Information Warfare Education, Propaganda, and How to Tell the Difference

Town Square
1626

No, you didn’t strike a nerve. lol
Second I wasn’t even doing a ranking in pluralism.
You say obviously people who commit crimes are not Pluralistic and I agree. Obviously Trump Committed a Crime, so he therfore cannot be pluralistic. It is in fact illegal to sexually harrass people in an organization that you have a position of power within. That is 100% the law. I don’t know why Trump get an exception to this most obvious rule.

I said:

And you apparently ignore that and ask this:

You either are ignoring what I said concsiously or subconsciously. Regardless of what it is, it’s kind of pointless for me to keep saying the same thing and have you completely ignore it.

I think you keep repeating things because you THINK it “strikes a nerve” when in fact it just suggest to me that you have some problems yourself and perhaps these issues strike a nerve with you far more than me.

Maybe bold will help:
Being a member of any group does not suddenly give anyone any kind of pluralist or integral status.
However, membership in a group may categorically mean you are NOT pluralistic. For example, Aryan Nation, KKK and Proud Boys are organizations with anti-pluralist agendas and supporting their missions is an anti-pluralist act.

1627

Groping random woman in a club is also a good way to get shot or at least beat up when you go to the rest room or at the very very least 86ed from the club. Go ahead and try it. Good luck.

The key in a club is CONSENT. You better make sure you have consent before you grab a woman’s pussy in a club, for sure.

1628

Good to hear I didn’t strike a nerve. Not my intent in the inquiry.

Of course Ray. So when a woman saunters up, you pat your lap, she sits down and grinds into your crotch feeling your hard-on, you then squeeze her thigh, she feeds you a drink of champagne and spreads her legs and kisses you, you then rub up her tight sliding up and slipping your hand into her panties is not uncommon in night clubs. Or you can play out the Midnight Cowboy version with two dudes feeling each other up, without ever saying a word. Happens all the time and even if archaic urges are in play, I wouldn’t think it indicates someone is more or less Pluralistic than the devout Jehovah’s Witness.

Is there a “power dynamic” at play here? Perhaps a misogynistic display of patriarchal privilege? Or two humans enfolding their archaic desires.

When the nation was in an uproar over Bill Clinton feeling up the flight attendant, I was not shocked nor morally outraged. Did she rub against him. Did she push him away when he gently laid his had on her waist. Did she smile when he started sliding his hand up her dress. Did she widen her stance as he slipped a finger in her panties. Or did he violently grope her committing sexual assault - patriarchal power play if you will? While my political and moral opinion of Bill Clinton might not be the highest, I still don’t know what happened so simply do not concern myself with it. Was President Clinton abusing his power? Was she a Gold Digger looking for favor or riches? Or was it simply a horny guy and a horny girl groping each other?

We saw a college kid get charged with rape. He claimed “consensual sex”. She charged “rape”. Video cameras showed the lady kissing and crawling all over him, signing him in to her dorm, then dragging him by the arm to the elevator and up to her room. What would justice look like in this case?

Thanks Ray. My question was more one of associating with other Intersectionality groups rather than “belonging” to the group. If a white man marries a black woman is he more Pluralistic than the asian man that marries native american woman? Is a gay man choosing to have sex with asian men more Pluralistic than a hetero man having sex with latina women?

Absolutely agree that some organizations are NOT pluralistic. KKK and Aryan Nation would be great examples. Proud Boys aren’t race based so should they get a bit of Pluralistic credit since they are solely political based?
What about Black Lives Matter? Should they be considered a Pluralistic group knowing what we know now?

1629

No - these are surface behaviors. They are not identity nor internal mental or emotional processes. I can give $1 million to charity and still be a miser. The devil is in the details and the internal, not external behavior.
I would argue that Integral is not a measurable external behavior.
You can put whatever names you want. You can put the Mickey Mouse Club. I don’t know how many times I have to repeat the same thing.

So BLM - what is the intent or reason why the person supports BLM? As I said, just being a member of a group does not qualify anyone for pluralistic status. Nor does BLM disqualify. An 80 year old white male Navy war veteran who just wants to say Black People should not get murdered by police and then is assaulted by police has a completely different motivation than teenagers who just want to raise hell or Proud Boys disguiesd as Antifa who commit arson on local businesses in order to create chaos.

What was the final verdict of the Jury and Appeals court process? I’ll go with what a jury decided in each case and if the sentence was maintianed through appeals. That is a perfectly Orange rational way to look at it. Green would not be judging guilt or innocence except though Green Shadow.

No. Again, Membership means nothing. A group can put whatever they want on internet their home page and it does not change the facts on the ground.
Again - a group cannot get “pluralistic credit”

Now - is it possible that there is one or two confused people in the Proud Boys who don’t realize what is going on? Yeah, that’s reomotely possible. It would be really hard though when they actuall openly and officially advocate violence and are openly against Islam, and have been convicterd by juries of their peers for various identity related crimes. Moreover, when many of the Proud Boys convicted also had affiliations with other groups with openly racist agendas.

1630

Ok - So I missed on the Proud Boys. I don’t actually follow them. LOL

So I agree it’s not about “group membership”. What I’m trying to look at are behaviors and actions in the real world. Perhaps I view external behaviors as manifestation of internal states - not a facade to manipulate Power Dynamics and “trick” everyone. I think outside of a few Narcissists, people can’t really put on that much of an “act”.

Personally I don’t see marrying someone as a “surface behavour”. In my religion, marriage is a Holy Sacrament, beyond the vanity of ego or surface.

Essentially if someone exhibits, inhabits, manifests a Pluralistic life what more is there? Or is living a Pluralistic life insufficient to be considered Green or perhaps on-the-edge of Integral?

I rowed a double scull with a homosexual with virulent AIDS. He warned me that he had bouts of diarrhea and vomiting and to not touch any bodily fluids since they were highly contagious as he was dying. Since we were in extremely close quarters frankly it scared me. Repulsion initially if you will, just as I would be repulsed by someone holding a hand grenade. And I yet I still rowed with him. Should we cling to my initial revolt at exposure to AIDS or having careful weighted the threat and continued rowing with him?

1631

Here we’d have to get into psychology. Most psychological and spiritual teachings identify 3 aspects of the identity. Call it Id, Ego and Superego - or whatever.

We vistited this slightly in our discussion of Intrinsic vs extrinsic religious behavior. Whether Christians or New Age Hippies - there are many who go through the motions of the spritual practice for whatever reasons but never actually “get it”. So we have plastic Yoga mats and spandex and sexual tantra on the left and televangelism on the right. The first person everyone tries to fool is themself. Again - this is well examined in psychology. Jung called the face we present to the world as our Persona.

Even with marriage - some people view it as a Holy Sacrament while some men found their brides in the brothels of Manila or Bangkok. Their marriages are little more than legal prostitution. Money for ownership papers in the guise of a marriage. So again it depends on the internal rather than the external.

I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself for being concerned about an infectious disease. If I was 20 again and wrestling or sparring I might want participants to be tested due to the real chance of blood contact.

1632

Most disturbingly, the left will lie to steal an election.

Even more disturbingly, the right actually DID lie to steal an election. Even tried to send “fake electors” (as his own lawyer called them) to D.C., and to get Pence to tip the scales by declaring Trump winner of an election he objectively lost. And even after all this time, the right continues to lie about the election being stolen, despite these claims being laughed out of court dozens of times (often by Trump-appointed judges), and many of the lawyers being stripped of their credentials for pushing such fraudulent claims, resulting in the first non-peaceful transfer of power in modern American history. Even FermentedAgave posted some fairly conclusive evidence above that the election was in no way “stolen”, with an abstract that reads:

Abstract

After the 2020 US presidential election Donald Trump refused to concede, alleging widespread and unparalleled voter fraud. Trump’s supporters deployed several statistical arguments in an attempt to cast doubt on the result. Reviewing the most prominent of these statistical claims, we conclude that none of them is even remotely convincing. The common logic behind these claims is that, if the election were fairly conducted, some feature of the observed 2020 election result would be unlikely or impossible. In each case, we find that the purportedly anomalous fact is either not a fact or not anomalous.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2103619118

“Trump, meanwhile lies like any other politician lies… it’s not nice, but thankfully, he’s no worse than any other that has gone before. It’s just business as usual.”

No, Trump’s lies are magnitudes greater than “other politicians”, both in terms of quantity and quality. Spreading self-serving lies about his election being stolen is one of the most dangerous lies you can spread in a democracy – which, again, resulted in the first non-peaceful transfer of power in modern American history.

This is far, far worst than Clinton lying about a blowjob. It’s probably about on par with Bush lying about WMDs, resulting in the death of 1 million Iraqis, except in this case it resulted in the delegitimization of our own Constitution.

“The left doesn’t like Trump. That’s all it is. He’s broken no laws, he’s not done anything unconstitutional. It’s just that the left hate him. That’s what it comes down to. It has a name. TDS.”

Hard disagree. And honestly, accusing anyone who dislikes Trump as having “TDS” is just a cynical way to shut down the conversation and avoid the many substantial criticisms that folks have.

  • Conspiring to send “fake electors” so he can steal a presidential election is, by definition, blatantly unconstitutional.
  • Stealing top secret confidential documents, keeping them at Maralago, and refusing to return them after many attempts to retrieve them is blatantly illegal.
  • Pressuing officials in Georgia to somehow find the 11,000 votes he needed to win the election was illegal.
  • Manafort just plainly admitted to illegally handing private polling data to the Russians, as was found by the GOP-led bipartisan investigation report.
  • Trump kids stole money from their own charity. For children. Illegal.
  • If we are so concerned about Hunter Biden (who has no government position, and whose laptop was investigated by Trump’s team over multiple months, after which it was decided there was nothing they were able to prosecute him for), then you must be REALLY pissed at how Trump’s kids were able to use their positions and proximity to Trump to literally pull in billions of dollars while being active members of the administration.

Of course, I could always just flip this claim, so we can see how this plays on either end: “The right doesn’t like Biden. That’s all it is. He’s broken no laws, he’s not done anything unconstitutional. It’s just that the right hate him. That’s what it comes down to. It has a name. BDS.”

Also worth noting that “TDS” was originally coined by the left during the Obama years, when the GOP was obsessed with dijon mustard and tan suits. This was the root of “ODS”, or “Obama Derangement Syndrome”. However, I think TDS works really well — Trump is in fact delusional, and his reality distortion field amplifies his delusions until they thoroughly infect his most diehard supporters :slight_smile:

1633

Essentially if someone exhibits, inhabits, manifests a Pluralistic life what more is there? Or is living a Pluralistic life insufficient to be considered Green or perhaps on-the-edge of Integral?

As Ray says, these are all exterior surface features that may or may not reflect interior deep features. It is very difficult to gauge one’s interior development based on the visible behaviors that we can observe. If anything, it’s because we don’t know what these people are like in different contexts, or behind closed doors. Everyone puts on an “act”. Even you. Even me. The question is, how aware are we of our degree of authenticity or inauthenticity at any given moment?

Stages of development refer to the various complexities of interior thought that different people are capable of (at least in terms of the cognitive line), which ends up producing different views, values, and behaviors (each of which correspond to other developmental lines, which typically lag a stage or two behind the cognitive). It’s a person’s capacity to take multiple perspectives, and to fold these multiple perspectives together in different ways. At the green level, it’s s capacity for genuine systemic thinking (which is why the healthy forms of progressivism/wokism tend to emerge out of mature green, and the unhealthy forms often come from lower-stage enactments of those ideas), radically inclusive values, and worldcentric concerns. It describes a cognitive capacity for perspectivism, pluralism, and constructivism.

This is why, for example, someone can have an Orange cognition, and “play an orange game” while interacting with others, while coming from a predominantly Red stage of values, ethics, intrapersonal capacities, etc. But we can’t see the main drivers of a person’s behavior, only the behavior itself, which is often too little information for us to accurately reconstruct the person’s interior.

Also important to note that, when a “later” stage gets adopted by the rest of society, it has a way of re-translating prior stages.

For example, as I’ve mentioned before, in 1958 only something like 8% of the population supported interracial marriage. These days it’s more like 94%. Does that mean that everyone suddenly popped out of the amber stage, into Orange and Green? Well some of them, maybe, but studies suggest that upward of 60% of people continue to have an amber center of gravity today – yet interracial marriage still has such high majority support. How could this be?

Simple: once Green was adopted by society (and all the civil rights legislation that emerged from this stage), this effectively reformatted what it means to be “ethnocentric” in America. Later stages exert a regulatory force on prior stages.

And this is real progress, and progress that should be celebrated! But we should be clear what kind of progress it actually represents. It’s a progress of better/healthier horizontal translation, not necessarily one of vertical transformation.

So when it comes to something like “Green christianity”, which certainly exists (but much more rare than traditional Amber versions), all of those participants would definitionally have needed to first grow through Orange, because there is no skipping stages. Which means, if you are a Green Christian, you probably no longer believe that Christ was literally born from a biological virgin, you probably no longer believe that Moses literally parted the Red Sea, you probably no longer believe that Noah literally filled a boat with two of every animal on the planet. There is still Faith, there is still Mystery, there is still God — but enacting these things no longer requires you to believe in the various kinds of traditional myth that has surround them for centuries. A Green Christian would be perfectly fine with using a person’s preferred pronouns as a sign of respect (though they would likely resist the idea that such speech be made mandatory, if they have integrated their Orange in a healthy way.) A Green Christian would never identify themself as a “Christian nationalist” (even while perhaps being a patriotic Christian American in their everyday life.)

So when it comes to “ethnocentrism”, there are all sorts of ways to draw the “us vs. them” line. It doesn’t only need to be based on ethnicity. It can be drawn on partisan lines, religious lines, nationalist lines, etc. Which means that, even if you have multiple ethnicities in your Church, if that Church is still emphasizing myths and beliefs and narratives over a) direct experience, b) empirical reality, or c) minimally-rational humanitarianism, then chances are it’s still an Amber church.

And here’s the thing — there is nothing wrong with that. It only becomes a problem when Amber attempts to assert its views on everyone else. Which can be anything from banning abortion, to banning gay marriage, to banning books, to forcing schools to hang “In God We Trust” signs. (Which is the same criticism I have for the Amber ethnocentric segments of the left, who also try to assert their views on everyone else.)

This is why it’s important to make room for all stages, but equally important to govern from the highest stages available. We live in a society with a value stack that runs from Amber through Orange to Green, with a dim possibility of Integral emergence in the future as life conditions continue to present themselves.

Which means that our solutions need to find a way to align that values stack, rather than privileging the earlier stages in the stack over everyone else. Amber is at its best when constrained by Orange, Orange is at its best when constrained by Green, and Green is at its best when constrained by Teal. And there are versions of Christianity, for example, at every one of these altitudes, even if they don’t necessarily think of each other as being “real Christians”.

And it’s not like these structures ever go away as we continue to grow and develop. We don’t lose ego altogether when we evolve into ethnocentric stages. We don’t lose ethnocentricity altogether when we evolve into worldcentric stages. Rather, the earlier structures are reformatted and “put in service” of the higher stages. I just talked to Ken about this over the weekend in our latest episode.

For example, we here in Integral Land have our own ethnocentricity — e.g. my job is to create integral content for integral people. That is a “soft” ethnocentrism, an “integrated” ethnocentrism, which is put in service of my higher worldcentric and kosmocentric values. We can still have an “us”, we can even still have a “them”, but the line between them becomes far more permeable and far less opaque. I’ll still save my own family in a fire before everyone else’s. I’ll still put my own oxygen mask on before my kid’s, because that would be an act of ego-centrism that is in direct service to the larger ethnocentrism I feel for my own family. Et cetera.

1634

I totally disagree with you on this. Believing that the election was stolen is different to lying that the election was stolen. Trump’s heart-felt belief was that the election was stolen. And we see, from Sam Harris’s comments, that Trump’s belief was not baseless:

That doesn’t answer the people who say, ‘It’s still completely unfair to not have looked at the laptop in a timely way and to have shut down the New York Post Twitter account; that’s a left-wing conspiracy to deny the presidency to Donald Trump.’ Absolutely it was, absolutely. But I think it was warranted.

“But I think it was warranted?” These are the kinds of people that Trump is up against. The “anything goes”, “do whatever it takes” crowd for whom the end justifies the means. Trump will probably lose the next election, because this crowd will do whatever it takes to make sure that he never returns to politics.

As a businessman in a previous life, Trump was exposed to the results-oriented world of competitive negotiations, and he developed an instinct for spotting frauds. This kind of businessman is typically suspicious of the two-faced bureaucracies that are inclined to manipulate outcomes in secret and out of sight. Trump believed what he saw, felt certain of it, and so his belief that the election was stolen was not a lie, even remotely.

As for the claim that his lies are greater than other politicians? I’ve worked in government for a time. I’ve been exposed to the subtle, behind-the-scenes lies that manipulate agendas within bureaucracies. They are a different category of lie to those that play out in results-oriented, in-your-face negotiations. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but is there a reason why you might believe that the silent, behind-the-scenes lying habituated by two-faced bureaucrats is the more ethical?

The neo-cons lying about WMD, by contrast, was indeed lying of the self-serving kind.

I don’t know the details. I’d ask for a link, but I’m sure you’re busy. Likewise, I’m busy, and every time someone sends me a link to prove their point, I dig deeper, only to discover that I was right the first time. When Harris mentioned that heinous Trump University scandal, I did my research, only to discover that, while the scandal was indeed nothing to be proud of, it was in no measure of the scale of criminality that Harris so yearned it to be. Fake electors? Tell you what, I’ll google it myself shortly, see if it’s just another leftist smokescreen.

As alleged by Biden’s FBI Stasi? Doesn’t mean anything. Empty.

The essential point that I want to make is that all-too-often the far left make allegations, and when you look more closely into it, factoring in the broader context, it always turns out to be fluff motivated by wishful thinking.

Trump kids stole money? I’d have to look into it. But what are the odds that it was sloppy, careless oversight on their part, far removed from anything resembling cynical intent and self-interest?

Manafort? This goes back a bit, old news. Trump was rather careless with whom he chose as allies. He had issues with giving and receiving loyalty. What was the broader context? I can’t remember.

Context, context, context. Trump’s far-left opponents always make their allegations out of context. How convenient.

1635

Oh that was easy. Found the following link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

The Justice Department is investigating Trump’s role in the events. Testimony has revealed that Trump was fully aware of the fake electors plan[1][2] and knew that Eastman’s plan for Pence to obstruct the certification of electoral votes was a violation of the Electoral Count Act.[1]

Fair enough. This is a reflection of the ugly and dangerous times that we are heading into. “All’s fair in love and war” as they say. Trump recognizes and responds to the do-whatever-it-takes frauds that he is up against. What’s new?

1636

Having grandiose delusions is only marginally better than being a gratuitious and habitual liar.

Again - I don’t know why you think this Sam Harris person is some kind of authority or spokseperson for the left. He’s just another youtuber who also mad an meditation app. I don’t see he has any qualifications for being better informed that you or I.

I love this classic projection. Trump and his supporters are themselves willing to do anything, whatever it takes. You yourself apparently are willing to do mental gymnastics to paint down as up and up as down.
Trump will win or lose because he made his doubling down again and again to a minority of Americans and outraging everyone else. Fortunately we may not be at the point where Democracy will permanently die and the 10% or so who were hoodwinked are becoming aware of it and tired of Trump’s constant lies and insantiy.

Again, a man with grandiose delusions (a diagnosable mental disorder, by the way) is only marginally better than a gratuitious and habitual liar.
More importantly, because you do not have ESP you cannot possibly tell what he actually believes. He says things that are patently untrue. This is the definition of a liar. Whether he believes his own lies does not make him less a liar. Homeless people and drug addicts do this all the time - they are still lying and are therefore liars.

What happened while Trump was in office? Why did he have 4 years to put Hillary and Hunter Biden in jail but did not? The fact that Trump had control of the FBI and the Dept of Justice for 4 years and did not even start an investigation against Hillary and Hunter suggests to me that it was a big nothing burger or he is grossly incompetent.

This is not a reason to appoint them to some of the most important postions of authority of the country. By the Way Nepotism is also illegal. If they were grossly incompetent or corrupt why were they not fired?

Again - this is not a qualification for President. He also had issues with offering loyalty to Putin far too easily. Being a very poor judge of who to trust and who not tot trust is not a qualification for a job that holds the most sensitive national security secrets. Also by the way, it is a good reason for the FBI to seize those documents from him by force of law and to charge him with various crimes if handling those secrets carelessly results in loss of American lives or increases the security threat to hundreds of millions Americans.

1637

Harris is not some invisible unknown. As per Konstantin Kisin’s introduction to their interview:

Delighted to say our brilliant guest today is a neuroscientist, philosopher and one of America’s and the world’s most prominent public intellectuals Sam Harris, welcome to Triggernometry. It is great to have you on the show. We mentioned that usually when we start the show, we ask our guests to introduce themselves, you’re well-known enough that you don’t need to do that.

If you haven’t heard of Harris and your interests lie in some combination of politics or philosophy or psychology or social science, then you’ve probably been living under a rock. That’s ok, it’s ok if you have narrower interests, but Harris is not some invisible unknown whom only a handful of people have heard of.

That’s a very soviet-Russian approach. Diagnose your opponent as suffering a mental disorder and ship him off to a Siberian concentration camp for “therapy”. Classic. lol

Wow, does this really require a response? Separation of powers. The US Constitution. Trump is obliged to operate within a framework, follow due process. He can’t just decide to jail Hillary and Hunter on whim. He had to manage a hostile environment and an uncooperative DeepSwamp. The FBI was among the Deep State Swamp-creatures. Trump was a newby, coming from a business environment, and having to grasp the big-picture nuances of politics is a very steep learning curve. If you interpret this as an apologist making excuses, then you clearly don’t understand the intricacies of strategic management. The presidency is not like operating a corner grocery store… though I agree with you that the nepotism of recruiting family members to the project, as if it were a family store, was out of line.

1638

I have heard of Sam Harris. I have also hear of many other people. I’d place him in the same category as any of a dozen other personalities adored or despised by the masses, like Hitchenson, Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro. Yes, all these men have opinions. Big deal.

Haha ok, the whole field of psychology is invalidated. You got me. The only reason psychologists exist is a by-product of Soviet Russia and to diagnose Trump and send him to a concentration camp. (sarcasm) lol you are so far deep down your won rabbit hole you make zero sense.

Yes, and thank God for that. Trump WANTED to override the rule of law, but fortunately there were sane adults in the room and he was not able to.

Yes - he needed actual evidence and a logical consistent story, which he did not have.
Case closed.

1639

Would we not be the most authentic the closer we approach being “in the moment”?
Would not “living your life” not be closer to “living in the moment” than intellectualizing thoughts on past, present and future?

Would someone attempting to “assess” the “interior development” of the next door neighbor for marrying a Filipina mail order bride and raising 4 children with her be more “authentic” than the neighbor since they drop all the right “virtue signals”?

What Interior artifacts could External “virtue signalling” and “assessing others” be masking?

1640

Well, in this case the assessment comes from daily interaction with those “4 children” (or 3 or 2 or 1) inside their own home and witnessing the dynamics of the house when Dad was away on East Pac on a Naval vessel for 10 months of the year and when he was home. Then multiply that a dozen or so times with many other friends living on 3 different Naval Bases.
Then multiply that by living in the Ameican expat community for over a decade and having daily conversations with Expats married to foreign nationals from dozens of nations and noting stark differences between these mixed marriages that “coincidentally” also feel along racial lines.

When you share 10 beers with a person you tend to get quite a heavy dose of their interior. Multiply that with 1,000 or more instances (I drank with a lot of expats). You also get some look at the interior when your friends’ dads get drunk at a bbq and use racial and mysoginistic slurs against your friends’ mothers.

Nice try, but nope. If you want to turn a blind eye to realities that’s up to you. Fact is I’ve seen actual sexual slavery and other exploitation in the USA many times in my life and many times the vehicle for it was marriage. That’s just the world we live in.
Does this apply to you and your marriage? No. I believe your marriage is sacred. However, your marriage has no bearing on millions of other marriages.

1641

First off, I want to say that it’s okay if we disagree about politics, there are hundreds of other things we can talk about where we would likely find tons of agreement and shared reality. I say that only because people often get too activated by these kinds of conversations, and end up enacting each other only through their own political lens, which contributes to the overall fragmentation of our culture and society and adds more heat to the civil Cold War.

That said — I think you’ve been subject to some misinformation around Trump. It concerns me a bit that you have such strong feelings about him, but didn’t already know about the fake electors, his kids’ theft from their own childrens’ charity, Manafort’s role in “russiagate”, etc. Most likely because whatever information terrain you are plugged into, ignores those scandals and tries to distract with manufactured scandals of their own.

As a result, any authority that would be in a position to actually identify Trump’s corruption — the FBI, the DOJ, the media — is an authority you will instantly dismiss. Which, you have to admit, is pretty convenient for Trump. But if that same FBI, DOJ, and media was prosecuting Hillary or Hunter, I am guessing you would believe them immediately. It seems to me you may have double standards here.

Also, we know that Trump cheated on his wife with a porn star, right after his wife gave birth to his child. Which was pretty much all the character reference I needed to judge this guy’s obvious moral failings.

“ Believing that the election was stolen is different to lying that the election was stolen. Trump’s heart-felt belief was that the election was stolen.”

“Believing” something without evidence — and pushing your unsubstantiated beliefs from the most powerful seat on the planet — is pathological and incredibly dangerous behavior. We never would have tolerated this from any other President. If Obama came out and said “I believe Hillary actually won, and I’m having Biden declare victory for her, using these fake electors we are sending from multiple states”, you would want to put that fucker up against the wall :slight_smile: This is also exactly the behavior you would expect from someone with narcissistic personality disorder, which Trump clearly has.

“But I think it was warranted?” These are the kinds of people that Trump is up against.

Aren’t you doing the exact same for Trump right now?

Sure he lied about the election being stolen, but I think it was warranted. Deep state is always coming after him!

Sure he illegally sent fake electors to Congress, but I think it was warranted. These are just the times we live in!

Sure he defrauded people with Trump University, but I think it was warranted. It just wasn’t a very big deal!

Sure he said he grabs women by the pussy, but I think that was warranted. Have you seen how many skanks are out there?

“Trump was exposed to the results-oriented world of competitive negotiations, and he developed an instinct for spotting frauds.”

Before he was President, Trump was already widely known as a fraud.

“Trump believed what he saw, felt certain of it, and so his belief that the election was stolen was not a lie, even remotely.”

And he was wrong. I don’t disagree that he likely believed his own lie, that’s what narcissistic personality disorders do. But as President, he has a greater responsibility to the Constitution itself. The moment the courts rejected all the phony lies about the stolen election, he should have conceded gracefully instead of continuing to follow the My Pillow Guy’s obviously fraudulent claims.

“As for the claim that his lies are greater than other politicians? I’ve worked in government for a time. I’ve been exposed to the subtle, behind-the-scenes lies that manipulate agendas within bureaucracies.”

I think you countered this yourself, when you then said:

“If you interpret this as an apologist making excuses, then you clearly don’t understand the intricacies of strategic management.”

“As alleged by Biden’s FBI Stasi? Doesn’t mean anything. Empty.”

The FBI is still headed by Trump’s own pick, Christopher Wray. And in this case, the “deep state” that is taking Trump down for stealing confidential documents are librarians and archivists, which I think is kinda funny considering Trump’s well-known literary talents :wink:

“The essential point that I want to make is that all-too-often the far left make allegations, and when you look more closely into it, factoring in the broader context, it always turns out to be fluff motivated by wishful thinking.”

Yep, that definitely happens. Especially when those allegations are coming from social media. We see the exact same thing happening on the right, which is how we get personality-cult BS like Qanon. But it doesn’t mean that all observations and accusations about Trump’s corruption can be automatically added to the “deep state conspiracy” pile.

Here’s a question for you — if Trump was truly as fraudulent as I very clearly see him to be, how would you know it? What sources would be capable of convincing you? What would it take for you to see that Trump’s “plausible deniability” isn’t very plausible at all?

“Trump kids stole money? I’d have to look into it. But what are the odds that it was sloppy, careless oversight on their part, far removed from anything resembling cynical intent and self-interest?”

I mean, even if we allow for this plausible deniability (which I think is likely more true than not, it wasn’t embezzlement as much as it was “self-dealing” and misappropriating funds), it still shows that these guys are totally incompetent and should not be allowed anywhere near the levers of power.

“Manafort? This goes back a bit, old news. Trump was rather careless with whom he chose as allies. He had issues with giving and receiving loyalty.”

Strange, isn’t it, that Trump fully surrounded himself with career criminals? We have Manafort on one side, and Roger Stone on another. Roger, of course, is pretty much synonymous with “deep state” and “swampland” corruption.

(Also interesting to note that both Stone and Manafort seem to be involved in some fairly disturbing sexual depravity behind the scenes. Manafort has been accused by his own daughter of forcing his wife into gangbangs [she’s even posted the private emails]. And of course Stone is a well known DC swinger. Which is fine, of course, assuming it’s consensual. Trump himself cheated on his wife with a porn star while caring for their newborn baby. It’s interesting to me that there seems to be some dark sex magic in the background of this particular group, even more so when we consider Trump’s prior friendship with Epstein, about whom he said, *"I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” Kinda puts all those Qanon claims into perspective. Give me a monogamous family man like Obama any day of the week.)

“Harris is not some invisible unknown.”

Sam Harris is a well known name, yes, but as far as I know he has very little real influence in politics. He is not known for being a political pundit, he’s known for being the anti-mythic religion guy.

“Trump is obliged to operate within a framework, follow due process. He can’t just decide to jail Hillary and Hunter on whim.”

I agree! The thing is, four years are more than enough time for this due process to play itself out. And yet, it went nowhere, because it had nowhere to go.

“Trump was a newby, coming from a business environment, and having to grasp the big-picture nuances of politics is a very steep learning curve”

Here’s that double standard. Trump is just an innocent baby, pure as freshly laid snow, fighting heroically against that corrupt deep state FBI, which happens to be led by Wray who Trump himself personally appointed. This feels very much like the sort of “reality distortion field” that malignant narcissists are able to project. I would know, I’ve dealt with some of them in this space over the last two decades :slight_smile:

It’s a very strange thing, because before Trump, the FBI in no way had a reputation as being a left-leaning organization. But now they are, because they dare to accuse Trump of committing crimes.

We don’t need to agree about all this brother, we are just two drops in the ocean and everyone has a right to their own worldview. But I am hoping that open dialogue can help move us closer to some sort of shared political reality.

1642

Cognitive development does not only map to one’s intellectual prowess. It also determines a person’s perceptual range — that is, what they can see, and what they can’t see.

There are realities and complexities that simply cannot be perceived by earlier stages, just like a 2nd grader cannot perceive the square root of -1. Which means that, when we are “living our life”, we can only operate on what we are able to directly perceive.

This is why the cognitive line is “necessary but not sufficient” for all other lines, which basically just means that our cognitive line will always be the most advanced line of development for us, and no other line of development can exceed our cognitive line. You can’t have an amber cognitive line, for example, and a green moral line — because that green morality depends on you actually being able to see green phenomena in the first place. Your morals are determined by the set of people you can empathize with, and you can only empathize with what you see, and what you see is determined by your cognitive line of development. Being able to perceive more complexity leads to more complex thinking.

So “cognition” here doesn’t just mean your capacity to entertain great big intellectual thoughts. It also determines what you can directly perceive, and therefore respond to, right now in this moment. And people who do not yet possess genuine systemic thinking, cannot see or respond to the systemic challenges and complexities that remain “over their heads”.

Here’s a great talk for you to check out, if interested:

“Would someone attempting to “assess” the “interior development” of the next door neighbor for marrying a Filipina mail order bride and raising 4 children with her be more “authentic” than the neighbor since they drop all the right “virtue signals”?”

I don’t quite understand what you are asking. However, “virtue signaling” is a perfect example of people’s talk not always corresponding to their walk. It’s a wonderful example of inauthenticity, especially when it’s being performed in the name of authenticity.

1643

@corey-devos @raybennett

Any thoughts on Zuckerberg’s interview with Rogan?

1644

One more time, this time with feeling. He did not lie about the stolen election. He sincerely believed it was stolen.

The democrat agenda, to destroy Trump, was established in the ridiculous Pelosi-Schumer-Schiff show masquerading as the impeachment circus. The battle lines were drawn, and it was the Democrats who drew them.

Where did I say that?

Excellent question. I have asked this of myself, and it is the reason why I attempt to research the nuggets you and others provide, in anticipation of low-hanging fruit that isn’t too difficult to find (e.g., the “fake electors”).

But exactly the same question turns back on you. How would you know if you don’t look through the same sources that I do, test the same assumptions that I test?

We are confined to our silos, and it takes enormous effort to look across into other silos and understand where others are coming from.

1645

No, not really, other than the fact that I would never trust Zuckerberg with anything remotely resembling a “public commons”.

Sounds like the FBI was informing FB that there was a ton of manufactured propaganda being generated around the laptop story, and cautioned FB to be cautious. They never instructed them to censor any information. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

The point remains, Hunter Biden has no role whatsoever in the Biden administration, unlike Trump’s kids who were allowed to personally enrich themselves to the tune of billions of dollars while working in the White House.