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midcan5
08-15-2016, 12:22 PM
Any Charles Bowden readers out there? If you get a chance read 'At the Peripheries of Violence and Desire'. Warning, Bowden is not for the faint of heart, you may find yourself changed. It appeared in Harper's Magazine 8/1998, one of the best magazines ever published. It is also in 'The Charles Bowden Reader'. Sexual violence - rape - is its topic and its complication. Read it, link below.

If you are a libertarian or other free market fantastic check out his wring on Mexico and the workers. Their pay, their hours, their deaths, again stay away if you want to remain a naive free marketer.

I loved his pieces on his pet rattlesnake Beulah or all the bats.

http://harpers.org/archive/1998/08/torch-song-2/


https://aeon.co/essays/in-memory-of-charles-bowden-a-writer-and-a-sensualist

"He had the most interesting and original mind that I ever got to know well. It cut right through the conventional wisdom and surface veneer to the stark uncomfortable truth. His intellectual honesty compelled him to fully acknowledge the horrors and pointlessness of the human experiment in this world, but he never lost his sense of wonder or curiosity. Even as he catalogued the monstrous dystopias emerging from social and political collapse in Mexico, even as he prophesied the bleakest of futures for our ransacked planet, his love of life was undiminished – mainly because he could take such pleasure from the colour of a bird’s throat, the feel of a woman’s thigh under his fingertips, the rain falling like arrows on the desert as the sky convulsed in thunder." from essay above

Books

https://www.amazon.com/Charles-Bowden-Reader/dp/0292721986/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8
https://www.amazon.com/Murder-City-Ciudad-Economys-Killing/dp/1568586450/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8


"Legalized drugs would cause dislocations in the US economy - the prison industry for example and tens of billions spent annually on drug enforcement. But because the US economy is so large, this would be a minor blow, hardly as severe as the ultimate nightmare for the US economy, global peace, which would shutter its death industry commonly called the military/industrial complex." Charles Bowden

Oboe
08-15-2016, 12:26 PM
Sounds like another liberal "expert".

OGIS
08-16-2016, 02:28 AM
If you are a libertarian or other free market fantastic check out his wring on Mexico and the workers. Their pay, their hours, their deaths, again stay away if you want to remain a naive free marketer.

The last thing Mexico is, is a free market economy. There are, I think, seven families that control virtually all of the land and infrastructure in Mexico. And, of course, the government, which is a typical 3rd world kleptocracy. It's essentially a feudal nation.

midcan5
12-08-2018, 09:28 AM
Some suggestions for reading in the new year, please be aware should you accept the challenge of reading a few of the books listed below you will be changed. Proceed with caution. Great Holiday gifts too for the thoughtful reader.

“One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” Cassandra Clare

Alpha order. Various topics.

'Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle' by Daniel L. Everett
'Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis' by J. D. Vance
'Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain' David Eagleman
'Merchants of Doubt' by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. M. Conway
'On Human Nature' by Edward O. Wilson
'On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century' by Timothy Snyder
'One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway - and Its Aftermath' by Seierstad, Åsne and Sarah Death
'Paul Farmer: Servant to the Poor' by Jennie Weiss Block
'Prehistory: The Making Of The Human Mind' by Colin Renfrew
'The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark' Carl Sagan
'The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century' by Peter Watson
'The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman
'The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science' by Will Storr
'Voltaire's Bas-tards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul
'World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech' by Franklin Foer
'Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance' By Robert Pirsig

Check Goodreads for reviews, many of the books are challenging and they will change you and change the way you see. Best of luck.

"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey

Lummy
12-08-2018, 07:33 PM
Anything Carl Sagan wrote was before science exposed itself as typically half-baked or outright lie for purely political ends. We now have a science-haunted world: atheist dogma as perpetual darkness.

It flipped fast too.


Some of those do look good.

Orion Rules
12-10-2018, 12:11 AM
Anything Carl Sagan wrote was before science exposed itself as typically half-baked or outright lie for purely political ends. We now have a science-haunted world: atheist dogma as perpetual darkness.

It flipped fast too.


Some of those do look good.

Atheism is incompatible with science if it contradicts the Word of God. When did the dog become a foe of the fox? A dog is a wolf is a fox as the horse jumped to salute the trained dogs to pursue a fox regarded as an intruder where it lives because aliens have owned lands they took by being thieves.

There can only be outer darkness for those. The companions of monsters, of who takes baby foxes to be given as a training exercise to see what their dogs do to a baby fox?

nathanbforrest45
12-12-2018, 05:18 PM
Someone once said "Those who beat their swords into plowshares will soon be enslaved by those who don't"

midcan5
12-13-2018, 06:29 PM
Someone once said "Those who beat their swords into plowshares will soon be enslaved by those who don't"


https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/22

"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and patriotism, will offer up all of their rights to the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. " Julius Caesar

Mister D
12-13-2018, 07:15 PM
https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/22

"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and patriotism, will offer up all of their rights to the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. " Julius Caesar


You know Caesar never wrote or said that, right?

Chris
12-13-2018, 08:58 PM
The man of many quotes ought to verify them.

midcan5
01-03-2019, 08:37 AM
Thanks on the quote, most I have saved since 'autoexec.bat' started your PC, but I didn't confirm that one. Notify the site if you are concerned. I will footnote: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/snare-drummed/


-----


For the serious person puzzled by human behavior see the books above on Human Nature by Wilson and the Prehistory book. And if you have ever wondered at why you are who you are, see book and video below. And get a DNA test, it is fascinating stuff.

Another book to read: 'Robert Plomin on Blueprint: how our DNA makes us who we are'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FptGxaxJyms

midcan5
01-14-2019, 04:17 PM
One writer I missed in the list above is Robyn M. Dawes' 'House of cards : psychology and psychotherapy built on myth'. Fascinating read on a topic that enters the lives of so many families.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1304574.House_of_cards_

Also check out 'Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making' Reid Hasti / Robyn M. Dawes. If that topic is of interest.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/173932.Rational_Choice_in_an_Uncertain_World

And humor is a must if we are to remain human. I liked George Saunders' early stuff but later work seems strained. Saw this today, Sam Lipsyte, 'Hark' may check it out. Kurt Vonnegut is still funny and readable too. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40538674-hark (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40538674-hark?from_search=true)

I love books on life and work different from ours, may check this out, Doug Bock Clark, 'The Last Whalers'.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43374244-the-last-whalers

This site was inspiration for repost: https://lithub.com/13-books-you-should-read-this-january/

Advice - Read: https://lithub.com/whats-needed-is-magic-writing-advice-from-haruki-murakami/

http://flavorwire.com/360910/10-of-our-funniest-living-authors

midcan5
02-24-2019, 10:12 AM
Another piece on quotes, I decided to post some of my favorites, mostly short quotations. Enjoy.


http://midcan5.blogspot.com/2019/02/jms-favorite-mostly-short-quotes-in.html



"Quotes are the mental furniture of my life. From certain angles my inner landscape resembles a gallery hung with half-recalled citations, the rags and tag-ends of a lifetime of reading and listening." Geoffrey O’Brien

Sergeant Gleed
03-13-2019, 09:54 PM
Some suggestions for reading in the new year, please be aware should you accept the challenge of reading a few of the books listed below you will be changed. Proceed with caution. Great Holiday gifts too for the thoughtful reader.

“One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” Cassandra Clare

Alpha order. Various topics.

'Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle' by Daniel L. Everett
'Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis' by J. D. Vance
'Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain' David Eagleman
'Merchants of Doubt' by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. M. Conway
'On Human Nature' by Edward O. Wilson
'On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century' by Timothy Snyder
'One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway - and Its Aftermath' by Seierstad, Åsne and Sarah Death
'Paul Farmer: Servant to the Poor' by Jennie Weiss Block
'Prehistory: The Making Of The Human Mind' by Colin Renfrew
'The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark' Carl Sagan
'The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century' by Peter Watson
'The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman
'The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science' by Will Storr
'Voltaire's Bas-tards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul
'World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech' by Franklin Foer
'Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance' By Robert Pirsig

Check Goodreads for reviews, many of the books are challenging and they will change you and change the way you see. Best of luck.

"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey

So...

...is they principle villain in the "Unpersuadables" book those lying jerks who keep telling us that we are all going to die, in the next decade, because cows fart?

midcan5
08-08-2019, 07:21 PM
"We are here on Earth to fart around." Kurt Vonnegut


So... ...is they principle villain in the "Unpersuadables" book those lying jerks who keep telling us that we are all going to die, in the next decade, because cows fart?


Not at all, it is a fascinating read, one of those books that can change the way you see the world or at least on a smaller scale lots of it. Read it, you will be glad you did, and wiser too. It goes both ways in direction, read it and you'll see why.


Change of pace, I am reading four books at the moment, bad habit but good too. I am re-reading two of Kurt Vonnegut's non fiction books. Vonnegut has a magical and often profound way of saying hard things in a comical manner. I may quote a bit of it in another post, but again excellent writing and deep thoughts on all subjects.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4988.Fates_Worse_Than_Death


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4979.A_Man_Without_a_Country


"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center." Kurt Vonnegut

"Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet - the only one in the whole Milky Way - with a century of transportation whoopee." Kurt Vonnegut

"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything." Kurt Vonnegut

"If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy." Kurt Vonnegut

nathanbforrest45
08-08-2019, 07:45 PM
Well, we can certainly understand your preoccupation with nihilism

Lummy
08-11-2019, 07:23 AM
Any Charles Bowden readers out there?


No, not that I'm aware of.



https://aeon.co/essays/in-memory-of-charles-bowden-a-writer-and-a-sensualist

"He had the most interesting and original mind that I ever got to know well. It cut right through the conventional wisdom and surface veneer to the stark uncomfortable truth. His intellectual honesty compelled him to fully acknowledge the horrors and pointlessness of the human experiment in this world, but he never lost his sense of wonder or curiosity. Even as he catalogued the monstrous dystopias emerging from social and political collapse in Mexico, even as he prophesied the bleakest of futures for our ransacked planet, his love of life was undiminished – mainly because he could take such pleasure from the colour of a bird’s throat, the feel of a woman’s thigh under his fingertips, the rain falling like arrows on the desert as the sky convulsed in thunder." from essay above


babble babble ... "horrors and pointlessness of the human experiment" ... babble babble.


Really? Was Bowden a religious man?

Admiral Ackbar
08-11-2019, 07:44 AM
The last thing Mexico is, is a free market economy. There are, I think, seven families that control virtually all of the land and infrastructure in Mexico. And, of course, the government, which is a typical 3rd world kleptocracy. It's essentially a feudal nation.

So you now understand why Trump is so protective of the US economy from places like Mexico and China. The US is unique in the world in terms of culture and its ecomomy.

So lets agree we should be careful who we let in to the country as not to build the underclass they have in China and Mexico. He wants to deregulate and lower taxes to keep the economy functioning free.


Congratulations @midcan5 (http://thepoliticalforums.com/member.php?u=765) You are officially on the MAGA team. The President appreciates your vote in 2020

Hoosier8
08-11-2019, 08:43 AM
Some suggestions for reading in the new year, please be aware should you accept the challenge of reading a few of the books listed below you will be changed. Proceed with caution. Great Holiday gifts too for the thoughtful reader.

“One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” Cassandra Clare

Alpha order. Various topics.

'Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle' by Daniel L. Everett
'Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis' by J. D. Vance
'Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain' David Eagleman
'Merchants of Doubt' by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. M. Conway
'On Human Nature' by Edward O. Wilson
'On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century' by Timothy Snyder
'One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway - and Its Aftermath' by Seierstad, Åsne and Sarah Death
'Paul Farmer: Servant to the Poor' by Jennie Weiss Block
'Prehistory: The Making Of The Human Mind' by Colin Renfrew
'The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark' Carl Sagan
'The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century' by Peter Watson
'The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman
'The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science' by Will Storr
'Voltaire's Bas-tards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul
'World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech' by Franklin Foer
'Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance' By Robert Pirsig

Check Goodreads for reviews, many of the books are challenging and they will change you and change the way you see. Best of luck.

"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey

I highly recommend Hillbilly Ellegy. We read this one as a club and I have experience with the same kind of folks as I married into a family and also had neighbors from the same areas. He outlines the culture very very well. If I were to deal with anyone on a person to person basis, I would choose people from this culture because their word is highly important and they take care of issues themselves which is refreshing in today's complain first, sue next culture.

Murder City by Bowden looks like a good pick for reading.

Lummy
08-11-2019, 01:12 PM
No, not that I'm aware of.





babble babble ... "horrors and pointlessness of the human experiment" ... babble babble.


Really? Was Bowden a religious man?

Frankly, I think academia is rotten -- in religious terms, hell bound.

midcan5
08-19-2019, 07:05 AM
LOL Not sure what to make of replies above....


I want to add three books to my list of must reads for the thinker and the explorer.

'Fates Worse Than Death' by Kurt Vonnegut
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4988.Fates_Worse_Than_Death

'The Last Novel' by David Markson
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195603.The_Last_Novel

'That's Not What They Meant!' by Michael Austin
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15897043-that-s-not-what-they-meant

"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey

The Sage of Main Street
08-19-2019, 04:48 PM
You know Caesar never wrote or said that, right?​Sissy Caesar


He did say, "Veni. Vidi. Vici," which at the time was pronounced, "Wenny, Widdy, Wicky." No wonder they assassinated him.

The Sage of Main Street
08-19-2019, 04:57 PM
Frankly, I think academia is rotten -- in religious terms, hell bound.
Academentia


Professors are intellectual pedophiles, nerd weaklings who get a sadistic compensating pleasure from mind-raping their students. The students deserve it, too, because college is work without pay and attracts only teenagers who are afraid to grow up. They desperately look up to professors as father-figures; that's what makes them such easy prey.

midcan5
08-25-2019, 06:51 AM
"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey


Ok here goes, this is blow your mind stuff, so beware. Deep deep dive. Enter with care, history and thought and ideas. Pick one.

'On Human Nature' by Edward O. Wilson
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62555.On_Human_Nature

'Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud' by Peter Watson
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/408204.Ideas

'The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154643.The_Rhetoric_of_Reaction

'Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain' by David Eagleman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9827912-incognito

"The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20Th Century' Peter Watson [title differs]
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/348327.A_Terrible_Beauty

Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century by Jonathan Glover
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/321263.Humanity

''The Rise and Fall of *Communism' by Archie Brown'
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6004393-the-rise-and-fall-of-communism

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/786560.Gut_Feelings


'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' by John Ralston Saul
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6584.Voltaire_s_Bastards



"If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief." Franz Kafka

nathanbforrest45
08-29-2019, 07:45 AM
Have you read Atlas Shrugged? The Fountainhead?, Any of Ayn Rand's epic novels?

Somehow I doubt it. Too low brow for someone of your obviously vastly superior intellect.

midcan5
10-11-2019, 06:09 AM
Re: Ayn Rand, I tried to read her a few times as so many like and admire her. Ironic she ended up on welfare at the end of her life. But I couldn't do it, her writing and her ideas are boring and simplistic nonsense. Comic book level with a touch of evil. See quote at bottom.

----------------------

If you want a real challenge I have an author - I should have listed above not sure how I had missed him - for you all. William T. Vollmann. I have been re-reading 'Rising up, Rising Down'. The abridged edition. Vollmann will challenge you in a way you have never been challenged before. I've read several of his other books, but I'll leave it there for now.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45637.Rising_Up_and_Rising_Down


"Just for the hell of it, try to love someone as unlike you as possible." William T. Vollmann


Rand:

"Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible." Whittaker Chambers

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2705853/posts

midcan5
01-30-2020, 07:28 AM
An interesting read. History in a way we rarely see.

""To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing," the Canadian poet Anne Carson once said. With Trump, America finds itself at the end of its myth.

To talk about the frontier is also to talk about capitalism, about its power and possibility and its promise of boundlessness. Donald Trump figured out that to talk about the border -and to promise a wall- was a way to acknowledge capitalism's limits, its pain, without having to challenge capitalism's terms. Trump ran promising to end the wars and to reverse the extreme anti-regulatory and free-market program of his party. Once in office, though, he accelerated deregulation, increased military spending, and expanded the wars. But he kept talking about his wall.

That wall might or might not be built. But even if it remains only in its phantasmagorical, budgetary stage, a perpetual negotiating chip between Congress and the White House, the promise of a two-thousand-mile-long, thirty-foot-high ribbon of concrete and steel running along the United States' southern border serves its purpose. It's America's new myth, a monument to the final closing of the frontier. It is a symbol of a nation that used to believe that it had escaped history, or at least strode atop history, bur now finds itself trapped by history, and of a people who used to think they were captains of the future, but now are prisoners of the past." Introduction p8-9

'The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America' by Greg Grandin

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36743029-the-end-of-the-myth


"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." Dwight D. Eisenhower

patrickt
02-01-2020, 11:17 AM
The last thing Mexico is, is a free market economy. There are, I think, seven families that control virtually all of the land and infrastructure in Mexico. And, of course, the government, which is a typical 3rd world kleptocracy. It's essentially a feudal nation.
They ruined the country by trying to be socialists and are backing away trying to salvage what they have. Of course, I realize that people on the left and the right who condemn Mexico know nothing about it.

Of course, the U.S. isn't a representative democracy. There are, I think, seven families that control the Democrat Party.

Mister D
02-01-2020, 05:05 PM
An interesting read. History in a way we rarely see.

""To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing," the Canadian poet Anne Carson once said. With Trump, America finds itself at the end of its myth.

To talk about the frontier is also to talk about capitalism, about its power and possibility and its promise of boundlessness. Donald Trump figured out that to talk about the border -and to promise a wall- was a way to acknowledge capitalism's limits, its pain, without having to challenge capitalism's terms. Trump ran promising to end the wars and to reverse the extreme anti-regulatory and free-market program of his party. Once in office, though, he accelerated deregulation, increased military spending, and expanded the wars. But he kept talking about his wall.

That wall might or might not be built. But even if it remains only in its phantasmagorical, budgetary stage, a perpetual negotiating chip between Congress and the White House, the promise of a two-thousand-mile-long, thirty-foot-high ribbon of concrete and steel running along the United States' southern border serves its purpose. It's America's new myth, a monument to the final closing of the frontier. It is a symbol of a nation that used to believe that it had escaped history, or at least strode atop history, bur now finds itself trapped by history, and of a people who used to think they were captains of the future, but now are prisoners of the past." Introduction p8-9

'The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America' by Greg Grandin

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36743029-the-end-of-the-myth


"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." Dwight D. Eisenhower
Mr. Grandin sounds like a man desperate to say something profound but failing miserably". Mister D

Lummy
02-03-2020, 09:32 AM
"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey


Ok here goes, this is blow your mind stuff, so beware. Deep deep dive. Enter with care, history and thought and ideas. Pick one.

'On Human Nature' by Edward O. Wilson
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62555.On_Human_Nature

'Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud' by Peter Watson
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/408204.Ideas

'The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154643.The_Rhetoric_of_Reaction

'Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain' by David Eagleman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9827912-incognito

"The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20Th Century' Peter Watson [title differs]
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/348327.A_Terrible_Beauty

Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century by Jonathan Glover
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/321263.Humanity

''The Rise and Fall of *Communism' by Archie Brown'
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6004393-the-rise-and-fall-of-communism

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/786560.Gut_Feelings


'Voltaire's $#@!s: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' by John Ralston Saul
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6584.Voltaire_s_Bastards



"If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief." Franz Kafka

An interesting list I have never read. I'm just curious -- to you, how does any of it relate to politics?

Kafka does, I think, but what little I know about Kafka is about all I want to know. Very creepy, IMHO. How much of our existence do you think can be framed in context of Kafka's interpretations?

Lummy
02-12-2020, 03:47 PM
... I see ... ...

midcan5
05-26-2020, 05:19 AM
I'm not finished this yet but it is highly recommended if you are interested in understanding this time we live in and the world of viruses etc. Excellent and deeply human.


"This is a critical point in history. Time is running out to prepare for the next pandemic. We must act now with decisiveness and purpose. Someday, after the next pandemic has come and gone, a commission much like the 9/11 Commission will be charged with determining how well government, business, and public health leaders prepared the world for the catastrophe when they had clear warning. What will be the verdict?"

'Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs'

by Michael T. Osterholm, Mark Olshaker


https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30841977-deadliest-enemy


"Mother Nature is the greatest bioterrorist of them all, with no financial limitations or ethical compunctions."

midcan5
06-27-2020, 05:40 AM
I must say honestly, the replies above from republicans and conservatives are empty of content, curiosity, or even thought. But I guess that goes with the territory. A thoughtful republican below.

'It Was All A Lie'

'...he is simply telling us what he has seen firsthand. He helped to create the modern party that kneels before a morally bankrupt con man and now he wants nothing more than to see what it has become burned to the ground.'

'How The Republican Party Became Donald Trump'

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48806578-it-was-all-a-lie

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/stuart-stevens/it-was-all-a-lie/

Mister D
06-27-2020, 09:20 AM
There are no readers, midcan.

stephenpe
08-09-2020, 07:49 AM
There are no readers, midcan.
Reading these four pages where Midcan suggests books and authors and the rest try to belittle his thought using political jabs I was reminded of this character.


“I like to watch.” In uttering that line in the 1979 movie Being There, Chauncey Gardiner (Peter Sellers (https://deadline.com/tag/peter-sellers/)) was confessing his addiction to television. Now we have Donald Trump (https://deadline.com/tag/donald-trump/), who also likes to watch, except he watches Fox News and believes it; that gets him into trouble — witness the Comey hearings. Of course, Chauncey could neither read nor write, but his ignorance brought him great wealth and power. Sound familiar?
I swear there was a scene where the guy interviewing him said what do you read and replied he doesnt. And the interviewer goes "right, no one has time to read"

Cotton1
08-09-2020, 09:02 AM
Any Charles Bowden readers out there? If you get a chance read 'At the Peripheries of Violence and Desire'. Warning, Bowden is not for the faint of heart, you may find yourself changed. It appeared in Harper's Magazine 8/1998, one of the best magazines ever published. It is also in 'The Charles Bowden Reader'. Sexual violence - rape - is its topic and its complication. Read it, link below.

If you are a libertarian or other free market fantastic check out his wring on Mexico and the workers. Their pay, their hours, their deaths, again stay away if you want to remain a naive free marketer.

I loved his pieces on his pet rattlesnake Beulah or all the bats.

http://harpers.org/archive/1998/08/torch-song-2/


https://aeon.co/essays/in-memory-of-charles-bowden-a-writer-and-a-sensualist

"He had the most interesting and original mind that I ever got to know well. It cut right through the conventional wisdom and surface veneer to the stark uncomfortable truth. His intellectual honesty compelled him to fully acknowledge the horrors and pointlessness of the human experiment in this world, but he never lost his sense of wonder or curiosity. Even as he catalogued the monstrous dystopias emerging from social and political collapse in Mexico, even as he prophesied the bleakest of futures for our ransacked planet, his love of life was undiminished – mainly because he could take such pleasure from the colour of a bird’s throat, the feel of a woman’s thigh under his fingertips, the rain falling like arrows on the desert as the sky convulsed in thunder." from essay above

Books

https://www.amazon.com/Charles-Bowden-Reader/dp/0292721986/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8
https://www.amazon.com/Murder-City-Ciudad-Economys-Killing/dp/1568586450/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8


"Legalized drugs would cause dislocations in the US economy - the prison industry for example and tens of billions spent annually on drug enforcement. But because the US economy is so large, this would be a minor blow, hardly as severe as the ultimate nightmare for the US economy, global peace, which would shutter its death industry commonly called the military/industrial complex." Charles Bowden

I've always enjoyed thinking for myself. You should try it occasionally

midcan5
01-09-2021, 07:23 AM
I've always enjoyed thinking for myself. You should try it occasionally

And that is why I read. Expand your vision.


"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey



Earlier I mentioned that many republicans and Trump followers, "Act in such a way that [Trump} the Fuhrer, if he knew your action, would approve it." Hans Frank, quoted in Arendt's 'Eichmann in Jerusalem'. We saw that this past week.


I finished re-reading 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' recently and it still challenges. But as I noted in link below I wanted to check out 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' and wanted to see what he has to say. Had a copy for years now. The detail and analysis is amazing. Pages of footnotes, this will take some time. Enter it if you dare to think.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/784848.Hitler_s_Willing_Executioners


https://thepoliticalforums.com/threads/134695-Trump-in-Washington?p=3141790#post3141790

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." Arthur Schopenhauer

Cotton1
01-14-2021, 10:10 PM
And that is why I read. Expand your vision.


"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey



Earlier I mentioned that many republicans and Trump followers, "Act in such a way that [Trump} the Fuhrer, if he knew your action, would approve it." Hans Frank, quoted in Arendt's 'Eichmann in Jerusalem'. We saw that this past week.


I finished re-reading 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' recently and it still challenges. But as I noted in link below I wanted to check out 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' and wanted to see what he has to say. Had a copy for years now. The detail and analysis is amazing. Pages of footnotes, this will take some time. Enter it if you dare to think.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/784848.Hitler_s_Willing_Executioners


https://thepoliticalforums.com/threads/134695-Trump-in-Washington?p=3141790#post3141790

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." Arthur Schopenhauer

Keep that parrot fed ! Squawk!

midcan5
01-23-2021, 07:44 AM
An interesting list I have never read. I'm just curious -- to you, how does any of it relate to politics? Kafka does, I think, but what little I know about Kafka is about all I want to know. Very creepy, IMHO. How much of our existence do you think can be framed in context of Kafka's interpretations?
Politics intersects who we are as humans, all books relate to politics whether in substance or in relation to how we live and think, our values our goals our humanity. Franz is an interesting writer and obviously experienced life in a way most of us would find alien. Kafkaesque has even entered our vocabulary, but I wake preparing my morning coffee unlike Gregor. "A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us." Franz Kafka

Still reading 'Willing....' and just enjoying the wonder of democracy, Joe won. Life is good. Enjoy it, be safe.


Another read below for those who think for themselves and do not follow blindly.

“I fear that we live in a world in which war and racism are ubiquitous, in which the powers of government mobilization and legitimization are powerful and increasing, in which a sense of personal responsibility is increasingly attenuated by specialization and bureaucratization, and in which the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. In such a world, I fear, modern governments that wish to commit mass murder will seldom fail in their efforts for being unable to induce “ordinary men” to become their “willing executioners.”"

'Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland' by Christopher R. Browning

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/647492.Ordinary_Men

midcan5
02-14-2021, 07:35 AM
How did the rich get so rich and the majority of people barely getting by. While this book is about 'now' it details how we got to 'now', Read it read it read it. Brilliant.

"What began as advertising is now a threat to freedom and democracy argues the author and scholar. Time to wake up - and fight for a different digital future"

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/04/shoshana-zuboff-surveillance-capitalism-assault-human-automomy-digital-privacy

'High tech is watching you'

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-professor-says-surveillance-capitalism-is-undermining-democracy/

'You Are Now Remotely Controlled'

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/sunday/surveillance-capitalism.html

Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26195941-the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism


"So he lent her books. After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; most pleasurable of all is lending it to the person one loves: Now she is reading or has just read the scene with the mirrors; she who is so lovely is drinking in that loveliness I've drunk." William T. Vollmann

stephenpe
03-03-2021, 03:43 PM
Reading is like traveling, whether back in time or to future worlds or even into the minds of interesting people. I recently read a new book about Edison that started at his death and went backwards. Took awhile to get used to. Brilliance coupled with tenacity and tunnel vision. He was amazing. When he died they dimmed lights around the world to mark his passing.

midcan5
06-21-2021, 06:53 AM
This is an easy read and fascinating. I never realized how much money these news people make, no wonder they are more propaganda than news. No matter your political leanings you'll enjoy it.

'Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth'

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53345186-hoax

"If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief." Franz Kafka

Another favorite author.

"So he lent her books. After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; most pleasurable of all is lending it to the person one loves: Now she is reading or has just read the scene with the mirrors; she who is so lovely is drinking in that loveliness I've drunk." William T. Vollmann

Peter1469
06-21-2021, 06:54 AM
Sounds like a disinformation campaign.

A favorite of the old KGB and its fans.
This is an easy read and fascinating. I never realized how much money these news people make, no wonder they are more propaganda than news. No matter your political leanings you'll enjoy it.

'Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth'

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53345186-hoax

"If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief." Franz Kafka

Another favorite author.

"So he lent her books. After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; most pleasurable of all is lending it to the person one loves: Now she is reading or has just read the scene with the mirrors; she who is so lovely is drinking in that loveliness I've drunk." William T. Vollmann

hanger4
06-21-2021, 07:02 AM
This is an easy read and fascinating. I never realized how much money these news people make, no wonder they are more propaganda than news. No matter your political leanings you'll enjoy it.

'Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth'

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53345186-hoax

"If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief." Franz Kafka

Another favorite author.

"So he lent her books. After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; most pleasurable of all is lending it to the person one loves: Now she is reading or has just read the scene with the mirrors; she who is so lovely is drinking in that loveliness I've drunk." William T. Vollmann

Your link just proves you're all about pointing fingers at one side while ignoring the other side doing the same thing. Your double standards shine midcan5.

Now run away midcan5, it's what you do so well.

stephenpe
06-21-2021, 07:15 AM
Sounds like a disinformation campaign.

A favorite of the old KGB and its fans.
Except there literally dozens of books written by insiders, former insiders, former appointees that were his fair haired boys and to a person all point out what a shttt show he is, more like a child than some competent leader. I have read about 10 so far. When Melanoma writes hers it should be hilarious.


Your link just proves you're all about pointing fingers at one side while ignoring the other side doing the same thing. Your double standards shine midcan5. Except the other side never elected a petulant whining child to run the country who suckked up to a Putin because of flattery while ignoring the entire American Security agencies intel on Russian bllsthttt cause he knew Vladdy was telling him the truth........SMGDDMH

Peter1469
06-21-2021, 07:43 AM
Never Trumpers wrote books and you organism over it.

Who cares?
Except there literally dozens of books written by insiders, former insiders, former appointees that were his fair haired boys and to a person all point out what a shttt show he is, more like a child than some competent leader. I have read about 10 so far. When Melanoma writes hers it should be hilarious.

Except the other side never elected a petulant whining child to run the country who suckked up to a Putin because of flattery while ignoring the entire American Security agencies intel on Russian bllsthttt cause he knew Vladdy was telling him the truth........SMGDDMH

Skull
07-13-2021, 09:45 AM
Is midcan5's avatar a young Aldous Huxley? He expanded my vocabulary, many decades ago.

Cotton1
07-13-2021, 04:44 PM
Midcan ran away :(

carolina73
07-13-2021, 04:53 PM
Except there literally dozens of books written by insiders, former insiders, former appointees that were his fair haired boys and to a person all point out what a shttt show he is, more like a child than some competent leader. I have read about 10 so far. When Melanoma writes hers it should be hilarious.

Except the other side never elected a petulant whining child to run the country who suckked up to a Putin because of flattery while ignoring the entire American Security agencies intel on Russian bllsthttt cause he knew Vladdy was telling him the truth........SMGDDMH
All deep state that were going to leave anyways. Some stayed just to try to screw up his Presidency.

When you threaten the jobs of big government then the reaction is going to be sabotage. Trump's one mistake was to not wipe out the staff and any resistors to change. Obama had him set up with left wing indoctrination. Can you actually call some of these people in the pentagon fighting men? They are puzzies.

hanger4
07-13-2021, 05:28 PM
Midcan ran away :(

midcan5 always does, stephenpe almost always does.

stephenpe
07-15-2021, 06:13 PM
Never Trumpers wrote books and you organism over it.

Who cares?
Never trumpers? bllshhttt. Many worked for him. Were appointed by him and even lauded by him early on. They saw the shttt show and told the truth. Keep your head in the sand if it helps you sleep. lmfao


midcan5 always does, @stephenpe (https://thepoliticalforums.com/member.php?u=3028) almost always does.
You mean we live to post in this CJ all day everyday. Got me there. I just look when I have time to see the new outrage or who to hate or boycott from the cultists..............

Peter1469
07-15-2021, 07:14 PM
Useless cultist emotes.
Never trumpers? bllshhttt. Many worked for him. Were appointed by him and even lauded by him early on. They saw the shttt show and told the truth. Keep your head in the sand if it helps you sleep. lmfao


You mean we live to post in this CJ all day everyday. Got me there. I just look when I have time to see the new outrage or who to hate or boycott from the cultists..............

stephenpe
07-25-2021, 10:01 AM
All deep state that were going to leave anyways. Some stayed just to try to screw up his Presidency.

When you threaten the jobs of big government then the reaction is going to be sabotage. Trump's one mistake was to not wipe out the staff and any resistors to change. Obama had him set up with left wing indoctrination. Can you actually call some of these people in the pentagon fighting men? They are puzzies.

All that to just say "fake news" ? Cmon. Obviously your ability to read outside your ever shrinking box of "they are taking my Murica" has stolen any chance you could make a real objective look at reality regarding the idiotweeter............

Chris
07-25-2021, 10:02 AM
All that to just say "fake news" ? Cmon. Obviously your ability to read outside your ever shrinking box of "they are taking my Murica" has stolen any chance you could make a real objective look at reality regarding the idiotweeter............

All that just to say TDS?

carolina73
07-25-2021, 02:04 PM
All that to just say "fake news" ? Cmon. Obviously your ability to read outside your ever shrinking box of "they are taking my Murica" has stolen any chance you could make a real objective look at reality regarding the idiotweeter............

I have to give it to you. You just responded in the most meaningless, useless and incomprehensible way that I have seen in some time.

midcan5
08-21-2021, 06:51 AM
Update: 'Hoax' was an interesting read on the shenanigans going on in Fox media but 'Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents' by Isabel Wilkerson will really challenge you. Read it read read it. You will see life differently guaranteed.

Also 'Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy' by Talia Lavin is a deep look into the hate groups that occupy the web. I wasn't aware there was this much hate and white male insecurity.

I am going to read books below when I get a chance. Republican on his party and Conspiracy thinking which baffles me.

'It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump' by Stuart Stevens


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48806578-it-was-all-a-lie


'Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power' by Anna Merlan


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40046060-republic-of-lies


"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey

midcan5
10-26-2021, 08:10 AM
"You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." Ray Bradbury

Reading for those who want to know and understand America and ??? today. I figured I'd repeat a few as most readers go to the end of a thread. A fascinating read I finished recently that is apolitical is Nomadland, by Jessica Bruder. It is about America today, an aspect of our times most don't see. The movie looks interesting but I doubt it can capture the crux of the issue. Check it out, another book that will change your view.

* 'Wildland: The Making of America's Fury' Evan Osnos

* 'Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents' Isabel Wilkerson

'On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century' by Timothy Snyder

'Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America' Sarah Kendzior

'Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power' by Anna Merlan

'Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth'

'Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted' Ian Millhiser

'Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming' Naomi Orestes, Erik M. M. Conway

If you only read one check asterisks.

OLD GUY IN FLORIDA
10-27-2021, 02:54 PM
Are the only books worth reading are those that disparage the United States and are only read by pseudo intellectuals? Asking for a friend.

montana
10-28-2021, 11:42 AM
Some suggestions for reading in the new year, please be aware should you accept the challenge of reading a few of the books listed below you will be changed. Proceed with caution. Great Holiday gifts too for the thoughtful reader.

“One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.” Cassandra Clare

Alpha order. Various topics.

'Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle' by Daniel L. Everett
'Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis' by J. D. Vance
'Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain' David Eagleman
'Merchants of Doubt' by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. M. Conway
'On Human Nature' by Edward O. Wilson
'On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century' by Timothy Snyder
'One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway - and Its Aftermath' by Seierstad, Åsne and Sarah Death
'Paul Farmer: Servant to the Poor' by Jennie Weiss Block
'Prehistory: The Making Of The Human Mind' by Colin Renfrew
'The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark' Carl Sagan
'The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century' by Peter Watson
'The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman
'The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science' by Will Storr
'Voltaire's Bas-tards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul
'World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech' by Franklin Foer
'Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance' By Robert Pirsig

Check Goodreads for reviews, many of the books are challenging and they will change you and change the way you see. Best of luck.

"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey you forgot to mention IGNORANCE OF THE LEFT by midcan.It s great satire.

midcan5
12-27-2021, 03:26 PM
Fellow Americans take note. 'How Democracies Die'

"Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not. This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy-packing and "weaponizing" the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy's assassins use the very institutions of democracy-gradually, subtly, and even legally-to kill it.

America failed the first test in November 2016, when we elected a president with a dubious allegiance to democratic norms. Donald Trump's surprise victory was made possible not only by public disaffection but also by the Republican Party's failure to keep an extremist demagogue within its own ranks from gaining the nomination.

How serious is the threat now? Many observers take comfort in our Constitution, which was designed precisely to thwart and contain demagogues like Donald Trump. Our Madisonian system of checks and balances has endured for more than two centuries. It survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, the Cold War, and Watergate. Surely, then, it will be able to survive Trump.

We are less certain. Historically, our system of checks and balances has worked pretty well-but not, or not entirely, because of the constitutional system designed by the founders. Democracies work best-and survive longer,-where constitutions are reinforced by unwritten democratic norms. Two basic norms have preserved America's checks and balances in ways we have come to take for granted: mutual toleration, or the understanding that competing parties accept one another as legitimate rivals, and forbearance, or the idea that politicians should exercise restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives. These two norms undergirded American democracy for most of the twentieth century. Leaders of the two major parties accepted one another as legitimate and resisted the temptation to use their temporary control of institutions to maximum partisan advantage. Norms of toleration and restraint served as the soft guardrails of American democracy, helping it avoid the kind of partisan fight to the death that has destroyed democracies elsewhere in the world, including Europe in the 1930s and South America in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today, however, the guardrails of American democracy are weakening. The erosion of our democratic norms began in the 1980s and 1990s and accelerated in the 2000s. By the time Barack Obama became president, many Republicans, in particular, questioned the legitimacy of their Democratic rivals and had abandoned forbearance for a strategy of winning by any means necessary. Donald Trump may have accelerated this process, but he didn't cause it. The challenges facing American democracy run deeper. The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization-one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture. America's efforts to achieve racial equality as our society grows increasingly diverse have fueled an insidious reaction and intensifying polarization. And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout history, it's that extreme polarization can kill democracies.

There are, therefore, reasons for alarm. Not only did Americans elect a demagogue in 2016, but we did so at a time when .....

pps 8-9 'How Democracies Die' By Steven Levitsky And Daniel Ziblatt


Podcast: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/22/579670528/how-democracies-die-authors-say-trump-is-a-symptom-of-deeper-problems

midcan5
04-06-2022, 06:15 PM
For the readers, the thinkers, those who steer their boat and don't look to false gods for leadership.


'The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control' Steven Hassan

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43261495-the-cult-of-trump

'The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family'

Pulitzer Prize*–winning reporter and dean of Trumpologists David Cay Johnston reveals years of eye-popping financial misdeeds by Donald Trump and his family.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56898282-the-big-cheat

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Isaac Asimov

Chris
04-06-2022, 07:11 PM
For the readers, the thinkers, those who steer their boat and don't look to false gods for leadership.


'The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control' Steven Hassan

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43261495-the-cult-of-trump

'The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family'

Pulitzer Prize*–winning reporter and dean of Trumpologists David Cay Johnston reveals years of eye-popping financial misdeeds by Donald Trump and his family.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56898282-the-big-cheat

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Isaac Asimov


You mean like Obama?

Cotton1
04-08-2022, 02:04 PM
An interesting read. History in a way we rarely see.

""To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing," the Canadian poet Anne Carson once said. With Trump, America finds itself at the end of its myth.

To talk about the frontier is also to talk about capitalism, about its power and possibility and its promise of boundlessness. Donald Trump figured out that to talk about the border -and to promise a wall- was a way to acknowledge capitalism's limits, its pain, without having to challenge capitalism's terms. Trump ran promising to end the wars and to reverse the extreme anti-regulatory and free-market program of his party. Once in office, though, he accelerated deregulation, increased military spending, and expanded the wars. But he kept talking about his wall.

That wall might or might not be built. But even if it remains only in its phantasmagorical, budgetary stage, a perpetual negotiating chip between Congress and the White House, the promise of a two-thousand-mile-long, thirty-foot-high ribbon of concrete and steel running along the United States' southern border serves its purpose. It's America's new myth, a monument to the final closing of the frontier. It is a symbol of a nation that used to believe that it had escaped history, or at least strode atop history, bur now finds itself trapped by history, and of a people who used to think they were captains of the future, but now are prisoners of the past." Introduction p8-9

'The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America' by Greg Grandin

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36743029-the-end-of-the-myth


"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." Dwight D. Eisenhower

This thread contains many of the best posts you have ever made

stephenpe
04-22-2022, 02:29 PM
Are the only books worth reading are those that disparage the United States and are only read by pseudo intellectuals? Asking for a friend.
If a book tells the truth about Donnie that means it disparages America? Unlike many cultists that worship at the spoken word of Fox or Trump I actually read books. History mostly. Where they cite evidence and numbers of others who have observed and actually been in the room. I have had heard many Trumpists say what he really was doing. He appointed many that finally said "this shttt show aint for me" and left. Bolton was probably the most credible to some of you. The most compelling thing to me and many others is who can actually look at the man, listen to him and believe this is a leader? Its bizarre. Shttt come out of his mouth that makes you say, "huh?" I know he parrots what hate radio jocks said about liberals that excites his base and others but for fck sake, he acted like a 14 yr old with his insults , blather and obvious lies.

Peter1469
04-23-2022, 05:18 AM
Cultists! lol
If a book tells the truth about Donnie that means it disparages America? Unlike many cultists that worship at the spoken word of Fox or Trump I actually read books. History mostly. Where they cite evidence and numbers of others who have observed and actually been in the room. I have had heard many Trumpists say what he really was doing. He appointed many that finally said "this shttt show aint for me" and left. Bolton was probably the most credible to some of you. The most compelling thing to me and many others is who can actually look at the man, listen to him and believe this is a leader? Its bizarre. Shttt come out of his mouth that makes you say, "huh?" I know he parrots what hate radio jocks said about liberals that excites his base and others but for fck sake, he acted like a 14 yr old with his insults , blather and obvious lies.
Dummy.

hanger4
04-23-2022, 05:39 AM
If a book tells the truth about Donnie that means it disparages America? Unlike many cultists that worship at the spoken word of Fox or Trump I actually read books. History mostly. Where they cite evidence and numbers of others who have observed and actually been in the room. I have had heard many Trumpists say what he really was doing. He appointed many that finally said "this shttt show aint for me" and left. Bolton was probably the most credible to some of you. The most compelling thing to me and many others is who can actually look at the man, listen to him and believe this is a leader? Its bizarre. Shttt come out of his mouth that makes you say, "huh?" I know he parrots what hate radio jocks said about liberals that excites his base and others but for fck sake, he acted like a 14 yr old with his insults , blather and obvious lies.

As often as the left media, you stephenpe and midcan5 have lied outright and/or by omission about what Trump has said or done, why would anyone believe what's written in a book ??

Hell, you, midcan5 and the left media can't even acknowledge that President Biden has a mental acuity problem.

The Booman
04-25-2022, 06:02 PM
Just when you thing democrats can't get any dumber.

stephenpe
05-09-2022, 05:39 PM
As often as the left media, you stephenpe and midcan5 have lied outright and/or by omission about what Trump has said or done, why would anyone believe what's written in a book ??

I lied about trump? Where he told the whole world be believed Putin over our security agencies regarding the election. Treason if it was a dem. There was not "a book" there are double digit books written by appointees, insiders that worked with him. Or books written by Woodward who did hours of interviews with Trump (because his ego demanded he keep talking). Just because you refuse to believe dozens of people that worked near him or with him and cover your ears and eyes does not make it a lie. That sir, is evidence of a cult. Or worse blind belief in an obvious demagogue so narcissistic that a child could see it.

hanger4
05-09-2022, 05:43 PM
I lied about trump? Where he told the whole world be believed Putin over our security agencies regarding the election. Treason if it was a dem. There was not "a book" there are double digit books written by appointees, insiders that worked with him. Or books written by Woodward who did hours of interviews with Trump (because his ego demanded he keep talking). Just because you refuse to believe dozens of people that worked near him or with him and cover your ears and eyes does not make it a lie. That sir, is evidence of a cult. Or worse blind belief in an obvious demagogue so narcissistic that a child could see it.

I see you ignored this part of my post stephenpe;

*Hell, you, midcan5 and the left media can't even acknowledge that President Biden has a mental acuity problem*

Why is that ??

stephenpe
05-09-2022, 06:02 PM
I have heard him talk more than a few times. Lucidly 48896[ But you can diagnose because of your education in what medical field. Reagan already had dementia going on before he ended his last term. They say he would fall asleep in meetings so I guess he really didnt know what was going on in South America funding shttt that congress had ruled against.

The Booman
05-09-2022, 07:25 PM
I see you ignored this part of my post stephenpe;

*Hell, you, midcan5 and the left media can't even acknowledge that President Biden has a mental acuity problem*

Why is that ??

They are disingenuous cowards.

hanger4
05-09-2022, 08:12 PM
I have heard him talk more than a few times. Lucidly 48896[ But you can diagnose because of your education in what medical field. Reagan already had dementia going on before he ended his last term. They say he would fall asleep in meetings so I guess he really didnt know what was going on in South America funding shttt that congress had ruled against.

You talking to me ?? Quote me.

As to your wittle picture meme, do you really want to start listing campaign rhetoric on one side while ignoring campaign rhetoric on the other ??

Reagan's not President and hasn't been since probably before you were born. Biden is President and it's rather obvious his mental acuity is waning. And you play but, but, but Reagan.

stephenpe
05-13-2022, 01:54 PM
Let me apologize for reading books by people that served in the Trump admin. Unless they were blowing him they must have been lying. I think the best parts were when he could not sit through a briefing by staff on world affairs without adding some sort of bizarre conspiracy at times or when they finally gave up briefing him and gave him a single sheet with bullet points to try and follow. But best of all when they had to hide shtt from him when he kept saying he wanted to remove us from NATO. Im sure Vladimir told him it was for the best. You talk about mental acuity. Most people with brains cells close together could see what a mental mistake he was. Dont listen to me. Instead of believing him go read a few of the MANY books written by people that had to personally deal with him. If the word shttt show was in Websters he would be definition 1.

The Booman
05-14-2022, 09:56 PM
Democrats have now made books unfun. Please go away. You keep promising to move to Canada but you never do.

midcan5
06-17-2022, 03:01 PM
I may have mentioned one of these books in another thread but for those who think and do not follow check them out. Darn PJ is gone, one conservative who could talk and write and think and around my age. I miss the intelligent conservatives like myself even when we sometimes disagreed.

P.J. O’Rourke wrote, 'this is the strangest book of note I have ever read...' I agree, read and check out book linked at bottom and learn and be puzzled too.

'This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality' by Peter Pomerantsev

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41717504-this-is-not-propaganda

And check out 'Nothing is True and Everything is Possible'.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/04/nothing-is-true-and-everything-is-permitted-peter-pomerantsev-review-russia-oil-boom (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/04/nothing-is-true-and-everything-is-permitted-peter-pomerantsev-review-russia-oil-boom)

stephenpe
06-19-2022, 09:26 AM
Democrats have now made books unfun. Please go away. You keep promising to move to Canada but you never do.
I gotta give you props for that one, Boo. Made me laugh. I never promised to move to Canada but I went to Winnipeg once. Loved that city. I read the local newspaper and it was like reading one written by adults and the level of common sense and intellegence in the letters to the editor made me weep for the level of nonsense I was reading here at home. btw I have read some unfun books that still piqued my interest. A Beautiful Mind was one of the hardest books I ever read but my new love gave it to me and I had to read it. The movie was pretty good. Being a true story I made it much better.

Cotton1
06-19-2022, 09:35 AM
I gotta give you props for that one, Boo. Made me laugh. I never promised to move to Canada but I went to Winnipeg once. Loved that city. I read the local newspaper and it was like reading one written by adults and the level of common sense and intellegence in the letters to the editor made me weep for the level of nonsense I was reading here at home. btw I have read some unfun books that still piqued my interest. A Beautiful Mind was one of the hardest books I ever read but my new love gave it to me and I had to read it. The movie was pretty good. Being a true story I made it much better.

Cool. "I've never been to Spain but I kind of like the music " :)

midcan5
09-27-2022, 07:07 AM
Please stay on topic, thanks. If you want to talk about our current President create a thread.

I have finally come to understand QAnon. For now I'll just say it is about change. Not being a conspiracy fan - I feel conspiracy is right in the open and understandable. Q was a bit of a puzzle though. More books and readings for those who want to know and understand the whys.

"Trump's rise to power was no aberration in American history and that the political project of Trumpism is still very much alive. The full title is "The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present And Future Of Trump's America.""

'Adam Serwer On New Book: 'The Cruelty Is The Point' In Trump's America'

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/27/1010760890/adam-serwer-on-new-book-the-cruelty-is-the-point-in-trump-america

'The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything' Mike Rothschild - great read

https://howtoacademy.com/podcasts/mike-rothschild-the-rise-of-qanon/

And: https://www.britannica.com/topic/QAnon

'QAnon: What is it and where did it come from?'

https://www.bbc.com/news/53498434

"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Benjamin Franklin

Peter1469
09-27-2022, 07:50 AM
What a dummy.
Please stay on topic, thanks. If you want to talk about our current President create a thread.

I have finally come to understand QAnon. For now I'll just say it is about change. Not being a conspiracy fan - I feel conspiracy is right in the open and understandable. Q was a bit of a puzzle though. More books and readings for those who want to know and understand the whys.

"Trump's rise to power was no aberration in American history and that the political project of Trumpism is still very much alive. The full title is "The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present And Future Of Trump's America.""

'Adam Serwer On New Book: 'The Cruelty Is The Point' In Trump's America'

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/27/1010760890/adam-serwer-on-new-book-the-cruelty-is-the-point-in-trump-america

'The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything' Mike Rothschild - great read

https://howtoacademy.com/podcasts/mike-rothschild-the-rise-of-qanon/

And: https://www.britannica.com/topic/QAnon

'QAnon: What is it and where did it come from?'

https://www.bbc.com/news/53498434

"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Benjamin Franklin

Mister D
09-27-2022, 12:26 PM
Please stay on topic, thanks. If you want to talk about our current President create a thread.

I have finally come to understand QAnon. For now I'll just say it is about change. Not being a conspiracy fan - I feel conspiracy is right in the open and understandable. Q was a bit of a puzzle though. More books and readings for those who want to know and understand the whys.

"Trump's rise to power was no aberration in American history and that the political project of Trumpism is still very much alive. The full title is "The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present And Future Of Trump's America.""

'Adam Serwer On New Book: 'The Cruelty Is The Point' In Trump's America'

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/27/1010760890/adam-serwer-on-new-book-the-cruelty-is-the-point-in-trump-america

'The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything' Mike Rothschild - great read

https://howtoacademy.com/podcasts/mike-rothschild-the-rise-of-qanon/

And: https://www.britannica.com/topic/QAnon

'QAnon: What is it and where did it come from?'

https://www.bbc.com/news/53498434

"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Benjamin Franklin
Why should anyone stay on topic when you are too cowardly to engage?

hanger4
09-27-2022, 12:40 PM
Please stay on topic, thanks. If you want to talk about our current President create a thread.

I have finally come to understand QAnon. For now I'll just say it is about change. Not being a conspiracy fan - I feel conspiracy is right in the open and understandable. Q was a bit of a puzzle though. More books and readings for those who want to know and understand the whys.

"Trump's rise to power was no aberration in American history and that the political project of Trumpism is still very much alive. The full title is "The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present And Future Of Trump's America.""

'Adam Serwer On New Book: 'The Cruelty Is The Point' In Trump's America'

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/27/1010760890/adam-serwer-on-new-book-the-cruelty-is-the-point-in-trump-america

'The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything' Mike Rothschild - great read

https://howtoacademy.com/podcasts/mike-rothschild-the-rise-of-qanon/

And: https://www.britannica.com/topic/QAnon

'QAnon: What is it and where did it come from?'

https://www.bbc.com/news/53498434

"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Benjamin Franklin

*Please stay on topic, thanks. If you want to talk about our current President create a thread.*

I suppose it would be too much to ask you to practice what you preach. :facepalm:

You can run away now midcan5, it's what you do best.

midcan5
10-22-2022, 06:18 PM
"The violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021 was a terrible day for American democracy, but at least, many people dared hope that, after it was over, the fever would now be broken, Trump's absurd and relentless set of lies about the stealing of the 2020 election made unspeakable. That is not what happened. Instead, shockingly, "the big steal" has increasingly become dogma among an ever-higher percentage of American Republicans. What happened to the Republican Party, and America, during the Trump presidency is a story we more or less think we know. What has happened to the party since, it turns out, is even more disturbing. That is the story Robert Draper tells here."

'Weapons of Mass Delusion: How the Republican Party Became an Apocalyptic Cult and Brought America to the Brink'

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60279799-weapons-of-mass-delusion

Mister D
10-22-2022, 06:21 PM
"The violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021 was a terrible day for American democracy, but at least, many people dared hope that, after it was over, the fever would now be broken, Trump's absurd and relentless set of lies about the stealing of the 2020 election made unspeakable. That is not what happened. Instead, shockingly, "the big steal" has increasingly become dogma among an ever-higher percentage of American Republicans. What happened to the Republican Party, and America, during the Trump presidency is a story we more or less think we know. What has happened to the party since, it turns out, is even more disturbing. That is the story Robert Draper tells here."

'Weapons of Mass Delusion: How the Republican Party Became an Apocalyptic Cult and Brought America to the Brink'

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60279799-weapons-of-mass-delusion

You said nothing about political violence when it mattered. Kindly STFU.

BTW, they're closing Wawas in Philadelphia because of rising crime and mayhem. Nice city you got there. Have you left your segregated community enough to notice?

midcan5
10-22-2022, 06:28 PM
You said nothing about political violence when it mattered. Kindly STFU.
BTW, they're closing Wawas in Philadelphia because of rising crime and mayhem. Nice city you got there. Have you left your segregated community enough to notice?
Sorry you are upset, you Trump tools get upset too quickly. Please don't mess up the thread with your irrelevant chatter. Start a new one. Thanks.

Mister D
10-22-2022, 06:31 PM
Sorry you are upset, you Trump tools get upset too quickly. Please don't mess up the thread with your irrelevant chatter. Start a new one. Thanks.

I'm not upset. I'm just calling you a hypocrite. STFU, will ya?

carolina73
10-22-2022, 06:51 PM
Please stay on topic, thanks. If you want to talk about our current President create a thread.

I have finally come to understand QAnon. For now I'll just say it is about change. Not being a conspiracy fan - I feel conspiracy is right in the open and understandable. Q was a bit of a puzzle though. More books and readings for those who want to know and understand the whys.

"Trump's rise to power was no aberration in American history and that the political project of Trumpism is still very much alive. The full title is "The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present And Future Of Trump's America.""

'Adam Serwer On New Book: 'The Cruelty Is The Point' In Trump's America'

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/27/1010760890/adam-serwer-on-new-book-the-cruelty-is-the-point-in-trump-america

'The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything' Mike Rothschild - great read

https://howtoacademy.com/podcasts/mike-rothschild-the-rise-of-qanon/

And: https://www.britannica.com/topic/QAnon

'QAnon: What is it and where did it come from?'

https://www.bbc.com/news/53498434

"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Benjamin Franklin

Anyone that thinks Q was about pizzagate and pedophiles is the nut. I am no way a believer in Q, but Q was independent of Trump. The pizzagate thing was more of a creation of the MSM. It was a small online rumor that only the likes of Alex Jones promoted.
How many times do we have to watch lies of the MSM before we understand that is their MO.

I belong to a Conservative board for a short period of time before I came here. Many of them were strong believers in Q. The forum had a Q section.

They never talked about Pizzagate and pedophiles. That is left wing propaganda.

midcan5
10-28-2022, 07:02 PM
Please stay on topic. Information concerning QAnon and Pizzagate for the interested reader.


'Pizzagate and its progeny QAnon are two conspiracy theories with a growing number of believers worldwide.'

https://jaapl.org/content/50/1/124

'QAnon, Pizzagate conspiracy theories co-opt #SaveTheChildren'

https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/aug/12/qanon-pizzagate-conspiracy-theories-co-opt-savethe/

'Pizzagate’s violent legacy'

"The gunman who terrorized a D.C. pizzeria is out of prison. The QAnon conspiracy theories he helped unleash are out of control."

LescoBrandon
10-28-2022, 07:28 PM
Any Charles Bowden readers out there? If you get a chance read 'At the Peripheries of Violence and Desire'. Warning, Bowden is not for the faint of heart, you may find yourself changed. It appeared in Harper's Magazine 8/1998, one of the best magazines ever published. It is also in 'The Charles Bowden Reader'. Sexual violence - rape - is its topic and its complication. Read it, link below.

If you are a libertarian or other free market fantastic check out his wring on Mexico and the workers. Their pay, their hours, their deaths, again stay away if you want to remain a naive free marketer.

I loved his pieces on his pet rattlesnake Beulah or all the bats.

http://harpers.org/archive/1998/08/torch-song-2/


https://aeon.co/essays/in-memory-of-charles-bowden-a-writer-and-a-sensualist

"He had the most interesting and original mind that I ever got to know well. It cut right through the conventional wisdom and surface veneer to the stark uncomfortable truth. His intellectual honesty compelled him to fully acknowledge the horrors and pointlessness of the human experiment in this world, but he never lost his sense of wonder or curiosity. Even as he catalogued the monstrous dystopias emerging from social and political collapse in Mexico, even as he prophesied the bleakest of futures for our ransacked planet, his love of life was undiminished – mainly because he could take such pleasure from the colour of a bird’s throat, the feel of a woman’s thigh under his fingertips, the rain falling like arrows on the desert as the sky convulsed in thunder." from essay above

Books

https://www.amazon.com/Charles-Bowden-Reader/dp/0292721986/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8
https://www.amazon.com/Murder-City-Ciudad-Economys-Killing/dp/1568586450/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8


"Legalized drugs would cause dislocations in the US economy - the prison industry for example and tens of billions spent annually on drug enforcement. But because the US economy is so large, this would be a minor blow, hardly as severe as the ultimate nightmare for the US economy, global peace, which would shutter its death industry commonly called the military/industrial complex." Charles Bowden

Does one of those links take me to an actual argument to debate?

blackjack21
10-28-2022, 10:09 PM
'Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis' by J. D. Vance
Congratulations @midcan5 You are officially on the MAGA team. The President appreciates your vote in 2020Apparently so. JD Vance is the Republican Senate candidate for Ohio. There must be something to this "trans" thing after all.
Reading these four pages where Midcan suggests books and authors and the rest try to belittle his thought using political jabs I was reminded of this character.We're just amazed that he's read and recommends the MAGA Republican Senate candidate from Ohio. No belittling, but maybe a raised brow curious for a little more explanation.
Midcan ran away Maybe because he realizes he recommended a Trump MAGA Republican Senate candidate?
How serious is the threat now? Many observers take comfort in our Constitution, which was designed precisely to thwart and contain demagogues like Donald Trump. Our Madisonian system of checks and balances has endured for more than two centuries. It survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, the Cold War, and Watergate. Surely, then, it will be able to survive Trump.We've been told that America could barely survive Jacob Chansley on the Senate floor.
mutual toleration, or the understanding that competing parties accept one another as legitimate rivals,Seems there was little toleration for Trump.
By the time Barack Obama became president, many Republicans, in particular, questioned the legitimacy of their Democratic rivals and had abandoned forbearance for a strategy of winning by any means necessary.Uhhhhummm... Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush, Trump? All of them faced efforts to delegitimize them by the Democrats. It's ludicrous to pretend otherwise.
'The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family'This is not mutual toleration...
Bolton was probably the most credible to some of you. Bolton was a neoconservative war monger. What makes you think he's credible to us?
Shttt come out of his mouth that makes you say, "huh?" I know he parrots what hate radio jocks said about liberals that excites his base and others but for fck sake, he acted like a 14 yr old with his insults , blather and obvious lies.You mean like Biden calling Mohammed bin Salman a murderer and then wondering why the Saudis are cutting oil production?
But best of all when they had to hide shtt from him when he kept saying he wanted to remove us from NATO. Insubordination... and you believe their books, huh?
I miss the intelligent conservatives like myself even when we sometimes disagreed.You're a conservative now, eh? What are you trying to conserve?

Ethereal
10-28-2022, 10:38 PM
Please stay on topic. Information concerning QAnon and Pizzagate for the interested reader.


'Pizzagate and its progeny QAnon are two conspiracy theories with a growing number of believers worldwide.'

https://jaapl.org/content/50/1/124

'QAnon, Pizzagate conspiracy theories co-opt #SaveTheChildren'

https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/aug/12/qanon-pizzagate-conspiracy-theories-co-opt-savethe/

'Pizzagate’s violent legacy'

"The gunman who terrorized a D.C. pizzeria is out of prison. The QAnon conspiracy theories he helped unleash are out of control."

The hypocrisy of liberals like you is on topic. Naturally, you want to avoid having that discussion because you need to maintain the elaborate delusion that you and your liberal ilk are somehow the good guys in all this.

And I just have to say that after reading your stuff for at least a DECADE now, I can't recall a single original or interesting thing you've ever said. And on the rare occasion that something interesting does show up in one of your posts, it's always someone else's words, words that you distort to serve your transparently partisan political agenda. And you know what else? You have NEVER debated anyone! Not once! In the over two decades I've been posting on internet forums, you might be the biggest weirdo I've ever come across, which is really saying something.

Ethereal
10-28-2022, 10:45 PM
Bolton was a neoconservative war monger. What makes you think he's credible to us?

Several conservatives here argued that Bolton was a good choice at the time. I told them Bolton was a snake that would just betray Trump. As usual, I was right and they were wrong. And, as usual, they never admitted or even acknowledged their error. Incidentally, this refusal to admit error is one of the reasons why the US finds itself bogged down in the Ukrainian quagmire. The exact same clowns who gave us the disastrous war in Iraq are still calling the shots in DC. Literally nothing has changed in the past twenty years except for increased rates of senility among boomer politicians and voters.

Cotton1
10-31-2022, 11:06 PM
Sorry you are upset, you Trump tools get upset too quickly. Please don't mess up t8bhe thread with your irrelevant chatter. Start a new one. Thanks.


I agree. This is your thread of TDS, parroting and other examples in regards to saying what you want when you want and truth be damned, Torpedo.

When we want to do the same we should start our own highly biased threads .

midcan5
11-07-2022, 09:24 AM
Relaxing after a workout this morning, I went to my bookshelf and selected a book read long ago and thought how brilliant is this. Another favorite author for those who think for themselves and do not follow.

"Which are the arguments and how many are there? I must have an inbred urge toward symmetry. In canvassing for the principal ways of criticizing, assaulting, and ridiculing the three successive "progressive" thrusts of Marshall's story, I have come up with another triad: that is, with three principal reactive-reactionary theses, which I call the perversity thesis or thesis of the perverse effect, the futility thesis, and the jeopardy thesis. According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy. The futility thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to 'make a dent.'"

Albert O. Hirschman, 'The Rhetoric of Reaction'

Source: https://quotepark.com/authors/albert-o-hirschman/

'The Rhetoric of Reaction - Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674768680
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rhetoric_of_Reaction

Peter1469
11-07-2022, 09:26 AM
Relaxing after a workout this morning, I went to my bookshelf and selected a book read long ago and thought how brilliant is this. Another favorite author for those who think for themselves and do not follow.

"Which are the arguments and how many are there? I must have an inbred urge toward symmetry. In canvassing for the principal ways of criticizing, assaulting, and ridiculing the three successive "progressive" thrusts of Marshall's story, I have come up with another triad: that is, with three principal reactive-reactionary theses, which I call the perversity thesis or thesis of the perverse effect, the futility thesis, and the jeopardy thesis. According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy. The futility thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to 'make a dent.'"

Albert O. Hirschman, 'The Rhetoric of Reaction'

Source: https://quotepark.com/authors/albert-o-hirschman/

'The Rhetoric of Reaction - Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674768680
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rhetoric_of_Reaction
Sounds like a blast to read.

Chris
11-07-2022, 09:41 AM
Relaxing after a workout this morning, I went to my bookshelf and selected a book read long ago and thought how brilliant is this. Another favorite author for those who think for themselves and do not follow.

"Which are the arguments and how many are there? I must have an inbred urge toward symmetry. In canvassing for the principal ways of criticizing, assaulting, and ridiculing the three successive "progressive" thrusts of Marshall's story, I have come up with another triad: that is, with three principal reactive-reactionary theses, which I call the perversity thesis or thesis of the perverse effect, the futility thesis, and the jeopardy thesis. According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy. The futility thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to 'make a dent.'"

Albert O. Hirschman, 'The Rhetoric of Reaction'

Source: https://quotepark.com/authors/albert-o-hirschman/

'The Rhetoric of Reaction - Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674768680
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rhetoric_of_Reaction


So you follow Hirschman.

He compares liberalism and conservatism in the way only a liberal would.

Mister D
11-07-2022, 11:20 AM
So you follow Hirschman.

He compares liberalism and conservatism in the way only a liberal would.
I was assigned that book for a class in college. Looking back on it years later, I wondered in what world Joseph de Maistre and Friedrich Hayek shared the same principles.

Chris
11-07-2022, 12:14 PM
I was assigned that book for a class in college. Looking back on it years later, I wondered in what world Joseph de Maistre and Friedrich Hayek shared the same principles.

de Maistre was, little I know, a traditionalist, Hayek a liberal in the classical sense.

midcan5
11-17-2022, 08:40 AM
Picked from my bookshelf a book I read some time ago, an author for those who think for themselves. I was discussing writing with our granddaughter who is already published and still in HS. Read Stanley Fish if you want to learn. Another OP for the serious reader is linked below, a short essay for those who want to see.

'Winning Arguments: What Works and Doesn't Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom'

https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Arguments-Politics-Courtroom-Classroom/dp/0062226673

'I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump'

http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-whites-chant-trump-trump-trump/

"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey

Cotton1
11-17-2022, 09:03 PM
Picked from my bookshelf a book I read some time ago, an author for those who think for themselves. I was discussing writing with our granddaughter who is already published and still in HS. Read Stanley Fish if you want to learn. Another OP for the serious reader is linked below, a short essay for those who want to see.

'Winning Arguments: What Works and Doesn't Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom'

https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Arguments-Politics-Courtroom-Classroom/dp/0062226673

'I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump'

http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-whites-chant-trump-trump-trump/

"The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading." David Bailey

Good evening, Mid. I may take you up on that suggestion.

We may not always agree but you are a thinker. I admire that .

LescoBrandon
11-17-2022, 09:05 PM
I'd recommend "The Last Superstition" by Edward Feser. Puts to bed all the atheist arguments from the last decade or so.

Cotton1
11-17-2022, 09:07 PM
"The violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021 was a terrible day for American democracy, but at least, many people dared hope that, after it was over, the fever would now be broken, Trump's absurd and relentless set of lies about the stealing of the 2020 election made unspeakable. That is not what happened. Instead, shockingly, "the big steal" has increasingly become dogma among an ever-higher percentage of American Republicans. What happened to the Republican Party, and America, during the Trump presidency is a story we more or less think we know. What has happened to the party since, it turns out, is even more disturbing. That is the story Robert Draper tells here."

'Weapons of Mass Delusion: How the Republican Party Became an Apocalyptic Cult and Brought America to the Brink'

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60279799-weapons-of-mass-delusion

For the fair minded thinker you often appear to be it seems out of place when you reduce yourself to parroting biased halfwits.

However, it is your right...Patriot

midcan5
12-26-2022, 08:24 AM
'Amusing Ourselves To Death' Read this years ago, check it out. You see this in much of the America so called conservative news today.

https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/amusing-ourselves-to-death

"In Huxley's vision, Postman writes, 'no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.""

"A peek-a-boo-world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is a world without much coherence or sense; a world that does not ask us, indeed, does not permit us to do anything; a world that is, like the child’s game of peek-a-boo, entirely self-contained. But like peek-a-boo, it is also endlessly entertaining."

LescoBrandon
12-26-2022, 08:29 AM
'Amusing Ourselves To Death' Read this years ago, check it out. You see this in much of the America so called conservative news today.

https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/amusing-ourselves-to-death

"In Huxley's vision, Postman writes, 'no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.""

"A peek-a-boo-world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is a world without much coherence or sense; a world that does not ask us, indeed, does not permit us to do anything; a world that is, like the child’s game of peek-a-boo, entirely self-contained. But like peek-a-boo, it is also endlessly entertaining."

That pretty much sums up Democrat voters - loving their oppression, adoring the technologies that have stupefied them, etc.

midcan5
04-15-2023, 07:14 AM
When we were young mom would try to manage / control / censor our books, especially porn. Today, as it has been forever it seems, diversity and sexual issues confuse the so called religious right and the republicans use the topic to manage them and get their vote. Sexuality sure confuses the religious right, one wonders if their God has made a mistake. God once destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, don't you wonder why he doesn't destroy blue states where sin runs rampant according to the conservative religion right republicans. Seems odd that all these storms hit random states.

'Censorship is surging thanks to an organised rightwing minority targeting books on LGBTQ and Black characters and issues'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/13/the-guardian-view-on-us-book-bans-time-to-fight-back

hanger4
04-15-2023, 07:24 AM
When we were young mom would try to manage / control / censor our books, especially porn. Today, as it has been forever it seems, diversity and sexual issues confuse the so called religious right and the republicans use the topic to manage them and get their vote. Sexuality sure confuses the religious right, one wonders if their God has made a mistake. God once destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, don't you wonder why he doesn't destroy blue states where sin runs rampant according to the conservative religion right republicans. Seems odd that all these storms hit random states.

'Censorship is surging thanks to an organised rightwing minority targeting books on LGBTQ and Black characters and issues'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/13/the-guardian-view-on-us-book-bans-time-to-fight-back

*Censorship is surging thanks to an organised rightwing minority targeting books on LGBTQ and Black characters and issues'*

So those books should be widely available to primary school children without parents permission ??

jes'fuchinwitcha
04-15-2023, 07:39 AM
'Amusing Ourselves To Death' Read this years ago, check it out. You see this in much of the America so called conservative news today.

https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/amusing-ourselves-to-death

"In Huxley's vision, Postman writes, 'no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.""


Fox "News" even defined itself, in a court of law, to be entertainment, and not news. Fox consumers don't let that get in the way, though.

Hoosier8
04-15-2023, 09:52 AM
https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/22

"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and patriotism, will offer up all of their rights to the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. " Julius Caesar

Being done right now about Ukraine even though it will be another failed foray.

Hoosier8
04-15-2023, 09:53 AM
When we were young mom would try to manage / control / censor our books, especially porn. Today, as it has been forever it seems, diversity and sexual issues confuse the so called religious right and the republicans use the topic to manage them and get their vote. Sexuality sure confuses the religious right, one wonders if their God has made a mistake. God once destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, don't you wonder why he doesn't destroy blue states where sin runs rampant according to the conservative religion right republicans. Seems odd that all these storms hit random states.

'Censorship is surging thanks to an organised rightwing minority targeting books on LGBTQ and Black characters and issues'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/13/the-guardian-view-on-us-book-bans-time-to-fight-back

LOL, one name, Aunt Jemima. FAIL

stephenpe
04-15-2023, 07:40 PM
I still buy it by the new name. My kids love that pancake. I wish I could make them from scratch that well. The Pearl Milling Company. Since 1889

jes'fuchinwitcha
04-15-2023, 07:59 PM
You know Caesar never wrote or said that, right?
I didn't think he was smart enough to say such an excellent thing.

Great quote, no matter where it came from.

stephenpe
04-20-2023, 10:14 AM
I didn't think he was smart enough to say such an excellent thing.

Great quote, no matter where it came from. Ive searched back for said quote......What was it. TIA

DGUtley
04-20-2023, 10:16 AM
https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/22

"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and patriotism, will offer up all of their rights to the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. " Julius Caesar

He never said that.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/snare-drummed/

stephenpe
04-20-2023, 01:36 PM
thanks, but still a great quote.........so it just showed up on the internet in 2001........

midcan5
04-21-2023, 07:39 AM
I wish you guys would read learn and pay attention instead of the constant childish and stupid ad hominems. You do realize your inane replies tell us who you are and do not address the topic. Maybe not?

While this is a bit off topic, we do try to support local bookstores. Our grandchildren cost us a fortune some visits. lol But I like Amazon it is easy finding books that are often not big sellers.


'Lydia Davis refuses to sell her next book on Amazon' 'The garlanded short story author will release her next collection solely in bookshops and select independent online outlets to coincide with Bookshop Day'

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/19/lydia-davis-refuses-to-sell-her-next-book-on-amazon

stephenpe
04-22-2023, 04:27 PM
I wish you guys would read learn and pay attention instead of the constant childish and stupid ad hominems. You do realize your inane replies tell us who you are and do not address the topic. Maybe not?

While this is a bit off topic, we do try to support local bookstores. Our grandchildren cost us a fortune some visits. lol But I like Amazon it is easy finding books that are often not big sellers.


'Lydia Davis refuses to sell her next book on Amazon' 'The garlanded short story author will release her next collection solely in bookshops and select independent online outlets to coincide with Bookshop Day'

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/19/lydia-davis-refuses-to-sell-her-next-book-on-amazon
My 15 yr old loves me to take her to Barnes and Noble. Its a $50 trip usually. I love that she loves books.

midcan5
05-05-2023, 09:04 AM
Religion in America today is not Christlike, it seems too concerned with politics and control of the other. Think only of how they cry over the unborn but care nada for the born. Interesting read below.

'Testimony: Inside the evangelical movement that failed a generation'

'Jon Ward’s life is divided in half: two decades inside the evangelical Christian bubble and two decades outside of it.

“A work of raw honesty and deep insight.” Kristin Kobes Du Mez, New York Times best-selling author of Jesus and John Wayne

https://www.jonwardwrites.org/book/testimony

"Jon Ward’s honest, meditative, and beautifully written memoir shines a bright light on the often-obscured links between religion and politics in America." Yuval Levin

zelmo1234
05-05-2023, 12:02 PM
I wish you guys would read learn and pay attention instead of the constant childish and stupid ad hominems. You do realize your inane replies tell us who you are and do not address the topic. Maybe not?

While this is a bit off topic, we do try to support local bookstores. Our grandchildren cost us a fortune some visits. lol But I like Amazon it is easy finding books that are often not big sellers.


'Lydia Davis refuses to sell her next book on Amazon' 'The garlanded short story author will release her next collection solely in bookshops and select independent online outlets to coincide with Bookshop Day'

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/19/lydia-davis-refuses-to-sell-her-next-book-on-amazon

This is actually really cool. it is nice that she is trying to support small business. and it will take longer for her books to reach all of the readers but I like the idea

carolina73
05-05-2023, 12:17 PM
I still buy it by the new name. My kids love that pancake. I wish I could make them from scratch that well. The Pearl Milling Company. Since 1889

But, I'll bet their jingle sucks.

stephenpe
05-06-2023, 02:52 PM
Old school reference. Jingle. It morphed into jiggle for awhile. Sex sells. But now all I hear in my head are multiple jingles from old days of commercials. Youll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent. Im cukoo for cocoa puffs.

My bologna has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R. ( ...
Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is. ( ...

Double your pleasure, double your fun.

midcan5
06-29-2023, 06:55 AM
Excellent read and spot on.

'American Whitelash' 'A Changing Nation And The Cost Of Progress' By Wesley Lowery

'A masterful blend of narrative history and empathetic reporting.'

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/wesley-lowery/american-whitelash/

LWW
06-29-2023, 09:05 AM
i wish you guys would read learn and pay attention instead of the constant childish and stupid ad hominems. You do realize your inane replies tell us who you are and do not address the topic.

wow!

midcan5
08-13-2023, 08:40 AM
Reading for the interested.

'Has America Strayed from Democracy?'

One of the paradoxes of the American Right, so called conservative, mostly republican supporters in America today is they pretend to be concerned with children education and Christian values but their actions are just the opposite. Trump, a convicted rapist, draft dodger, inveterate liar, Putin sympathizer, and failed president - accomplished nothing - has made cowards of the republicans with values. They fear his base, for that base fears democracy with its complications and respect for all people.

'Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%'

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

'Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World' by Anand Giridharadas

https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Take-All-Charade-Changing/dp/0451493249

midcan5
08-29-2023, 03:17 PM
Worth mentioning again. Read it read it read it..... and short too.

"...Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation." John Adams

https://www.theclassroom.com/did-john-adams-say-democracy-never-lasts-long-7843.html

Quoted in 'The Trouble With Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time' by Brooke Gladstone

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/55659690-the-trouble-with-reality-a-rumination-on-moral-panic-in-our-time

Chris
08-29-2023, 04:23 PM
"Democracy is the road to socialism." --Karl Marx

midcan5
11-06-2023, 08:02 AM
I recently re-read 'Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance' By Robert Pirsig and found it interesting the second time around. So I had to check out 'Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals' also by Pirsig. A deep read so far and just as Zen opened your mind, Lila is all over the place, fascinating and worth your time in these crazy times.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/31093

"The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do." Robert Pirsig, Lila: An Enquiry into Morals

jes'fuchinwitcha
11-06-2023, 09:35 AM
I recently re-read 'Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance' By Robert Pirsig and found it interesting the second time around. So I had to check out 'Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals' also by Pirsig. A deep read so far and just as Zen opened your mind, Lila is all over the place, fascinating and worth your time in these crazy times.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/31093

"The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do." Robert Pirsig, Lila: An Enquiry into Morals
ZATAOMM had an influential effect on my 20 year old developing mind. I don't remember specifically how, but I think of it fondly.

midcan5
02-26-2024, 07:54 AM
Re-reading parts of this collection, paper is turning yellow I hate that in publishing. For those online here, who think, it is worth your time covers a variety of topics thoughtfully.

"A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it." A.C. Grayling

'The Mystery of Things' A.C. Grayling

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/581132

LWW
03-02-2024, 02:36 AM
Worth mentioning again. Read it read it read it..... and short too.

"...Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation." John Adams

https://www.theclassroom.com/did-john-adams-say-democracy-never-lasts-long-7843.html

Quoted in 'The Trouble With Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time' by Brooke Gladstone

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/55659690-the-trouble-with-reality-a-rumination-on-moral-panic-in-our-time

Adams was warning of the inherent flaws of democracy and did not support the belief that the new nation be a democracy.

Facts. They are such stubborn things.