@ThunderClap said in #38:
> > Decreasing the number of Nurses & Teachers is another stupid result of the recent big billionaire bailout
You have not proven anything here, and while making claims without explicitly backing them up is sometimes acceptable, your entire game here is one line posts without elaboration.
Do you want us to research your point and make the case for you, and then interact with it?
Or would you like to make your case?
@CountDorio said in #39:
> @Decaffeinated
>
> That's a good point regarding Plato's point regarding idiots ruling when people lack interest in government. I guess I have 'some' interest but I have very peculiar beliefs such as egalitarianism and kindness and so forth. Not the stuff for Democrats and Republicans and since this is a two party system I utilize efforts in my local church and community. I leave politics for politicians which, though it is a republic, is a mob mentality republic though thank God we have some artificial boundary between decision making and total chaos with elected officials.
This is not bad.
The good intentions of the public are frequently hijacked by politicians and misused.
@m011235 said in #40:
> > > Because trump does not care about the people
> >
> > Absolutely tremendous observation. Game changing. I had never considered this as a possibility.
>
> Post #28 is the symmetrical opposite (with less verbosity) of your post #3:
>
> > and he truly feels beholden to the American people to some degree.
>
> That's called having an opinion, and they don't have to be game-changing to be shared in a public forum. That's what forums are precisely for. I am not sure at all that #3 is game-changing either.
>
> Furthermore, I'm genuinely curious on how you manage to know Trump's feelings. I can agree with you that Trump has a unique talent for communicating with a sizeable fraction of the US population (America is a continent btw). But I'd very much like to understand how you know how he does feel about them.
>
> For myself, I only have access to transcripts of his discourses and third party accounts of facts. One such account concerns the short-lived Trump University. In my opinion, it was a scam. Which makes me wonder, how can a person scam the very people he feels beholden to. One explanation could imply a psychological disorder. Another explanation could be simply that person does not care about said people.
>
> I conclude this mundane and ordinary post with another opinion. Trump is a smart person, who shuns ideologies, and whose behavior is governed by money.
(1) I see you are concerned that I am riding people too hard for making open-ended statements like that. Fair enough! But I would just insist that, in the context of things, my bearing is reasonable.
(2) I interpret his feelings using the Principle of Charity:
"The principle of charity is a philosophical concept that suggests interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational and favorable way possible, assuming their arguments are coherent and logical."
To interpret them in any other way is to invite absurdity and to basically not be engaging in food faith, IMO.
(3) Your last point about Trump being fundamentally non-ideological is an interesting one. I tend to think that people who operate even without an express ideology become ideological if they are consistent at all, so I do not think I agree, but I understand how from a narrower definition of ideology this makes perfect sense.
@Decaffeinated said in #43:
> (2) I interpret his feelings using the Principle of Charity:
>
> "The principle of charity is a philosophical concept that suggests interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational and favorable way possible, assuming their arguments are coherent and logical."
>
> To interpret them in any other way is to invite absurdity and to basically not be engaging in food faith, IMO.
This is interesting. When there's not much at stake, I agree that applying this principle can be necessary. For example, I'd say it is required for web forums like this one to remain civil and functioning. Worst thing that can happen is you're out smarted by being too charitable and you lose an argument in the off-topic forum, end of story.
But applying that principle towards powerful people is a very unwise thing to do. Let's say you're locked in a room with somebody who has a loaded gun, while you're unarmed. That person says: "I will protect you, because I care for you". Would I take those words at face value? Hell no.
Another example. The following can be read in another thread:
"He introduced protection laws for animals, gave people cheap and reliable vehicles, he took them out of the economy disaster. He loved Germany, their history, their people and wanted its country to be great. He genuinely did."
"He" is Hitler, and that poster is using said principle with him. Needless to say, taking powerful people words at face value is a recipe for disaster and, dare I say, undemocratic.
About (3), I was referring to political ideologies, so I make this clarification. Of course Trump has at least one ideology: money.
@m011235 said in #40:
> I can agree with you that Trump has a unique talent for communicating with a sizeable fraction of the US population (America is a continent btw). But I'd very much like to understand how you know how he does feel about them.
Only people from the US commonly, casually and officially utilize the demonym 'Americans'. People from Chile aren't saying this, they say their Chilean, etc. I'd estimate 99% of usage is people from the US, and the other 1% is split between people trying to be contrary saying it refers to non-US people too, and maybe .3% actually using it to refer to themselves outside the US.
@salmon_rushdie said in #45:
This is still an abuse of language. In France for example, "américain" was used too to refer to an USA inhabitant. But in the last years, "états-unien" (literally "united statesian") has been gaining traction because it is much more accurate.
In an alternate universe, suppose the demonym "human" is used to name the inhabitants of the USA. In the sentence "Nascar is a popular human motorsport", we'd obviously interpret "human" as "inhabitant of the USA" because "human" is so general, and 99% of the people who explicitely name themselves as such are from the USA. But still, that would be an abusive, and somewhat strange, use of that adjective.
Anyway, it's another topic, I think there's already one thread on that subject.
@m011235 said in #46:
> This is still an abuse of language. In France for example, "américain" was used too to refer to an USA inhabitant. But in the last years, "états-unien" (literally "united statesian") has been gaining traction because it is much more accurate.
>
> In an alternate universe, suppose the demonym "human" is used to name the inhabitants of the USA. In the sentence "Nascar is a popular human motorsport", we'd obviously interpret "human" as "inhabitant of the USA" because "human" is so general, and 99% of the people who explicitely name themselves as such are from the USA. But still, that would be an abusive, and somewhat strange, use of that adjective.
>
> Anyway, it's another topic, I think there's already one thread on that subject.
And I suppose you're also against the term Asian only referring to almost only east-asians, and practically never someone from say Israel?
@m011235 said in #44:
> > (2) I interpret his feelings using the Principle of Charity:
> >
> > "The principle of charity is a philosophical concept that suggests interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational and favorable way possible, assuming their arguments are coherent and logical."
> >
> > To interpret them in any other way is to invite absurdity and to basically not be engaging in food faith, IMO.
>
> This is interesting. When there's not much at stake, I agree that applying this principle can be necessary. For example, I'd say it is required for web forums like this one to remain civil and functioning. Worst thing that can happen is you're out smarted by being too charitable and you lose an argument in the off-topic forum, end of story.
>
> But applying that principle towards powerful people is a very unwise thing to do. Let's say you're locked in a room with somebody who has a loaded gun, while you're unarmed. That person says: "I will protect you, because I care for you". Would I take those words at face value? Hell no.
>
> Another example. The following can be read in another thread:
>
> "He introduced protection laws for animals, gave people cheap and reliable vehicles, he took them out of the economy disaster. He loved Germany, their history, their people and wanted its country to be great. He genuinely did."
>
> "He" is Hitler, and that poster is using said principle with him. Needless to say, taking powerful people words at face value is a recipe for disaster and, dare I say, undemocratic.
I am really pleased you appreciated the principle of charity that I brought up... It has been a guiding light in my discussion life.
But yeah, I do see certain limitations to it. There are psychopaths out there who do manipulate people, and we absolutely need to be cognizant of not feeding into it... But, having said that, I do nto see the case where Trump is actually doing anything along those lines. He isn't Hitler, period, and even the attempts to portray J6 as a coup have fallen completely flat on me. So, I just don't fully buy into it...!
And I would also point this out...
Hitler did initiate a plan of mass murder. The second this is included we simply learn something else about charismatic, evil leaders: they are often accompanied by plenty of "good" ideas.
This is very true of Communism, right - the Communist platform sounds like a utopia, but it tends to create dystopias. Just as such, the Messianic nationalism of megalomaniacs like Hitler create the exact same circumstances of suffering.
And hey, we are all free to view politicians very cynically. I hope that you continue to view Trump and other conservatives cynically, even though I am someone who tends to support them, because I feel that the skepticism towards politicians in general is a healthy thing.
> About (3), I was referring to political ideologies, so I make this clarification. Of course Trump has at least one ideology: money.
My coworker and I were talking about how on an international poll of human values, Koreans came out on top as one of the only nations putting money before seemingly everything else, including friends and family... The rationale was that "You can't even create a family without having money" (and our fertility rate is actually showing that), and another aspect to it is that your family may be miserable without any income on the side.
Of course, I do not accept this..! But people who have known intense poverty (as Koreans did in the 70s and before) tend to value wealth highly and to greatly favor any loss of it because it can mean the return of life as a tragedy for many people.
So... If the ideology centers around maximizing wealth, it can also be reinterpreted as a way of maximizing opportunities for happiness for people. Yes, obviously, happiness is a choice that you have ot make daily, and it transcends money, but absolute poverty tends to create unhappiness.
@salmon_rushdie said in #47:
> And I suppose you're also against the term Asian only referring to almost only east-asians, and practically never someone from say Israel?
I have a slight impression you really want to argue here about an en-passant, off-topic comment.
Besides, you're drifting further into off-topic territory. I'd be very much surprised if a significant portion of Israeli identify as Asians. In contrast, people from South America do identify as Americans.
Questions for you:
- is "European" used to name the inhabitants of one particular country of said continent
- is "African" used to name the inhabitants of one particular country of said continent
- is "Asian" used to name the inhabitants of one particular country of said continent
- is "Oceanian" used to name the inhabitants of one particular country of said continent
- is "American" used to name the inhabitants of one particular country of said continent
Hint: all questions but for one have "no" as the answer. One question has the answer "by some but fortunately not others who know better".
In my not insignificant experience, in common administrative, academic parlance a "professional degree" is the term used to distinguish a J.D. or an M.D. (sometimes called "professional degrees") from a Ph.D. (often simply called a "doctorate") despite the fact that all three degrees usually include the "doctor" designation and typically take far longer than an undergraduate degree to earn.
I can't and don't claim to be all-knowing, but I don't recall ever hearing an undergraduate degree of any sort called a "professional degree," with the possible exception that a more-lengthy-than-usual undergraduate pathway has sometimes led toward what some call a "professional engineer's" credential.
If undergraduate credentials in nursing or teaching are called "professional degrees" why not call undergraduate credentials in business or math or accounting or science or ..... and so forth .... "professional degrees" as well?
Indeed, if we wish to hunt for reasons to be upset over terminology, let's point out that one can make music or psychology or art or sports science one's "profession" as well -- from time to time with a successful and impressive result!
It's fascinating to come to the internet each day and find some presentation -- often stated quiet briefly -- of the Latest Outrage -- only to watch it be replaced in a few hours with something new to stir the pot.
Of course, each new Outrage doesn't disappear completely. It lingers in the stew of simmering talking points, adding its little bit of flavor to the political repast.
For example, we get repeatedly told from time to time that Trump serves only "billionaires," which is a somewhat amusing claim given how many of the wealthy have been asked to support, and have supported, Progressive candidates. Where did the reportedly more-than-a-billion-dollars spent on Mrs. Harris's 2024 campaign come from? None of it from the wealthy?
And among the 100,000 (approximately) people killed yearly in the United States by imported, illegal drugs -- the very same people Trump is trying hard to save -- how many are "billionaires" ? And among those saved from death by the end of conflicts around the world that Trump has worked to stop -- how many were "billionaires" ? And of those helped by reducing taxes on tips and overtime -- how many were "billionaires" ?
I guess some find the stew useful. After all, people won't replace incumbents at the voting booth unless the people are upset! So, each day something upsetting seems to be pumped out! And some people seem happy to offer the stew to others, repeatedly. Daily. And who knows, it might just work!
After all, many people are far more receptive to hearing complaints directed at others than hearing tough but good advice!