The Cultural Contradictions of Conservatism and the Death of the GOP

Not only did heads not roll. Ten different investigations concluded that there was absolutely no wrong-doing on the part of the State Department.

It's one of the cases that made Hillary the most exonerated politician in history.

 

I know the feeling exactly. I felt the same way when I was 9 and my big brother and his best friend told me that Santa Claus didn't exist.

Kinda changes all your perspective in life, doesn't it?

 

One investigation found that she violated the law. However, she was not convicted of anything because she was only "extremely careless".

However, for most of us mortals, that would have landed us in jail or at least as a minimum got us fired.

 

Wow ...

Just wow ...

 

The Democratic Party in general, the Obama Administration. When you screw up and don't hold yourselves accountable there'll be more screwups. It won't be tweeted but the incompetence willl still be noticeable.

 

Our US Congress didn't authorise the consulate, hell it was kept secret! Imagine if Trump had a secret consulate in Russia lol. Pompeo would've heard calls for resignation is what I'm saying.

 

Well, for what this is worth, I think you did improve your argument or, at a minimum, certainly the clarity of what you are postulating. I appreciate your effort in being so thorough. It also seems to me, though, that you are changing your argument, or at least its emphasis. While you feel that the Trump train, eventually, has to run out of track, the most concrete scenarios you now see for an earlier, rather than a later, crash require emergencies:

Besides wars or financial crises, which may or may not cause tremendous division amongst Republicans, the other emergencies you list-- IMMIGRATION, GUNS, HEALTH CARE, & CLIMATE CHANGE-- are all issues that the Republican herd has kept close on, even if their only solution is to say there's no real problem or, in the case of health care, claiming that they've got enough tools to fix the problem, but they're not gonna pull 'em out of the box until they've got all government power to themselves, so the Dems can't get in the way.

The underlined phrase, in the last quote, is something I hope for, as well. But, while I'm not writing off the possibility, Repub pols have shown, up until now, that they REALLY LIKE having their jobs, and realize that talking about subjects that their constituents don't want to think about, is not helpful towards their keeping them. So I'm still in a, time will tell, mode.

Even if that happens, though, the rest of your argument for that does not seem to follow, i.e., just because someone's Republican Congressperson decides to stop drinking the Kool Aid (so to speak), it doesn't mean all their constituents are going to have a change of heart. More likely, I would suspect, we would see a successful primary challenger, under those circumstances.

Your alternate scenario is hard to imagine occurring, though granted, if Moderate Republican politicians were to separate from those whose views are more extreme, that war on the Right (an uncivil one, no doubt), would diminish the influence of their current, united party. But my impression is that it is their CONSTITUENTS, American citizens, who are the greatest influence on some of the Republican Congress's policies, as well as being the tender, whose loyalty allows these politicians to bankroll their other, regressive stances. This being the case, how would we arrive at a future Republican Standard-Bearer who is non-populist or, at least, not the most popular among the candidates? Because it would only be if there was a populist candidate who was sought after by Republican VOTERS, that imModerate Republican politicians would consider breaking from the Party. Why else would they, for ideological principles? Seriously?

This is why your argument is not all that encouraging to me. It relies on the good sense of either 1) current GOP voters or 2) a significant minority of GOP pols. And in this 2nd option, they only remain an influence if both the Democratic voters of their state or district are willing to accept them as their Dem candidate, AND their former supporters, Republicans, are willing to vote for them as Democrats. Ergo, that would also rely on a fairly substantial number of GOP VOTERS "coming to their senses."

I'm still hopeful, just not optimistic. At this point it looks more like we're in store for a slow, wasting burn, than for a seismic jostling, allowing one with a vivid imagination to believe, "it was all just a bad dream." But hey, I could still hope for a war, right?

 

She was not convicted because she was not charged of any crimes. Your straw grasping is obvious.

 

Probably because it wasn't a consulate. The consulate story was most likely a coverup for a CIA operations office, or similar. Why would anybody keep a consulate secret?

 

She violated the law. She was not charged because the conclusions were changed from Grossly Negligent to Extremely Careless by Strzok.
Dismissed FBI agent changed Comey's language on Clinton emails to 'extremely careless': report | TheHill

 

She carelessly left her server in the basement rather than in a secure location like it was supposed to be. She further carelessly used a server not certified for classified information to store and process over two thousand classified documents, at least one of which was classified above top secret.

 

You do know that in the 70’s Joe Coors, of Coors beer fame, used his fortune to found and fund a right wing organization whose primary purpose was to implant in as many peoples minds as possible the very perceptions that you have here outlined. I’m sure you have heard of them, The Heritage Foundation. And I am sure that you have spent numerous hours listening to their spokespersons, like Sean Hannity.

Apparently right wingers are unable to win on their merits. After all, no one wants to be ruled over by tyrants. So they whip up the susceptible into believing things that do not square with reality?

I happen to be a product of the educational/government research/defensive weapon development/pharmaceutical/semiconductor/robotic/AI/scientific/Rock-n-Roll/“party on” COMPLEX. I see where you are coming from. I have heard it all before. It is just interesting to see how it plays out in the minds of men, both large and small. I wonder if Joe Coors would be proud, if he were still alive. Or would he be apologetic, like Charles Koch, the money and brains behind the Cato Institute, seems to be.

 

Colorado was the first state to give women the right to vote, the first to forbid Jim Crow laws, the first to decriminalize abortion, the first to decriminalize and then to legalize marihuana. That is what progress looks like. Did I mention that Colorado tends to score rather well on most measurements of intelligence/knowledge. Stephen Weinberg, the Nobel winning physicist has been known to claim that one of the greatest achievements of science has been to make it impossible for an intelligent person to believe in a god.

Of all the states, Idaho has the lowest average educational attainment of any state. Only Mississippi has a lower GDP per capita. Oregon is also a rather low on the educational attainment scale state. Except, that is, in the Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas counties where the educational attainment is rather high, in comparison with the rest of the state and the country. Religiosity is rather low, almost as low as in San Francisco. Another center of a high concentration of higher than average educational attainment.

 

Oh... The Deep State, of course. Such power! I mean that even the President of the United States, who controlled Congress, the Supreme Court, scores of U.S. Attorneys, the FBI, ... everything... and she was still exonerated. What a Conspiracy!

 

Isn't what I said true?

 

Most rural areas, which appear solidly red on national maps, typically have more than 40% of voters who vote Democratic. Does not their perceived disenfranchisement offset whatever disenfranchisement city dwelling Republican voters may feel?

 

Nonresponsive. Congratulations though, every single sentence in the above is fallacious, some compound, that's quite an achievement even for you.

 

That only proves that, no matter how smart a person may be, 1) they're not beyond being wrong &, if they are pompous enough to become enamored of their own opinions, or are just infatuated with modern science (which, FYI, is in need of correcting itself on a regular basis), 2) they are not beyond saying something stupid.

We have yet to explore the majority of the ocean floor of our own planet, much of which we are unable to reach, & so we are unaware of what exists over a large part of our world. We also have little information on the tree-canopy environment which exists over most of the world's rainforests. For that matter, we're mostly unaware of the species that live on the ground, in our tropical jungles. Biologists estimate we have only identified about 10% of the species currently inhabiting our planet. And, need I point out, our planet is an infinitesimally small part of our galaxy, much less of the entire universe. Until recently, as a matter of fact, our erroneous concept of space was that it was mostly empty; the discovery of dark matter is a fairly new addition to our idea of the universe's composition, and the question as to what dark matter actually is, remains unsettled.

My point is not to badmouth science. It is to bring to the attention of any who bring the true scientific way of thinking to the question of God, the fact that our base of our knowledge is much smaller than of our ignorance, regarding everything that exists. And to make the presumptuous leap to believe that if God existed, we would know it, has no more factual basis than the certainty of those scientists who laughed at the concept of invisible bugs, or germs, before they could be seen under microscopes. Oh, I know, those scientists of the past had all sorts of false notions, but now we understand the full picture, right? It is that unwarranted self-confidence which defeats one's study of history; that is, even he who studies history, is bound to repeat it, if he is unwilling to see his own situation as being analogous to the past, and not something completely new.

To my mind, before we can even explain from where CAME the universe's original matter (from which point our models now work to simulate the Big Bang), it is jumping the gun, to try to rule on the existence of some invisible, universal force, called, "God." We merely have insufficient data, at this point, to venture any scientific judgements.

I will, lastly, point out that there have men of much greater scientific accomplishment & renown, than the person you cite, who have believed in this undetectable, "divine," presence. The difference, for most of these great geniuses, is that their concepts of God tend to be non-traditional. Leibnitz, a contemporary & equal of Newton (who was a traditional Christian), believed in his own theology, which he termed Monadology, in the short book he wrote about it (not to be confused with the once common concept called Monadism).

The genius creator of Analytic Psychology, who conceived of the Communal (Collective) Unconscious, Archetypes, Introversion & Extroversion, Individuation, the idea of the psychological Complex, not to mention Synchronicity, along w/ theories about the anima (the feminine animus), was C. G. Jung, who also had a mystic's, & a scientist's, view of God. To him, it was the force underpinning Creation, which, through life, manifests Itself, in its search for a satisfactory medium for Its expression (in Jung's view, God was omnipotent, but not omniscient).

It is also possible that Einstein conceived of an overarching Consciousness within the Universe; he said that the most important question we need to answer is if the universe is fundamentally nurturing or hostile towards us. For the universe to be anything but neutral, of course, would imply that it has some method of both perceiving & acting upon others, i.e., that it has some sort of awareness.

I think something else Einstein said explains this phenomenon of many of the imaginative, groundbreaking giants of science conceiving of an unseen Intelligence behind the universe, while the run-of-the-mill scientific drone tends to worship only science. It goes something like, truly brilliant ideas are always met with great hostility from mediocre minds.

To be clear, I'm not endorsing any particular view. I personally believe there is a reality we are not (certainly not yet) able to measure. I doubt, however, that anyone's particular view of it is all that accurate. But, since I can't know, for sure, either, I can't (with any authority) pronounce another's concepts of this as, demonstrably false.

 

I am more inclined to align my thoughts along the Star Trek version of religion. That it is a passing fancy in the evolution of sentient beings. That eventually the human species will evolve beyond religious thought - as an increasing number already have.

When I was a child, I attended a rather nice Catholic school. I was even an alter boy, for awhile. One day a nun told us a story about a man who doubted God’s existence. The man was especially skeptical about the host served at mass. Was it really the body of Christ? To prove it, the man attended mass and received communion. But he did not swallow, he just let the host sit on the top of his tongue until he returned to his seat. There he spit it out into his handkerchief and stuffed it into his pocket. When he got home he announced to his family what it was, and to prove that it was not the body of Christ, he nailed the host to the wall. Soon after the host began to bleed and bleed. It would not stop bleeding and the man was unable to remove the nail. It took the intervention of a priest and the man confessing his sins and giving his heart to Jesus, in order for the bleeding to stop.

That Sunday, I did just what the nun said the man did. Except when I drove the nail in, the host did not bleed.

 

I never heard that story, but it sounds apocryphal, to me (I was also raised Catholic; now pantheist, which I consider a personal evolution). I hope you don't base your rejection of any unknown, spiritual dimension on the fairy tale told by one nun. Even in the official versions, there is no doubt plenty of misinformation. But that does not prove that there might not be a kernel of truth, as well.

It is, of course, your choice as to what you believe. I had only responded because it had seemed that you were trusting the view of a scientist, or your impression of science, in general, to arrive at your conclusion. I had wanted to point out that the discipline of science is in no better position to render judgement than religions. Both are prejudiced in their views. Note the hypocrisy of the scientific minded being willing to accept things as equally incredible as the idea of heaven, based on no more evidence, if it comes through a scientific pitch (better still, if a few mathematical equations can be worked in). Different mathematicians have, "proven," the existence of differing numbers of dimensions, based on their own mathematical computations. It may be noted that the father of geometry, Pythagoras, also founded a religion, or cult, that believed in reincarnation.

But things like string theory, the holographic universe, and the multiverse (multiple universes that exist in seemingly the same space) are all unproven speculations. And many scientists either believe in them, or at least acknowledge the possibility of their existence. As I pointed out that the majority of the universe's mass was only relatively recently accepted to be dark matter, it seems to me that any reasonable mind would likewise have to acknowledge the possibility of some as yet unidentified force in the universe (which is certainly still full of surprises for us, none will disagree) that could potentially serve a regulating function, an undiscovered dark energy, as it were, that some could call, "God." But the stigma attached, in the scientific community, to holding beliefs that are seen as superstitious, makes the admission of any such sentiments taboo, except for those few, who rise to the top of the field & no longer need worry about the disapproval of peers or superiors.

There was an entire other half to this post that just disappeared due to some evil technological spirits, & it's too late for me to try to rewrite it all now, so I'll just reply with this, for the time being, so that it doesn't vanish, as well.

 

So your thoughts derive from TV shows/movies? Could never have guessed.

 

I pursued an education in physics, partly because I had developed a fascination with electricity at an early age, and partly because I wanted to know how the world worked. At least by kindergarten age, I had mostly rejected the religion that my parents had forced upon me. It seemed to me to be not well thought out. Physics gave a picture of the universe that is relatively easy to understand. That can be tested and manipulated to one’s advantage quite reliably. I’m not into astrophysics, or even astronomy, other than just an occasional cursory curiosity. I think that string theory is a dead end theory. Quantum Field Theory has become the standard model, especially ever since the discovery of the Higgs particle. It explains the double slit experiment. The photon goes through both slits simultaneously as it is not a point particle but rather a chunk of energy vibrating along a field.

I find this most fascinating. If you take a length of rope or string and give it a quick shake a wave packet will propagate along the rope to the end.
That wave packets takes the energy from your hand motion and travels down the rope with it. This can be demonstrated by paying attention to the crack of a whip. The jerk of the hand causes the energy, in the form of a wave, to propagate down the length of the whip, and then to explode at the end with a sharp sound as energy is transferred to the surrounding air particles. Photons, including light is just these wave packets of energy propagating in a wave like fashion along the ever-present electromagnetic field, the home of the electron.

I’m not inclined to believe in multiverses or even necessarily the Big Bang or the great expansion that is said to have followed it. What we can see only takes us back so far. To get from there to the Big Bang requires the laws of physics to have been other than they are now. I see no reason to find that acceptable.

A crises of sorts, had arisen in physics. Even though on their own Newton’s laws (mechanics) and Maxwell’s laws (electromagnetism) were sound, but at times contradicted each other. This all was compounded by the discovery of the consistency of the speed of light, regardless of one’s frame of reference. It was an issue that Einstein first solved with his Special Theory of Relativity. But only for objects moving at a constant speed. The General Theory was an endeavor to include objects moving at accelerating speeds. I think that it turned into a theory of gravity more by accident than by plan. Later on Einstein tried and tried repeatedly to formulate a theory of everything. His repeated failures can be seen in hindsight, by noting that Einstein had no knowledge of quarks, they being discovered after his death. Among those who study such things, it is expected that eventually a new theory will come along to supersede the General Theory of Relativity. As to gravity and celestial motion it can be said that Galileo made a first approximation then came Kepler and then Newton, refining the approximation. The General Theory being an approximation of even higher refinement. But it is not perfect and a future physicist will be receiving a Nobel prize for discovering the next order of refinement in that approximation. One that blends well with Quantum Field Theory.