Examples of GOP Leadership

cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Roger A. Shrubber said:
sorry, too much effort to prove that a fictitious company would be better off selling their nonexistent products to a cartoon character, than to a...cartoon character...?...
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the whole flight of fancy was kicked off by the thought of an Acme Impenetrable Dome Company.

The dome better not have a wall for a base. That would be a confidence reducer.
 
Bagginski

Bagginski

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
I have a different take on honor. Lois McMaster Bujold (whose Barrayar series I wholeheartedly recommend) said it thus:

Reputation is what others know about you.
Honor is what you know about yourself.

Perhaps this is the basis of my diverging from what you were saying.
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I suspect you’re the same sort of dinosaur I am/spoke of earlier. Familiar w/ Bujold only by name, so please don’t mind me messing with it (for illustration)…but it speaks to (from?) that same antique sense of things: note that virtue isn’t even a shadow in that formulation, yet it’s the one thing that allows honor to take shape - the driver of the behavior that causes reputation to have meaning.

Reputation: PharmaBro(tm), TDFFG, Kevin McCarthy, Alex Jones have reputations. If asked, chances are good that the entire bunch would individually claim a ‘strong sense of personal honor’ as a core part of themselves (their press packet)…but that “honor” is *not* something they ‘know about themselves’, it’s a necessary pretense for maintaining/extending their personal power/influence - both performance and performative maintenance.

In such a set of circumstances, ‘honor’ is not armor formed from good deeds & positive virtues - it is an ongoing threat of reprisal and ruin: a valuable property to be protected at all costs.

NONE of which requires even the least scrap of virtue by any definition…it merely requires that evidence of malice or self-aggrandizement be hidden well enough, long enough - and that distractions be in play for the crucial moment.

I spent a considerable amount of time focused on how to inculcate & develop civic awareness and civic virtues - hell, even basic manners - in a population inclined to think of ‘character’ as a playable resource in a game, and nothing personal at all. I gave it up eventually: if the bear doesn’t care to dance, there’s nothing you can bring…to…bear in the way of persuasion. If people see virtue, honor, character, behavior as irrelevant flags waved by cranky old hippies, they won’t bother taking it on board as anything but another gambit.

Which kind of IS where we are…but instead of slippery-sloping myself to the sidelines, I (still) want to DO something if I can figure out something. So, I think I need to get cozy with the Federalist Papers again, and take notes on what “honor” was supposed to screen OUT. From there, I’ll really have some things to think about.
 
Bagginski

Bagginski

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
About performance. Not the public-show sort but the getting-things-done sort (as in performance evaluation).
Imo that is a decent proxy for virtue, or at least a civic-minded work ethic. “By their works shall you know them.”

Of course, that requires that I as a voter (my one power of evaluating their performance) keep current on who’s doing what to whom. The temptation to be lazy is great. A major consequence of civic laziness is to apply an ideological filter to what our elected public servants are doing.

Double lazy score is achieved when we let the propagandists, the marketers of a packaged and (at least simplistic, at worst false and evil) ideology do the thinking for us. I’m thinking of Fox or Meidas consumers.

That is how “someone so unqualified” can work the system and win. Populism sells. Fox is making money hand over fist pandering to the Beleaguered Patriot (who, of course, is neither).

Bottom line: no easy answers, no silver bullet, and a recommendation to be wary of the Cliff’s Notes/education by soundbite garden path.
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Popular nativist thought-leader Thomas Jefferson wrote often and at length about how the USA WOULD FAIL if citizens ceased to value education, learning, and knowledge - and ceased to pay PARTICIPATORY attention in the issues and arguments at play.

The name of our game is PARTICIPATORY SELF-GOVERNMENT. If we don’t participate - if we just follow along w/ the preacher, the radio, the boss, the neighbors, the ads, the internet - and let that be our thinking and the basis for our collective action, we truly face risk of disaster in at least the intermediate term if the insurrection machine retakes Washington: “stripped of everything by the guys who (think they) own the Eagle, and the Outrage” seems to sum it up.

We need to act now to plan for then: it doesn’t need to get to our doorstep before we wonder “what now?”

You may infer my appreciation for & agreement with your remarks :bigjoint:
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Bagginski said:
I suspect you’re the same sort of dinosaur I am/spoke of earlier. Familiar w/ Bujold only by name, so please don’t mind me messing with it (for illustration)…but it speaks to (from?) that same antique sense of things: note that virtue isn’t even a shadow in that formulation, yet it’s the one thing that allows honor to take shape - the driver of the behavior that causes reputation to have meaning.

Reputation: PharmaBro(tm), TDFFG, Kevin McCarthy, Alex Jones have reputations. If asked, chances are good that the entire bunch would individually claim a ‘strong sense of personal honor’ as a core part of themselves (their press packet)…but that “honor” is *not* something they ‘know about themselves’, it’s a necessary pretense for maintaining/extending their personal power/influence - both performance and performative maintenance.

In such a set of circumstances, ‘honor’ is not armor formed from good deeds & positive virtues - it is an ongoing threat of reprisal and ruin: a valuable property to be protected at all costs.

NONE of which requires even the least scrap of virtue by any definition…it merely requires that evidence of malice or self-aggrandizement be hidden well enough, long enough - and that distractions be in play for the crucial moment.

I spent a considerable amount of time focused on how to inculcate & develop civic awareness and civic virtues - hell, even basic manners - in a population inclined to think of ‘character’ as a playable resource in a game, and nothing personal at all. I gave it up eventually: if the bear doesn’t care to dance, there’s nothing you can bring…to…bear in the way of persuasion. If people see virtue, honor, character, behavior as irrelevant flags waved by cranky old hippies, they won’t bother taking it on board as anything but another gambit.

Which kind of IS where we are…but instead of slippery-sloping myself to the sidelines, I (still) want to DO something if I can figure out something. So, I think I need to get cozy with the Federalist Papers again, and take notes on what “honor” was supposed to screen OUT. From there, I’ll really have some things to think about.
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Yup, I’m solidly of the mind that honor is a subset of character, which is purely internal. There are incidental outward manifestations, but there is an awful lot these days (and has it not ever been thus) of mistaking the map for the territory.

What to do about it tends (I believe) to render down to setting a contrary individual example. The other hoary hippie maxim comes to mind: think globally; act locally.
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Bagginski said:
Popular nativist thought-leader Thomas Jefferson wrote often and at length about how the USA WOULD FAIL if citizens ceased to value education, learning, and knowledge - and ceased to pay PARTICIPATORY attention in the issues and arguments at play.

The name of our game is PARTICIPATORY SELF-GOVERNMENT. If we don’t participate - if we just follow along w/ the preacher, the radio, the boss, the neighbors, the ads, the internet - and let that be our thinking and the basis for our collective action, we truly face risk of disaster in at least the intermediate term if the insurrection machine retakes Washington: “stripped of everything by the guys who (think they) own the Eagle, and the Outrage” seems to sum it up.

We need to act now to plan for then: it doesn’t need to get to our doorstep before we wonder “what now?”

You may infer my appreciation for & agreement with your remarks :bigjoint:
Click to expand...
Participatory self-government is a very high mark to set when confronted by the enduring reality of gentem otiosam.

It is very easily subverted by the usual salesmen of ideas who offer either a Simpler Way, or one compounded by the External Threat. Pastors, populists, general-duty peckerheads.

Americans have grown up with this sort of thought-fascism as a hallmark of the national character, perhaps as a result of being colonized by religious radicals whom most actually revere to this day to a greater or lesser extent.

Maga is a direct consequence of this plus a few other quirks of history.
What I find screamingly ironic is that yet another hippie ideal seems to have contributed to the current crisis. Love one another and celebrate your differences! has spawned an unwillingness to spank the naughty andor predatory.

What jumps to my mind as an illustration of the tenet taken too far was the captain of Voyager in the Trek spin-off. Whenever confronted by rapacious nasty spiky just plain mean aliens, her overriding impulse is to hug them! and try to win them into the fold of Roddenberry’s utopia. We have embraced vipers, seeking to reform them by the sheer power of acceptance (while rejecting fables of scorpions and frogs), and now they are practicing Critical Asshole Theory while making exposing the fact a felony.

How to arrest that pendulum and send it back to some sort of balance (with inevitable overswing) ~expressive shrug~.
 
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Fogdog

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
Participatory self-government is a very high mark to set when confronted by the enduring reality of gentem otiosam.

It is very easily subverted by the usual salesmen of ideas who offer either a Simpler Way, or one compounded by the External Threat. Pastors, populists, general-duty peckerheads.

Americans have grown up with this sort of thought-fascism as a hallmark of the national character, perhaps as a result of being colonized by religious radicals whom most actually revere to this day to a greater or lesser extent.

Maga is a direct consequence of this plus a few other quirks of history.
What I find screamingly ironic is that yet another hippie ideal seems to have contributed to the current crisis. Love one another and celebrate your differences! has spawned an unwillingness to spank the naughty andor predatory.

What jumps to my mind as an illustration of the tenet taken too far was the captain of Voyager in the Trek spin-off. Whenever confronted by rapacious nasty spiky just plain mean aliens, her overriding impulse is to hug them! and try to win them into the fold of Roddenberry’s utopia. We have embraced vipers, seeking to reform them by the sheer power of acceptance (while rejecting fables of scorpions and frogs), and now they are practicing Critical Asshole Theory while making exposing the fact a felony.

How to arrest that pendulum and send it back to some sort of balance (with inevitable overswing) ~expressive shrug~.
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Do you think "the pendulum" is still swinging to the right nationally? Maybe I'm suffering from recency bias but just looking at national trends in our elections, demographics and attitudes, I'm of the opinion that the pendulum has just departed the rightward apex and is now swinging leftward. Actions taken by the right seem to be the ones that are taken to reverse these trends.
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Fogdog said:
Do you think "the pendulum" is still swinging to the right nationally? Maybe I'm suffering from recency bias but just looking at national trends in our elections, demographics and attitudes, I'm of the opinion that the pendulum has just departed the rightward apex and is now swinging leftward. Actions taken by the right seem to be the ones that are taken to reverse these trends.
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I don’t know. Going with the pendulum metaphor, it is quite far right, but I cannot figure the trend. The recent election was outcome-neutral imo: while Democrats did not lose as much ground as they might have, they didn’t gain any. And the Republican class in place has shed its moderates. That makes me wonder if we’re still gonna move right. Certainly the ramparts against necessary expansion/funding of government are heavily manned right now. Committee assignments are a diagnostic.

A decider for me will be judicial. Not only how the various high-profile documents etc. matters will be handled, but the actions and makeup of our appellate courts. The signals from there (to this unqualified observer) have been mixed.

Another will be media and corporate accountability. The alt-fact media and multinational corporate and banking tax evaders have been on the ascendant. For me to place any stock in the hope that the wave has crested, I’ll need to see a billionaire or two put into prison pour encourager les autres.
 
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Roger A. Shrubber

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
I don’t know. Going with the pendulum metaphor, it is quite far right, but I cannot figure the trend. The recent election was outcome-neutral imo: while Democrats did not lose as much ground as they might have, they didn’t gain any. And the Republican class in place has shed its moderates. That makes me wonder if we’re still gonna move right. Certainly the ramparts against necessary expansion/funding of government are heavily manned right now. Committee assignments are a diagnostic.

A decider for me will be judicial. Not only how the various high-profile documents etc. matters will be handled, but the actions and makeup of our appellate courts. The signals from there (to this unqualified observer) have been mixed.

Another will be media and corporate accountability. The alt-fact media and multinational corporate and banking tax evaders have been on the ascendant. For me to place any stock in the hope that the wave has crested, I’ll need to see a billionaire or two put into prison pour encourager les autres.
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i think perhaps there are two pendulums running out of sync with each other. the radical right pendulum is not only at an apex, it's being held there artificially, the base being whipped with constant propaganda.
the other pendulum was leaning to the right, but it has self corrected, and after a short trip further left, it will swing centrist, which is what "leftist" actually are in the current political environment...the disharmony between those two pendulums has cancelled each other out for a long time, but they're growing more out of sync each day, and the structural inadequacies in the system are starting to come apart at the seams.
Fortunately, most of the structural inadequacies are built and maintained by republicans. when shit flies apart, they'll be the ones getting hit with the worst of the fallout, politically. In the real world, poor people will have to eat most of the shit, like they always do, but hopefully it will be for the last time.
 
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cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Roger A. Shrubber said:
i think perhaps there are two pendulums running out of sync with each other. the radical right pendulum is not only at an apex, it's being held there artificially, the base being whipped with constant propaganda.
the other pendulum was leaning to the right, but it has self corrected, and after a short trip further left, it will swing centrist, which is what "leftist" actually are in the current political environment...the disharmony between those two pendulums has cancelled each other out for a long time, but they're growing more out of sync each day, and the structural inadequacies in the system are starting to come apart at the seams.
Fortunately, most of the structural inadequacies are built and maintained by republicans. when shit flies apart, they'll be the ones getting hit with the worst of the fallout. politically, in the real world, poor people will have to eat most of the shit, like they always do, but hopefully it will be for the last time.
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What do you see or watch for

- the current drivers for
- the indicators of

the center being restored?
 
Bagginski

Bagginski

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
Well, well. Perhaps the third rail of American politics is getting some volts back.

thehill.com

McCarthy: Social Security, Medicare cuts ‘off the table’

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said ahead of a meeting with President Biden this week that cuts to Medicare and Social Security are off the table in talks around raising the debt limit. McCarthy…
thehill.com thehill.com
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I hold out no hope for his ‘alternative’ plan: he’s batting 0.000% on rational policy
 
Roger A. Shrubber

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
What do you see or watch for

- the current drivers for
- the indicators of

the center being restored?
Click to expand...
there are so many little things that lead me to believe we live in a divided country, but that the right is and has been slowly failing for at least a decade.
the areas where racism is rampant are slowly contracting, (although they're still orders of magnitude too large) business, Big Business is taking a stance against politically incorrect behavior, blue states are becoming more financially and ideologically appealing to businesses, the military, teachers and doctors looking for work...red states will rely on dirty jobs that pay like shit, because that's already beginning to be all they have to offer. their educational systems which already revolve around sports, will suffer even more, and a degree from a red state school will be a joke in the real world.
they will have low tax revenue, with most of their base doing menial labor, and the few entrepreneurs either ditching them or demanding huge tax breaks not to, which will just suck them further down the drain.
we met a couple of couple for drinks and duck pin bowling at Flavortown the other day. two gay couple my wife is friends with.
one of them is interracial...no one said shit to them, no one looked at them funny, no one acted scandalized...in a bar and grill in one of the reddest states in the country. tell me that was possible even ten years ago... real people don't take polls, they don't take phone surveys, but they go out, and none of them seem to be hugely concerned with homosexuality or interracial marriage.
so is the center restored? not yet, but i think it's repairing itself, and will do so more quickly, the more republicans who get locked up and are forced to stop directly interfering with the process.
by the way, i kicked everyone's asses at duck pin bowling.
 
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