DocWatts

All this from giving kids the option to have a Vegan/Vegetarian meal in school (not from forcing Vegetarian meals on anyone). Is there something I'm missing here?

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Thanks for clearing that up, as that seems like an important distinction to keep in mind. Never disliked Jesse Ventura, but his affinity for some forms of Conspiracism always made me a bit hesitant about the guy. Seems like he's on the more benign end of that spectrum from the sound of it.

The guy is giving away almost all of his immense fortune to the poorest people on the planet. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he's operating in Good Faith when he makes statements like this.

I think Jesse Ventura, along with Arnold Schwarzenegger, are good indicators of what a Healthy and Functional Conservative political party might look like in America. In the case of Jesse Ventura, credit where credit is due for being able to run for governor as a Third Party Candidate and actually win, considering the obstacles that third parties face. The Reform Party, for its brief existence, could have been a relatively Healthy Alternative for Conservative Voters to turn to, rather than the open kleptocracy that the Republican Party has devolved to; being actually concerned with fiscal responsibility (rather than using it as a smokescreen for kleptocratic policy), and actually concerned with government overreach (ie Civil Liberties violations). That said, I do know that Jesse Ventura was a noted Conspiracy Theorist throughout much of his political career. In his case, I haven't heard him say anything obviously stupid about Pandemic Denial or Election Fraud over the last year, so it's possible he might have eased off on some of that stuff. And while Jesse Ventura doesn't consider himself a Conservative per se, there's enough overlap where I could see him being able to appeal to at least some Conservatives and Libertarians. Hearing him go off on billionaires, it's encouraging to see how his political views have evolved over time; when he was active in Politics in the nineties his political philosophy was probably closer to Centrist (rather than Conservative leaning) Libertarianism. Evolving political views is something we should normalize. As an aside, I've believed for years that CEO/Executive pay should be capped at some Multiple of what thier lowest paid employee earns (say 40 times as much for the sake of argument, the actual number can debated). What we really need is some sort of shared economic incentives between the poorest and richest people in our society, because otherwise we're setting ourselves up for a fragmented society vulnerable to societal collapse.

Whenever I think to myself 'surely this is a new low', Republicans always manage to come back and surprise me with just how dishonest and corrupt they can be while still being able to con enough dummies into Voting for them to stay in Office. Not sure if this is just an illusion on my part, but I seem to recall a time where my disagreements with Right Wingers were over what from my perspective was thier misguided political philosophy. Rather than taking for granted the fact that people who support the modern day Republican Party are openly giving a licence for con artists and grifters to loot the country. Whatever my disagreements with someone like John McCain, he at least wasn't in it only for his narrow self interest; that he seemed to be operating from a position of good faith. Feels much harder to make thay claim about any prominent person in the Republican Party these days.

Imaging posting this on a public forum, after learning that your city's residents are without water and electricity due to a Winter Storm damaging infrastructure across the state. From the Mayor of Colorado City, Texas, who was shamed into resigning shortly after posting this on Facebook.

The reason why we shouldn't be dancing on the grave of someone like Rush Limbaugh (or Osama Bin Laden for that matter) isn't because we owe terrible people any respect, it's because taking pleasure in someone else's death makes you a worse person. How is acting out in this manner any different than a right winger who froths at the mouth at the prospect of someone getting sent to the electric chair? That said I think it's fully acceptable to acknowledge the harms that people like Rush have caused and conclude that the world is a better place without him in it, but that's not the same thing as taking joy in someone else's suffering.

It's incredible how most of the Republican Party can't even be bothered anymore to at least put up a pretense of caring about anyone or anything but their narrow self interest. If you want an great analogue of the modern Republican Party, look no further than the carnivorous short sighted Greed of the Skeksis from Dark Crystal.

Marcus Aurelius was Healthy Blue. Rush Limbaugh is what happens when Cartman from South Park grows up and is given a radio show. Guy was little more than a Bigot with a Megaphone, contributing nothing of value and actively making life worse for people. Not one to engage in schadenfreude, but the world is a better place without him in it. And I'll happily defend that claim to anyone who takes issue with it.

Republican Politicians lecturing the ignorant plebs on the merits of defunding the government while thier state's infrastructure and emergency services are crippled by a snowstorm.

More context for what's going on in Texas right now:

Interesting how residents expecting Utilities that they've paid for to be functional is somehow twisted into asking for a Handout. The amount of Mental Gymnastics to get to that one is beyond my comprehension. Amazing how this guy wasn't even putting up a pretense of at least pretending to care that the people who put him into Office are freezing in thier Homes. Vote for Stupid Politicians, win Stupid Prizes.

This is a public post from the Mayor of Colorado City, Texas, in response to residents of his town being without electricity and water after a Winter Storm that shut down parts of the state. (The Mayor resigned a short time after posting this).

Plenty of contemporary Moral Philosophers who take a more Relativist view of ethics, you just won't find many of them before the emergence of the postmodern Value Meme and the advent of Social Construct Theory and Deconstructionism.

I've been transitioning to a plant based diet over the course of the past few years for ethical reasons, but I also get the sense that is a structural issue endemic to Industrial Societies, and something that won't be solved until several generations pass and countries like the US are roughly at SD-Stage Green. Either that or because Climate Change literally forces our hand, with how unsustainable meat heavy diets are. Of course there's a possibility that synthetic lab grown meat could perhaps be part of a move away from factory farming, but it's not something I'm holding my breath about. My intuitive sense is that as long as large portions of society are having trouble meeting their basic needs, worrying about animal suffering is sadly going to be something of a luxury for privileged people to worry about. Hell, in the US we haven't even fully transitioned away from what can arguably be considered Human Slave Labor, when you consider the state of the US Prison system and how inmates are paid pennies for manual labor.

Kind of a moot point since they fought a war to protect the interests of Slave Owners.

All very good points. I think some of difficulty also comes from the fact that it can be difficult to separate Good Faith discussions on difficult issues like racism from Bad Faith Actors willing to use such discussions to legitimize their own internalized implicit racism. Ben Shapiro and Ken Wilber might both discuss some of the excesses that you mention, but one is doing it legitimize racist attitudes, and the other is doing it to help people ascend developmentally in order to transcend racism. This is an exaggerated and obvious comparison to demonstrate the point (at least to those who are literate in basic developmental psychology), but in most cases most of the time that distinction won't always be so easy to draw. I read an interesting book recently which goes in to detail about how culture at different levels of development use different emotional regimes to enforce norms and behaviors. Whereas roughly SD-Stage Red societies primarily use the emotional regime of Fear to motivate behavior, as you move up the spiral that eventually changes to Guilt (SD-Stage Blue), Shame (SD-Stage Orange). Once you reach roughly SD-Stage Green, there's not really a great English word for it, but the emotional regime is that of trying to avoid provoking the envy of others (such as avoiding ostentatious displays of wealth, and so on).

In today's world racism is more often than not Implicit, rather than Explicit. An example of explicit racism would consist of shouting racial slurs of someone on a bus. Someone who's Implicitly Racist would be far more likely to eagerly look for reasons as to why a black teenager shot and killed by the police deserved to die. If you confronted this person, they would deny that this behavior is racist; and this is because they are simply unaware (or in denial) of how things like Implicit Bias operate. The reason for this shift from Explicit to Implicit is because cultural norms have gradually shifted so that expressing openly racist attitudes is no longer tolerated by most of society. That doesn't mean racism has gone away though, it just means that the racism exists today is more subtle than racism of the past. And even people with quite Explicitly Racist worldviews, such as Richard Spencer, have gone out of their way to rebrand themselves as 'race realists' in an attempt to make racist rhetoric more palatable for mainstream acceptance.

That's the great counter-factual that we can't really be sure of. I guess I would counter that Trump's acquittal and its corresponding weakening of the Rule of Law outweighs the potential negative effects of further antagonizing Trump's Cult-like followers. But of course it's difficult to back up such a claim, as quantifying how much Harm each would be likely to cause is a seemingly impossible task.

The problem isn't that he'll win, the problem is that he'll continue to occupy the public spotlight to spread misinformation, and that when he loses we'll see more outbursts of violence from his Cult like followers. Let's hope that his ban from Social Media sticks...

It's a little bit more complicated than that. Impeachment is something that was designed specifically for elected public officials, but most of the time when people in the US refer to Impeachment, they're usually specifically referring to Presidential Impeachment. So how it works is that 67 Senators (two thirds majority) would have to vote to convict. But then after that it's another simple majority Vote (51 Senators) to strip the Impeached President of his ability to run for office again, strip him of his pension, etc (something that would almost certainly happen if he were to be impeached, the additional Vote being more of a formality). In theory any US Citizen could be put on Criminal Trial for Treason, but Impeachment is just for elected officials. We have a weird patchwork of laws here, but in most States convicted felons lose thier Right to Vote and lose thier Right to hold Public Office. One other point about Impeachment is that counter intuitively Impeachment doesn't carry with it Criminal Charges, so my initial point was that in addition to being Impeached, Trump should also be held criminally liable for citing a violent insurrection.

I agree that if our system was working as intended, he would be on trial in criminal court on charges of Treason for inciting an Insurrection that lead to deaths, and put the lives of many more in danger. Impeachment specifically has some additional penalties which are extremely important, and justified under the circumstances: (1) Most importantly, he would be ineligible to run for President again in the future, and he would be barred from holding any other Public Office. (2) He would lose his Presidential Pension as well as Secret Service Protection. In addition, his would no longer have his travel expenses reimbursed with public funds. (3) Another important aspect of an Impeachment Trial is to expose Trump's crimes in an open and public forum for the nation to see. It also attempts to set a precedent of Accountability for public servants who commit crimes while in Office.

Not sure if this is exactly what you were looking for, but developmental imbalances seem like a big one. Someone can operate at a high degree of cognitive complexity while being less developed in other areas, such as the breadth and depth of thier emotional and moral development, with all of the associated pathologies which that entails. Think of any of the numerous examples of Highly Intelligent people whose Shadow manifests as sociopathic personality traits. Or conversely, someone can possess a great deal of depth that outstrips thier own cognitive complexity, with Magical Thinking and some of the unhealthy aspects of the New Age Community being good examples of this. Another developmental imbalance that can happen is when people's Effective Value Meme (ie SD-Stage) is wildly out of sync with that individual's psychological development. The reason that this is a problem is that if the SD stage you've been imprinted with outstrips your own psychological development, you'll likely be operating with a flattened and dysfunctional version of that Value Meme. Hell, anyone who uses developmental models like Spiral Dynamics to judge and shame other people is a great example of this. Or twenty year old kids who get imprinted with a flattened version of SD Green while still emotionally immature, and then become toxic caricatures of that Value Meme.