Prelude to the Apocalypse

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Iran War. When.

2021
3
6%
2022-2025
15
28%
2026-2030
7
13%
2031-2040
3
6%
2041-2050
0
No votes
Never
25
47%
 
Total votes: 53

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BulletMagnet
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

The deafening chorus of yeeaahhh fuck yooouu yeeahhh from the Reasonable Moderates just never seems to stop, and neither does nearly everyone else's willingness to pretend they didn't hear it.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

Sengoku Strider wrote:Pretty sure the apocalypse has come & gone by this point. Probably time to change the name of the thread.
Ee, in all seriousness, I am a little curious on opinions of what would constitute a fullblown Apocalypse.

It kind of horrifies how much of not giving a shit we have when I think about what metrics it would take: It's not a blue ocean event in the Arctic. It's not all sea life ceasing to live. It's not the current generations never being able to buy a house during their life times.

I personally think it's somewhere between widespread deadzones on land that require massive migration, and the collapse of car culture due to not having the fossil fuel left to sustain it.

Oddly I haven't thought about it that much (by my standards), and since I'm someone who loves apocalypses, that means normies have spent zero conscious thought on it.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

A quick reminder for anyone somehow under the delusion that low-tax states exist for the benefit of people who actually live there.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Image

61 court cases lost. Mostly from his own appointed judges.

Every last audit and recount proved it was a secure election without fraud.

His lawyer lost his license over this.

His other lawyers and martial law advisor/pillow salesman are about to be sued into oblivion.

Dozens of his followers already in prison.

This isn't funny anymore. He knows this is the state capitol that got stormed last year, he knows there were militia nuts there plotting to kidnap the governor. This guy needs to face consequences at this point, the notion that it would be politically divisive or that it would diminish the presidency has gone beyond farcical.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Sengoku Strider wrote:This guy needs to face consequences at this point, the notion that it would be politically divisive or that it would diminish the presidency has gone beyond farcical.
The people best-positioned to enact said consequences have never actually given a rat's ass about "divisiveness" or the like - if they had, they'd never have gleefully supported a shameless powder keg like Trump in the first place. What they have done is openly embraced authoritarianism right alongside him, and possess, often by their own admission, absolutely zero qualms about folks being hurt or killed in the name of keeping the base good and riled up, let alone millions of legitimate votes being disallowed or thrown out because "people don't trust the electoral system for some incredibly nebulous reason that we and our narrative had absolutely nothing to do with."

They are not going to demand accountability. They are not going to change their vote. They are not going to learn.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

For this week's WTF Musk event...

This game called Genshin Impact had its anniversary recently. Normally this is a time for promotional currency to given to players, in order to reinforce the addiction cycle and bring back those who've lapsed. Because the game brings in a bazillion dollars and has zero competition, it went very very light in how much material was given. Of course much of the community disliked this pittance, akin to flicking a nickel at a begger.

Afterwards, the company had a great idea for a promotional event. What was the reward for players? A character selection ticket? Some draws? Maybe some upgrade materials? Nope! It was this!

I understand the company's founders are super nerds, a rare rags to riches story where three goons were able to unite and crawl together from peasant to overlords in a decade... but this still bummed me out by reminding me there's a character named after Musk in the game. She's not even a bad character - I can remember that she's this little nerd that wants to learn their language and talk to the beastmen you slaughter in waves like wheat. Any mob that memorable is a successful design.

Just the uh, Musk stench is a little stinky. A demonstration of my "you shouldn't put real people into fiction" philosophy.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

...and a reality check for those who base their votes on obeisance to the stock market.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

Man, remember dividends? lol
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BulletMagnet wrote:...and a reality check for those who base their votes on obeisance to the stock market.
* The top 10% of Americans now hold 89% of corporate equities and mutual fund shares, a record high.
* The top 1% alone hold over half of stocks owned by households, according to the Federal Reserve.

What's the stage that comes after late-stage capitalism?

End stage?
Post-credits?
[Everything is] DLC?
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Mortificator »

Sengoku Strider wrote:What's the stage that comes after late-stage capitalism?
The same that comes after late-stage cancer.

Image
RegalSin wrote:You can't even drive across the country Naked anymore
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

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One additional aside to the "what's good for Wall Street is good for America" crowd (and/or those who claim to not be in said crowd but keep electing people who are), in case I haven't mentioned it on here already - around 40 percent of US stocks are owned by foreigners.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Very little surprises me at this point, but I seriously think we've got a new definition of chutzpah:
“My friends, storm clouds are gathering on the horizon,” [Mitch] McConnell told the Heritage Foundation audience.

“One of our country’s two major political movements has decided they’re fed up with trying to win the contest of ideas within the institutions the framers left us and would rather take aim at the institutions themselves,” McConnell said.
The modern right will tell you with a straight face that the sky is green with pink polka dots if it gets them their yeeeahhh fuck yooouuu yeeeahhh fix, while the "reasonable moderates" murmur welllll, I mean, buuut it's not really faaaair... while oh so innocently throwing their own lit matches on the fire.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BulletMagnet wrote:Very little surprises me at this point, but I seriously think we've got a new definition of chutzpah:
“My friends, storm clouds are gathering on the horizon,” [Mitch] McConnell told the Heritage Foundation audience.

“One of our country’s two major political movements has decided they’re fed up with trying to win the contest of ideas within the institutions the framers left us and would rather take aim at the institutions themselves,” McConnell said.
The modern right will tell you with a straight face that the sky is green with pink polka dots if it gets them their yeeeahhh fuck yooouuu yeeeahhh fix, while the "reasonable moderates" murmur welllll, I mean, buuut it's not really faaaair... while oh so innocently throwing their own lit matches on the fire.
That terrible feeling when you realize how much better off the world would be if its super villains had even as much integrity as Lex Luthor.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

Knowing that we defend "special operators" who like to decapitate children and shit is a great way to feel crappy. When a guy is so into serial murder that his fellow serial murderers felt it necessary to readjust his sights because they were sick of seeing him shoot kids all the damn time, sheesh. I think he's walking around free with a shiny medal for his all his dedicated child-murder efforts?

Know what else is a great way to feel doomy? My 30-yearish out projection of the fuel apocalypse might have been a bit off. They were based on old projections, filtered through a lazy internet asshole (me~). A recent French study puts it down as early as 13 years away. Does it feel like we're prepared or preparing for that, whatsoever? Historical precedent on how well we did with those ~four months heads-up on COVID.. I'm sure we'll do a great job of making the transition to electric cars or donkies. A great. Job.

I'm also increasingly convinced that Dick Cheney immortality serum will come online before then. The universe definitely wants him to live forever.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sima Tuna »

Sengoku Strider wrote:
BulletMagnet wrote:...and a reality check for those who base their votes on obeisance to the stock market.
* The top 10% of Americans now hold 89% of corporate equities and mutual fund shares, a record high.
* The top 1% alone hold over half of stocks owned by households, according to the Federal Reserve.

What's the stage that comes after late-stage capitalism?

End stage?
Post-credits?
[Everything is] DLC?
Destabilization and Violent Revolution. Not advocating it. Just saying. The working poor have lived through so much horrible shit in the last decade+ and now we have the last two years on top. Historically, responses to the kind of aggressive inequality we're seeing haven't always been peaceful or pleasant.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

So yeah, a few quick updates from the American right:

- We are going to take our utterly incurable victim complex, graft it onto a Catholic-style top-down "moral authority" structure, and codify open discrimination against the political left into law.

- We are absolutely itching to start shooting you.

- In both cases we are already blaming you for forcing us to do this.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

RalphWiggumHahaImInDanger.jpg

Kamala is at the top of the primary polls and is the designated nominee just like I said after Biden retires. (Retires is a euphemism, you know I mean after two terms or that other thing.) The fascist apocalypse on top of the climate and fuel ones is gonna be fun.

Imagine being a dumb millennial/zoomer thinking we could have improved society slighty or solve any systematic issues post-World War 2 style without all the massive self inflicted suffering and death. "Just fix it!" "Just don't do stupid shit!", lol. The naivety.

Simple plasma transfer from young rats lead to an increase of healthspan and average lifespan but not maximum lifespan. (It's not conclusive epigenetic rejuvenation isn't enough; it might not have impacted certain vital organs potently enough.) So we'll probably be really, really sexy during the apocalypse, at the minimum. Silver lining?
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

Stumbled onto this today:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/ ... rned-spain

Interesting conclusion when they determined who that gold and silver "belongs to". Interesting decision. Yep. That's some fucking decision. Who does it fucking belong to? Who?

Hint: Spanish men wrapped a knotted rope around their defacto monarch's head and twisted it until his head popped off. Where was it coming from? Whose money is it, again?

Some nerve, there. Hey, you sent the rest of it up the silk road, you thick spanish bafoon. May as well spend the rest, too. I know! Buy some more spices!
We apologise for the inconvenience
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

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Some additional fun facts about the afore-cited "Dominionism" rapidly becoming mainstream on the right, with precious little resistance:
Dominionism is the theocratic idea that regardless of theological view, means, or timetable, Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.
Christian reconstructionism, Tabachnick explained, is "about bringing government in all areas of life under biblical law, a continuation of the Mosaic law in the Old Testament, with some exceptions." This dispensation would include, "according to Gary North, public execution of women who have abortions and those who advise them to have an abortion."
"On the basis of their belief of what the law or the word of God is, they are allowed — on the advice, on the interposition, of a lesser magistrate — to commit acts of violence," Tabachnick continued. North was seeking to control or curb anti-abortion terrorism, but without rejecting it in principle. Murdering abortion providers — or even murdering women seeking abortions — could be morally justified, with the blessing of a lesser magistrate.

This is relevant to SB 8 in Texas in at least two ways. That bill bans abortions after six weeks and is enforced not by state officials, but by deputizing private individuals to sue anyone who performs the procedure or "aids and abets" it. First of all, giving private individuals these vigilante-style rights seems a lot like making them into "lesser magistrates," however narrowly constrained.

Second, the Supreme Court's refusal to stay the law — which clearly violates the Constitution and existing precedent, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued in her dissent — can be seen as an example of the doctrine in action.
"This movement believes that rights come from God and not from any government," Tabachnick told Salon. "Therefore, any 'rights' that conflict with their interpretation of God's law are not actually rights. They are 'humanist' or a product of man's laws and not God's laws. This theme of 'human rights' versus inalienable rights from God has been at the center of the Christian Reconstructionist movement since its beginnings."

She pointed to "What's Wrong With Human Rights," an excerpt from a book of the same name by the Rev. T. Robert Ingram published in "The Theology of Christian Resistance," a collection edited by North. Ingram sweeps aside the Bill of Rights as "a statement of sovereign powers of states withheld from the federal authority of the Union," and turns instead to the Virginia Declaration of Rights, authored by George Mason in 1776.

The first section of the Virginia Declaration, beginning "That all Men are by Nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent Rights," is dismissed by Ingram for omitting any mention of God, as an "error of unbelief which falsifies all the rest that is said about human life." The second, beginning "That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from the People; that Magistrates are their Trustees and Servants, and at all Times amenable to them," he dismisses as well: "The meaning could not be more clear, nor more opposite Biblical thought. The ruling proposition of Scripture and Christian doctrine is that 'power belongeth unto God.'" In short, there are no human rights.

The connection to the doctrine of the lesser magistrate is clear: Power comes from God, not the people. Whatever the people want is irrelevant. Whatever laws they may pass are irrelevant, too, if they go against God. "Tyranny" is whatever the Christian reconstructionist decides he doesn't like.
I would very much appreciate if any of our resident righties might attempt to reconcile American conservatism's long-standing and spittle-laced "how dare you suggest the Founding Fathers and their document are flawed" rhetoric with its courting and outright cultivation of a mindset that literally posits that their entire worldview was and remains not only completely invalid but must be actively opposed, violently if necessary.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

Today I learned the "metaverse" is not the horrible creation of Ready Player One, but was created in a novel back in the 90's. The "meta" actually stands for metaphorical. And it was a virtual chatroom - a very outdated idea that people used to think was cool back then. You might remember examples of it in Furcadia, Second Life, and the animated series Serial Experiments Lain. It's easier to be gentle on it since it was a more innocent, unknown time back then. (But not with the stans obsessed with it as "the next big thing" though.)

In the real world wearing a tv strapped to your face while waving a wand around has so far proven inferior to having a screen over there and just using a mouse or whatever. Stuff like Table Top Simulator seem more useful as a form of virtual space.

Leave it to Facebook to spend a hundred billion dollars on an idea that passed its prime 30 years ago. There's something a bit dark there along the lines of "this mirrors how its core userbase passed their prime 30 years ago!"
BulletMagnet wrote:Some additional fun facts about the afore-cited "Dominionism" rapidly becoming mainstream on the right
pffffft, "becoming"? You're reminding me of those 90's Watchtower newsletters where JW's were shocked there was pornography on the internet. But instead of being a few years behind the times, a few hundred millennia. The genocide of indigenous populations in the past and present is timeless.

It is neat that you don't like inevitable outcome of rich republicans becoming democrats though. They'll say all the pretty words but won't ever support giving poor people a raise in pay or quality of life. As there's no force pushing them back into their preferred party to moderate their faction's rubes (a rube is a bootlicker that gets paid in non-material things like feelings, as opposed to the sycophant - a bootlicker who gets paid for defending the status quo), fascism is the only thing to look forward to.

Another day, 70% of the voting base thinks the healthcare system here is not so great. 0% chance it changes anytime this decade. "Democracy."
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Randorama »

BryanM wrote:Today I learned the "metaverse" is not the horrible creation of Ready Player One, but was created in a novel back in the 90's.
Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, which the author used to sum up all the themes (pardon, tropes) that featured in cyberpunk novels from the late '70s to '92 (the year of release).
Stephenson basically said: "OK, this one and I jump ships to other SF sub-genres, cyberpunk is already passe'".

So, the metaverse as represented in that book was already a bit outdated for the time...1992.
I am acquainted with nerds/geeks in their late '40s that might be excited about this meta thing, though.
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by DDDP »

BulletMagnet wrote:Some additional fun facts about the afore-cited "Dominionism" rapidly becoming mainstream on the right, with precious little resistance:
Dominionism is the theocratic idea that regardless of theological view, means, or timetable, Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.
Christian reconstructionism, Tabachnick explained, is "about bringing government in all areas of life under biblical law, a continuation of the Mosaic law in the Old Testament, with some exceptions." This dispensation would include, "according to Gary North, public execution of women who have abortions and those who advise them to have an abortion."
"On the basis of their belief of what the law or the word of God is, they are allowed — on the advice, on the interposition, of a lesser magistrate — to commit acts of violence," Tabachnick continued. North was seeking to control or curb anti-abortion terrorism, but without rejecting it in principle. Murdering abortion providers — or even murdering women seeking abortions — could be morally justified, with the blessing of a lesser magistrate.

This is relevant to SB 8 in Texas in at least two ways. That bill bans abortions after six weeks and is enforced not by state officials, but by deputizing private individuals to sue anyone who performs the procedure or "aids and abets" it. First of all, giving private individuals these vigilante-style rights seems a lot like making them into "lesser magistrates," however narrowly constrained.

Second, the Supreme Court's refusal to stay the law — which clearly violates the Constitution and existing precedent, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued in her dissent — can be seen as an example of the doctrine in action.
"This movement believes that rights come from God and not from any government," Tabachnick told Salon. "Therefore, any 'rights' that conflict with their interpretation of God's law are not actually rights. They are 'humanist' or a product of man's laws and not God's laws. This theme of 'human rights' versus inalienable rights from God has been at the center of the Christian Reconstructionist movement since its beginnings."

She pointed to "What's Wrong With Human Rights," an excerpt from a book of the same name by the Rev. T. Robert Ingram published in "The Theology of Christian Resistance," a collection edited by North. Ingram sweeps aside the Bill of Rights as "a statement of sovereign powers of states withheld from the federal authority of the Union," and turns instead to the Virginia Declaration of Rights, authored by George Mason in 1776.

The first section of the Virginia Declaration, beginning "That all Men are by Nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent Rights," is dismissed by Ingram for omitting any mention of God, as an "error of unbelief which falsifies all the rest that is said about human life." The second, beginning "That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from the People; that Magistrates are their Trustees and Servants, and at all Times amenable to them," he dismisses as well: "The meaning could not be more clear, nor more opposite Biblical thought. The ruling proposition of Scripture and Christian doctrine is that 'power belongeth unto God.'" In short, there are no human rights.

The connection to the doctrine of the lesser magistrate is clear: Power comes from God, not the people. Whatever the people want is irrelevant. Whatever laws they may pass are irrelevant, too, if they go against God. "Tyranny" is whatever the Christian reconstructionist decides he doesn't like.
I would very much appreciate if any of our resident righties might attempt to reconcile American conservatism's long-standing and spittle-laced "how dare you suggest the Founding Fathers and their document are flawed" rhetoric with its courting and outright cultivation of a mindset that literally posits that their entire worldview was and remains not only completely invalid but must be actively opposed, violently if necessary.
You've cut off the knees of your own argument by lumping all "conservatives" and "righties" into one group, which creates the appearance of a "contradiction" that you can trumpet over. Don't get spooked by new-to-you words that the pundits on TV and your favorite Facebook videos have all suddenly started using.

"Dominionism" has been around for centuries, it isn't unique to christianity/conservatism, and it is the other side of the coin of individualism. Secular liberalism also suffers from a flavor of "Dominionism", that is to say, the tenants of liberalism are an Objective Good and can be pursued with single-minded devotion and it will result in a better Humanity. Liberals continue to attempt the same failed ideologies without ever challenging the underlying assumption that the ideas are "good" (oh this attempt? It wasn't REAL socialism) and that the people carrying out the ideas are also "good" (we are on the Right Side of History). If you have any doubts, feel free to dust off your history books and look at the French Revolution, how they re-shaped society, and how it led to Napoleon's conquests. This is Dominionism of the liberal variety, and academia continues to worship it for two centuries and running, with little critical thought or personal responsibility. I've personally heard several flavors of religious "Dominionism" since I was a kid, as well as learning about the various historical flavors throughout history. An easy way to spot an ideologue is when they chalk up human nature (like wanting to dominate and egotistically spread their own ideas) to specific opponents in their ideological sphere of choice. The christians. The republicans. The jews. They all just want to DOMINATE, so we need to DOMINATE them back or else all is lost. This line of thinking is well-documented and well-understood.

So called "christian Dominionism" makes a big assumption about the nature of power and how power should be used. The notion that power belongs to God and not to Man is why we have checks and balances in government and why most of us don't obey a monarch or a priest-caste of rulers. The West figured out that if all men -- kings and serfs -- were subject to the same divine law, then the serfs could hold the king accountable. Hence, the Reformation followed later by the Bloodless Revolution. And if this law was Good (which christians believe), then patiently applying that law to the world will also improve the world. This hope isn't unique to christianity. It was only AFTER the Reformation and AFTER the Bloodless Revolution that secular liberalism decided to try this idea, resulting in the Enlightenment and various colonial revolutions. And THEN the French Revolution happened back in Europe, who thought they could pull it off Best.

Then later Marx and Engels thought the underlying ideas of the French Revolution were solid, but without the executions and corruption, so they again re-wrote how humanity "should" work. They weren't the only ones attempting during that time period, of course. Reshaping society using government and economic systems continued to be a hot topic. These ideas were openly discussed in Academia, where they blended with "race realism" in the Berlin 1920s university scene, where it quickly mutated into the NAZI ideology of the 30s. Of course the Founding Fathers were flawed. Liberalismis not willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater when socialism's genocides are mentioned. Why would we throw out the Constitution or their ideas just because we don't believe the constitution is Flawless? It's like that old webcomic with the guy peeking out of the well "Ahhh I see that you are typing that on an iPhone. Ahhh I see that you are participating in Society too. How interesting!"

The christian ideology at least offers allowances for a Perfect Law carried out imperfectly (if not malevolently) by imperfect stewards. How those stewards are corrected and selected has been openly debated for 100s of years. These checks and balances aren't new. What are the inherent checks of Liberalism? I'm sure there are 10,000 answers from 10,000 different academics who will write 10,000 reasons but won't ever be held accountable for any of them. Bloody revolution seems to be the recurring behavior when the children of these talk-heavy Liberals cannot accomplish their grand aspirations. Liberalism enjoys the excuse of "but that wasn't True Liberalism" which it borrowed from religion. Liberalism enjoys the "free marketplace of ideas" which it borrowed from religion too.

We already live in a world of "religious Dominionism", thankfully. What concerns me is the slide toward secular Dominionism, which lacks all the charity, personal accountability, and humility of the religion from which it came.

Hope that answer resolves your question about the difference between conservatives who think the law of God is a good thing to study and follow, and conservatives who think the Founding Fathers were wrong and should be thrown out.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

I am acquainted with nerds/geeks in their late '40s that might be excited about this meta thing, though.
I've seen quite a few people online hyped about it for some reason and I'm always like ".... it's just a chatroom. Go play an mmo or yahoo chess, bro." I can sympathize wanting to be excited about the future though. Me stanning the potential of E5 may indeed be nothing but hot air and wishful thinking.

The crypto bros I have no empathy with though. Their speculation instruments are worse than Magic the Gathering cards or stocks.
Liberals continue to attempt the same failed ideologies without ever challenging the underlying assumption that the ideas are "good" (oh this attempt? It wasn't REAL socialism)
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I don't think you understand what liberalism is. It's by definition anti-socialist. There's the material, and the non-material. The policy of liberalism on the non-material is "let the peasants say whatever they feel like saying - they have no power so it means nothing. It lets them feel like they're free, even while under our dictatorship." The non-material is wonderful because it can be any arbitrary thing you want it to be; our politics could be people who like the movie Robocop versus the people that hate it, if those in charge of grooming us from birth were ordered to make it so.

The policy of liberalism on the material is laissez-faire capitalism: the exact same ideolody of anarcho libertarians.

It's extraordinary rare in history for the people with no power and no money to ever have any power. The farmer's union in the ~1930's managed to win a few concessions that came out of the communist manifesto: minimum wage, public schools, end of child labor, 40 hour work week, social security, etc. All communist ideas, no capitalist wanted those and they even considered a military coup to stop them from happening. If you think they're ok, you're a commie. If you want to get rid of them (or in the case of the minimum wage, slowly phase it out to inflation), you're a good and proper capitalist. 12 hour workdays 7 days a week for 2 company scrip bucks an hour. Just like the good 'old days. Just like God (God has always just been a metaphor for "human being at the top of the pyramid scheme") intended.

It's hierarchical dictatorships all the way down. Our brutal dictatorship just happens to be a union of a few interests instead of just the military like younger, less developed dictatorships have. We barely even have to torture our own citizens, they'll even torture themselves sometimes. How wonderfully efficient is that?
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by DDDP »

BryanM wrote:
I am acquainted with nerds/geeks in their late '40s that might be excited about this meta thing, though.
I've seen quite a few people online hyped about it for some reason and I'm always like ".... it's just a chatroom. Go play an mmo or yahoo chess, bro." I can sympathize wanting to be excited about the future though. Me stanning the potential of E5 may indeed be nothing but hot air and wishful thinking.

The crypto bros I have no empathy with though. Their speculation instruments are worse than Magic the Gathering cards or stocks.
Liberals continue to attempt the same failed ideologies without ever challenging the underlying assumption that the ideas are "good" (oh this attempt? It wasn't REAL socialism)
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I don't think you understand what liberalism is. It's by definition anti-socialist. There's the material, and the non-material. The policy of liberalism on the non-material is "let the peasants say whatever they feel like saying - they have no power so it means nothing. It lets them feel like they're free, even while under our dictatorship." The non-material is wonderful because it can be any arbitrary thing you want it to be; our politics could be people who like the movie Robocop versus the people that hate it, if those in charge of grooming us from birth were ordered to make it so.

The policy of liberalism on the material is laissez-faire capitalism: the exact same ideolody of anarcho libertarians.

It's extraordinary rare in history for the people with no power and no money to ever have any power. The farmer's union in the ~1930's managed to win a few concessions that came out of the communist manifesto: minimum wage, public schools, end of child labor, 40 hour work week, social security, etc. All communist ideas, no capitalist wanted those and they even considered a military coup to stop them from happening. If you think they're ok, you're a commie. If you want to get rid of them (or in the case of the minimum wage, slowly phase it out to inflation), you're a good and proper capitalist. 12 hour workdays 7 days a week for 2 company scrip bucks an hour. Just like the good 'old days. Just like God (God has always just been a metaphor for "human being at the top of the pyramid scheme") intended.

It's hierarchical dictatorships all the way down. Our brutal dictatorship just happens to be a union of a few interests instead of just the military like younger, less developed dictatorships have. We barely even have to torture our own citizens, they'll even torture themselves sometimes. How wonderfully efficient is that?
You're not the first forum goer to snip a single line and then reply "I don't think you know about the topic but here let me explain it to you with my own definitions and assumptions". Effort begets effort. Your observations are not new or unique. The first thing to do is back up your definitions pulled from a hat, like what liberalism really is and who determined it to be as such.

At least, if I've misunderstood liberalism, I have framed my argument with historical examples and real names. You're regurgitating terms that you heard on youtube or in a university class a few semesters ago.
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

DDDP wrote:The first thing to do is back up your definitions pulled from a hat, like what liberalism really is and who determined it to be as such.
Um... the liberals???

Words mean things? You're conflating Karl Marx with Joseph Biden and John Locke. It's funny lol

Is Joseph Biden and his family paid and owned by

a) Capitalists

b) Broke stoned commie hippies that can't even be bothered to go outside

The old timey folksong by Phil Ochs, Love Me I'm A Liberal, helps clarify the matter. The liberals are the ones with the signs with slogans like "black lives matter", "we believe in science", "love is great", etc. Slogans strangely missing from their signs: stuff like "universal medicare" and "raise the minimum wage you bastards it's been twenty years".
You're not the first forum goer to snip a single line and then reply "I don't think you know about the topic but here let me explain it to you with my own definitions and assumptions". Effort begets effort. Your observations are not new or unique.
No duh, they're words and ideologies that are hundreds of years old.
You're regurgitating terms that you heard on youtube or in a university class a few semesters ago.
I'm an eight thousand year old mountain hermit. Youtube wasn't invented back then. I don't even know what a university is.

I understand it's a kneejerk defense mechanism to attack personalities instead of accepting basic observable facts. Don't get angry at me, get angry at the people who groomed you into thinking something so simple is "acksually very complicated. Both sides!"

It's hard when the bullshit we use to justify to ourselves the current state of the world is so trivially washed away by the simple and inarguable observation that all politics is class warfare, and everything else is just pretend non-material nonsense to distract us from that.
Last edited by BryanM on Tue Nov 02, 2021 6:00 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Mortificator
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Mortificator »

DDDP wrote:At least, if I've misunderstood liberalism, I have framed my argument with historical examples and real names.
"Well I completely misunderstood liberalism, but my rant still makes sense because I cited Real Names of the historically humble and accountable religious dominionism camp, such as, uhhhhhhhhh......."
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

So, I generally have respect for religious people, and there are genuine, complex and philosophically well-grounded arguments in religion's favour as a cultural entity. DDDP, you'd mentioned you wanted proper engagement with your arguments rather than cherry picking. I'm a historian who spends more than a little time with the phenomenology of historical religious thought, and I need a break from grading papers.
DDDP wrote:Secular liberalism also suffers from a flavor of "Dominionism", that is to say, the tenants of liberalism are an Objective Good and can be pursued with single-minded devotion and it will result in a better Humanity.
This is the literal stated aim of axial post-Socratic philosophy - though it's far from settled that there is an 'objective' good, that's been the core debate of ethics for 2500 years. Christianity emerged from that exact milieu, the church fathers were deeply influenced by neo-Platonism, Aristotle, and others.
Liberals continue to attempt the same failed ideologies without ever challenging the underlying assumption that the ideas are "good" (oh this attempt? It wasn't REAL socialism)
Socialism and liberalism are typically held as opposites, at least on the economic scale. The entire conservative critique of socialism is that it denies individual liberty and leaves an excessive amount of power to the government. Aside from that, it's certainly not the same old ideas being thrown around, there have been countless successful variations. For instance, states with some form of universal healthcare such as:

Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Czech Republic, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Scotland, England, Wales, the Bahamas, Costa Rica, Mexico, China, Japan, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Australia, New Zealand, Colombia, Russia, Croatia, Argentina, Turkey, Serbia, Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, South Korea, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Kuwait, Israel, Morocco...

...actually pretty much every country in the developed world (and plenty outside of it) aside from the United States.

and that the people carrying out the ideas are also "good" (we are on the Right Side of History). If you have any doubts, feel free to dust off your history books and look at the French Revolution, how they re-shaped society, and how it led to Napoleon's conquests.
This is flawed reasoning though. The French Revolution was directly inspired by the American one (which was itself heavily influenced by the thinking of Voltaire and Rousseau). There is no pattern of Napoleons being the inevitable result of removing monarchy from power and instituting social equality.
This is Dominionism of the liberal variety, and academia continues to worship it for two centuries and running, with little critical thought
Critical thought is a term which literally refers to applying one's critical faculties - ie., logic - to ideas. In other words, literally what an academic's job description is. It is something that any fundamentalist theocratic approach seeks to do away with as a fundamental premise, as everything meaningful is already set and explained by divine scripture.
or personal responsibility. I've personally heard several flavors of religious "Dominionism" since I was a kid, as well as learning about the various historical flavors throughout history. An easy way to spot an ideologue is when they chalk up human nature (like wanting to dominate and egotistically spread their own ideas) to specific opponents in their ideological sphere of choice. The christians. The republicans. The jews. They all just want to DOMINATE, so we need to DOMINATE them back or else all is lost. This line of thinking is well-documented and well-understood.
That's good old fashioned projection, and yes, it is everywhere. The difference is that academia absolutely does not function on a basis of denying free thought - it's what tenure literally exists to enshrine at a formal level. By contrast, a system based upon a codified sacred divine word aims to reign that in to a narrow set of prescribed ideas appropriate for discussion. Academics may get roasted on Twitter or even fired, but they don't get burned at the stake for suggesting that other solar systems exist.
So called "christian Dominionism" makes a big assumption about the nature of power and how power should be used. The notion that power belongs to God and not to Man is why we have checks and balances in government and why most of us don't obey a monarch or a priest-caste of rulers. The West figured out that if all men -- kings and serfs -- were subject to the same divine law, then the serfs could hold the king accountable. Hence, the Reformation followed later by the Bloodless Revolution.
This is the same kind of inductive fallacy as the Napoleon example. It's extrapolating from a single event while ignoring all counter evidence.

Europe's population was an estimated 65 million at the time of the Reformation, an event which was the direct cause of some of the deadliest conflicts in European history. Between the 30 Years' War, the French wars of Religion of the Catholics & Hugenots, the War of the Three Kingdoms and other regional conflicts, between 7 (lowest estimate) and 17 million people died. It was anything but a peaceful transition hand in hand to Protestantism.
Then later Marx and Engels thought the underlying ideas of the French Revolution were solid, but without the executions and corruption, so they again re-wrote how humanity "should" work. They weren't the only ones attempting during that time period, of course. Reshaping society using government and economic systems continued to be a hot topic. These ideas were openly discussed in Academia, where they blended with "race realism" in the Berlin 1920s university scene, where it quickly mutated into the NAZI ideology of the 30s.
The reasoning here just went A + B = Z, which is where arguments fall apart. You started with the Reformation, an event which changed the world, then abruptly shifted gears to "trying to change the world caused Napoleon," - which is an odd take because they got rid of their monarch and ended up with:

Image

...the same thing.

But where things got off track was going from "Marx and Engels had ideas similar to the French Revolutionaries" to the non-sequitur "people 80 years later had {radically different} ideas {derived from social Darwinism} in academia which led to THE NAZIS" ...THE NAZIS being a populist group who came to power precisely because despite his party only gaining 33% of the vote, Hitler was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg because Franz von Papen and the conservatives wanted an alliance to keep the Communist Party out of power.

Literally the very next month Hitler raided the Communist party HQ. A few days later the Reichstag fire happened, Hitler stated - and I quote - “This is a God-given signal,” blamed the communists, rounded up and tortured 4000 of them, and left their seats in the Reichstag empty to remove opposition. And then invaded France. Pinning that on Karl Marx & Robespierre doesn't really add up.
The christian ideology at least offers allowances for a Perfect Law carried out imperfectly (if not malevolently) by imperfect stewards. How those stewards are corrected and selected has been openly debated for 100s of years. These checks and balances aren't new.
I would humbly submit that Perfection is perhaps not on the menu here.

The Perfect Law states that if you're fighting a guy, then your wife tries to stop it by grabbing your balls, you are required to cut off her hand without pity. Deuteronomy 25: 11-12

If you sit somewhere a woman on her period has sat, even if it's perfectly clean, you are spiritually polluted and must take a shower (watch out on the bus). Leviticus 15: 19-21

One absolutely must not wear clothes made of both wool and linen at the same time. Leviticus 19: 19

The Perfect Law states that if your wife cheats on you, a priest has to make her drink water mixed with dirt from the temple floor, and put a curse on her so that her next pregnancy is a miscarriage. Numbers 5:11-31

If you ever have a slave, and you declare them free, but the slave doesn't want to go free because he likes hanging out with you, you have to pierce his ear through with an awl and then he becomes yours forever. Exodus 21: 5-6

You are not allowed to ever eat fat. Sorry America. Leviticus 3:17

In addition, you are statutorily banned from eating the following:

Eagles
Ospreys
Vultures - Standard, Bearded and Egyptian varieties
Ravens
Kites
Owls - Both little and great varieties
Night Hawks (Day Hawks = OK)
Cuckoos
Cormorants
Storks
Swans
Pelicans
Herons

...and bats. Absolutely no bats. Looking at you, Ozzy. Leviticus 11: 13-19

I think it's okay to accept that human culture has evolved and that we have a free will for a reason.
What are the inherent checks of Liberalism? I'm sure there are 10,000 answers from 10,000 different academics who will write 10,000 reasons but won't ever be held accountable for any of them. Bloody revolution seems to be the recurring behavior when the children of these talk-heavy Liberals cannot accomplish their grand aspirations. Liberalism enjoys the excuse of "but that wasn't True Liberalism" which it borrowed from religion.
This might be a good time to tell you that the United States is a liberal democracy.. Like, the standard bearer for liberal democracy.
Liberalism enjoys the "free marketplace of ideas" which it borrowed from religion too.
[/quote]

You remember that one time a few responses ago when Giordano Bruno got burned at the stake for believing there was more than one solar system?
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Others here have gone deeper into the proverbial weeds than I'm frankly qualified to, but I will take a moment to respond to one significant item:
DDDP wrote:You've cut off the knees of your own argument by lumping all "conservatives" and "righties" into one group, which creates the appearance of a "contradiction" that you can trumpet over.
Assuming that you haven't seen the posts on similar topics I've been making in this thread for months if not years, allow me to re-present my opening line from the post you replied to, with a bit of added boldface:
Some additional fun facts about the afore-cited "Dominionism" rapidly becoming mainstream on the right, with precious little resistance:
In case you honestly need me to say this even without being familiar with my views, no, I do not posit that every "conservative" or "rightie" actually believes in a God-given obligation to undermine any and all laws that somehow run counter to the Bible's edicts (to be perfectly blunt, I'm of the mindset that many, if not most, of those who do profess such beliefs only do so to avail themselves of an additional avenue to justify otherwise-unacceptable behavior on their part, in much the same manner as "religious exceptions" to the COVID vaccine and only the COVID vaccine).

What I do posit, with a great deal of confidence, is that an overwhelming majority of those who instead like to fancy themselves "reasonable" or "moderate" or "centrist" or "common-sense" conservatives, religious and not, would much rather tolerate, or implicitly support ("they have a right to their opinion and to explore their options"), this scorched-earth undermining of the "law and order" they claim to revere than actually express even minimal concern about it, let alone opposition to it, because even if they let others do most of the legwork they still plan to benefit from it in the end (even if said benefits begin and end with "totally owned the libtards"), and nothing else much seems to matter to them.

As I've said many times before, if there's some major groundswell of conservatives, anywhere at all, from leadership to the rank-and-file, openly saying "this is unacceptable" that I've missed (sorry, but The Lincoln Project doesn't count :lol:), feel free to clue me in; all I see from here, from top to bottom with very few (and all but certainly excommunicated) exceptions, is a whole lot of very self-satisfied finger-twiddling.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Randorama »

BryanM wrote:
I am acquainted with nerds/geeks in their late '40s that might be excited about this meta thing, though.
I've seen quite a few people online hyped about it for some reason and I'm always like ".... it's just a chatroom. Go play an mmo or yahoo chess, bro." I can sympathize wanting to be excited about the future though. Me stanning the potential of E5 may indeed be nothing but hot air and wishful thinking.

The crypto bros I have no empathy with though. Their speculation instruments are worse than Magic the Gathering cards or stocks.
...I guess that it does have a gloss of "zee-rust" (or whatever the term is) that can appeal to a certain demographic. I admit that at some point I re-read a lot of classic SF (from the '40s onwards, even!), and the passion for a "future perfect" (i.e. a vision of the future that was over a long time ago) is something I can understand and sympathise with.

Hey, we are posting this on a forum stuck to software from 15 years ago, and we use it to celebrate games from 30, 40 years ago (20, for the modernist crowds). I can still grab a Neo-Geo game, smile at the "the future is now" logo, play Ryuichi Sakamoto's Neo Geo album and feel *completely* unapologetic about it.

...one more tangent and I'll shut up: I was really surprised that something like Cyberpunk 2077 happened. I played the dice-and-pencils version as a teen, so to my eyes the basic idea behind the whole game/fiasco/etc. was just pure zee-rust, for a lack of a better term (and tangent). I think that Mischief Maker made similar observations. And then there's steampunk, and here I will let the floor take the word and drive the tangent to offensive levels (Apologies; I will read some post-apocalyptic work from the '80s as a punishment, promise!).
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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