2017 Trump Presidency Thread

[aihfl]

Unemployment rate under Trump lowest since year 2000: https://www.wsj.com/articles/hiring-rebounds-in-october-unemployment-rate-falls-to-4-1-1509712307

Too bad for him it's not translating into better approval numbers. Gallup measured his disapproval at 60 percent.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/how-the-democrats-are-failing-the-resistance.html

 

[alasdairm]

and also too bad that people are focused only on the number and not the cost of the number.

yay! unemployment is low and the dow hit a record high! fast forward 50 years and ask our kids and grandkids if the desecration of the planet was worth it for such a short term gain so long ago...

alasdair

 

[LucidSDreamr]

i think you are agreeing with me that your original claim that "...tomorrow after halloween they will go back to defending people rejoicing that the car plowed into crowds in new york today." was just wrong.

thanks.

alasdair

not really. I believe failing to point out evil and act on it is a form of "defense" It depends what you use as your guiding principles but if you saw a small child about to get run over by a truck and could easily have saved them but dont because you would stand to make some extra money, I believe you did something wrong. Maybe we have a different standard for morality though.

 

[alasdairm]

nice try.

i'll file your 'people defending people rejoicing that the car plowed into crowds' in the same file as the 'thousands and thousands of people' trump saw in nj celebrating the world trade center attack. the bullshit file.

alasdair

 

[Scrofula]

So, you're saying this liberal media (Amy Goodman maybe?) could have saved the small child, which in your analogy is America, from the truck, which is the GOP tax plan, because they'll make some money?

I'm not getting what we're supposed to be doing to be moral.

 

[drug_mentor]

not really. I believe failing to point out evil and act on it is a form of "defense" It depends what you use as your guiding principles but if you saw a small child about to get run over by a truck and could easily have saved them but dont because you would stand to make some extra money, I believe you did something wrong. Maybe we have a different standard for morality though.

At most, it would be plausible to say that failing to point out an evil which one is aware of is a form of defense. Frankly, even that seems much too strong. I am aware of many evils in the world, when and where am I supposed to point all of these out? If I fail to point one of them out, am I defending it?

Moreover, it seems you are here guilty of the informal fallacy of begging the question. You asserted that on a particular date elements of the media would defend a particular course of action; it seems quite reasonable to suppose that what you meant by this is that there would be particular articles citing occurrences of said course of action, and coming up with excuses why it was justified. Ali, rightly (in my estimation) challenged you to provide some evidence that this had occurred after the fact (which was most plausibly seen as the insinuation that what you asserted would not come to fruition). Now, in the absence of such articles, you are suggesting that the defense consists in not reporting the phenomena whatsoever. So, it seems you are asserting that your assumption is true, despite the absence of any evidence which positively supports your assertion. I happen to know you are a scientist, so I assume you place some value on the notion of falsification. How do you suppose that your assertion might have been falsified? If, in the absence of the media reporting what you conjectured, the explanation is that the lack of any report whatsoever confirms your claim (as you seem to be suggesting), then it seems you must concede that your claim was unfalsifiable. To my mind, and I think this is generally agreed upon among the scientific community, unfalsifiable claims are not worth very much. Of course, some unfalsifiable claims may be true. However, if your critique of an institution is confined to such unfalsifiable claims, I am sure you can forgive others for thinking that your criticism is rather inert.

 

[alasdairm]

^ of course.

not really. I believe failing to point out evil and act on it is a form of "defense"...

check out this awful story about a murder: Woman killed autistic teen to cross murder off her ‘bucket list’

she was convicted just yesterday yet i see no posts from you pointing out this evil. so, i assume you're defending it. that is just awful! how can you defend something so insidious?

is my logic here bananas? is this whole post ridiculous?

if so, then q.e.d.

alasdair

 

[JessFR]

Not that your bucket list is a particularly acceptable justification for murder, but if you absolutely had to kill a random person why wouldn't you pick a pedophile or a rapist or something?

 

[Fresco]

Not that your bucket list is a particularly acceptable justification for murder, but if you absolutely had to kill a random person why wouldn't you pick a pedophile or a rapist or something?

Or the Westboro church members.

Just drive a truck bomb through the front gates and put that entire family out of their misery

 

[JessFR]

Or the Westboro church members.

Just drive a truck bomb through the front gates and put that entire family out of their misery

Sorry man but you lost me there.

You gotta understand, I've had something of a fascination with cults for pretty much my whole life. As a result I've read and watched an enormous amount about the Westboro baptist church and the people in it. They may do some horrible shit, but they still feel like real people to me with good sides and bad sides. Not villains. I don't wish will ill of any of them * especially when they're pacifist crazies.

Besides, they are gonna die out all on their own. So many of their youngest members have left and disavowed their former actions and tried to make amends for it. And likely there are still more to come who'd not get their chance were they all to die.

Honestly I'd never have been ok with harming anyone in the Westboro baptist church even if I didn't know anything much about them. Because they are pacifist. Their only harm is in their words. And as bad as those words are, it still tested free speech in America and I'm happy free speech won.

Actually, seriously wtf? I don't get how anyone can, even jokingly talk about wanting to kill an entire family full of brainwashed pacifists. Sure the shit they say and do is far from ok. But they've done no violence to anyone. But it doesn't warrent death, not even close. That's even worse than what they do if you ask me. A lot worse.

To be honest, more than anything else I feel sad for the people in the Westboro baptist church. They've made people hate them so much that people joke about killing them. And a few crazies take it a little further than a joke. And all for what? For nothing. And especially with their youngest members, the ones younger than about 30ish, they're pretty much victims of growing up in a cult. Or cult like environment anyway. They are a cult, but a very unusual one. They somewhat defy ordinary classification.

* Except Steve Drain, he seems like a horrible person so fuck him. Ironic that he's both one of the worst and also one of the few to join from outside the phelps family. So if you're gonna kill any of them maybe kill him. But then who knows, even with him I know too much to see him entirely 1 dimensionally. I mean he didn't start off that way. He started off a more open minded libertarian. But sounds like the darker sides of his personality, the controlling power hungry side got the better of him.

 

[Fresco]

^^^^ good, I'm very glad we disagree.

I think they are horrible people who do incredible amounts of psychological damage to people (especially army veterans at funerals).
They serve no useful purpose in society that I can think of!!

Good riddance

 

[aihfl]

Jess just entirely lost her street cred. I will never take seriously any of her posts again.

 

[swilow]

Jess just entirely lost her street cred. I will never take seriously any of her posts again.

What, because she doesn't want to kill the entire Westboro Baptist Church??

Me neither. I don't think they deserve death, at all. I think they deserve to be silenced and pushed out of society until they can modify their ways though. Use reason or plain suppression rather than murder.

I don't think anyone 'deserves' death, for that matter, paedophile/rapist/mass murderer/bacon-eater.

Anyway, I really think this line of discussion is pretty lame. Do we really need to talk about who we would kill if we had to? Its very juevenile, let's move on please...

 

[JessFR]

Well if I had to lose it defending WBC, I can live with that.

A persons worth isn't determined by their usefulness or lack of in society.

I'm not defending what they do. I am defending them as human beings though. And I see no problem with that. Because most of them aren't bad people. They are misguided and brainwashed people doing a bad thing.
It doesn't make their actions ok. Picketing military funerals is deplorable. But human beings are often very complicated and there is a lot more to them as people than just that aspect.

And it CERTAINLY doesn't warrent death.

And I've read what ex-WBC members have had to say and the remorse they feel over their mistakes.

I've made some terrible mistakes myself so I'd be one hell of a hypocrite if I condemned other people for theirs. People deserve a chance to realize their mistakes and try and make amends for them.

 

[alasdairm]

Not that your bucket list is a particularly acceptable justification for murder, but if you absolutely had to kill a random person why wouldn't you pick a pedophile or a rapist or something?

the detail of that crime are irrelevant to this discussion - i just picked it at random to use in an example of lucidsdreamr's nonsensical logic...

alasdair

 

[JessFR]

Yeah I know. I was just making a remark on how strange the logic is and it kinda went further off track from there.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

At most, it would be plausible to say that failing to point out an evil which one is aware of is a form of defense. Frankly, even that seems much too strong. I am aware of many evils in the world, when and where am I supposed to point all of these out? If I fail to point one of them out, am I defending it?

Moreover, it seems you are here guilty of the informal fallacy of begging the question. You asserted that on a particular date elements of the media would defend a particular course of action; it seems quite reasonable to suppose that what you meant by this is that there would be particular articles citing occurrences of said course of action, and coming up with excuses why it was justified. Ali, rightly (in my estimation) challenged you to provide some evidence that this had occurred after the fact (which was most plausibly seen as the insinuation that what you asserted would not come to fruition). Now, in the absence of such articles, you are suggesting that the defense consists in not reporting the phenomena whatsoever. So, it seems you are asserting that your assumption is true, despite the absence of any evidence which positively supports your assertion. I happen to know you are a scientist, so I assume you place some value on the notion of falsification. How do you suppose that your assertion might have been falsified? If, in the absence of the media reporting what you conjectured, the explanation is that the lack of any report whatsoever confirms your claim (as you seem to be suggesting), then it seems you must concede that your claim was unfalsifiable. To my mind, and I think this is generally agreed upon among the scientific community, unfalsifiable claims are not worth very much. Of course, some unfalsifiable claims may be true. However, if your critique of an institution is confined to such unfalsifiable claims, I am sure you can forgive others for thinking that your criticism is rather inert.

I'm no longer a scientist anymore, I practice IP law now. The law interpreted by practitioners and courts alike, not as cut and dry as science. Neither of which are subject to the same rules as a discussion on an internet forum. Also, please notice my post which you quoted began with the phrase I believe, not I know for a fact.

If you are failing to point out a wrong which you are benefiting from, yes you are defending it, for your own benefit. I would love to hear of another reason which a for-profit company may have for doing this.

In hindsight I shouldve said that the MSM will fail to condemn the religions in general but especiall yislam in this case, for the sake of their continued profit. Not that they will defend the behaviors of terrorists directly, which would also hurt their profits. The do a fine balancing act between PC-baiting self-righteous white 20 year olds that want to feel good about themselves and not totally insulting american decency.

 

[Fresco]

Jess just entirely lost her street cred. I will never take seriously any of her posts again

Agreed. She seems to think physical damage is worse than psychological damage.

Westboro is just like Scientology (only a smaller scale), they are just as damaging as any other cult.

I would feel no pity if they ever disappeared (through whichever means necessary)

 

[LucidSDreamr]

^ of course.



check out this awful story about a murder: Woman killed autistic teen to cross murder off her ‘bucket list’

she was convicted just yesterday yet i see no posts from you pointing out this evil. so, i assume you're defending it. that is just awful! how can you defend something so insidious?

is my logic here bananas? is this whole post ridiculous?

if so, then q.e.d.

alasdair

I am not profiting off of her murdering a child, which was the main requirement for my "defense" argument to stand. So yes your logic is flawed on that one.

 

[JessFR]

Agreed. She seems to think physical damage is worse than psychological damage.

Westboro is just like Scientology (only a smaller scale), they are just as damaging as any other cult.

I would feel no pity if they ever disappeared (through whichever means necessary)

I most certainly do not think that. But we are comparing the two. Murdering them, a physical response. For what is exclusively a matter of a psychological crime. I'm not say the psychological harm they do isn't serious. I'm saying murdering them all is far far worse in every respect.

And no, they aren't like Scientology at all. Scientology has gone to extreme tactics to keep people from leaving. WBC practically forces people out at the first hint of descent. Which is one of many ways in which they are very unusual for a cult. They also make no attempt to recruit. And they show enormous suspicion to anyone who comes to them wanting to join of their own accord.

I'm comfortable calling them a cult. But a very unusual benign cult.

But whatever man, agree to disagree. You're free to believe whatever you like and to believe I believe whatever you like. We're off topic so I intend to end it there.