US Elections 2012 Part I: The Primaries/Caucus

[Solace]

Originally Posted by GDB

Wouldn't it be the equivalent of expecting someone from a long line of Basketball players to be good at Basketball? "Tall" is not a profession like "Hunter" is.

Tall is not a profession, but the point is the same. They're expecting him to be something he's not, and he was raised believing those expectations and ended up unhappy when they didn't pan out because he was "punished" for it.

Basically the problem is that instead of letting him find his own thing that he is good at, they stereotyped him. Oh, you come from a family of hunters, you must be good at hunting. Oh, you're tall, you must play basketball. Oh, you know how to use a computer, you must be a techie. Oh, you're blonde, you must be stupid. Oh, you're black, you must be a good athlete....and keep away from my stereo. Oh, you're rich, you must have worked hard for it. Oh, you're poor, you must be lazy.

When you build people up like that, and they aren't who you expected them to be, you get that social "quirk" that kicks in. All of us have seen it, even if people never admit to it. When people do something unexpected but desirable, we praise them. When people do something unexpected but undesirable, we denounce them. When people do something expected, we affirm them.

"That boy was always a bad seed."
"He seemed like such a nice boy."
"I thought he was better than this."
"I always knew he'd be great."

Never mind that the leaders son may have been a good hunter if he had been taught to do it in a way that played to his strengths. Trapping for example, or sniping with a ranged weapon. Neither of those require strength, just patience.

Honestly Zetsubo's example is a good reason why social expectations and conformity aren't always a good thing.

[Xellos-_^]

During an event at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Huntsman spoke candidly about his party's flaws, lamenting the Republican National Committee's decision to rescind an invitation to a major fundraising event after Huntsman called for a third-party candidate to enter the race.

"This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script," Huntsman said.

Huntsman, a former Utah governor who dropped out of the GOP primary in January, served as U.S. ambassador to China under President Barack Obama.

He also criticized the Republican candidates' foreign policy stances, particularly in regard to China.

"I don’t know what world these people are living in," Huntsman said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1444529.html

where was huntsman living in the 4 yrs?

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

where was huntsman living in the 4 yrs?

He's a member of that part of the GOP that is watching the party go absolutely dumb-as-gravel bananas and its moving faster than they can fix. I'll argue it started as a small snowflake back when the GOP lured in the racist+evangelical South in the 60s and has been slowly usurping the "foreignpolicy+globalsociety" part of the GOP ever since. The "f+g" group thought they could handle them, keep them under control, press their 'single-issue' buttons when necessary --- and its gone to hell.

The jaw-dropping part is that its taking this long for that part of the GOP to start saying things were out of control out loud and its way too late. Some of them are fleeing the party, some of them have been made irrelevant, some of them are fighting for their own positions in safe districts in the primaries from "ideologically purer" candidates.

The Lugar race (Senate seat from Indiana) is telling because the challenger's basic line is "why have a statesman when you can have someone who is ideologically purer?". The ultra-wealthy ideologues are burying Lugar under SuperPac money.
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Separate news blurb -

Half of recent college grads remain unemployed or underemployed:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...ed?ft=1&f=1001

Romney advocates extenstion of Student Loan Relief (curbs the interest rates):
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolit...ef?ft=1&f=1001
Early sign of trying to move back to the near right from the extremist positions in the primary. Not quite near the position of re-assessing the loan value against the job market or loan forgiveness (both methods already proposed for home mortgages to keep it from complete implosion as housing devalues).

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Solace

Tall is not a profession, but the point is the same. They're expecting him to be something he's not, and he was raised believing those expectations and ended up unhappy when they didn't pan out because he was "punished" for it.

Basically the problem is that instead of letting him find his own thing that he is good at, they stereotyped him.

It sounds worse than that. That village sounds like you're a hunter, or you're a second class citizen (or would be, if they knew what citizens were). So, really, find himself? How's he supposed to do that? He was born in the wrong time and place.

[ganbaru]

Obama strategist sees Republican 'reign of terror' in Congress
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...83L05W20120422

[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by Solace

I wasn't?

You're so sexy when you tease like that.

Fair enough. I think your response here clears up a lot of how I've understood our previous discussions. And I agree on your notion of how easily the concepts are confused.

Thank you.

Marx is a bit like Rand, imo, in that the ideas were drafted in a very different time and many of the aspects do not hold up to scrutiny or time. That said, it's not like they're entirely wrong either. I don't think the philosophies are incompatible, but they are extreme; I feel there is a road in between the two that can work, and I think many others do too, which is why there are so many variations on their philosophies just as there are variations of capitalism, democracy, and other ideal-isms.

Honestly I think that Marx was better than Rand in some ways, not all mind you, but some.
H.G. Wells pointed out the problem with Marx (Wells having met Marx personally).
H.G. complained that Marx was pining away for the "good old days" of the feudal state where a benevolent dictatorship (as if there ever really was one) took care of their chattle like parents take care of their children.
As Wells pointed out (in Chapter 4 of his book "The New World Order"), the Medieval era was anything but the Utopia that he claimed Marx thought it was, and thus Marxian theory suffered from the personal desires of its founder.

Ironically, the first person to put Marxian theory into practice was Lenin, and he was fighting against a feudalist system and serfdom in order to free the peasants from the ruthless aristocrisy.
Had Lenin lived long enough to refine Marxian theory, I wonder what the world would look like today.
Perhaps Professor Sheldon L. Richmond (of George Mason U) is right.
Maybe Lenin would have paved a "Road from Serfdom." (Warning PDF file)
Perhaps, and this is just my own opinion, Lenin would have forged a workable mix of Laissez-Faire Capitalism and communalism/communism had he lived long enough to stop Stalin.

In contrast to Lenin and Marx, Rand had no such desires (to help the masses).
She made it perfectly clear that her Objectivism was essentially a Eugenic theory of survival of the brightest/illuminated and to hell with the "useless eaters/undesireables."
Fabian theory suffers from the same elitist ailments as Objectivism only it incorporates socialism into the mix as a means of taking care of the necessary serfs needed to maintain the Brave New World that Shaw, the Webbs, and Wells originally envisioned for the benefit of the Technocratic elite.
Professor Thomas C. Leonard of Princeton University adds the Progressive movement into this category as well since they were enamored with Eugenic theory (warning PDF file) for some time (and he contends still are).
Fascism...well we're going to live that (maybe not through it, but definitely "live it" in the US), so there is no need to delve into too deeply.
It's enough that we compare Benito Mussolini's Doctrine to what we are dealing with in the US today.

We had a nice thing in the USA, not perfect, but a workable model that could have done well had we reigned in the elitists (be they Neo-Con, Progressive, Corporatist, NeoLiberal, what have you) before they transformed this country into what it is today: a corporate state.

Maybe it is true of ALL societies that the scum eventually rises to the top and thus spoils the mix.

[Ithekro]

Well, Thomas Jefferson did say that a little Revolution every once is a while was a good thing.

[MeoTwister5]

@GundamFan0083

Well some believe that G.B Shaw's and Rand's work were corrupted bastardizations of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, as was eventual seen as the justification with the rise of the Third Reich, though it's probably more of my own inclination that Nietzsche never agreed with Eugenics since I'm partly convinced Nietzsche believed that the status was achievable by every person willing to try as opposed to Rand's characters.

Nevertheless the "cream of the crop" standing above society and excluded from its ethics and mores was deduced, and the result is what history has shown.

[Vexx]

Neitzsche would almost certainly have said that Shaw, Rand, et al completely missed his meaning. They saw what they wanted to see, that which justified their flaws.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Neitzsche would almost certainly have said that Shaw, Rand, et al completely missed his meaning. They saw what they wanted to see, that which justified their flaws.

I thought Ayn Rand is just a populist writer who has no idea about what she has read or known. She's just off quoting it to supplement her "popular beliefs" and just another bookseller of her own books.

[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

@GundamFan0083

Well some believe that G.B Shaw's and Rand's work were corrupted bastardizations of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, as was eventual seen as the justification with the rise of the Third Reich, though it's probably more of my own inclination that Nietzsche never agreed with Eugenics since I'm partly convinced Nietzsche believed that the status was achievable by every person willing to try as opposed to Rand's characters.

Oh man...you had to bring up Nietzsche.
I have a love/hate feeling for his philosophy.
On the one hand I think that I understand what it was he was trying to say in "Thus Spake Zarathustra, Of Good and Evil, and The Power of the Will."
That being that his so called "Ubermench" would be a person who of his own free will, without religion, or philosophy, or fear, would create a moral set that benefitted all of mankind.
I personally don't think that such a person will ever be possible until we evolve further as a race (I mean mentally/emotionally).
If I'm right on that, then his philosophy is a good ideal from which we can try to fashion a better society.

On the other hand, these three books have been used to justify some of the most horrible crimes in recent human history.
I don't believe, and perhaps it's because I don't want to, that Nietzsche intended for Darwinian theory to be perceived as a carte blanche to commit mass genocide in the name of a race of Ubermench.

Although, I do admit that I could be wrong.

Nevertheless the "cream of the crop" standing above society and excluded from its ethics and mores was deduced, and the result is what history has shown.

It may work out well for the top 1%, but not the rest of us.
We don't need rulers in the 21st century, we need statesmen who will actually put forward realistic plans to get us off this damn planet (since Thomas Robert Malthus' fear may be coming true in this century), move us to actual renewable fuels, and put more emphasis on making the "useless eaters" useful without resorting to a damn tyranny.

Originally Posted by Vexx

Neitzsche would almost certainly have said that Shaw, Rand, et al completely missed his meaning. They saw what they wanted to see, that which justified their flaws.

Yeah! I'd say they missed his point...by light years.

[MeoTwister5]

I was somewhere in my teens when I first read Atlas Shrugged when I found it in my mother's room. Didn't sit too well with me, and my mother at the time said it was just self-centered bullshit it novel form. Of course I also had my first experience with Kafka's "The Trial" from my mother so... yeah...

I consider Nietzsche to be a rather misunderstood thinker. Honestly, having read almost everything he wrote that you can actually buy. I still think that the true strength of the Ubermensch is his ability to be a role model, someone who elevates himself to a point that he is able to elevate others to a similar position. Beyond greed and selfishness, beyond exclusivities and elitists. Someone who uses his status and "awakening" for the common good.

It's just that it's too disregard the common good in achieving a certain status. I'd say a lot of people forgot that Nietzsche also dabbled in the history of morality and didn't disregard it's importance even in men who have achieved a higher sense of existence.

Sadly, as you guys say, I don't think such a person exists right now.

[Vexx]

Neitzsche was a required major section of my 12th grade Humanities (as were a number of other philosophers). The only way you can get from him to Rand and other idiots like her is to choose a few soundbites you're going to misinterpret and then ignore all the rest.

[MeoTwister5]

Eh I took a class on Nietzsche back in college from a Jesuit priest. It was funny when he once ranted about Nazis and Rand. All this talk about Shaw and Rand reminded me about that. Funny and informative, it was.

[synaesthetic]

Atlas Shrugged is self-centered bullshit in novel form.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Atlas Shrugged is self-centered bullshit in novel form.

I find it weird that being feministic, you call it bullshit. I thought "feminists" like to quote Ayn Rand works.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

I find it weird that being feministic, you call it bullshit. I thought "feminists" like to quote Ayn Rand works.

Militant feminists maybe, and only the ones who are randroids...

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

I find it weird that being feministic, you call it bullshit. I thought "feminists" like to quote Ayn Rand works.

There's really no meaningful intersection between feminism and Ayn Rand .... any more than there between civil liberty and drug-addled crazy person

[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

On the other hand, these three books have been used to justify some of the most horrible crimes in recent human history.
I don't believe, and perhaps it's because I don't want to, that Nietzsche intended for Darwinian theory to be perceived as a carte blanche to commit mass genocide in the name of a race of Ubermench.

You have to keep in mind thanhis last book was ''corrected'' my his sister and her husband, a notorious anti-semite. Even Nietzsche did thought than human could archive his Ubermench than it was a a target to archive for a invidual; we can' t get to this level yet but it isn't a reason to get as close a we can and it a personal target, not something for a nation or a race to archive.

[james0246]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

I find it weird that being feministic, you call it bullshit. I thought "feminists" like to quote Ayn Rand works.

Originally Posted by Vexx

There's really no meaningful intersection between feminism and Ayn Rand .... any more than there between civil liberty and drug-addled crazy person

To be fair, Objectivism is directly opposed to sexism, racism and other forms of bigotry (all are seen as forms of collectivism, which is completely opposed to Objectivism ). (And, of course, there is no religious intolerance, since all religion has been done away with .)

That being said, while some of Rand's heroines were definitely "strong", she made no secret over the fact that characters like Howard Roark and John Galt were the embodiment of her "ideal person", and her ideal person was always a man and could only be a man.