politics

Why do the rich spend so lavishly instead of helping those in need?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-do-the-rich-spend-so-lavishly-instead-of-helping-out-those-in-need/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

…because they can, and because they’re being rewarded for their success in accruing large sums of money with more money by the puppets they pay to play the role of a government representative of the people.

Why should they care about helping those in need if that fundamentally changes nothing about the existence of those in need?

Why should they cut back on their trips across the globe for their favourite ice cream to ease someone’s suffering for only a few moments while they continue to suffer throughout their lives?

Isn’t it just easier to let the suffering die so that they can be done with their misery once and for all?

Don’t we shoot horses when they break their legs?

https://youtu.be/qsKQiVJkEvI?si=gfT7KT5PNSX-G4rJ

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) ⭐ 7.8 | Drama

The real problem here is the concept of altruism. In an economically just world, altruism would be moot.

We already know that the executive boardroom is populated with the same density of psychopaths as a prison. Yet, we somehow expect they will be charitable enough with their money to sacrifice their luxuries to temporarily ease the pain of those suffering from unmet basic needs.

As individuals, they can only accomplish a little of anything.

As a group, however, we can ensure our system holds them accountable for their fair share of contributions to the world in which they disproportionately benefit from its bounties.

If they were held accountable for how they were at our height of middle-class growth, they would be more successful at helping all in need in proportion to their contributions as a whole because no one would benefit more or less from an act of altruism.

By returning tax rates on the wealthy to an Eisenhower level of progressive taxation, replete with the rules restricting corporations from benefitting from loopholes that permit them to escape a tax burden, we would resolve the needs of those in need on a systemic level.

We would not need to rely on a delusional expectation of the mega-wealthy to voluntarily practice austerity as has often been imposed upon the little people.

Have a close look at what happened to tax rates in the 1920s. That era was called the “Roaring 20s” because it had a booming economy due to the wealthy having much more disposable income. The same thing happened in the 1980s when Reagan dropped tax rates. The economy boomed briefly, and everyone loved Reagan because of it.

In both cases, those boom periods were finite and led, in the first case, to a worldwide war, while in the second case of Reagan’s tax cuts, it led to the “Great Recession.”

That’s what happens when large sums of money are released “out to the wild” for the peasants to get their trickle-down benefits. In the first case, that form of “voodoo economics” was called “Horse and Sparrow” economics because the Sparrow would benefit from all the food the horse hogged and shat out the other end.

That’s what trickle-down has always been. The little people get what the wealthy shit out as waste for them, and we’re supposed to find ways to live in dignity with that disgusting degree of indignity mounted onto our lives while we labour to make the rich wealthy.

It is precisely this dynamic that has been responsible for every social meltdown in history.

Meanwhile, if you look at that tax table, you’ll see the higher taxes resulted in the most tremendous growth ever for the middle class while the most significant number of people were lifted out of poverty.

None of it occurred because we relied on the generosity of greedy people but because we had our system tuned to maximize the benefits of a capitalist system.

“Trickle-down economies” are also called “boom and bust economies” because they go through cycles of recession and growth. The wealthy class loves this dynamic as the little people must suffer through periods of belt-tightening austerity. For the little people, austerity means having to go without essential needs being met, while for the wealthy class, austerity means excellent deals on going out of business sales. This is where they make their most significant cash grabs.

When small businesses thrive in a booming economy, they grow in value and expand while taking on more debt. That debt eventually crushes them when the cycle of a bear economy rears its ugly head. Many are forced to sell or go personally bankrupt and become devastated entirely for life. Many accept giving up the business that they grew out of love for what they were doing and allowed “an Elon Musk” to step in and claim credit for all their years of hard work while benefitting from that work to win humungous profits when the economy turned back into a bull.

It’s a class warfare game they have been playing with us as they corrupt the capitalist economy like it were a casino, and they’re the house that always wins, no matter how lucky any of the little people are.

This is why the guillotines come out whenever the little people figure out how badly rigged the game is against them.

The rich spend lavishly because they can and because they have rigged the game in their favour to specifically allow them to spend our money while programming the gullible among us to run interference for them as they victim-shame their fellow little people and accuse them of all the disgusting behaviours exhibited by the wealthy class, such as accusing the working class of wanting to steal the “hard-earned money of the rich” instead of demanding the money they stole returned to their victims.

The Disturbing Link Between Psychopathy And Leadership

Why are there more psychopaths in boardrooms?

Some care about those in need, but about 20% don’t, and they make it impossible to change the system because they invest billions in making it unfair while the rest reap the benefits of their corrupt activities. As a whole, they intentionally aim to strip the little people of our value precisely so they can spend gobs of money feeding their egos.

Due to their unrestrained behaviour, our species is on a trajectory toward extinction. Should we not push back on their greed and restore economic sanity, we won’t be able to continue at this pace, and we’ll be so severely humbled as a species that we may never recover, even if we survive the naive stupidity of our time.

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Anyone wishing to engage in a dialogue on UBI is invited to participate in an open space on Quora dedicated to the issue. You may need to register for a Quora account — It’s free, and I don’t get any kickbacks from it. This space is intended purely for stimulating discussion on the topic — there are no hidden surprises beyond possibly needing to join Quora if you want to post comments. Visitors to the site can read the content without registration hassles.

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Who were the big winners and losers in the 2024 presidential election?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://donewiththebullshit.quora.com/Who-were-the-big-winners-and-losers-in-the-2024-presidential-election-3“

The biggest losers are the MAGAts.

They don’t see it yet.

By the second year of his term, they’ll start to wonder what’s going on.

By the time the next election rolls around, they’ll begin seeing it’s no longer “business as usual.”

They will begin to realize that he meant what he said when he said no one would have to worry about elections any longer.

That’s when the fear will creep into them… the last of them because many will have already undergone harsh awakenings when discovering that prices have skyrocketed while employment protections have vanished. They will freak out when they find out they cannot count on retirement as they struggle with minimal incomes to survive on bare minimums. The entire nation will plunge into a recession that could very well become a depression due to environmental and regulatory mismanagement that will make the Bush housing crisis and the “Great Recession” pale by comparison.

Drug prices will skyrocket, as will medical bankruptcies. Millions will lose their healthcare as employers will cut back on employee expenses, and nothing will prevent them from converting the entire working class into a slavery system worse than it is now. The economy will radically shrink through their isolationist approach to international politics, and whoever remains will fight their neighbours for scraps.

That’s not the worst thing for them to lose, though.

No.

The worst and most profound loss they will experience is the compassion of their fellow citizens who warned them.

When they begin crying foul, they’ll find no sympathy.

There will be no quarter for them. No sympathetic shoulder will await them when they realize they’ve hit rock bottom.

They will finally get the disdain they’ve consistently demonstrated toward their fellow citizens for decades.

They will find their hatreds finally reciprocated in the harshest of terms with a simple “we told you so.”

They will find doors of sympathy slamming shut on them because they won’t be the only ones suffering from their hateful motivations. The entire nation will learn to hate MAGAts on such a visceral level that an escalation of antagonism will become the norm for the following unpredictable number of years — possibly the entire next century.

They’re going to learn how the fabricated hatred they’ve been displaying toward their fellow citizens is nothing like genuinely earned hatred.

When they finally realize the profundity of what they have lost, it will be experienced as a prolonged moment of debilitating horror that transfixes them. They will mourn the loss of a nation they professed to love. They will be overcome by paralyzing guilt accompanying the realization that they killed it by their ignorant and envious “stick-it-to-the-libs” attitudes, their hateful projections, and their self-fulfilling prophecies of doom they feared were to be caused by their fellow citizens.

They will have only themselves to blame. They will become this century’s brownshirts in the aftermath of the destruction they wrought against their people, neighbours, and fellow citizens. The entire world will regard them like drug addicts who have hit rock bottom and can’t be trusted ever again.

When they finally achieve their moment of harrowing clarity, it will be too late to turn back the clock and regain the stature of world power they enjoyed. The entire world will have marginalized the nation while permanently considering it a threat to global peace and security instead of its protector.

They will discover such a profound degree of shame accompanying a sense of loneliness and being lost and adrift in a massive ocean surrounded by the enemies they made of their fellow citizens that many will turn to suicide… and worse, no one will care if that’s what they choose for themselves. Many will feel the same relief they did when Rush Limbaugh finally stopped polluting this Earth with his hateful noise.

It will take all of the rest of this century for Americans to recover their dignity.

Why doesn’t the government give everyone 1 million each to save people from poverty?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-doesn-t-the-government-just-give-everyone-1-million-each-to-save-people-from-poverty/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

That’s an utterly ridiculous idea for many reasons. Probably the best example for showing how utterly absurd this idea is is not the devastating impact it would have on the economy.

The best example of why this idea represents a monolithic level of naivety is what happens when people win lotteries.

Massive lifelong windfalls are often mismanaged because people have no experience managing large sums and overestimate how far that will take them.

It’s much better to adopt the approach the wealthy class adopted with their children.

Providing people with enough to meet their needs until they can manage their affairs intelligently.

If they are responsible and resourceful, they will find they won’t need to rely on their entire inheritance to survive when it becomes available.

We are all part of a system into which we were born and collectively form a social contract by which our cumulative efforts guarantee the health of the whole.

Since we produce more than we consume, society is accountable to all its members to ensure everyone benefits enough to meet their basic needs.

The government should not participate in and create upward wealth redistribution schemes but spread the cumulative wealth to ensure people can survive with dignity.

We are at a point where it is not only feasible but inherently a superior form of economic management than we have in place now.

It will become ever more clear to ever more people as we march headlong in our transition to a fully automated society and entire classes of jobs vanish to be replaced by robots and AI.

Creating a sustainable lifeline gives people the space to be innovative because people are naturally creative problem solvers. Allowing people to determine their life course based on their interests is the quickest and most effective way to motivate them to invent new solutions to innumerable problems we all collectively face daily.

The solution is not a windfall because that is entirely counterproductive and a short-lived benefit with dramatically adverse effects on our economy that would radically increase poverty.

The solution to our economic and social issues is to provide for the basic survival needs determined by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Food, shelter, clothing, security, and the ability to invest in oneself to build a future with dignity for oneself and one’s family.

Most people’s needs are modest and don’t require a radical sum of money to transform their lives without effort magically.

Most people rise to the challenge of building a better life if they can access systems instead of being barred from access because of prohibitive costs.

For example, instead of giving away money to drain into a sinkhole, provide free access to education, and people will take advantage of that to create better opportunities for themselves on their own and without any prodding.

The difference between thinking of supportive solutions and cynical solutions like this question is between a disparagingly misanthropic view of humanity and one’s neighbours and a caring and supportive view of one’s fellow citizens as human beings simply trying to live their best lives.

The sooner we can cure ourselves of this wholly destructive attitude toward each other that we have allowed to fester and grow in society, the sooner we can progress in making this a better world for everyone.

This wholly cynical view of humanity is cultivated mainly within the MAGAt crowd. It is deliberately cultivated by a small percentage of sociopathic billionaires who routinely dehumanize people and pit us all against each other so they can continue stripping us all of our dignity while ripping us off by the tens of trillions of dollars to send us into poverty and destitution while they laugh at our misery.

Why does the Republican Party attract the uneducated?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-Republican-Party-attract-the-uneducated/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

They use slogans and soporifics to reinforce tribal associations and loyalties while motivating them to unite in solidarity over perceived common causes.

“Low taxes”
“Small government”
“Fiscally conservative”
“Save the unborn babies”

They use slogans to ignite passions driven by anger, envy, fear, and hatred to motivate them to act in solidarity against perceived enemies.

“Voter fraud”
“Nanny State”
“Migrant violence”
“Killing unborn babies”
“Immigrants stealing jobs”

As long as they can convey their ideas within a few syllables and tweak people’s emotions while doing so, they never have to bother with nuance, insight, context, complexity within grey areas, or even hypocrisy, for that matter.

None of their positions are consistent in any way. They can’t be, but it doesn’t matter to the uneducated because they don’t want to parse their slogans for meaning. They want to remember them well enough to hurl them as weapons, while the extent of their political arguments amounts to the level of a cheerleader for a sports team.

They hate the “nanny state” but demand draconian government measures to rule their lives.

They want a government that’s so small it fits inside every woman’s vagina and monitors everyone’s lives with Big Brother oversight without realizing how that bloats the government. They demand government expansion to incorporate unnecessary and paranoia-quelling functions that increase the problems that would otherwise not exist without their efforts to make issues manifest as problems.

Trans people pose no problem to society, but because they don’t fit preconceived notions of what is an acceptable definition of a human, they’re rendered as threats without any justification for the unimagined threat they allegedly are. Ask them how another’s marriage impacts them, and they immediately resort to abstractions rather than concrete reasons why their personal lives are threatened. Wisps of the imagination threaten them because that’s the natural consequence of ignorance.

They want low taxes and think it’s only fair to lower taxes on the wealthy. They believe the rich people they envy will trickle down their wealth to them and improve their lives because they both hate intelligence and revere what they interpret as intelligence in the accrual of riches. They can’t discern between the two because they can see wealthy people all around them who are just as intelligent and under-educated as they are. That prompts them to believe they’re smart enough to become just as successful. In this case, they’re not far from the truth but overlook variables like privilege, luck, and association as primary influences of wealth acquisition.

Fortunately, the primary solution to the problems they cause in society is already presented within the question. Education.

We can improve our education systems so that people are not intimidated by education simply by teaching them to love education.

It’s not that daunting a challenge.

Much of education is a process of rote remembering rather than teaching critical thinking skills.

Education should equip all learners with the appropriate attitude of education as a lifelong process. Once people understand and embrace the value of an education-oriented mind, they become less prone to being led around like lost sheep and begin to parse information in greater depth. Once one learns to love education, they also learn to love nuance because they appreciate the subtle shifts in perspective the mostly invisible aspects of communication convey.

For example, people are fascinated by and love learning how scams are set up to exploit the naive because the insights they get improve their sense of security. Once one knows how a grift works, one feels less intimidated and more secure when encountering a grifter.

Most people no longer fear Three-card Monty because they know how the game works and often partake for the sole pleasure of spotting the trick moment that swaps out the card to fool people.

The problems in today’s world are far more daunting than a simple game, and the complexities we have to deal with in modern living are overwhelming to the undereducated. Without bringing them up to speed, we’ll see an increasing division between those who are privileged enough to gain a proper education and those who resent them for being deprived of life skills they’re daunted by but innately understand are necessary advantages in today’s world.

They will often mistrust the educated because they can’t figure out the game being played, and the paranoia of being manipulated by someone whose education intimidates them drives them away from the potential assistance they can gain from them. It’s much easier for the under-educated to affiliate themselves with others who echo their struggles. It’s much easier for the under-educated to trust someone who speaks in the same simple language they do because it makes them feel like life hasn’t left them behind.

Until we improve our education systems such that education is universally viewed as a fundamental support for a stable nation and make it universally accessible at all levels, we will continue to struggle with the impact of our failure to equip our citizens with the skills necessary to develop a fully manifested democracy. As long as we continue to abandon the under-educated to the wolves, there will always be a political party seeking power through the exploitation of their ignorance.

Why is the American left so obsessed with abortion?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why is the American left so obsessed with abortion when contraception is so freely available and easy to apply?”
Other answers (about 55 at the time of this posting) to this question can be read via the following link: “https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-American-left-so-obsessed-with-abortion-when-contraception-is-so-freely-available-and-easy-to-apply“

People have given incredibly poignant answers to this disgusting question, but you don’t care what they have to say. It’s all just rhetoric to you. It means nothing to you because you don’t have to personally deal with the reality of being denied access to life-saving treatment.

Your fake profile name already suggests you’re only interested in pushing buttons and watching the left get triggered.

The suffering of others holds no weight for you unless it becomes a part of your experience.

That’s just how you are… but that’s not what’s so disgusting about this question.

It’s horrifying that you’ve been so broken that you’re okay with contributing to the murder of innocent women… but that’s also not what’s disgusting about your question.

Have you noticed how all the answers aren’t actually about abortion?

They’re all about saving lives and explaining how important it is to have access to healthcare.

But you don’t care about that, just like you don’t care about the lives you’re responsible for ending with your attitude toward abortion.

No.

Your question proves you revel in all that.

You are okay with women dying because you believe that’s justice.

It’s just righteousness to you that they die.

At least that’s what you want to believe even though you struggle to accept that, and your doubt shows through the cracks in an attempt at an innocent facade in your question.

You ask why people on the left are obsessed with abortion, but they’re not.

Not one of these answers shows an obsession with abortion.

They show concern for life.

Don’t you find it strange that the alleged “pro-life” people who are supposed to value life don’t value it at all?

Yet, somehow, they have focused on forcing women to undergo a full birth in all cases because they hate abortions… while they claim to be defending a child’s life — as they ignore living children dying every five seconds due to preventable causes. (That’s at least ten-to-fifteen children that will have died in the time you spent reading this answer.) You blatantly lie about caring about life, and you lie in this question about who’s doing the obsessing over abortion.

It’s not the left who’s obsessed with abortion.

You “pro-lifers” have been obsessed with abortion since Roe v. Wade was instituted.

Once that protection for women was instituted — and to be clear, it was instituted to protect women from dying unnecessarily — the American left stopped thinking about abortion. Women were getting the treatment they needed… so there was no point in having to think about it any longer.

The anti-abortion crowd didn’t stop thinking about it, though. They became even more obsessed with it and hunkered down on a fifty-year strategy to repeal the law and ban abortion.

Throughout all that time, they’ve never bothered to learn why abortions happened. They have maintained precisely the same depraved attitude you demonstrate within this question.

You sincerely believe abortion is just another form of contraception, and worse, you don’t care what the reality is. You mock the nightmare of having to undergo an abortion procedure while comparing it to the contraception you’re also blocking access to.

You’re obsessed with women who undergo abortion procedures because you believe they’re trying to weasel their way out of unwanted pregnancy… and you assume that’s not supposed to be permitted… even if they’re rape victims and not the whores you want to believe they are.

That’s what makes you evil… your hypocrisy, your iniquity, and your insistence that your disparaging fiction is reality without caring in the least about the horrifying experiences women suffer through as you gleefully kill them with your indifference.

That’s right… you are a murderer, just as if you pulled the trigger on a gun to end their lives by your hand. Your support of denying women the life-saving treatment they need means you have, according to this quick AI summary, been responsible for the unnecessary deaths of almost two thousand women as a consequence of your obsession with abortion.

Your obsession with abortion is responsible for almost the number of lives lost on 9/11.

You’re worse than a terrorist because you behave as if you are protecting lives instead of destroying them and committing manslaughter with your depraved ignorance.

No one on the left is obsessed with abortions, but you already knew that. You want to wipe your hands clean of the evil that you and your ilk have been perpetuating… you know what you’re doing is wrong, and you’re having fun with it… and that’s what makes this question and you so inhumanly disgusting.

What are the implications of a two-party system on democracy in the United States?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora and can also be accessed via “https://donewiththebullshit.quora.com/What-are-the-implications-of-a-two-party-system-on-democracy-in-the-United-States-1”

Well, that’s simple… Gridlock.

You’ve been watching it in action for a couple of decades now.

Whatever one party initiates, the other dismantles.

The fine arts of negotiation and compromise no longer exist because one party views that as submission while the other regards that zero-sum game attitude toward cooperation as toxic and prone to counterproductive and even destructive initiatives that create problems without solving any.

For example, there is no rational justification for abortion restrictions. The entire issue is a non-issue stoked up to an irrationally unhinged fervour based on two misanthropic lies, that abortions are a lazy excuse for birth control by whores, and that they are acts of murdering babies. Neither perception resembles anything remotely true or anywhere near accurate renditions of reality.

They are lies stoked for the simple reason of creating political alignments on the vector of hating one’s fellow citizens. Since about 80% of the population is against abortion legislation, it’s been hijacked by the tyranny of a minority and leveraged as a power grab for a political party. The overblown abortion issue is a political wedge and a fundamental betrayal of a democratic system. This would not be possible in a multiparty system.

A two-party system is a recipe for conflict. In contrast, multiparty systems have been denigrated as being incapable of progress. The reality is that multiparty systems encourage negotiation and compromise among varying ideologies that more accurately reflect the expressions of individual beliefs than the aggregated pools of power occurring within a duopoly.

Another major disadvantage of a two-party system is that it limits the spread of investments the ownership class requires while choosing campaigns to finance. It’s a win-win system for them because it’s the cheapest way to hedge their bets. They can’t afford to spread their campaign investments to many parties in a multiparty system. So, their influence in politics is significantly diluted, and the will of the people is much more accurately represented by the diversity of ideological voices in Congress.

A further, much more subtle, and arguably the most profound impact on society is the homogenization of public thinking through aggregating issues into bundles. All nuance is bred out of each issue as it becomes incorporated into a party package to be accepted wholesale — like a cable deal where you can’t opt for individual strategies or solutions. It’s an all-or-nothing approach to addressing political issues that pressures the electorate to reduce the political process to the level of cheering for one’s party, like a sports team.

A two-party system cannot but lead a nation toward escalating internal strife as party positions become increasingly polarized. One party may successfully drag the other party into its ideology. However, that flexibility and willingness to accommodate the other can only go so far before the opposing party must run backwards in the opposite direction. That’s where the DNC is now, after decades of capitulating to a fascist rightwing leadership banking the complete corruption of a democratic system on the corruptibility of their opposition.

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/wednesday-september-23rd-meet-middle

BONUS — Reposted from Facebook

A Worthwhile Share, Given How Close D-Day is:

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Can Kamala Harris prove she worked at McDonalds?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “https://www.quora.com/As-Donald-Trump-can-not-prove-his-accusation-that-Kamala-Harris-lied-about-working-at-McDonald-s-can-she-prove-she-has-and-should-she/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1”

Out of curiosity, do you not find it odd that Donald Trump is focused on this issue?

He is someone who has become well-known for breaking records for lying about so many things, ranging from relatively benign self-aggrandizement to malignant acts of manslaughter during a pandemic while encouraging people to dismiss the severity of a virus that killed millions worldwide.

His lies while in office killed hundreds of thousands of people, while his continued lies threaten even more lives.

Stack all of this up with one statement Kamala Harris has made about her experience as a teenager — a widespread experience for teenagers everywhere. A LOT of teenagers enter the world of work through the fast food industry. (Full disclosure — I worked for two years in a McDonalds restaurant from 15–16.)

It’s beyond a common experience and is the kind of experience that contributes absolutely nothing political toward one’s future beyond whatever one learns from the experience and money one earns. It may open some doors to other employment as a youth or young adult, but it contributes almost nothing tangible toward a long-term professional career — much less to politics.

Her claim is a one-off comment that shows how she can connect with average people living average lives. That’s about the extent of the impact that claim has.

“I’m normal. I’m like almost everyone else. I’m not weird like some people are.”

That’s the extent of the impact of her statement.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump tries to capitalize on his doubt that she had a “normal upbringing” without the privilege he’s benefited from his birth lottery. Nothing about her somewhat average background is a mystery to the public. Still, somehow, she’s being challenged, not only by Trump on this claim but also by his army of supporters who somehow believe this invalidates her candidacy.

Meanwhile, he tries to pass off a lie that he cares about ordinary, working-class people while selling cheap running shoes at horribly inflated prices or $100,000.00 watches that his contract says he has no obligation to deliver on. How exactly does that serve ordinary, working-class people? It doesn’t. It’s a money laundering scheme in which his buddy Vladimir can dump millions into his campaign war chest without tracing his collusion back to an enemy nation.

How exactly does the claim by Kamala Harris, even if it were a lie, stack up with lies told by a lifelong grifter hated by so many people worldwide for his destructive behaviour that he has stacked up a record number of lawsuits against him?

He brags about ripping people off, and somehow, people want to believe that Kamala Harris’ claim of working at McDonald’s as a teenager is enough to disqualify her as a candidate for a job in which the current administration she has been a part of has shown itself beyond capable of fixing the mess that Donald Trump left behind that will take decades to repair.

Ask yourself why people would care even if she did lie. It isn’t because such a lie is something they can’t tolerate because they tolerate life-destroying lies, so why would a benign lie like this matter in the least to people?

The problem here has nothing to do with Kamala Harris and everything to do with people who pretend to be patriots while behaving in the most treasonously hateful manner toward their fellow citizens every day.

Kamala Harris does not need to “prove” anything because she has already proven herself well beyond more capable than a lying grifter who has been deemed the worst president in American history.

What should be happening right now, if Americans have any self-respect and pride in their history and their status on the world stage, is for Donald Trump to be laughed off every stage he stands on instead of being entertained like drunk, old Uncle Fogarty. This embarrassing idiot decides, at a town hall, to play multiple versions of Ava Maria for 40 minutes instead of answering questions.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/wWwD5WBnqbwdvLeN/https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-music-town-hall-1.7352277

After all of this, how can whatever job Kamala Harris did or did not do as a kid matter to anyone in the least?

The truth is that it doesn’t matter to anyone. They have to make a stink about something because the corrupt nature of politics today is that although it’s supposed to be about solving common problems, a significant proportion of the population treats politics as a war game against one’s fellow citizens.

Until (some) people learn to work together with their fellow citizens (as diverse and different from themselves as they may be) instead of demonizing their “honourable opposition,” the only direction the nation will head toward is another civil war.

I’m sure even these guys don’t want to be in a literal war with their fellow citizens.

How do you know if you are right and others are wrong?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-know-if-you-are-right-and-others-are-wrong/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

The first place to start is to give up the notion that being “right” or “wrong” matters more than being accurate, informed, and knowledgeable.

“Right” and “wrong” are egotistical expressions that either stroke one’s sense of self or dismantle one’s self-confidence. Neither is helpful to oneself, others, or the issues at play.

As I often find myself checking out profiles to gain context into the querent’s mind, I did so with yours and am pleased to discover that you’re already on the right track.

Fundamentally, we’re all fumbling about in the dark and clueless, even about things we think we know. The worst thing we can do is believe we are “right” because that perspective contributes nothing to one’s growth and kills one’s ability to explore beyond that point.

No matter how “right” we might feel about something or how complete we think our knowledge of something, there is always something to learn about it that will be new to us. There is always a different perspective on that thing that we have not yet encountered.

If we could all adopt the perspective of being clueless, our world would experience far fewer conflicts because people would be more open to the perspectives of others.

Unfortunately, we live in a world built upon the foundation of exploiting insecurity at all levels throughout society — whether selling hair products or climbing corporate ladders. Insecurity has been weaponized as a tool of manipulation for personal gain over and above benefiting society as a whole.

We have never been more fortunate than we are today when confronted by the limits of our knowledge and understanding. Solving the problem of being unsure about one’s position means simply whipping out one’s means of accessing a comprehensive knowledge base to conduct basic research to verify if one’s position contradicts facts.

There is no real point in engaging with others to determine if one’s compass setting on knowledge is on true north by triangulating it with the settings of others because one is just engaging in an egotistical fencing match at that point. Online “debates” are often more about egotistical masturbation than they are about deriving an objective apprehension of issues to determine pragmatic resolutions.

Sharing information obtained through research efforts is far more rewarding and less prone to conflict over subjectively defined notions of being “right” or “wrong.”

One can still certainly derive flawed conclusions on matters, but that’s also a function of incomplete information that may be deemed “wrong.” Adding to one’s information base is less about determining “right” or “wrong” and more about ensuring the completeness of knowledge in a subject domain.

Knowing the difference in a dynamic with someone else on this level is essentially determined by whether or not the critic of one’s knowledge adds to one’s information base or disparages one’s person as a reaction to the information conveyed.

To directly answer your question, after all the verbiage I packed into this long-winded answer, is that you will know by the content of your critics’ arguments.

You can always deem yourself “not wrong” if the other party adds nothing to your position. If they can add valuable information to expand your knowledge base, you can still consider yourself “not wrong” while learning to be “more right” by their contribution.

This is how you can preserve your superior perspective of evolved humility by remaining confident in being clueless.

Congratulations on achieving a higher level of awareness than most of us monkeys ever attain throughout our very challenging lives.

Cheerios.

Can Trump-haters admit that his multi-million dollar donation to hurricane relief efforts is a good thing?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Question for all you Trump-haters — Can you at least admit that Donald Trump’s multi-million dollar personal donation to hurricane relief efforts, and the $7 million raised through his and Jason Aldean’s joint effort, are a good thing?”

I have a better question.
How can you possibly believe anything he claims?

  • He taught his kids how to steal money from kids dying from cancer.
  • He claimed to forgo his salary as President and spent over $100 million of taxpayer dollars on golfing. The annual wage of a US president is $400 thousand. He spent more than four times the salary he allegedly claimed to reject in four years.
  • He profited from charging taxpayers for the residency of Secret Service at Mara Lago because he refused to stay in the Whitehouse to the tune of $2 million taxpayer dollars. He insisted they stay at his residence and charged them for being there to protect him. Taxpayers paid not only for their salaries but for the profits he made, which constitute the total amount of the four years his salary as POTUS cost taxpayers.
  • He claims to be a billionaire when trying to impress people but sells over-priced junk products to the poor people he claims to be in support of.
  • He’s a convicted felon in a world where charges alone are enough for most people to convict the recipient of charges who automatically believe everything they say is a lie. People still believe Johnny Depp lied and Amber Heard was an innocent waif — even after learning she defecated on his bed. He was convicted on 34 counts and should be rotting behind bars right now, and you believe his words at face value.
  • The Washington Post has a 3-year-old article on Trump making 30,573 false or misleading claims during his tenure in office. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/ I understand how easy it might be for you to wave your hand and call it fake news as if they pulled that number out of a hat, but that’s not the case at all. Those incidents are verified by various fact-checking organizations that have taken the time to tally all his lies. Anyone like Trump can lie as often as he wants but never backs up those lies with evidence. Meanwhile, evidence of over 30 thousand statements by Trump has been presented.
  • With such a horrendous tally of lies, I could go on for hours regurgitating examples of Trump’s lies, but that would be pointless. The fact that you can overlook all this publicly available information and then come on here and declare another lie is proof positive that there is no reason to hate someone responsible for more American deaths than Osama Bin Laden is proof on its own that you have serious mental health issues to deal with. You’re even giving Trump credit for an effort that was mostly Aldean’s work.

Do you have even the slightest clue what that kind of thinking indicates?

Here’s a photo of what your question represents:

One of those bodies is you.

That’s what you represent.

A cult member who insists the drinks being served will bring everyone closer to God.

The sad thing is that you’re telling the truth while your Reverend lies his ass off and is planning his escape like Jim Jones tried to, while your body lies rotting on the ground.

Which brings me back to my original question as a response to your question:
How can you believe anything he says, even worse, without asking for a receipt to verify he did what he said he would do?

Before you answer that question, here’s another:
Did you accept or reject the proof of Obama’s birth in both his short and long-form birth certificates?
If not, then why not?

Why would you accept the word of someone who breaks records for lying (and is motivated to lie to you because if he doesn’t, he’ll end up in prison) and reject the proof of Obama’s birth?

Do you not see a double standard in all of this?

You can’t be that disconnected from reality, can you?

You know you need help but are too afraid to do the right thing.

Cowards always are.

Do the right thing for a change before you regret getting what you’re asking for.

Be brave and vote for a woman.

What percentage of Kamala’s voters are actually just “anti-Trump” voters?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://donewiththebullshit.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Kamalas-voters-are-actually-just-anti-Trump-voters-17” (complete with typos because the space it was posted in doesn’t permit edits — dang — and the reason I chose to “upgrade” this answer to a broader audience).

So, you’re trying to separate “anti-Trump” voters from “pro-Harris” voters as if that bears any relevance to this election.

You’re doing that because it’s easier for you to write off people with your go-to dismissal of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Do you recall how conservatives did the same thing with Bush when he lied to the American people and the world at large to justify invading Iraq and embroiling the nation in two costly wars?

“Bush Derangement Syndrome” was your go-to dismissal then.

That’s what conservatives do: invent a fake disease and accuse people of suffering from that “disease” to avoid having to deal with the very valid criticisms they have over the leaders you bend over backwards to protect. You don’t care in the least about examining, much less acknowledging, how utterly corrupt the actions or how incompetent the people you defend are.

For you, loyalty is everything… and you’re proud of your loyalty to such a degree you cannot fathom, much less accept how it’s precisely that sentiment being played against you.

You’ve been conditioned since childhood to value loyalty above all else and beyond reason.

This is not to say that your loyalty isn’t a precious sentiment. It is. It’s an essential ingredient for maintaining community cohesion. It isn’t, however, anything but a tool for people like this.

They don’t respect your loyalty or value it beyond how they can use it to benefit themselves.

The worst thing is that you don’t directly view your loyalty as loyalty to a convicted felon. You have convinced yourself to believe your loyalty is to your country. Why do you think he indulges in performative kisses of the flag if not to tweak your loyalty and use it against you?

The sad thing about your unwavering loyalty to this disloyal monster is that you’re the girlfriend in the stereotypical scenario played out by millions of teens throughout the decades.

You’re the girlfriend who’s being lied to so that he can get in your pants.

Once he’s done with you and decides there’s nothing more he can extract from you, then you’re his ex, and he treats you like he treats the memory of his ex-wife and mother of his children.

This is what you mean to him, yet you have convinced yourself that he won’t do the same thing to you. Do you know how many teenage girls follow that rationale to learn a powerful lesson in regret? Countless.

You’re so loyal that you’re willing to overlook the deaths of your fellow citizens while he generously shares equipment that would save American lives with the leader of an enemy nation.

… and while overlooking this betrayal of the American people, you still want to think of yourself as a loyal patriot of the nation you love.

You’re so lost in your team spirit haze that you want to believe the only reason he might lose the election is because your fellow citizens are suffering from an imaginary mental condition.

You have to think that way because the alternative is frightening.

If you can’t believe that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is real, then you have to admit to yourself that you’ve been wrong about this monster for years.

You fell into a trap in which you liked what he had to say because he hates the same people you have struggled with that piss you off every day. After all, they don’t seem to respect what’s important to you.

The trouble is that they do, but they do so equally for everyone, not just the insiders or fellow team members. That’s what makes you struggle with being loyal to your team. You can’t ignore all your many reasons for doubting this man’s integrity. It nags at you from the back of your mind like a splinter.

He’s just given you too many reasons to wonder if maybe… just maybe, he doesn’t intend to deliver an America that serves your needs. He intends to deliver you like a pig on a roast to the nation’s enemies and destroy the Republic you believe yourself a patriot of.

You know what the truth is.

Everyone voting for Kamala is anti-Trump. It doesn’t matter if that’s the only reason to support her because that’s enough of a reason for millions of people who also think of themselves as patriots. You know they think of themselves as loyal patriots, too… right? Except they’re not loyal to a person but a country, a constitution, and the spirit upon which the nation was founded. Your brand of loyalty is called a “cult of personality.”

If your suspicions are correct, someone besides Trump would mean fewer votes for Kamala and a better chance for your team to win. Those anti-Trump people who can switch sides based on the quality of character representing the candidates are more loyal patriots than you are because they are patriots loyal to the country and not the personality.

Your loyalty is a fraud. It’s the same type of “loyalty” a teenage girl who is desperate to be loved will show the people they hope will love them back. Like you, she’s willing to believe anything a charming young boy with promise for a future will tell her.

Ask yourself this question: If Trump could return your loyalty, why has he done nothing to help the people who are in prison today on his behalf? Why did he not do something for the family of the supporter who was shot and killed during his first assassination attempt? Why did he not even contact the family to pass on his condolences if their loyalty meant anything to him?

The sad reality is that you’re just a box of Kleenex to him.

Once he’s done wiping himself with your sacrifice, then you’re just garbage.

Is your loyalty worth that little?

Do you know who gets a greater reward for that kind of sacrifice?

Saddam Rewards Suicide Bombers’ Families

That’s right… Islamic suicide bombers get better treatment for their sacrifice than Trump’s loyal supporters.

Are you okay with being treated with less respect than an Islamic suicide bomber?

Is your sacrifice worth the cost of destroying the nation you want to think of yourself as a patriot of?

Here’s another thought: The loyal patriots who hated what the Republicans did to embroil the U.S. in two pointless wars weren’t just temporarily reacting for the sake of team performance. They weren’t suffering from some temporary mania called “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” They believed strongly then and still believe those who sent the nation into that hellscape should be held accountable for their actions — even if they switch sides and cheer for the same team. They’re not let off the hook for the damage they did to the nation. To them, being loyal to principles matters more than team loyalty.

Loyalty to a country means holding monsters accountable for their actions, no matter how they switch gears later.

Dick Cheney announces support for Kamal Harris

That’s the difference between genuinely patriotic loyalty to a country and misguided loyalty to someone who’s using you like a teenage boy eager to get in your pants.