Trumpty-Dumpty POTUS Thread

[RE]

What's that quote, something like "it's hard to get a man to believe something that's contrary to his job depending on it?"  Something like that.  I think that's what explains this phenomenon of climate change deniers.  Accepting AGW means that we have to change BAU.  The corporations depend on fossil fuels to continue doing business.  They are the vested interest, and therefor they control the dialogue.

Upton Sinclair.

Basically, Exxon-Mobil will fund anyone who is a climate change denier.  So politicians who wanna get elected become deniers.  The money alone explains the difference between the general population percentages and the percentage you find in CONgress.

RE

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[K-Dog]

What's that quote, something like "it's hard to get a man to believe something that's contrary to his job depending on it?"  Something like that.  I think that's what explains this phenomenon of climate change deniers.  Accepting AGW means that we have to change BAU.  The corporations depend on fossil fuels to continue doing business.  They are the vested interest, and therefor they control the dialogue.

Upton Sinclair.

Basically, Exxon-Mobil will fund anyone who is a climate change denier.  So politicians who wanna get elected become deniers.  The money alone explains the difference between the general population percentages and the percentage you find in CONgress.

RE

This has to be the most quoted quote among Kollapsnicks but among politicians denial and lack of belief are not the same thing.  Not understanding something because your job depends on it requires a modicum of effort.  Saying you don't understand something when you really do understand it requires no effort to a compulsive liar and politics attracts plenty of compulsive liars.  They do well since the rest of us are easily fooled.

This is not a simple semantic difference because the rest of us waste far too much time wondering why Republicans don't understand climate change.  Republicans understand it just fine but they lie and say they don't understand it because ignorance carries less stigma than being a flagrant selfish asshole does.  Pretending they don't understand when we really know they can understand things as well as we can is also easier for us to do because the alternative of confrontation is unpalatable.

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[RE]

This has to be the most quoted quote among Kollapsnicks but among politicians denial and lack of belief are not the same thing.  Not understanding something because your job depends on it requires a modicum of effort.  Saying you don't understand something when you really do understand it requires no effort to a compulsive liar and politics attracts plenty of compulsive liars.  They do well since the rest of us are easily fooled.

This is not a simple semantic difference because the rest of us waste far too much time wondering why Republicans don't understand climate change.  Republicans understand it just fine but they lie and say they don't understand it because ignorance carries less stigma than being a flagrant selfish asshole does.  Pretending they don't understand when we really know they can understand things as well as we can is also easier for us to do because the alternative of confrontation is unpalatable.

This might be true in some cases, but my experience dealing with the Christian Fundy Righties is they genuinely do not believe in anthropogenic climate change.  The owner of the gym I came up here to work with originally was like this.  A fairly intelligent guy, but he simply would not accept that Homo Sap was causing climate change.  To him this was all a conspiracy dreamed up by liberals to halt the great engine of capitalism.

IMHO, the energy industry simply selects for these people and they really don't believe in climate change, or at least don't believe burning fossil fuels is causing it.  Righties tend to be willfully stupid people this way.

RE

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[K-Dog]

This has to be the most quoted quote among Kollapsnicks but among politicians denial and lack of belief are not the same thing.  Not understanding something because your job depends on it requires a modicum of effort.  Saying you don't understand something when you really do understand it requires no effort to a compulsive liar and politics attracts plenty of compulsive liars.  They do well since the rest of us are easily fooled.

This is not a simple semantic difference because the rest of us waste far too much time wondering why Republicans don't understand climate change.  Republicans understand it just fine but they lie and say they don't understand it because ignorance carries less stigma than being a flagrant selfish asshole does.  Pretending they don't understand when we really know they can understand things as well as we can is also easier for us to do because the alternative of confrontation is unpalatable.

This might be true in some cases, but my experience dealing with the Christian Fundy Righties is they genuinely do not believe in anthropogenic climate change.  The owner of the gym I came up here to work with originally was like this.  A fairly intelligent guy, but he simply would not accept that Homo Sap was causing climate change.  To him this was all a conspiracy dreamed up by liberals to halt the great engine of capitalism.

IMHO, the energy industry simply selects for these people and they really don't believe in climate change, or at least don't believe burning fossil fuels is causing it.  Righties tend to be willfully stupid people this way.

RE

See how well it works!  They have you totality bamboozled LOL.

There is a difference between the Christian Fundy Righties who do the electing and those who get elected.  It is easier for a voter to be ignorant than a politician running for office.  Simply running exposes a politician to opposing views and evidence which an ignorant voter does not have to deal with.  A politician at a minimum is exposed to their own ignorance simply because lies must come from their own mouth. 

There was no reason for your fairy intelligent gym owner not to remain as ignorant as he wished because there was nothing in it for him to become enlightened.  A politician running for office is in an entirely different environment where ignorance must be consciously cultivated.  Becoming less ignorant is in a politicians best interest.  The conclusion must be then that they learn facts which break their ignorance but since they pander their votes from ignorant masses they continue to pretend ignorance. 

I'm sure it is true for you RE as it is for me that when we have a need to know something we learn it very fast.  Learning to prevail in a debate against a climate change advocate is more than enough incentive for a Republican politician to learn true facts concerning climate change even if they don't want to.

All Republicans are fools some of the time, and some Republicans are fools all the time, but not all Republicans are fools all of the time.

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[RE]

This has to be the most quoted quote among Kollapsnicks but among politicians denial and lack of belief are not the same thing.  Not understanding something because your job depends on it requires a modicum of effort.  Saying you don't understand something when you really do understand it requires no effort to a compulsive liar and politics attracts plenty of compulsive liars.  They do well since the rest of us are easily fooled.

This is not a simple semantic difference because the rest of us waste far too much time wondering why Republicans don't understand climate change.  Republicans understand it just fine but they lie and say they don't understand it because ignorance carries less stigma than being a flagrant selfish asshole does.  Pretending they don't understand when we really know they can understand things as well as we can is also easier for us to do because the alternative of confrontation is unpalatable.

This might be true in some cases, but my experience dealing with the Christian Fundy Righties is they genuinely do not believe in anthropogenic climate change.  The owner of the gym I came up here to work with originally was like this.  A fairly intelligent guy, but he simply would not accept that Homo Sap was causing climate change.  To him this was all a conspiracy dreamed up by liberals to halt the great engine of capitalism.

IMHO, the energy industry simply selects for these people and they really don't believe in climate change, or at least don't believe burning fossil fuels is causing it.  Righties tend to be willfully stupid people this way.

RE

See how well it works!  They have you totality bamboozled LOL.

There is a difference between the Christian Fundy Righties who do the electing and those who get elected.  It is easier for a voter to be ignorant than a politician running for office.  Simply running exposes a politician to opposing views and evidence which an ignorant voter does not have to deal with.  A politician at a minimum is exposed to their own ignorance simply because lies must come from their own mouth. 

There was no reason for your fairy intelligent gym owner not to remain as ignorant as he wished because there was nothing in it for him to become enlightened.  A politician running for office is in an entirely different environment where ignorance must be consciously cultivated.  Becoming less ignorant is in a politicians best interest.  The conclusion must be then that they learn facts which break their ignorance but since they pander their votes from ignorant masses they continue to pretend ignorance. 

I'm sure it is true for you RE as it is for me that when we have a need to know something we learn it very fast.  Learning to prevail in a debate against a climate change advocate is more than enough incentive for a Republican politician to learn true facts concerning climate change even if they don't want to.

All Republicans are fools some of the time, and some Republicans are fools all the time, but not all Republicans are fools all of the time.

I'm still not sold KD.  I think politicians are just as willfully ignorant as the people who vote for them.  I don't think Trumpty-Dumpty secretly believes in Climate Change and is just faking not believing it.  I think he truly doesn't believe it because he doesn't WANT to believe it.

RE

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[K-Dog]

This has to be the most quoted quote among Kollapsnicks but among politicians denial and lack of belief are not the same thing.  Not understanding something because your job depends on it requires a modicum of effort.  Saying you don't understand something when you really do understand it requires no effort to a compulsive liar and politics attracts plenty of compulsive liars.  They do well since the rest of us are easily fooled.

This is not a simple semantic difference because the rest of us waste far too much time wondering why Republicans don't understand climate change.  Republicans understand it just fine but they lie and say they don't understand it because ignorance carries less stigma than being a flagrant selfish asshole does.  Pretending they don't understand when we really know they can understand things as well as we can is also easier for us to do because the alternative of confrontation is unpalatable.

This might be true in some cases, but my experience dealing with the Christian Fundy Righties is they genuinely do not believe in anthropogenic climate change.  The owner of the gym I came up here to work with originally was like this.  A fairly intelligent guy, but he simply would not accept that Homo Sap was causing climate change.  To him this was all a conspiracy dreamed up by liberals to halt the great engine of capitalism.

IMHO, the energy industry simply selects for these people and they really don't believe in climate change, or at least don't believe burning fossil fuels is causing it.  Righties tend to be willfully stupid people this way.

RE

See how well it works!  They have you totality bamboozled LOL.

There is a difference between the Christian Fundy Righties who do the electing and those who get elected.  It is easier for a voter to be ignorant than a politician running for office.  Simply running exposes a politician to opposing views and evidence which an ignorant voter does not have to deal with.  A politician at a minimum is exposed to their own ignorance simply because lies must come from their own mouth. 

There was no reason for your fairy intelligent gym owner not to remain as ignorant as he wished because there was nothing in it for him to become enlightened.  A politician running for office is in an entirely different environment where ignorance must be consciously cultivated.  Becoming less ignorant is in a politicians best interest.  The conclusion must be then that they learn facts which break their ignorance but since they pander their votes from ignorant masses they continue to pretend ignorance. 

I'm sure it is true for you RE as it is for me that when we have a need to know something we learn it very fast.  Learning to prevail in a debate against a climate change advocate is more than enough incentive for a Republican politician to learn true facts concerning climate change even if they don't want to.

All Republicans are fools some of the time, and some Republicans are fools all the time, but not all Republicans are fools all of the time.

I'm still not sold KD.  I think politicians are just as willfully ignorant as the people who vote for them.  I don't think Trumpty-Dumpty secretly believes in Climate Change and is just faking not believing it.  I think he truly doesn't believe it because he doesn't WANT to believe it.

RE

It is not a matter of belief or disbelief.  It is a matter of scientific fact.  Not WANTING to believe it is not the same thing as not believing.  Trumpty-Dumpty is a master at manipulating people and part of having his particular talent for manipulation is to be able to put on a front and twist facts in any way necessary to get the behavior from other people he wants to see.  To know that honesty does not matter and only results do is to be in the Trump zone.  Manipulation may be Trump's only talent, though that I doubt, but it is a talent he is a total master of.  We assume too easily that because he is out of touch with reality as we know it, that he must be totally out to touch with reality to the point of madness because only madness can make somebody think that anything they want to be true will be true.  That is childish.  Trump is not a child.

Part of being an American President is the ability to lie with a straight face and sound convincing.  A man who has trouble lying well will never be elected.  The people won't have it.  From that perspective Trump by  far was the more qualified candidate.

Who was the most dishonest of them all?



Diogenies himself.

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[RE]

This has to be the most quoted quote among Kollapsnicks but among politicians denial and lack of belief are not the same thing.  Not understanding something because your job depends on it requires a modicum of effort.  Saying you don't understand something when you really do understand it requires no effort to a compulsive liar and politics attracts plenty of compulsive liars.  They do well since the rest of us are easily fooled.

This is not a simple semantic difference because the rest of us waste far too much time wondering why Republicans don't understand climate change.  Republicans understand it just fine but they lie and say they don't understand it because ignorance carries less stigma than being a flagrant selfish asshole does.  Pretending they don't understand when we really know they can understand things as well as we can is also easier for us to do because the alternative of confrontation is unpalatable.

This might be true in some cases, but my experience dealing with the Christian Fundy Righties is they genuinely do not believe in anthropogenic climate change.  The owner of the gym I came up here to work with originally was like this.  A fairly intelligent guy, but he simply would not accept that Homo Sap was causing climate change.  To him this was all a conspiracy dreamed up by liberals to halt the great engine of capitalism.

IMHO, the energy industry simply selects for these people and they really don't believe in climate change, or at least don't believe burning fossil fuels is causing it.  Righties tend to be willfully stupid people this way.

RE

See how well it works!  They have you totality bamboozled LOL.

There is a difference between the Christian Fundy Righties who do the electing and those who get elected.  It is easier for a voter to be ignorant than a politician running for office.  Simply running exposes a politician to opposing views and evidence which an ignorant voter does not have to deal with.  A politician at a minimum is exposed to their own ignorance simply because lies must come from their own mouth. 

There was no reason for your fairy intelligent gym owner not to remain as ignorant as he wished because there was nothing in it for him to become enlightened.  A politician running for office is in an entirely different environment where ignorance must be consciously cultivated.  Becoming less ignorant is in a politicians best interest.  The conclusion must be then that they learn facts which break their ignorance but since they pander their votes from ignorant masses they continue to pretend ignorance. 

I'm sure it is true for you RE as it is for me that when we have a need to know something we learn it very fast.  Learning to prevail in a debate against a climate change advocate is more than enough incentive for a Republican politician to learn true facts concerning climate change even if they don't want to.

All Republicans are fools some of the time, and some Republicans are fools all the time, but not all Republicans are fools all of the time.

I'm still not sold KD.  I think politicians are just as willfully ignorant as the people who vote for them.  I don't think Trumpty-Dumpty secretly believes in Climate Change and is just faking not believing it.  I think he truly doesn't believe it because he doesn't WANT to believe it.

RE

It is not a matter of belief or disbelief.  It is a matter of scientific fact.  Not WANTING to believe it is not the same thing as not believing.  Trumpty-Dumpty is a master at manipulating people and part of having his particular talent for manipulation is to be able to put on a front and twist facts in any way necessary to get the behavior from other people he wants to see.  To know that honesty does not matter and only results do is to be in the Trump zone.  Manipulation may be Trump's only talent, though that I doubt, but it is a talent he is a total master of.  We assume too easily that because he is out of touch with reality as we know it, that he must be totally out to touch with reality to the point of madness because only madness can make somebody think that anything they want to be true will be true.  That is childish.  Trump is not a child.

Part of being an American President is the ability to lie with a straight face and sound convincing.  A man who has trouble lying well will never be elected.  The people won't have it.  From that perspective Trump by  far was the more qualified candidate.

Who was the most dishonest of them all?

Diogenies himself.

Sorry, you still haven't sold me.  I never said Trumpty was a child.  I said the he doesn't believe in anthropogenic climate change because he doesn't want to believe it.  You can't believe anything unless you have the desire to believe it.

RE

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[JRM]

You can't believe anything unless you have the desire to believe it.

(Leaving aside all other contextualizing topics and adhering only to the statement quoted above):

"You can't believe anything unless you have the desire to believe it."

Is it permissible for me to extract this from the personal "you" and use the less particular "one" instead?

I'll address the statement as if that's okay.

You .. "One can't believe anything unless one has the desire to believe it."

Is this what you believe, RE?

Leaving aside whether or not I believe that you believe this statement, I must insist that ...

I don't believe this.

There are a good many things I'd like not to believe which I do believe.  And the corollary (or companion, perhaps) of this belief of mine about my own believing is also true.:

There are things I'd like to believe which I cannot.

I have other beliefs about my own beliefs and the beliefs of at least a good many other people.

For example, I believe that desiring (or wishing) -- however intensely -- to believe in something is not anywhere near sufficient means to adopt a belief.  And so on..., e.g., I believe wishing to believe X does not exist has no impact or influence on the fact as to whether X exists.

People believe in something when the evidence to them is sufficient for them to believe, provided that they examine and understand that evidence.  The belief can then be altered only with new evidence and understanding -- not by force of will.

These statements about the beliefs of others are relevant in the case where the person in question has normal reasoning faculties and is not seriously mentally ill.

No matter how much effort I put into it, I cannot persuade myself to believe that a rock is a puff of air or that a circle is a square. 

 

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[JRM]

PS -

Some of the surprisingly many US Congressional "representatives" who claim that they don't believe in anthropogenic climate disruption are, I'm very convinced, lying about their belief.  One may not be able to will one's self to believe in something, but one certainly can lie about what one does believe.  Very many Congressional "representatives" do this (I feel) with great frequency, and may do it almost enough to convince themselves that they're speaking the truth about their beliefs.  But as soon as they are reflective a moment (say, on their lunch break -- when not dining with a lobbyist ... in the middle of the night, perhaps, when awakening unexpectedly) they will realize they never believed it at all, and were just robotically lying. 

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[RE]

No matter how much effort I put into it, I cannot persuade myself to believe that a rock is a puff of air or that a circle is a square.

First off, climate is not a rock or square, it's a big complex topic.  Second, if you wanted to believe a circle was a square bad enough, you would believe it.  People convince themselves of all sort of preposterous things, like for instance that Noah fit 2 of every living creature on earth into his ark.  Third, you are projecting your inability to change your belief to other people.  Other people change their beliefs to suit the circumstances as necessary, like changing your underwear.

RE

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[JRM]

People convince themselves of all sort of preposterous things, like for instance that Noah fit 2 of every living creature on earth into his ark."

People adopt such beliefs as this unreflectively, and generally in childhood, at the same time that they adopt a belief in Santa Claus, Flying Reindeer pulling a sky-sleigh, The Easter Bunny and The Tooth Fairy.  They do so because these beliefs are at least claimed by everyone around them, or everyone who matters enough to them to consider....  These are culturally held default beliefs, not critically attained ones.  Most people eventually outgrow belief in The Tooth Fairy and the popular version of Santa Claus and his Flying Reindeer.  That is, they grow up to become adults with critical thinking skills, intelligence and self-honesty.

Those who continue to believe in " ... Noah fit 2 of every living creature on earth into his ark" have simply not grown up yet.  Or they have no concept of just how many creatures there are on earth and how much they must eat to stay alive for a long flood, etc... -- which amounts, also, to the conclusion that they are still children, even if age 64.

People who deny the basic knowledge which climate science have provided are either children or liars, or some combination of the two.  That is, if they claim to have investigated the topic sufficiently to discern a judgement on the topic.  Which, of course, they have not.  Nor would they, generally.  And this may be because they don't want to believe.  Which is where desire does come in with such beliefs.  One can desire not to become informed because the idea of it is too scary in some way, and thus avoid real acquaintance with the facts.  But when folks do this as "adults" in Congress (etc.) they show that they are adults in numbers (years) only. But not in fact.

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[RE]

That is, they grow up to become adults with critical thinking skills, intelligence and self-honesty.

Once again, you're projecting yourself onto others.  All 3 of these qualities run on a Bell Curve, and few people are high performers in all 3 areas.  Politicians in general are low performers in the area of self-honesty.  Some are intelligent, but few have good critical thinking skills.  I wouldn'd call them children though, more like retarded adults.

RE

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[JRM]

retarded

adjective
dated, offensive

less advanced in mental, physical, or social development than is usual for one's age.

__________________

Yup. Not grown up yet.

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[JRM]

There are multiple dimensions and kinds of human adulthood.

Biological adulthood is just one of these.  There is also mental and emotional and even spiritual adulthood.

Those who achieve full human adulthood, which includes all of these and more, should properly guide a tribe, community, civilization, etc.  Those who have failed to become fully adult humans should not be pretending to offer such guidance.

This is largely why I keep insisting that trump is not qualified for the office he will be entering in a few days.  He's not a human adult, much less a wise elder.

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[RE]

retarded

adjective
dated, offensive

less advanced in mental, physical, or social development than is usual for one's age.

__________________

Yup. Not grown up yet.

Retarded folks never "grow up".  They become adults but their mental faculties get stuck at some point in their development.

RE

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