. So far my strategy for not getting accused of these things worked.

Similar to SOCOM, deploying US troops in Mexico could be counterproductive. When the US attempted a similar plan on Columbia, the results were that the drug cartels moved to other countries. One detail I found is that Mexican citizens support training and weapons, but no troops. I think it would help if various countries legalized alternative medicine. This includes ibogaine to treat alcohol and heroine addictions. If drug cartels become less profitable due to fewer people being addicted, then private militaries would become unsustainable. Mexico already did this, but it can't solve the entire problem on its own. Other substances like LSD are more effective anti-depressants when compared to traditional medicine which leads to drug addiction in many cased. This would also make it more difficult for drug cartels to profit off of these substances. Leo mentions some this in his correcting the stigma of psychedelics videos.

That is a critical detail right there. I did a quick Google search. Multiple sites confirm that ISIS is one of the wealthiest terrorist organizations in history, making as much as 3 million dollars a day. It is interesting to note that ISIS pays benefits to the families of militants. This encourages impoverished and starving people to join. It explains why do many people join if you account for global poverty. cnn.com/2015/02/19/world/how-isis-makes-money/index.html The more I research the weirder and weirder it gets. According to cnn, ISIS makes over 1 million dollars a day selling oil that is smuggled into Turkey. The U.S. mainly targets the financial assets of these militants because they understand that if they don't have all this money, they can't run a military. It is interesting that the United States targets oil refineries to stop ISIS and maximize profits at the same time. ISIS also makes money from ransoms. They have made hundreds of millions from this. European countries pay the ransoms while the United States does not. This is how more US citizens are more likely to get beheaded when compared to European citizens. This leads to debates over whether or not we should pay the ransoms. I think we shouldn't because they will use the funding to hurt even more people. There are other ways ISIS makes money, but you can just look at the sites. huffpost.com/entry/isis-funding_n_5850286 According to this site ISIS also has wealthy donors. "The governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait also covertly provide millions in aid to radical Sunni groups fighting Assad.". It is very frustrating that countries keep giving weapons and money to terrorists. I will need to do more research into why countries are giving so much money to these organizations.

It is my understanding that these organizations are terrorist insurgencies which are not operated by any government. I read about ISIS. I found that their goal is to enforce what they believe to be the original and one true interpretation of the Quran without any innovations or corruptions. They are willing to kill anyone in the world who does not share the same interpretation. If you can expand on the significance of them being private militaries, that would help. Perhaps you are implying that private militaries are essentially terrorist organizations because they are not held accountable for war crimes. That would be very hypocritical of the US.

nondoc.com/2019/09/13/privatization-of-the-military-facts/ This site mentions more disturbing facts about private contractors. It mentions that they are not charged for war crimes such as torture and 85% of interrogators in the CIA are private contractors. If I can figure out how many private contractors there are, I would have a rough idea of how much of the war is for resources. washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/06/30/military-contractor-study/ According to this site, in 2019 there were 53,000 contractors from US companies and 35,000 US military troops. More contractors are killed than US troops as well. This would imply that the majority of wars in the middle East are for maximizing profits. Less than half of the armed conflict is the United States fighting terrorism. Furthermore, politicians are misleading because contractors are not considered "boots on the ground.". There are politicians who sound like they are opposed to the war, but in reality they could easily pull out troops and replace them with contractors. It is rare to find a politician who is truly anti-imperialism even if they say "we need to pull out troops out of the middle East."

@FoolsGold another question I have is in regard to the Mexican drug cartels. If the United States wanted to stop terrorists which could be motivating people to leave Mexico and go to the United States, then how much military aid should be sent to Mexico? I think this is an example of fighting terrorism for the sake of security rather than resources. I will try to figure out how much of the war is terrorism and how much is resources.