Hardkill

Tragic news. Don't know much about Abe, but he seemed like he was a good guy.

Okay, with regard to the monoclonal anti-body treatments and DeSantis, I would have to say that was actually a good thing that he did. So, credit where credit is due. However, you are totally mistaken and short-sighted regarding the vaccine mandates. Bodily autonomy is one thing, but you do not have the right to infect others with a deadly virus. Vaccine mandates are a necessary part of law and order (which Republicans and Conservatives always tout as one of the essential tenets of American life) for the safety of everyone in the country.

The constitution of Russia was supposed to grant freedom of speech and press for its people, but of course the reality is that hardly any Russian citizen has any true freedom of speech and press. Likewise, the constitution of China was supposed to grant freedom of speech and press for its people, but obviously the reality is that there is very limited freedom of speech and press for all Chinese citizens. Do the people of Russia and the people of China not really care about having any kind of freedom speech that 1st world countries have?

Okay, that’s what I thought. Just wanted to make sure. Now, what about what the progressives have saying about this issue? TYT and other progressives out there have been hurting have been screaming at the establishment Dems in Washington for “doing nothing” about this issue, even though we know that in reality that is there absolutely nothing they can do to get the votes they need to codify nationwide abortion rights into law. Cenk and Ana even yelled on their channel to not support any of these. “loser Dems” in Washington anymore. Aren’t the progressives hurting the Democratic Party politically with their stupid blaming their own party for failing to protect abortion rights?

I just thought of something. If most voters are generally ignorant and dumb then will enough of the general US population realize or understand who were truly responsible for ending nationwide abortion rights? Do or will most adults even know about roe vs. wade having been overturned by the conservative majority in SCOTUS? What if the right-wing media like Fox News is able to spin it in a way that actually persuades at least half of the entire population that it wasn't the right-wing who were at fault? Or as crazy or stupid as this may sound, what if they scapegoat Biden and the Dems in Congress for ending the right to have an abortion in most states because "it happened under their watch"?

It's kinda creepy when you think about it. I wonder how some people who grew up in a fundamentalist religious environment like in those Mormon sects or Amish areas were actually able to save themselves by leaving their religion and becoming so liberal.

Ah, so JP and Shapiro were born and raised in cultures that influenced them with a less developed set of ideas and memes, whereas people like you and me were born and raised in cultures that influenced us with a more developed set of values and ideology.

But what exactly is the root cause of their terrible epistemology, great self-bias, and need to preserve their ego at all costs? Why do everyday liberals like me have less of an inherent self-bias and rigid survival mindset?

So, are JP's and Shapiro's lack of true intelligence due to their religious dogma?

I see.... I guess that is a very different definition of intelligence than the one that is commonly understood by people.

Be that as it may, why is it that more educated people generally vote more for Dems and Libs whereas the more ignorant generally vote more for Repubs and Cons, but not educated individuals like Shapiro and Peterson? Is it simply because of their religious dogma? How does a society raise the true intelligence of its people on a collective scale over time? Also, are you saying that liberals like me are actually more intelligent than JP or Shapiro, even if people don't have as high of academic achievements as those two are?

We definitely shouldn't underestimate China's growing power at all. The country will inevitably become the largest economy in the world and the second most powerful nation in the world in about a decade from now. Also, there are some aspects of their type of economy that I believe are better than America's including the greater level of centralized planning by those who have been appointed to administer their entire country's economy solely based on their elite level of expertise in economics and governing. I also appreciate their government's ability to establish greater unity and civic duty amongst all of their citizens in their country than the US governments' ability to do so with its citizens. However, most of their citizens are still not nearly as developed as most Americans in many ways. Most of the citizens of China still apparently hold much more primitive cultural values than Americans do. They don't have freedom of expression and freedom of press anywhere to the level that most Americans do. In relation to that, despite the country being socialist, which was supposed to mean total equality for everybody, the people of China don't really believe in the values of democracy and true egalitarianism like those in 1st world countries do. Not to mention, there's much greater amount of corruption in China than there is in the US. Plus, their level of education per capita, GDP per capita, military power, medical and scientific breakthroughs and achievements, infrastructure, environmental regulation are all at much lesser degree in China than in the US. It's going to take several decades for China to become as developed overall as the US is.

Shapiro and Peterson may not have nearly as high of consciousness or intelligence as someone like you do, but they are still smarter and more educated than most ignorant conservatives in America. You even mentioned before about how that the more education you have and the more effective of a knowledge worker you become the more free you are able to use your mind to see the injustices in the world, become more skeptical about the cultural traditions of your society, and demand freedom for greater self-expression and greater democracy. https://youtu.be/_8kybdrx1Xo?t=7231 Is there something that I am not understanding from what you're saying about that?

Oh wow! This looks like New Age gospel for the youth. It definitely looks very welcoming to all people of all races/ethnicities and other backgrounds.

The Republican Party has continuously shifted to the right both economically and socially since the 70s, while the Democratic Party has continuously shifted to the left socially since the 70s and to the left economically since the early 2000s. Considering that most Americans are still more appealed to fear, tradition, ideology, dogma, security, and status quo than they are to logic, science, open-mindedness, advanced policies, and reform, then why haven't most Americans always voted for Republican politicians since around the 70s?

But I don’t think that they both achieved the kind of top educational level they each got by simply regurgitating concepts and knowledge. They also had to constantly use and enhance their critical thinking skills. Also, why do higher educated individuals tend to vote more for liberals and Democrats?

Well, both Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro are well-known religious conservative intellectuals, which is probably why they resonate with each other. However, I've never fully understood why guys like them who are much smarter, much more educated, and less scummy than most conservatives and Republicans are, are still totally on side of conservative Republicans. If guys like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro are undoubtedly smarter and more educated than the average American then why haven't they been able to question both their own religious dogma and all of right-wing politics?

I actually made a mistake when I previously said on this forum that Ron DeSantis could be the next Ronald Reagan of the GOP. According to this recent New Yorker article, DeSantis doesn't have nearly the historic levels of Charisma that someone like Reagan had. I am not trying to downplay the threat of DeSantis at all. I am still very very worried about him becoming president. However, he seems to be more like a Trump clone who like Trump would be considered incredibly popular within the entire Republican Party, but in the grand scheme of things only appeals to a relatively small slice of all Americans throughout the entire country. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/27/can-ron-desantis-displace-donald-trump-as-the-gops-combatant-in-chief I am really frightened by the idea that DeSantis could be very capable of finding more ways to erode our democracy by being able to find a lot of loopholes that neither Trump nor W. Bush were able to find. Perhaps he could become an extreme right wing version of Nixon.

I understand why those two countries had to be authoritarian 100-200 years ago and I am not expecting these countries to become democracies within the foreseeable future. Also, the US has actually always been one of the most ethnically heterogeneous countries in the world. But why did US already granted full freedom of speech and press right around the beginning of the 1800s and throughout the entire 19th century, America had actually much less developed technology, lower level of access to quality education, and poorer economic living conditions per capita than citizens in Russians and citizens in China in the late 1900s and 2000s have had? I am kind of surprised that there haven't already been some kind of mass revolt or widespread protesting for freedom of press and expression on all of the corruption that they have in their countries. Btw, allowing greater freedom of the press and speech provides government leaders the honest feedback and knowledge they need to improve their leadership capabilities. Why do you think that Putin has been constantly misinformed by everyone working for him and by the media in Russia? Because of how authoritarian Putin has gotten, all of his advisers and the media in Russia are all too afraid to tell him 'full truth' about the numerous failures his military has made and the mistakes that he and his military have made in their war against Ukraine.

Oh yeah, that makes sense. Thanks.

Ahhh! So, just like how the profoundly horrific Civil War finally lead to the enactments of the 13th, 14th, and 15th constitutional amendments...... just like how the Gilded Age which was full of widespread corruption, scandal, and intense political polarization led to the Progressive Era..... just like how the Great Depression in the US led to the New Deal era, and just like how the nonviolent resistance, civil disobedience campaigns, and mass racial violence during the mid 1900s Civil Right era led to end of segregation, full voting rights and full citizenship for all racial minorities, and the rest of Great Society era..... another few decades of this culture war that we’ve been in will ultimately usher in another era of some kind of fundamental structural reform of government and society to the degree of what was accomplished during each of those above mentioned historic reform eras.

Well racism and bigotry is both morally and logically wrong and of course that approx. 40% of white christian Americans who vote Democrat are fully aware of that. However, wouldn't the idea of keeping the status quo of white ethnic homogeneity and the hegemony of white America appeal more to the emotions and base instincts of those same white christian Americans than the idea of creating more equal opportunity and equal rights for all races/ethnicities would?

Okay, I got that. I guess that's true in a lot of ways true with regards to Democrats standard campaign strategy. Though, James Carville, one of the top campaign strategist for the Dems, says that many large areas of America unfortunately perceive Democrats as too urban, coastal, and intellectually condescending, which has really significantly damaged the party's brand. In fact, he pointed out how the progressive wing of the party have really hurt the Democratic Party's appeal a lot with their stupid wokeness and faculty lounge rhetoric. He said in an interview in a Vox article last year: "You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like 'Latinx' that no one else uses. Or they use a phrase like “communities of color.” I don’t know anyone who speaks like that. I don’t know anyone who lives in a 'community of color.' I know lots of white and Black and brown people and they all live in ... neighborhoods. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these phrases. But this is not how people talk. This is not how voters talk. And doing it anyway is a signal that you’re talking one language and the people you want to vote for you are speaking another language. This stuff is harmless in one sense, but in another sense it’s not......We have to talk about race. We should talk about racial injustice. What I’m saying is, we need to do it without using jargon-y language that’s unrecognizable to most people — including most Black people, by the way — because it signals that you’re trying to talk around them. This “too cool for school” shit doesn’t work, and we have to stop it. There may be a group within the Democratic Party that likes this, but it ain’t the majority. And beyond that, if Democrats want power, they have to win in a country where 18 percent of the population controls 52 percent of the Senate seats. That’s a fact. That’s not changing. That’s what this whole damn thing is about.......Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It’s hard to talk to anybody today — and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out loud.......Because they’ll get clobbered or canceled. And look, part of the problem is that lots of Democrats will say that we have to listen to everybody and we have to include every perspective, or that we don’t have to run a ruthless messaging campaign. Well, you kinda do. It really matters. I always tell people that we’ve got to stop speaking Hebrew and start speaking Yiddish. We have to speak the way regular people speak, the way voters speak. It ain’t complicated. That’s how you connect and persuade. And we have to stop allowing ourselves to be defined from the outside."

So, just because a non-white person in America may be tradition-oriented, it doesn't necessarily mean that they want the all or even many of the specific cultural traditions of America and the status quo of the US government to be preserved. Correct? But how do you explain why there are about 40% of white christian Americans who vote for Democrats when they know that the Republican Party is always whole heartedly committed to fighting for ethnic homogeneity of white Americans and the dominance of white christian American cultural?

You make a valid point about the Republican Party. But why don't most non-white Americans who are tradition oriented aren't more emotionally appealed by the Republican party's rhetoric that's based on fear, tradition, ideology, dogma, security, and status quo than with the Democratic party's rhetoric that's based more on logic, science, open-mindedness, advanced policies, and reform? Most people vote base on emotion and gut feeling and less on higher level thinking and compassion. Also, most Democrats tend to project more weakness than Republicans do, except in the cases of Bill Clinton and Obama. So, why are the Democrats have often been able to compete electorally with Republicans when the Republicans almost always have stronger emotional appeal and come off as stronger than the Democrats?