Galt's Gulch

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  • Posted by Dobrien 7 years, 1 month ago
    Good essay WalterDonway,
    Typical confusion and contradictions from Ms BLM.
    Group think is a magnet to the uneducated
    Particularly when it provides the group an excuse for under performance. Take no responsibility for bad behavior just blame the authority. This brings about a lot of cognitive dissonance and that is a formula for alcohol and drug abuse as well as violence.
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  • Posted by mia767ca 7 years ago
    mr donway...excellent analysis and framing of "BLM"...I am only now commenting as I have been spending the summer in Yellowstone with no internet or cell phone reception and I am back home in ft. Lauderdale now, catching up on events...thank you
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  • Posted by starznbarz 7 years, 1 month ago
    Garza is a communist, backed by communists and recruiting the uneducated to be communists. With a nod to obama, they are as close as they`ve been in 100 years to their goal.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 1 month ago
    The article is about a BLM co-founder's comments that President Trump is "epitome of evil…racism, capitalism, sexism, and homophobia." and like Hitler. IMHO President Trump is not even a strong supporter of any of those four things, and the Hitler thing is Godwin's Law and not worth comment.

    I think the article says we've made huge progress on "racism, sexism, and homophobia," which I agree with. I'm not clear if it's saying that means they're not big problems. Pick any problem in the world, literally almost any problem, and it's gotten way better with time but it's not perfect yet. So I consider racism, sexism, and homophobia serious issues, despite the progress.

    It points out that she includes capitalism in her list of evils. I agree capitalism is almost at the opposite of all these evil things. Maybe that's the point of the article. If anti-capitalism is the general view of BLM, they're accidentally opposing freedom, opposing their stated cause.

    I agree with the media's view that President Trump equating Nazis with people claiming to oppose Nazis was reprehensible. He could have done is general chest-thumping, which he's good at, against anyone who would violate someone's rights. Instead he gave comments that racist leaders said shows he's on their side. I know racist leaders are known to be wrong, but we got no chest-thumping at them. I do not think it was based on President Trump being racist or bigoted in any way. He's a master at drawing attention. We live in an age where clicks are tracked, and if the same behaviors that make us look on an accident with morbid fascination make us click on lurid headlines, content producers give us more of what we "want". Apparently this process have given us a clickbait president.
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    • Posted by WDonway 7 years, 1 month ago
      As I understood, at the time, President Trump was criticized by the media for condemning both sides equally, which the media screamed was implying an "equivalence" between Antifa/BLM and the KKK.
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      • Posted by ewv 7 years, 1 month ago
        They are equivalent. The media and the left in general demand that they be morally distinguished and that we criticize the current targets of the left and only that, regarding their 'side' as the 'idealists'. The communist versus fascist alternative, with everything else demanded to be measured relative to those two, has always been false and conceptually invalid. They are both collectivist, statist dictatorship. Capitalism and freedom are not defined in terms of either or in terms of anything about what either represent. The left doesn't want to be compared to freedom and individualism, which they don't mention in their appeals to varieties of fascist is "right" versus communist is "left". The media and the left freaked out at Trump because he didn't buy their phony, conceptually invalid moral scale instead of pandering to it as they demand and are accustomed to getting.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 1 month ago
        Thanks for replying.

        We have idiots fighting in the street and he talks about the sides of the fight, legitimating them and inviting people to take sides. He could have described the sides as people who fight in the street and law-abiding citizens. He could have used his crime-fiding bravado in his second comment when he read a reasonable statement condemning extremists instead of sounding like a hostage forced to read a statement. That's not his thing. He likes getting attention by inflaming petty fights.
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        • Posted by ewv 7 years, 1 month ago
          The issue is not "extremists", which means nothing without regard to "extreme what?". The two "sides" in the mob were not two sides of the country and not just "idiots"; it is an internal power struggle between essentially collectivist statists with minor differences between them, as the battle between fascists and communists has always been. Denouncing both of them together in their mob actions does not legitimize either, invite anyone to "take sides" in a false alternative of secondary differences and does not "inflame a petty fight". The principles are conceptually over Trump's head, but he did have the common sense to see it in concrete form. If there is 'pettiness' in Trump's statements, it is his inability to think in principles and essentials.
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 7 years, 1 month ago
            "it is an internal power struggle between essentially collectivist statists"
            I like that description.

            I always think you over-estimate people's ideological understanding. Many people are troubled and responding to the Network "Mad as Hell" rant, and the ideology is tacked on later.
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            • Posted by ewv 7 years, 1 month ago
              I don't overestimate their ideological understanding. They have little explicit philosophical understanding but have absorbed a lot of bad philosophical premises left unquestioned. The emotional responses are automatized reactions based on assumed values of what is good or bad, whether or not they examine them or know where they came from. When someone tries to talk about some response he has he may or may not be rationalizing. He should have a better understanding of what he believes, why, and how to apply it, and be willing to correct it.
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