Ships in Horrible Storms

[Ashvin]

Lockdowns are are drain on the economy. So is healthcare. So is the military. so is the police. So is education. So is welfare. We can do with out all these, but not sure I would like to live in a country without them thankyou very much.

I don't understand why lockdowns are getting called a "drain" on the economy, like any other government service. It is literally the shutting down of businesses and consumer spending and all the associated taxes, i.e. the economy.

I know quite a few elderly and infirm people I would like not to die early from this virus thank you very much. My parents. My wife. RE. A few of my friends. All of my uncles and aunts.

The question is whether you think these people can make informed responsible decisions without sweeping government restrictions on movement and private property (i.e. the ability to continue operating a business), or do we need the government to make sure the elderly and infirm are protected until this virus completely disappears?

This other myth; "Its not as deadly as the flu."
Incorrect. Its about 10 times more infectious and 10 times more deadly from what figures from our health department are saying. I dont believe China would have locked down like they did if it was just another seasonal flu. There has not been a huge spike in hospitalizations and death as we have been in lockdown to stop a huge spike in hospitalizations and deaths.

Can you provide a scientific source for that bolded assertion?

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[Ashvin]

I don't know about Voltaire's sister editing his writing. I'm not interested enough to look into it. I read his work initially to see why Hitler was basing his ideology around the philosophy. I do recall seeing it written that he attributed socialism to a broken or inferior men and race. You would need to look at the original handwritten pages to determine if he never said it. I'm sorry to say that I can't see he said anything profound.

This is a troubling trend, especially from people who lean left, but totally unsurprising to me at this point. You start opining on someone's philosophy and calling that person an "anti-Semite" while admitting you are not even interested enough to read his works or get his name right. Nietzsche was one of the most profound philosophers in human history, but of course you need to read him or at least credible sources on him to appreciate that.

I take behavioral science very seriously, it's reading the comments not under those utube vids, but under Jordan Peterson Brett and Eric Weinstein, Sam Harris, Charles and Douglas Murray and other intellectuals that white supremacists don't even understand. I mentioned the burning platform and zerohedge before, add to that the Facebook pages of right wing politicians such as Senator Chris McDaniels in America, Pauline Hanson in Australia and every men's rights activist or writer. I gave up on the whole movement as it decided to alienate half its potential support base by becoming aligned with the far right. Without fail, there are always people who chime in with comments completely off topic about western civilization, immigration, race mixing and the Jewish conspiracy. White people with shit going on in their lives don't need to do this, those who do are just losers left behind. They are easily refuted if I deign to waste my time, which I have often done. The point being, that is my data set, not the two vids I last mentioned.

Yes and this is to be expected, because the type of people who spend most of their time shooting off comments on YouTube videos are exactly the types with extreme views or just fucking around to get the more serious viewers riled up. It provides no insight into how influential those radical views actually are, and certainly no insight into the ideas of the people on the videos they are commenting on. It really should not be your "data set" for anything.

50c is perfectly entitled to vote for whoever least taxes top income earners and I will not castigate him for doing it. Any of us would do the same thing. What I find astonishing is Trump supporters accepting the part of his tweet saying "trump doesn't like black people" and gleefully sharing it. Would you accept Lot's lot and find just two good men to say he is wrong? The irony is I don't think it is true. If Mexicans, Blacks and LGBTQ appointed him their figurehead and promised the votes to get re-elected, he would play up to them instead.

I agree with you that it isn't true. What I'm saying is that most of the people who say they believe it's true (50c) are lying, because they don't act like its true. I don't think Trump supporters think that sharing the tweet means they are endorsing the "Trump hates black people" statement... why would it?

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[RE]

I cant understand why it has become a political divide not just in Merika but here in Oz as well. Science does not have a political view, its science. It tries to find the facts.

JOW.

Because we tend to dichotomize,  and any problems are always the fault of the "other guy".  It's the Radical Left!!  It's the Christian Right!  It's not.  It's Collapse.

RE

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[Phil Rumpole]

I don't know about Voltaire's sister editing his writing. I'm not interested enough to look into it. I read his work initially to see why Hitler was basing his ideology around the philosophy. I do recall seeing it written that he attributed socialism to a broken or inferior men and race. You would need to look at the original handwritten pages to determine if he never said it. I'm sorry to say that I can't see he said anything profound.

This is a troubling trend, especially from people who lean left, but totally unsurprising to me at this point. You start opining on someone's philosophy and calling that person an "anti-Semite" while admitting you are not even interested enough to read his works or get his name right. Nietzsche was one of the most profound philosophers in human history, but of course you need to read him or at least credible sources on him to appreciate that.

I take behavioral science very seriously, it's reading the comments not under those utube vids, but under Jordan Peterson Brett and Eric Weinstein, Sam Harris, Charles and Douglas Murray and other intellectuals that white supremacists don't even understand. I mentioned the burning platform and zerohedge before, add to that the Facebook pages of right wing politicians such as Senator Chris McDaniels in America, Pauline Hanson in Australia and every men's rights activist or writer. I gave up on the whole movement as it decided to alienate half its potential support base by becoming aligned with the far right. Without fail, there are always people who chime in with comments completely off topic about western civilization, immigration, race mixing and the Jewish conspiracy. White people with shit going on in their lives don't need to do this, those who do are just losers left behind. They are easily refuted if I deign to waste my time, which I have often done. The point being, that is my data set, not the two vids I last mentioned.

Yes and this is to be expected, because the type of people who spend most of their time shooting off comments on YouTube videos are exactly the types with extreme views or just fucking around to get the more serious viewers riled up. It provides no insight into how influential those radical views actually are, and certainly no insight into the ideas of the people on the videos they are commenting on. It really should not be your "data set" for anything.

50c is perfectly entitled to vote for whoever least taxes top income earners and I will not castigate him for doing it. Any of us would do the same thing. What I find astonishing is Trump supporters accepting the part of his tweet saying "trump doesn't like black people" and gleefully sharing it. Would you accept Lot's lot and find just two good men to say he is wrong? The irony is I don't think it is true. If Mexicans, Blacks and LGBTQ appointed him their figurehead and promised the votes to get re-elected, he would play up to them instead.

I agree with you that it isn't true. What I'm saying is that most of the people who say they believe it's true (50c) are lying, because they don't act like its true. I don't think Trump supporters think that sharing the tweet means they are endorsing the "Trump hates black people" statement... why would it?

 God only knows how "I read his works", mentioned three or four times, is interpreted as meaning the exact opposite. I don't need to read his complete works to examine particular passages.  I referred to God as all knowing because Nietzsche said He is dead, having lived, having existed. Perhaps his sister penned that quote and he was not an atheist at all. Taking advice on what an ubermensch is from a man admitted to an insane asylum can be for Hitler and his followers, not me thanks.

I suppose it is possible from what you are saying, that the lack of opprobrium from everyone who does not share the white supremacist views I see online, is due to those who disagree knowing they are only trolling. I think they just don't care enough and Ive seen the same opinion expressed by Bill Cosby and Muhammad Ali. "You don't all think like that, but there are enough of you who do and those that don't, aren't doing enough about it". That to me, is the worrying trend and it is only on the right.

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[Ashvin]

I don't know about Voltaire's sister editing his writing. I'm not interested enough to look into it. I read his work initially to see why Hitler was basing his ideology around the philosophy. I do recall seeing it written that he attributed socialism to a broken or inferior men and race. You would need to look at the original handwritten pages to determine if he never said it. I'm sorry to say that I can't see he said anything profound.

This is a troubling trend, especially from people who lean left, but totally unsurprising to me at this point. You start opining on someone's philosophy and calling that person an "anti-Semite" while admitting you are not even interested enough to read his works or get his name right. Nietzsche was one of the most profound philosophers in human history, but of course you need to read him or at least credible sources on him to appreciate that.

I take behavioral science very seriously, it's reading the comments not under those utube vids, but under Jordan Peterson Brett and Eric Weinstein, Sam Harris, Charles and Douglas Murray and other intellectuals that white supremacists don't even understand. I mentioned the burning platform and zerohedge before, add to that the Facebook pages of right wing politicians such as Senator Chris McDaniels in America, Pauline Hanson in Australia and every men's rights activist or writer. I gave up on the whole movement as it decided to alienate half its potential support base by becoming aligned with the far right. Without fail, there are always people who chime in with comments completely off topic about western civilization, immigration, race mixing and the Jewish conspiracy. White people with shit going on in their lives don't need to do this, those who do are just losers left behind. They are easily refuted if I deign to waste my time, which I have often done. The point being, that is my data set, not the two vids I last mentioned.

Yes and this is to be expected, because the type of people who spend most of their time shooting off comments on YouTube videos are exactly the types with extreme views or just fucking around to get the more serious viewers riled up. It provides no insight into how influential those radical views actually are, and certainly no insight into the ideas of the people on the videos they are commenting on. It really should not be your "data set" for anything.

50c is perfectly entitled to vote for whoever least taxes top income earners and I will not castigate him for doing it. Any of us would do the same thing. What I find astonishing is Trump supporters accepting the part of his tweet saying "trump doesn't like black people" and gleefully sharing it. Would you accept Lot's lot and find just two good men to say he is wrong? The irony is I don't think it is true. If Mexicans, Blacks and LGBTQ appointed him their figurehead and promised the votes to get re-elected, he would play up to them instead.

I agree with you that it isn't true. What I'm saying is that most of the people who say they believe it's true (50c) are lying, because they don't act like its true. I don't think Trump supporters think that sharing the tweet means they are endorsing the "Trump hates black people" statement... why would it?

 God only knows how "I read his works", mentioned three or four times, is interpreted as meaning the exact opposite. I don't need to read his complete works to examine particular passages.  I referred to God as all knowing because Nietzsche said He is dead, having lived, having existed. Perhaps his sister penned that quote and he was not an atheist at all. Taking advice on what an ubermensch is from a man admitted to an insane asylum can be for Hitler and his followers, not me thanks.

You're right, I incorrectly applied your admission "I'm not interested enough to look into it"to the reading of Nietzsche in general. But you were only admitting that you didn't have enough interest to look into the idea that he was NOT an anti-Semite (as you labeled him) and his association with the Nazis ONLY comes through his exploitative sister.

That's still pretty bad, though. It should remind you of someone else who is frequently accused by the Western left of being a Nazi or Hitler-esque figure. If you can't even summon the interest to fact-check the anti-Semitic accusation against a person who some consider the greatest Western philosopher to ever live, you can't blame me not taking your similar accusations against Trump (perhaps the dumbest American president to ever live) and Trump supporters seriously.

Nietzsche did proclaim "God is dead, God remains dead", and immediately followed that with, "And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?"He then proceeded to predict the consequence of God's death as nihilism and the rise of revolutionary dictators in the 20th century which would kill hundreds of millions of people.

I suppose it is possible from what you are saying, that the lack of opprobrium from everyone who does not share the white supremacist views I see online, is due to those who disagree knowing they are only trolling. I think they just don't care enough and Ive seen the same opinion expressed by Bill Cosby and Muhammad Ali. "You don't all think like that, but there are enough of you who do and those that don't, aren't doing enough about it". That to me, is the worrying trend and it is only on the right.

This is what Jung would call your unconscious projections, and also projections of the collective unconscious. It is the LEFT that lacks any opprobrium from the "moderates" within it. They are simply unwilling to call out any fellow leftists who have gone too far towards "equality of outcome" doctrines. Anyone on the left who has dared to call out such doctrines in the last few years is immediately associated with the "alt-right". Instead of facing this ideological tendency on the left, it is projected out onto everyone who may be considered "conservative", even though it's perfectly evident that conservatives call each other out all the time. We call Trump out for his shenanigans and stupidity all the time. But if you are only paying attention to chat sessions on YouTube videos, I can see how you might miss that.

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[Phil Rumpole]

his shenanigans and stupidity all the time. But if you are only paying attention to chat sessions on YouTube videos, I can see how you might miss that.

My admission that "you would need to look at the original handwritten notes to determine if he never said it" ("socialism is the product of broken men and a broken race"), left out that YOU would also need to learn German, as the onus is on YOU to back up the claim Nietzsche did not write that line in The Will To Power/Mein Kampf.

No discussion of Nietzsche is complete without some mention of Heidegger, his contemporary and compatriot card carrying member of the National Socialist Party anyway.

"Every artist is a canibal, every poet is a thief, they kill their inspiration and sing about the grief" Bono. Nietzsche did not need to take the approach that the Age of Reason disproves the existence of God, he obviously had no faith if he believed that, while being appreciative of religion only as a tool for social stability.   The natural reaction of a true believer would be to expect science would help prove God's existence. Instead of seeing Darwin's  theory of evolution through natural selection and random mutation as a death blow to morality, he could have pointed out the impossibility of such things as intermediary stages or a fully functioning male and female reproductive system as seperate but simultaneous mutations in a population.

He could have rejoiced in an end to religious and sectarian war. I don't recall he predicted hundreds of millions in the 20th C dead,  you may have heard that from another fallible authority.

 By your own standard, if you did not check the veracity of that statement I don't need to take any defence of trump or his supporters seriously. I didn't realise that by lesser evil, you meant the right is 100% less evil than the left and want to get out of assessing 'accusations against' trump such as his losing the trade war, and trump supporters on their stand alone objective merits.

I can't be projecting my sides attributes onto your side when I do not belong to any side, let me reiterate my position that you really on the same side you are ostensibly against, by obliging them and engaging in civil war. You
 know I am projecting if I say you are being objective, fair, evenhanded, impartial, non partisan and handsome.

I am well aware of cancel culture and shouldn't gloat at the 2nd Wave feminists who thought they occupied an unnasailable position atop the dominance hierarchy until intersectionality hit them like a truck at an intersection. Now it is not hyperbole that they are associated with the alt right, SWERFS and TERFS have literally become Trump supporters. Yes, yes, I observed this on social media, but I don't associate with man haters in real life.
Where do you think the Twitter president got "when the looting starts, the shooting starts", not from the collective unconscious.

I wasn't aware conservatives call Trump out all the time. Isn't the consensus that Romney is just butthurt, while Chris Wallace is considered hostile and has a fatwa for ambushing Trump in an interview by not pitching only softball questions. I remember when he said Ted Cruz father was present when JFK was assassinated and questioned what he was doing there.  Some ridiculous number of people then believed he may be responsible.
 

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[Ashvin]

his shenanigans and stupidity all the time. But if you are only paying attention to chat sessions on YouTube videos, I can see how you might miss that.

My admission that "you would need to look at the original handwritten notes to determine if he never said it" ("socialism is the product of broken men and a broken race"), left out that YOU would also need to learn German, as the onus is on YOU to back up the claim Nietzsche did not write that line in The Will To Power/Mein Kampf.

Where did he say "socialism is the product of a broken race"? I did find this from Nietzsche, which critiques socialism and also captures the meaning of his "will to power" (no mention of inferior races whatsoever):

"Socialism ― or the tyranny of the meanest and the most brainless, ―that is to say, the superficial, the envious, and the mummers, brought to its zenith, ―is, as a matter of fact, the logical conclusion of “modern ideas” and their latent anarchy: but in the genial atmosphere of democratic well-being the capacity for forming resolutions or even for coming to an end at all, is paralysed. Men follow―but no longer their reason. That is why socialism is on the whole a hopelessly bitter affair: and there is nothing more amusing than to observe the discord between the poisonous and desperate faces of present-day socialists―and what wretched and nonsensical feelings does not their style reveal to us! ―and the childish lamblike happiness of their hopes and desires. Nevertheless, in many places in Europe, there may be violent hand-to-hand struggles and irruptions on their account: the coming century is likely to be convulsed in more than one spot, and the Paris Commune, which finds defenders and advocates even in Germany, will seem to have but a slight indigestion compared with what is to come. Be this as it may, there will always be too many people of property for socialism ever to signify anything more than an attack of illness: and these people of property are like one man with one faith, “one must possess something in order to be some one.” This, however, is the oldest and most wholesome of all instincts; I should add: “one must desire more than one has in order to become more.” For this is the teaching which life itself preaches to all living things: the morality of Development. To have and to wish to have more, in a word, Growth―that is life itself. In the teaching of socialism “a will to the denial of life” is but poorly concealed: botched men and races they must be who have devised a teaching of this sort. In fact, I even wish a few experiments might be made to show that in socialistic society life denies itself, and itself cuts away its own roots."

No discussion of Nietzsche is complete without some mention of Heidegger, his contemporary and compatriot card carrying member of the National Socialist Party anyway.

Well that's another absurd statement, but one that fits right in with leftist ideology. Yes let's all define people in terms of their "associations", or better yet, their falsely perceived associations. Martin Heidegger was born the year before Nietzsche died... so what, you want to eternally link them together because they were both German philosophers?

"Every artist is a canibal, every poet is a thief, they kill their inspiration and sing about the grief" Bono. Nietzsche did not need to take the approach that the Age of Reason disproves the existence of God, he obviously had no faith if he believed that, while being appreciative of religion only as a tool for social stability.   The natural reaction of a true believer would be to expect science would help prove God's existence. Instead of seeing Darwin's  theory of evolution through natural selection and random mutation as a death blow to morality, he could have pointed out the impossibility of such things as intermediary stages or a fully functioning male and female reproductive system as seperate but simultaneous mutations in a population.

He could have rejoiced in an end to religious and sectarian war. I don't recall he predicted hundreds of millions in the 20th C dead,  you may have heard that from another fallible authority.

I'm not sure what you are saying above. Nietzsche was not an "atheist" in any modern sense of that word, although he was certainly anti-dogmatic religion, which is what the modern left has become. As for your last sentence about his 20th century predictions, you may not recall it, but he did. See the bolded sentence in the quote above, as well as many other parts of his writings.

I am well aware of cancel culture and shouldn't gloat at the 2nd Wave feminists who thought they occupied an unnasailable position atop the dominance hierarchy until intersectionality hit them like a truck at an intersection. Now it is not hyperbole that they are associated with the alt right, SWERFS and TERFS have literally become Trump supporters. Yes, yes, I observed this on social media, but I don't associate with man haters in real life.

Well at least we agree that intersectionality reveals the incoherency of leftist ideological positions. And yes, women have now taken the silver or bronze to young black men in the oppression Olympics. I don't know if feminists have "literally become Trump supporters", though.

I wasn't aware conservatives call Trump out all the time. Isn't the consensus that Romney is just butthurt, while Chris Wallace is considered hostile and has a fatwa for ambushing Trump in an interview by not pitching only softball questions. I remember when he said Ted Cruz father was present when JFK was assassinated and questioned what he was doing there.  Some ridiculous number of people then believed he may be responsible.

They do. Ben Shapiro is maybe the most well known conservative commentator, and he criticizes Trump quite often. Lately, though, given all the dishonest, vile shit the ideological left has been up to, any silly or offensive thing that Trump tweets out seems like peanuts in comparison.

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[Phil Rumpole]

his shenanigans and stupidity all the time. But if you are only paying attention to chat sessions on YouTube videos, I can see how you might miss that.

My admission that "you would need to look at the original handwritten notes to determine if he never said it" ("socialism is the product of broken men and a broken race"), left out that YOU would also need to learn German, as the onus is on YOU to back up the claim Nietzsche did not write that line in The Will To Power/Mein Kampf.

Where did he say "socialism is the product of a broken race"? I did find this from Nietzsche, which critiques socialism and also captures the meaning of his "will to power" (no mention of inferior races whatsoever):

"Socialism ― or the tyranny of the meanest and the most brainless, ―that is to say, the superficial, the envious, and the mummers, brought to its zenith, ―is, as a matter of fact, the logical conclusion of “modern ideas” and their latent anarchy: but in the genial atmosphere of democratic well-being the capacity for forming resolutions or even for coming to an end at all, is paralysed. Men follow―but no longer their reason. That is why socialism is on the whole a hopelessly bitter affair: and there is nothing more amusing than to observe the discord between the poisonous and desperate faces of present-day socialists―and what wretched and nonsensical feelings does not their style reveal to us! ―and the childish lamblike happiness of their hopes and desires. Nevertheless, in many places in Europe, there may be violent hand-to-hand struggles and irruptions on their account: the coming century is likely to be convulsed in more than one spot, and the Paris Commune, which finds defenders and advocates even in Germany, will seem to have but a slight indigestion compared with what is to come. Be this as it may, there will always be too many people of property for socialism ever to signify anything more than an attack of illness: and these people of property are like one man with one faith, “one must possess something in order to be some one.” This, however, is the oldest and most wholesome of all instincts; I should add: “one must desire more than one has in order to become more.” For this is the teaching which life itself preaches to all living things: the morality of Development. To have and to wish to have more, in a word, Growth―that is life itself. In the teaching of socialism “a will to the denial of life” is but poorly concealed: botched men and races they must be who have devised a teaching of this sort. In fact, I even wish a few experiments might be made to show that in socialistic society life denies itself, and itself cuts away its own roots."

No discussion of Nietzsche is complete without some mention of Heidegger, his contemporary and compatriot card carrying member of the National Socialist Party anyway.

Well that's another absurd statement, but one that fits right in with leftist ideology. Yes let's all define people in terms of their "associations", or better yet, their falsely perceived associations. Martin Heidegger was born the year before Nietzsche died... so what, you want to eternally link them together because they were both German philosophers?

"Every artist is a canibal, every poet is a thief, they kill their inspiration and sing about the grief" Bono. Nietzsche did not need to take the approach that the Age of Reason disproves the existence of God, he obviously had no faith if he believed that, while being appreciative of religion only as a tool for social stability.   The natural reaction of a true believer would be to expect science would help prove God's existence. Instead of seeing Darwin's  theory of evolution through natural selection and random mutation as a death blow to morality, he could have pointed out the impossibility of such things as intermediary stages or a fully functioning male and female reproductive system as seperate but simultaneous mutations in a population.

He could have rejoiced in an end to religious and sectarian war. I don't recall he predicted hundreds of millions in the 20th C dead,  you may have heard that from another fallible authority.

I'm not sure what you are saying above. Nietzsche was not an "atheist" in any modern sense of that word, although he was certainly anti-dogmatic religion, which is what the modern left has become. As for your last sentence about his 20th century predictions, you may not recall it, but he did. See the bolded sentence in the quote above, as well as many other parts of his writings.

I am well aware of cancel culture and shouldn't gloat at the 2nd Wave feminists who thought they occupied an unnasailable position atop the dominance hierarchy until intersectionality hit them like a truck at an intersection. Now it is not hyperbole that they are associated with the alt right, SWERFS and TERFS have literally become Trump supporters. Yes, yes, I observed this on social media, but I don't associate with man haters in real life.

Well at least we agree that intersectionality reveals the incoherency of leftist ideological positions. And yes, women have now taken the silver or bronze to young black men in the oppression Olympics. I don't know if feminists have "literally become Trump supporters", though.

I wasn't aware conservatives call Trump out all the time. Isn't the consensus that Romney is just butthurt, while Chris Wallace is considered hostile and has a fatwa for ambushing Trump in an interview by not pitching only softball questions. I remember when he said Ted Cruz father was present when JFK was assassinated and questioned what he was doing there.  Some ridiculous number of people then believed he may be responsible.

They do. Ben Shapiro is maybe the most well known conservative commentator, and he criticizes Trump quite often. Lately, though, given all the dishonest, vile shit the ideological left has been up to, any silly or offensive thing that Trump tweets out seems like peanuts in comparison.

Thanks for finding that for me, it would have been a herculean task on my own to try and go through Will To Power finding it. From your passage:

"botched men and races they must be who have devised a teaching of this sort."

 Recall I said I was going from memory when I decided to look into why holocaust denial is so persistent, which was years ago. I said "broken or inferior", in my mind the word "busted" kept throwing up, but I knew that couldn't be correct for the epoch. "botched" it is, close meaning, number of letters, syllables and letter it begins with. The part of your passage put in bold on the other hand, is a stretch to equate with him saying "hundreds of millions will be killed in the 20th  century based on nihilistic ideology". Within that passage he says he sees socialism as a minor irritant to a natural order of capitalism because man is nothing without owning. So this is what he meant by all those statements that life is suffering without meaning in it and you can endure anything if you have a purpose. No he isn't an atheist, his god is Laxmi or mammon. 

I don't see why what you call  another absurd statement should not stand. There is a reason Nietzsche is claimed by Hitler, Proud Boys and Heidegger. "Herr Fuhrer, it's 50 below here at stalingrad, we don't have adequate clothes or fuel for our panzers" , is a weak excuse when the Nazis ideology says all an ubermensch needs is the will to power. You can't do this with Tolstoy, Dostoevsky or Bukowski, my philosopher of choice.

Not all feminists have become Trump supporters, just a good chunk of 2nd Wave TERFS. Do the math on how old they are now and why expressing their opinions has no bearing on their employment. I noticed you used an alliterative phrase I coined a long time ago and went viral for a while, nice to see it not forgot. 

I think the reason Ben Shapiro sometimes just can't take any more bullshit, is all those others that say it's really 5D chess and call him God-emperor etc. It was true when he said something like he could run naked down 5th Avenue shooting people and they would still applaud.

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[Ashvin]

his shenanigans and stupidity all the time. But if you are only paying attention to chat sessions on YouTube videos, I can see how you might miss that.

My admission that "you would need to look at the original handwritten notes to determine if he never said it" ("socialism is the product of broken men and a broken race"), left out that YOU would also need to learn German, as the onus is on YOU to back up the claim Nietzsche did not write that line in The Will To Power/Mein Kampf.

Where did he say "socialism is the product of a broken race"? I did find this from Nietzsche, which critiques socialism and also captures the meaning of his "will to power" (no mention of inferior races whatsoever):

So I see where he refers to socialist teaching as a machination of a "botched man or race", which I presume is what you are referring to. I would say his concept of "race" was more along the lines of what we now call "culture", except with maybe more of a connection to evolutionary biology (but that last part is far from certain). The topic of what constitutes substantive biological differences between groups of people is a hotly debated topic among evolutionary biologists even today, let alone in his time when Darwinian theory was relatively new. (this is another way in which I would say the ideological left is anti-scientific - they are unable to discuss such legitimate scientific topics in the open for fear of being called "racist").

In any case, I cannot find any instances of Nietzsche linking socialist teachings to people of Jewish faith or descent (which would be a very odd thing to do if you think about it), and I can find many instances where he was critical of his own cultural grouping (Germans, Aryans, "Northerners").  He also condemns people who feel they must use violence on weaker groups to prove their strength/power - in his view this is actually weakness. So there is no sense in which his philosophical ideas supported Nazi ideology, which of course is a form of socialist ideology to begin with, and we have already established how much he despised socialism.

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[Ashvin]

The part of your passage put in bold on the other hand, is a stretch to equate with him saying "hundreds of millions will be killed in the 20th  century based on nihilistic ideology".

As I stated before, it is within many of his writings. You know he wrote A LOT of stuff. Maybe I'll go find some more for you later.

Within that passage he says he sees socialism as a minor irritant to a natural order of capitalism because man is nothing without owning. So this is what he meant by all those statements that life is suffering without meaning in it and you can endure anything if you have a purpose. No he isn't an atheist, his god is Lakshmi or mammon. 

Of course you would think that, because to you "ownership" must be reduced to the material dimension of owning resources and objects and nothing else just like "power" must be reduced to control over other people. Nietzsche was a metaphysician and a trained philologist. He understands that all of our "physical" language today evolved from psychic concepts many thousands of years ago. Or, more accurately, there was no distinction between the psychic and the "physical" for ancient humans, unlike philosophical materialists today (which is practically everyone in the West and especially on the ideological left). What he is talking about is so much deeper, more rich and multi-dimensional than what you are trying to attribute to him by saying his god was "mammon".

I don't see why what you call  another absurd statement should not stand. There is a reason Nietzsche is claimed by Hitler, Proud Boys and Heidegger. "Herr Fuhrer, it's 50 below here at stalingrad, we don't have adequate clothes or fuel for our panzers" , is a weak excuse when the Nazis ideology says all an ubermensch needs is the will to power.

Ideologues claim every profound thinker for themselves. Plenty of ideologues on the radical left claim Nietzsche as well. That doesn't make any of them correct about his philosophy or your simplistic rendering of his philosophy any more insightful.

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[Eddie]

his shenanigans and stupidity all the time. But if you are only paying attention to chat sessions on YouTube videos, I can see how you might miss that.

My admission that "you would need to look at the original handwritten notes to determine if he never said it" ("socialism is the product of broken men and a broken race"), left out that YOU would also need to learn German, as the onus is on YOU to back up the claim Nietzsche did not write that line in The Will To Power/Mein Kampf.

Where did he say "socialism is the product of a broken race"? I did find this from Nietzsche, which critiques socialism and also captures the meaning of his "will to power" (no mention of inferior races whatsoever):

So I see where he refers to socialist teaching as a machination of a "botched man or race", which I presume is what you are referring to. I would say his concept of "race" was more along the lines of what we now call "culture", except with maybe more of a connection to evolutionary biology (but that last part is far from certain). The topic of what constitutes substantive biological differences between groups of people is a hotly debated topic among evolutionary biologists even today, let alone in his time when Darwinian theory was relatively new. (this is another way in which I would say the ideological left is anti-scientific - they are unable to discuss such legitimate scientific topics in the open for fear of being called "racist").

In any case, I cannot find any instances of Nietzsche linking socialist teachings to people of Jewish faith or descent (which would be a very odd thing to do if you think about it), and I can find many instances where he was critical of his own cultural grouping (Germans, Aryans, "Northerners").  He also condemns people who feel they must use violence on weaker groups to prove their strength/power - in his view this is actually weakness. So there is no sense in which his philosophical ideas supported Nazi ideology, which of course is a form of socialist ideology to begin with, and we have already established how much he despised socialism.

This is the Ashvin I like....Ashvin the scholar. Always willing to make a deep dive. When I came to the Diner I knew very little about Nietzsche other than a general knowledge that he was influential and went crazy...and the general time frame he lived and wrote. Now I have a better understanding of Nietzsche and nihilism both.

I think you'e right about Nietzsche, but wrong about the Nazis.

The Nazis didn't get Nietzsche.....but they used his words to justify their POV....sort of like the way the Trump base thinks about Trump. They are in love with their vision of Trump....not the real Trump.

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[Phil Rumpole]

Race meaning culture is more of a stretch than him saying hundreds of millions dead from nihilism. You were on more solid ground attributing the racist quote to the sisters editing, which is a possibility. I know he wrote a lot, so much it contradicts itself everywhere. I'm sure if he said there would be hundreds of millions dead from nihilism it would be well known. That was your original point and I don't need to read anything else from him. I'm glad you enjoy it though.

What you say about language having a reference to psychic concepts seems like stating the obvious, or perhaps you should explain what you mean. You're not treating any of it as opinion, but facts he knew. An interest or understanding of such things is not bettering oneself according to him anyway. Man is nothing without him owning. 

On what do you base the claim that for me, power is only power over other people?   

Redistribution of wealth and property under socialism only requires a simplistic understanding. Note you have not given any explanation for what other type of things can not be owned under socialism he supposedly refers to.

If you think the idea of socialism being the product of a particular race is preposterous, you have a hell of a lot of other trump supporters to convince.

For someone who is so squarely opposed to the political left, you embrace a lot of their praxis. Liz Warren saying she's native American makes sense and the reasoning is reminiscent of Bill Clintons 'it depends what you mean by is' 

I need to excuse myself from this discussion. My rule is to be working by 0900 and I'm a little behind because I got sidetracked here.

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[Ashvin]

This is the Ashvin I like....Ashvin the scholar. Always willing to make a deep dive. When I came to the Diner I knew very little about Nietzsche other than a general knowledge that he was influential and went crazy...and the general time frame he lived and wrote. Now I have a better understanding of Nietzsche and nihilism both.

I think you'e right about Nietzsche, but wrong about the Nazis.

The Nazis didn't get Nietzsche.....but they used his words to justify their POV....sort of like the way the Trump base thinks about Trump. They are in love with their vision of Trump....not the real Trump.

Thanks Eddie, at least for your appreciation of my discussion of Nietzsche.

I haven't really said what I think about the Nazis yet, other than the obvious fact that their ideology is evil. We like to think that these ideologies were made possible by a few elite people who went on a power trip and scoured for a bunch of a philosophy and science to support their violent machinations. We like to think that because it effectively absolves us of complicity.

This is an anti-religious perspective and one that has little utility in explaining the 20th century atrocities. As Solzhenitsyn put it, when brilliantly explaining the causes of Stalinist atrocities in the Gulag Archipelago:
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts."

Hitler was known to be a master at playing off of his audiences when he gave speeches. He could sense their deep frustrations, angers, resentments, and he would pay attention to what they reacted positively to when he spoke and follow that thread. In a very real sense, the German people created the Hitler we personify as the quintessential evil dictator today. They had real bones to pick with the states of their lives in the aftermath of WWI and their economic destruction, but they remained unconscious of their deep resentments. The unconscious psyche does not remain hidden when we ignore it within ourselves, but it projects out into the world. The Jewish people, among others, became the containers of their unconscious projections.

Sure, there are certainly some American conservatives who envision Trump as a savior figure from the evil leftist mobs, the cultural Marxists and what not. But we cannot ignore that they are in the minority here. Trump is much more of a container for the unconscious resentments of the left. They project all the dark aspects of themselves onto Trump. Suddenly the rich, narcissistic, bigoted reality TV celebrity becomes the epitome of evil itself, capable of Nazi-like atrocities to squash his opposition. Even people who are opposed to the Marxist left tend to start viewing him in this way, and it's no wonder because that is the image quite literally projected onto him by almost all of the mainstream media.

I agree with you that Trump is no savior figure for people with conservative values and should never be conceived that way, but he is a far cry from Nazi dictator as well. We need to take more responsibility for our roles in the frustrations and resentments we have in American culture, instead of projecting it out onto individual people (Trump), political parties (Democrat or Republican), classes (the rich) or entire races and genders (white males). My rants here against the ideological left should be taken as rants against the above way of thinking (or NOT thinking), and not necessarily against "liberal" political values or Democratic politicians.

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[Ashvin]

If you think the idea of socialism being the product of a particular race is preposterous, you have a hell of a lot of other trump supporters to convince.

Again, the only people who clearly and visibly make race a defining factor of identity in America right now is the left and the one or two neo-Nazis mucking about. In fact, the most anti-Semitism you find in American right now is in Black Lives Matter. The racial component is so bad that you can't watch a sports broadcast on ESPN or stream something on Netflix or Amazon without coming across it a dozen times. And forget the "news", which is now nothing more than identity politics 24/7.

So I'm watching the new Borat movie on Amazon by Sacha Baron Cohen and just had to bring this up, given what we have been discussing. The number of anti-Semitic jokes, including references to a "holocaust remembrance day" in the beginning, is amazing. I realize he is Jewish, but still. He's a ballsy comedian for sure, but I also think he knows he can get away with it because he is on the left, anti-Trump AND anti-Semitism isn't exactly frowned upon within the American left these days.

He does the usual thing where he goes into the south and films interactions with people until he finds the people who will put up with a ridiculous amount of racist shit or even go along with it and then uses that footage. I have to admit it's funny... but still hypocritical as hell given the overall political narrative he wants to impart.

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[Ashvin]

Here are some more passages written by Nietzsche which quite clearly refer to an "unimaginable" number of deaths and were written many decades in advance of such events, in a time of relative peace in Europe:

And although silent here about some things, I will not, however, be silent about my morality, which says to me: Live in concealment in order that thou mayest live to thyself. Live ignorant of that which seems to thy age to be most important! Put at least the skin of three centuries betwixt thyself and the present day! And the clamour of the present day, the noise of wars and revolutions, ought to be a murmur to thee! -The Gay Science, 1882

“The Transvaluation of all Values, this is my formula for mankind's greatest step towards coming to its senses—a step which in me became flesh and genius. … Thus, I am necessarily a man of Fate. For when Truth enters the lists against the falsehood of ages, shocks are bound to ensue, and a spell of earthquakes, followed by the transposition of hills and valleys, such as the world has never yet imagined even in its dreams. The concept "politics" then becomes elevated entirely to the sphere of spiritual warfare. All the mighty realms of the ancient order of society are blown into space—for they are all based on falsehood: there will be wars, the like of which have never been seen on earth before. Only from my time and after me will politics on a large scale exist on earth." - Ecce Homo, 1888.

"What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism... For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect." Id.

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