With the Democratic Party taking the historic step of nominating the first woman candidate for president (to a major party), we at the Cape Charles Mirror were hoping to hear from Northampton County DEMs on Hillary Clinton’s achievement, or to at least make a case against Trump (although at times he appears to be doing a fine job of that himself). As has been the case, we have gotten many comments and submissions from the right, but as for the left, we have gotten nothing. In a county that is 2/3 democrat, one has wonder about the silence. At the Mirror, we strive to be balanced, but that’s hard if we don’t receive it.
As always, submit to capecharlesmirror@gmail.com. Well thought-out commentary is always in demand.
Nobody laughs better than Rat Liotta, even in an Internet Meme
Why so serious? I understand…all that email stuff…
Given the email scandal involving the DNC, Democrat’s silence may be justified, as it appears that the entire primary election was rigged in favor of candidate Clinton, leaving an army of Bernie or Bust supporters writhing and gnashing their teeth. Interestingly, the RNC, at least old school rank and file, had their own ‘Stop Trump’ movement, but unlike Sanders, Trump beat the fix, and rode a wave of populist discontent to victory–despite the media’s trumpeting his demise, Trump is filling stadium sized arenas while Hill can barely get a pep rally going at a high school gym. Oddly, there is a freakish media frenzy surrounding the notion that the Russians (a foreign government) may be trying to influence a U.S. election. Dudes, the DNC (mainly Clinton’s crew) have already influenced the election, and yet, nobody’s in jail?
The Great Bait and Switch
I was a Bernie supporter from the start, and watching the war chest grow, as well as a populist rebellion build in the streets, the nomination did not seem completely out of reach. Of course, we were all fools, victims of a very slick bait and switch (Bernie turned out to be a tool). Get a bunch of naïve voters on board with your message, then say, “hey, vote for her.” A brilliant plan…so stupid, and awesome.
If not for the email hack and subsequent WikiLeak this might have worked (it still might). Still, if you know the other side rigged the election against you, what level of low self-steam does it take for you to pull the knife out of your back and join the dark side?
Let’s Give the Iranians $4 million in Cash! Awesome Sauce!
Despite Secretary Clinton no longer being on premises, the idiotic trail of foreign policy question marks continues to accumulate. Pulling out of Iraq to double-down on Afghanistan (graveyard of civilizations)…why? The dominoes did fall as predicted: Military takeover in Egypt, crisis in Syria, the rise of ISIS and the Taliban, fall of Northern Iraq, totalitarianism in Turkey, the migrant crisis, total chaos in Libya and Yemen, all daisy chained to Secretary Clinton’s influence over the POTUS. Warmongering, plain and simple. And then taking an unmarked plane full of small foreign currency, and dropping it in Iran for….what exactly? It’s never too late to impeach, especially for fraud. So much for that Supreme Court nomination. But hey, we’ll always have taxi cab karaoke!
Time to Go Green?
Hmmmm…Time to Go Green? I voted for Ralph Nader, probably the only legit vote I ever made. No doubt, the Green Party has gone through a period of irrelevance. That could be changing, due to the negligence and incompetence of Clinton (an unhardened email server in your basement? Really?) and the fact that Sanders has turned out to be less than the fighter he pretended to be. Could this open the door for Jill Stein to make a decent 3rd party run? Only if she can convince the Busters to come over.
Thanks to WikiLeaks, the next few months should prove interesting. The Russians (and probably everybody else) certainly hacked the DNC server, which means they probably ravaged Clinton’s home grown email server as well. Not good, but very interesting.
Progressive Left: Please write something to us! I worry social media has lobotomized the lot of us….prove me wrong!
I don’t classify myself as anything other than independent and being for rationality and sanity, so I don’t fit the “normal” classifications being bandied about in America today such as “liberal” or “conservative”, or “progressive,” which has been made into a word worthy of being mocked by Bernie Sanders who sold out his “progressive” followers to Hillary Clinton after first fleecing them for $228,557,735 with his fraudulent campaign promises.
This country started out without the pernicious and corrosive influence of party politics on our national life, and in Federalist No. 10, Jemmy Madison, a son of the Old Dominion, under the pseudonym “Publius,” the pseudonym under which all of The Federalist Papers were published, warned the people of New York state about “FACTION,” promising us that if the U.S. Constitution were ratified, it would deal effectively with the problem of the undue influence of faction in our national politics.
So much for Jemmy, is my thought, as I gaze around me at the corrosive and pernicious and destructive influence partisan politics is having on our nation today, and that brings me to some questions for these Democrats, if they would take a moment of their valuable time to address them, as I am doing by raising them in here.
My specific concerns as a loyal American citizen not affiliated with any political faction arise out of language found at page 14 of the 2016 Democrat Manifesto, or Party Platform, under the heading “Ending Systemic Racism,” where we can clearly see that the statement Hillary Rodham Clinton made earlier this year at a closed political gathering that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them” forms the basis for that part of the platform, despite that earlier statement by Hillary Clinton itself being based on what can only be called crack-pot science or lunatic science in the form of some voodoo called “implicit bias” which then forms the basis for the claims in the 2016 Democrat Party Platform that:
* Democrats will fight to end institutional and systemic racism in our society.
* We will challenge and dismantle the structures that define lasting racial, economic, political, and social inequity.
* We will push for a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter and that there is no place for racism in our country.
end quote
All of that is based on this highly prejudicial and discriminatory statement on April 7th of this year that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
As a science-based person, which would make me in some ways a “progressive,” I must ask the Democrats, a faction, where is there any scientific EVIDENCE to support the accusation or allegation that there is “institutional and systemic racism in our society?”
And if there is no scientific basis for that statement, why is it in the 2016 Democrat Party Platform?
When the Democrats, who by the way number only a bit more than 30% of the U.S. population, say that they “will dismantle the structures that define lasting racial, economic, political, and social inequity,” what exactly are they talking about there where the word “dismantle” is defined as “to disassemble or pull down; take apart?”
What “structures” define lasting racial, economic, political, and social inequity in the United States of America today?
Does the Bill of Rights of the Commonwealth of Virginia, since it is a product of people who today are denounced and discredited by the Democrat party as “racists” because they owned slaves?
Is the Bill of Rights of the Commonwealth of Virginia going to be dismantled, since its has its origins back in “those days?”
And how do the Democrats make that determination, other than basing it on the crack-pot science derived statement “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them?”
And what about this “societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter and that there is no place for racism in our country?”
What “societal transformation” exactly are they talking about?
What does “societal transformation” actually mean?
To me, who am of the generation whose lives began at the end of WWII, and the fall of totalitarian government in Europe, and whose education began with a study of the rise of the Nazis in Germany, and who has memories of the IRON CURTAIN and Stalinism, “societal transformation” sounds like something Adolph Hitler was saying when he said he would solve the “Jewish Problem” in Germany.
When it is based on the Democrat saying that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them,” quite frankly, it sounds as if the Democrats are planning on a STALINIST PURGE in this country, with purge being defined as “an abrupt or violent removal of a group of people from an organization or place.”
Perhaps these Democrats could come forward in the Cape Charles Mirror and give us American citizens concerned about the direction the Democrats are planning to take this country what their views are on the subject, starting with whether they themselves adhere to these statements, given that they are from the Party Platform these Democrats are now supposed to have loyalty and fealty to.
Mr Plante , I have no idea what the Democrats are planning but I just wanted to comment on just because you don’t understand Implicit Bias, it doesn’t mean it’s voodoo or crack pot science. It wasn’t invented by the Democrats and it wasn’t invented for this political season. It’s been around since the 60s and is taught in Criminal Justice, Sociology and Psychology courses.
Answer this question: Why do women of equal skill to men get paid less than them?
To further your education: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/faqs.html
Recently, tkenny, members of the Albany, New York Police Department were required to take an 8-hour mandatory attendance training program on, you guessed it, IMPLICIT BIAS.
Just the other day, I was talking with a sergeant in the Albany Police Department who was required to sit through that 8-hour course, because I was curious as to what would be taught in it, given that it is in fact based on “crack-pot” science, no matter how many Criminal Justice, Sociology and Psychology courses it might in fact be taught in.
It was a POWER-POINT presentation, and the only slide he could remember was one which said “80% of white people are scared when they see a black face because it reminds them of spiders and snakes.”
Now, tkenny, are you actually going to stand up in here and defend that assertion as anything other than “lunatic” or “crack-pot” science, notwithstanding that it was part of mandatory training for the Albany, New York Police Department, which agency was denounced as “racist” by Democrat Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan on January 25, 2016, as follows:
She also said the police department would undergo more training in order to build trust and legitimacy with the people they serve.
“I will hold myself and our command staff accountable for learning from hindsight and for making sure we are providing our officers with the tools and skills that they need to police fairly in our city, to build trust, and to finally shake the legacy of racism that we have earned and that was reprehensible,” she said.
end quote
The “legacy of racism” Democrat Kathy Sheehan, who endorsed Hillary Clinton in March of 2016, was talking about stemmed from complaints by Black Lives Matter that the Albany Police were “racist” because in September of 1981, thirty-five (35) years before, the Albany Police provided security when the Springboks, a white South African rugby team at the time of apartheid in South Africa, came to Albany to play a match at Bleeker Stadium, a city-owned sport facility in the City of Albany, which match was heavily protested by the black community in Albany.
Among the “tools and skills” that Democrat Mayor Kathy Sheehan said the Albany Police needed to “police fairly in our city, to build trust, and to finally shake the legacy of racism that we have earned and that was reprehensible” was a course in IMPLICIT BIAS, which then led to that ridiculous assertion above that “80% of white people are scared when they see a black face because it reminds them of spiders and snakes.”
As to “implicit bias,” which you seem to be enamoured of as is your right as an American citizen exercising your own liberty of conscience, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is only one of the many sources I have consulted on this subject, has this to say:
“Implicit bias” is a term of art referring to relatively unconscious and relatively automatic features of prejudiced judgment and social behavior.
end quote
Term of art, tkenny, not science, which is defined as “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.”
Why “implicit bias” is not real science, but instead is “crack-pot” or “lunatic” or “voodoo” science, can readily be determined by this following from the Kirwan Institute on the subject, to wit:
Defining Implicit Bias
Also known as implicit social cognition, implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.
These biases, which encompass both favorable and unfavorable assessments, are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or intentional control.
Residing deep in the subconscious, these biases are different from known biases that individuals may choose to conceal for the purposes of social and/or political correctness.
Rather, implicit biases are not accessible through introspection.
end quotes
If, tkenny, these so-called “implicit biases” reside deep in the subconscious and are not accessible through “introspection,” which is “the examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes,” then how, pray tell, can any valid scientific experiments be conducted on it employing the scientific method, which is defined as a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses, given that a hallmark of science is repeatability?
Which takes us back to this crack-pot science statement from earlier this year in the Albany Police mandatory training program on the subject that “80% of white people are scared when they see a black face because it reminds them of spiders and snakes.”
Pardon me, tkenny, but I find that to be a ludicrous statement, because at age 70, I have seen a lot of black faces in my lifetime, and I never once have been scared by any of them, nor did I see spiders and snakes when I saw a black face (sounds like the DT’s, actually, for some alcoholic deprived of his booze supply), and at age 70, I have met a lot of white people, and in all that time, I have not met one, including this Albany Police sergeant, who is scared by a black face, or has seen spiders and snakes when they have seen one.
So what orifice of the human body do you think that ridiculous statement was pulled from?
As to your question “Why do women of equal skill to men get paid less than them,” I honestly cannot say, since I have no direct evidence that such is the case, although I won’t deny that there are many men out there who are misogynists, which is to say, a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women.
But that, tkenny, is explicit bias, if you bother to check your science further here, to separate out the crack-pot science from the real science, not implicit bias.
And thank you for bringing that all up, for it is a very important subject for the common people to understand in the light of the dangerous statement Hillary Clinton made at a Black Lives Matter function in April of this year that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
In closing, tkenny, as an expert on the subject of “implicit bias,” yourself, do you accept what Hillary Clinton is saying there as true and factual?
And since you are an expert on “implicit bias,” how is it cured?
As I stated above, that is what a lot of older people in America would like to know.
When we hear that, we are reminded of “re-education camps” in the Soviet Union and Viet Nam after the fall of the South Vietnamese government, where re-education as it was implemented in Vietnam was seen as both a means of revenge and as a sophisticated technique of repression and indoctrination, which developed following the 1975 Fall of Saigon, where the theory underlying such camps is the Maoist theory of reforming counter-revolutionaries into socialist citizens by re-education through labor.
Is that what we can expect in our future do you think, tkenny, re-education through hard labor, if the 2016 Democrat Party Platform, which is based on Hillary Clinton’s statement “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them” is implemented by a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency?
Inquiring minds would truly like to know.
Paul, you have a truly perverted view of the Democratic platform. I won’t argue with you on the bias issue, because it won’t do any good. I do find it funny you referenced the Kirwan Institute. My guess is you didn’t read the whole report http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/2015-kirwan-implicit-bias.pdf. They talk about how implicit bias can be understood without the need for “re-education camps” ( you are aware that Vietnam and the Soviet Union were not democracies)
It’s always easy to be an armchair quarterback, negativity abounds. Instead of telling us not to vote for the democrats, tell us who to vote for. Try the persuasive argument. Please don’t give us some argument that this is a free society and you should vote for who you want because your “Manifesto” is clearly telling us not to vote for Hilary. So who should I entrust this nation too?
To give credit where credit is due, tkenny is entirely correct when he says “implicit bias” wasn’t invented by the Democrats.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it started out as psychologists in the field of “implicit social cognition” studying “implicit attitudes” toward consumer products, self-esteem, food, alcohol, political values, and more.
More recently, however, the most striking and well-known research has focused on implicit attitudes toward members of socially stigmatized groups, such as African-Americans, women, and the LGBTQ community.
It is that research that has been adopted and adapted as a political tool by the Democrat party for this political season and twisted and warped and perverted into Hillary Clinton’s absurd, outlandish and dangerous statement “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
And an ideal political tool it is, since n0body knows what it is, and thus, can’t question when they are told they “have it,” but they can’t know they have it, unless told by an expert like Hillary Clinton, because it resides deep in the subconscious and is not accessible through “introspection,” which is “the examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes.”
In that sense, it is like cancer, which you can only know you have if a doctor says you do, and then you are in thrall to the doctor for the cure.
As to what the Democrats are planning, all one need do to know that is follow the news, where the whole nation, lobotomized as it is, has been told as follows:
When Sanders endorsed Clinton on July 12th he said “I am happy to tell you that at the Democratic Platform Committee … there was a significant coming together between the two campaigns and we produced, by far, the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.”
“Our job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency – and I am going to do everything I can to make that happen.”
end quote
A Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency, of course, equals one party government.
One-party government equals absolute power, and absolute power, to some, equals tyranny, while to others, it equates with the dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist sociopolitical thought, which refers to a state in which the proletariat, or the working class, has control of political power.
That is what the 51-page 2016 Democrat Manifesto or Party Platform is the recipe for.
According to Marxist theory, the existence of any government implies the dictatorship of one social class over another.
In this case, according to the 2016 Democrat Manifesto, that social class with the dictatorship presently is the “white” people who are racist because of Implicit Bias, so that we need community programs here in America to cure them.
Said more properly, we need to overthrow the dictatorship of the white people, and instead have a dictatorship of all the people the “white” people have been exploiting over the years.
We need a “societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter and that there is no place for racism in our country.”
We need to dismantle the structures that define lasting racial, economic, political, and social inequity.
In other words, we need a cultural revolution in this country, and that is what we are going to get, if the 2016 Democrat Party Platform is implemented by a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency, which Bernie Sanders, a socialist, is going to do everything he can to make that happen, as it would be a fulfillment of his political dream of seeking to establish a vanguard party, to lead proletarian uprising, assume state power on behalf of the proletariat, and create a single party socialist state.
Really, how hard is that to understand, especially when the Democrats have made it incandescently clear in their public statements and published Manifesto that that is exactly what they intend to do, which is take complete control of all political power in this country for themselves and for their purposes – the dictatorship of the Democrats.
If people in this nation were not so lobotomized, perhaps they could hear what the Democrats are telling them.
But they are, so they don’t.
And how dangerous that is to our Republic that is cannot be understated.
tkenny, having read ALL of what the Kirwan Institute has to say about “implicit bias” several times now, what I have to say in response to your comments above is that it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to this up-coming presidential election what the Kirwan Institute said beyond these two statements:
* Residing deep in the subconscious, these biases are different from known biases that individuals may choose to conceal for the purposes of social and/or political correctness.
* Rather, implicit biases are not accessible through introspection.
end quotes
Those two statements alone are enough to show that when Hillary Clinton says “if someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them,” she is full of crap.
If these alleged and supposed “implicit biases” reside deep in the subconscious and are not accessible through introspection, then NOBODY can prove they exist.
And since nobody can prove they exist, there is no cure for them.
End of that story.
As to the Kirwan Institute, nowhere do they make a statement that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them,” and nowhere do they purport to support that inflammatory, derogatory, and prejudicial statement as made by Hillary Clinton in April of this year.
That statement, which was a public statement in that it was widely reported in the media, belongs to Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton alone.
That is an all-inclusive slur or smear or accusation made by the standard bearer for one of the two major political parties in the United States of America, not some fruitcake ranting out on the sidewalk somewhere, notwithstanding that she comes across as one, nonetheless.
That derogatory and discriminatory and prejudicial statement of hers smacks of McCarthy-ism to be quite truthful with you, tkenny, but instead of smearing people with the pejorative label of “COMMIE,” this neo-McCarthy-ism of Hillary Clinton brands and smears as “racist” about 245,532,000 people in this country who are classified as “white” by the census bureau, or 77.7% of the population of the United States of America, with absolutely no evidentiary basis to support the charge, nor an opportunity for due process of law for those so accused to defend themselves.
It also smacks of a form of eugenics.
Do you remember eugenics, tkenny, and compulsory sterilization, also known as forced or coerced sterilization, programs based on government policies which attempted to force people to undergo surgical or other sterilization.
For the younger people, in here, in the first half of the 20th century, several such programs were instituted in countries around the world, usually as part of eugenics programs intended to prevent the reproduction and multiplication of members of the population considered to be carriers of defective, more often than not different and not inferior in a natural combination racial genetic traits.
By making her false claim that white people have this “implicit bias” almost in their DNA, Hillary Clinton is implying or stating, with no evidence to support her spurious charges, that white people in this country are considered by her to be carriers of defective racial genetic traits, which is a serious charge indeed, given this nation’s prior history with eugenics.
According to WIKIPEDIA, our own United States of America was the first country in the world to concertedly undertake compulsory sterilization programs for the purpose of eugenics.
The heads of the program were avid believers in eugenics and frequently argued for their program.
Of importance to this discussion, it was shut down due to ethical problems.
This bogus claim of Hillary Clinton that “if someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them” suffers from those same ethical problems, although I am sure that that does not bother a sociopath and congenital liar like Hillary Clinton one bit.
And nothing the Kirwan Institute says changes any of that, which is why I didn’t quote further from it in here.
If you think it does, tkenny, please elucidate and educate us, if you will.
SHOW people with facts how I am wrong, if you think you can prove I am wrong.
As to your claim that I have a truly perverted view of the Democratic platform, my reply would be balderdash and poppycock.
I am not saying in here what I think, or what I feel the 2016 Democrat Manifesto might be saying.
To the contrary, I am cutting and pasting directly from that document, and I am saying this is what it says, word for word for word.
Are you then saying that it does not say what I am saying it says, when I am quoting directly from it?
Or are you saying that those words mean something totally different from what they say?
Please do us a favor and clarify your position on that, if you can.
And yes, tkenny, I am very much aware that Vietnam and the Soviet Union were not democracies.
They were TOTALITARIAN governments, which is to say centralized governments that did not tolerate parties of differing opinion and that exercised dictatorial control over many aspects of life, in the course of doing so exercising control over the freedom, will, or thought of others.
That is precisely what the 2016 Democrat Manifesto calls for here in the United States of America, as well, if sell-out Bernie Sanders gets his wish to see the 2016 Democrat Party Platform implemented by a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency, which Bernie Sanders, a socialist, is going to do everything he can to make happen, as it would be a fulfillment of his political dream of seeking to establish a vanguard party, to lead proletarian uprising, assume state power on behalf of the proletariat, and create a single party socialist state.
And tkenny, I am not telling you to not vote for Democrats.
I am telling you what we as a nation are going to get if the 2016 Democrat Party Platform implemented by a Democratic Senate, a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency.
Given that right now, depending on what poll you go by, some 50+% of the American voting public wants Hillary Clinton, then quite obviously, they are for what Hillary Clinton is going to deliver them, and it is highly unlikely that anything I say in here will sway them away from her.
So who would I entrust this nation to?
I am going to write in Tulsi Gabbard for president, and Chris Gibson for vice president, myself.
Why?
Because to me, they are the most trustworthy people I can think of to entrust this nation to right now.
Wayne, with respect to your statement “I worry social media has lobotomized the lot of us,” I would argue that all social media has done is to illuminate just how lobotomized the American people really are, which then raises the question of how they came to be that way.
I was educated at the end of WWII, and I was taught critical thinking beginning on the first day of kindergarten.
Actually, I wasn’t “taught” critical thinking.
I was told that as an American citizen, critical thinking would be required of me, so that was why I was sitting there in that classroom, to learn how to think so that I would be able to engage in critical thinking.
Keeping up with current events was part of that, as was knowing what was going on in the world around us, so we had the Weekly Reader and discussion sessions to develop those faculties.
And we were told that a vital element of critical thinking, which is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment, was to question everything around us, especially what those in positions of responsibility in our government were doing, so to be able do that, we had to learn about RESPONSIBILITY (BOO HOO HOO, the liberals around me all say, how very cruel to demand responsibility from children).
Researching the subject of critical thinking further, one finds this:
Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe.
It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking.
Someone with critical thinking skills is able to do the following :
•understand the logical connections between ideas
•identify, construct and evaluate arguments
•detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning
•solve problems systematically
•identify the relevance and importance of ideas
•reflect on the justification of one’s own beliefs and values
end quote
Think on what a world it could be if everyone in the United States of America were able to do all of that (but it’s too hard and wah, wah, wah, I want to go shopping).
So then, the critical question: how did we become such a lobotomized nation as we are today, where roughly half the voting public wants as their leader a sociopathic, congenital liar with a long history of extremely poor decisions and exceptionally shallow thinking who has left a trail of chaos, destruction and disruption of people’s lives behind her, as well as spawning terrorism not only in the Middle East, but North Africa as well, while the other half prefers as their leader an idiot?
For that answer, you have to go back to the 1950s, and the rise of the dreaded specter of world domination of COMMIE-nism, the RED MENACE and the IRON CURTAIN (run, run, the sky is falling and the dominoes are falling, too).
All of a sudden, our education as young Americans changed.
No longer was it acceptable to question what our government was doing to protect us from the COMMIES; to the contrary, ours was to OBEY!
Blind faith replaced critical thinking.
Kool-Aid drinking replaced questioning.
And now, here we are.
Big mystery, right, folks?
A lobotomized nation.
Wayne, to close, the mind is a muscle.
For that muscle to be maintained, it must be continually exercised.
When people stop doing that, or more importantly, when they never start in the first place, which is the case today, you get what you call the lobotomized nation that is so apparent today on facebook and the TWEETINGS on TWITTER.
And tkenny, no, I don’t have an answer as to how to correct the problem, because it is now too immense.
If you have one, could you please share it with us?
It would be appreciated.
The “progressive left” seems to be hiding behind a wall of silence, Wayne, or they simply do not exist, at least in a form that can express itself intelligently, or having said that, more than likely, if they do exist, they are TWEETING away on TWITTER, where you are limited to 140 characters, so you don’t have to worry about thinking too deeply, since nobody who is there with you can either, which makes TWITTER an ideal medium for people who really don’t have anything to say, but want to say it, anyway, and God bless them for it, say I.
It is their right as an American citizen to think as shallowly as they want to, and veterans like myself went to Viet Nam to defend that right with our lives and our blood against the RED MENACE and GODLESS COMMIE-nism, which wanted to take that right away from them when all the dominoes fell the right way for them.
It is also their right, according to our Constitution, to have as their leader someone who thinks just as shallowly as they do, and when they hold the majority, which they do right now, they actually can have a very shallow thinker as their president, and another pair of very shallow thinkers to pick from for their next leader, and there is nothing anyone in the nation can do to stop them, such is the nature of what is called democracy in the United States of America today.
So what is all this hoohah about critical thinking then that I am bringing into this discussion?
If the majority are shallow thinkers, and the success of TWITTER would seem to confirm that statistic as true, then why bother with critical thinking, because it simply is a lot of extra work, which would take valuable time away from shopping and the pursuit of pleasure, which is to say, our American way of life today?
And that, of course, is a good question, since it is very relevant to where we do find ourselves in the United States of America today, where for our choices as president, we have a moron on the one hand who has to be one of the dumbest human beings on the face of the planet, and on the other, a sociopathic, congenital liar with a record of poor decision-making stretching back to her days with the Rose law firm, and the Whitewater development, who has left a trail of death and destruction and ruined lives for hundreds of thousands of people in North Africa and the Middle East from her days as America’s secretary of state.
Simply stated, can a nation full of shallow thinkers with even shallower thinkers as their leaders survive, given that one of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations share a sharp curve of decline, and a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak in population, wealth and power.
A question for our times, indeed.
When I was young, right after the end of WWII, we young American citizens (this is before people became consumers, instead of being citizens) were taught that we needed to learn how to be critical thinkers, because good critical thinking is the foundation of science and democracy.
We were taught that science requires the critical use of reason in experimentation and theory confirmation, as in debunking claims based on crack-pot science that if someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, so that we need community programs here in America to cure them, and we were further taught that the proper functioning of a liberal democracy requires citizens who can think critically about social issues to inform their judgments about proper governance and to overcome biases and prejudice.
Citing WIKIPEDIA, “governance” refers to “all of processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market or network, whether over a family, tribe, formal or informal organization or territory and whether through the laws, norms, power or language.”
It relates to “the processes of interaction and decision-making among the actors involved in a collective problem that lead to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of social norms and institutions.”
And that of course takes us right back to the 2016 Democrat Party Manifesto, wherein we are told that if the Democrat Party is successful in its bid to seize total control of our federal government, which it may well be able to do come November of this year, it is going to “dismantle the structures that define lasting racial, economic, political, and social inequity” in the United States of America today, in their opinion, without telling us exactly what those structures might in fact be, how they are going to be dismantled, other than by force of arms, and what it will mean to us as a people to have them dismantled.
And that takes us to the statement made above by tkenny that Vietnam and the Soviet Union were not democracies.
Applying the principles of critical thinking to the matter, we can clearly see that Viet Nam and the Soviet Union were indeed democracies, despite having totalitarian governments, just as Athens was a democracy circa 621 BC when the Athenians chose Draco to be their tyrant, because they could not trust themselves to govern themselves.
The fact that a nation is a democracy in no way, shape or manner precludes it from being a dictatorship with a centralized government that does not tolerate parties of differing opinion and that exercises dictatorial control over many aspects of life, in the course of doing so exercising control over the freedom, will, or thought of others.
The Athenians proved that many centuries ago when they voted to put Draco and his Draconian Code in power over them as a dictator.
Indeed, about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.”
“A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”
“From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
end quote
There, people, is where we happen to be in this nation right exactly now, perched on the verge of a true dictatorship in the United States of America.
Do you think that that cannot happen in the United States of America today?
Why?
What is to stop it from happening?
Would anyone care to tell us?
Inquiring minds would truly like to know.
Tkenny, the answer to your query on income disparity is due to women working only %77 of the hours men work, in jobs far less dangerous and physically demanding. Add to that the number of women who are not in the workforce for personal reasons( ya know,CHOICE?) and all of a sudden your infantile liberal whinge is explained.
You can have your own opinions, but not your own facts.