Authoritarianism

"Authoritarian" thread turns into LARPING govworker "I can code" thread. Priceless.

 

People are expendable, the environment is not.

 

Which utterly NEGATES the hyperbolic rightwing drivel about the sanctity of life since PROFITS for the GREED OBSESSED 1% are way more important than people.

 

I guess there are LISPs that allow one to directly access processor data registers, which typically only Assembly lets you do that.

Recently I read up on BASIC. I didn't know it before, but BASIC and multitasking were both developed, in tandem, at Dartmouth College. One of the driving ideas was that computer programming could be available to the masses. That under graduates as well as high school students could do it. My first exposure to programming was from a closet, under the stairway in my high school. There was a teletypewriter with a paper tape puncher/reader. I, and a few other kids would sneak in there during lunch, or sometimes cutting class to go there. We got caught a few times, but never got in trouble over it.

You'd type in the BASIC code which would be punched into the paper tape. Once it was finished, you'd have to run the tape back through the machine, which was hooked up to the computers at the Colorado School of Mines. Depending on your program, you'd then get a reply from the computers in the form of printed text on a tractor fed printer. It took a lot of paper to play simple games.

 

They may be more connected than one might think. The Apple Macintosh is central to the story of the fall of the Soviet Union. The personal computer was still mostly in the domain of so-called nerds, and the world's governments had yet to undestand their power. Thus all the cells of resistance in the Soviet Union had Macs which allowed them to pass massive amounts of data on floppy disks that could be easily concealed, in an efficient manner.

Currently the war between authoritarians and egalitarians is being waged on the internet. Individuals are being tracked and cataloged based on their internet activity, their purchasing patterns, and the friends they keep. There may even be a database somewhere that documents your tattoos.

Computers and databases have made it easier for states like Florida, Georgia, and Wisconsin, to purge their voter rolls of likely Democratic voters.

 

Nerds ? I bought my first Apple II plus in 1980 with my newspaper delivery job

 

I think that environment plays a profound role on one's personality, especially the environment of one's youth. There are certain personality traits that women who grew up cute girls have, that women who grew up on the homely side don't, and visa a versa. Mostly due to how people reacted to them as they grew up.

One is programmed, if that is the right word, to function within one's environment. It may make it difficult to step outside that environment. However I see the main political divide in the world as being between authoritarians and egalitarians. I think these leanings tend to be inborn. Most people are kind of in the middle, but there are sizable numbers at both extremes.

Going back to the pretty/homely girl example, a pretty authoritarian woman tends to more likely to be concerned with hierarchy, while a pretty egalitarian woman is more likely to be concerned with if everyone is getting enough.

It is argued that wealth makes one more conservative, yet when one looks at what very wealthy people do with their excess money, one sees that more authoritarian individuals tend to use their money to defend and strengthen the position of the aristocracy, whereas the more egalitarian individuals, tend to use their wealth to do things like eliminate disease and spread education and technology to the underserved.

Yes the environment plays a big part, but still, a cat's stripes don't change.

 

Bullcrap for example Tom is extremely wealthy a liberal and has nothing better to do but run for president, so does Bloomberg.

 

Okay. I can drop the word enhanced if you like.
How has what you refer to as logic improved yours?
Has it simply made you a "professional bickerer"?

 

Neither is asking for tax cuts for the wealthy or a reduction of regulations. Tom Steyer promotes the idea of universal health care.

 

I appreciate your reply because I wanted to take your ideas a step farther.

As I recall you said you grew up in a so called Christian environment.

Presumably you’ve heard lots of Christian verses spoken

or perhaps read them yourself. During that time, or since that time, did

the thought ever occur to you that what the churches are preaching

had nothing to do with what the poor guy they nailed to a tree was pointing to?

 

Logic doesn't necessarily benefit the simple. Logic is only of benefit to that which is uniquely human. Logic serves as a foundation. Simple things and ideas require little or no foundation. Sophisticated things and ideas require more of a foundation.

 

How do you give

How do you give tax cuts to those who pay no net taxes?

 

Perhaps you can give an example of how your sophisticated logic
has made the division in this country any less.

 

Oh my goodness. I have no desire to minimize the divisions between myself and people like you. I am quite happy with the way things are divided up. Currently, 85% of our nation occupies 15% of our country. The last thing that I would want is for those people to disperse and their ideas to metastasize throughout our 85% of the country doing here what it did there.
As it is, 85% of our nation pays a premium to live, often literally, stacked on top of each other, and I thank God that they do. Unite with those people, no thanks.

 

Well aware of that, was fiddling with a cassette driven TRS80 in the chemistry lab in 1980, writing templates in DOS for Lotus Symphony in the late 80s while a MSFT dealer building PCs for sale. Glad to see you making the case against your fellow gov worker who would erroneously classify the above and all the other boons of the private sector as "worker exploitation." MSFT alone had created 10,000 employee millionaires by the turn of the century, maybe twice that by now, and that's only one of many companies that "exploited" its employees right into riches they could never imagine otherwise. Thus the "exploitation" narrative is just another LW hoax.

Yes, I too was concerned about the "authoritarian" private sector enacting the Patriot Act among other spying... erm... wait. The difference between private sector spying and public sector is that the former is constrained, mostly harmless and voluntary, the latter is none of those.

What a shame that dead people can't vote for Democrats as easily as they used to. I'd be annoyed about that too in your shoes.

 

Perhaps the kindness you’ve shown by maintaining your geographical separation
has not gone unappreciated by the 85%.
Where is the logic in promoting the division of country unless
you stand to gain from it.

 

The country is, for the most part, united. The nation, on the other hand, is quite divided.
Time and space, I gain time and space. That 85% of our nation that occupies that 15% of our country sacrifice time and space in exchange for the higher density of material goods and services in that 15% of our country.

 

Even if a “Yuge” blue tsunami miraculously washed away all of the red hats
from this country except for yours and the Trump wall successfully prevented our
country's now trained and most efficient work force from escaping to Mexico,
it would take hundreds of years for urban sprawl to cast a shadow on your grave
which by then would contain nothing but a bit of dust and a bright red MAGA hat
made of non-biodegradable plastic fibers.

So maintaining 85-15 as a reason to support Trump really has
no logical benefit to you at all.

 

Exactly

 

I think that religion is whatever one wants it to be. Technically Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, and New Age religions, and all the various sects all worship the same god. The problem I have is when someone says, "Things have to be done the way my religion dictates".

However, I have noticed a difference between religions in America, a divide of sorts. I went to a Benedictine school up through eighth grade. And my family attended Catholic mass most Sundays. Yet, from time to time we attended a Baptist Church. And in the summer a bus would come around, that would take take kids to a Baptist Church day camp. My siblings would go, but I hated it. Even got my mom to sign me up for tennis camp, so I could go somewhere else.

With the Catholics, the Benedictines, taught that one gets to heaven by doing good works. That the best way one can honor God, is to help one of his creatures. When us kids were volunteered, we did things like deliver food boxes to poor people, entertain the residents of old folks homes, and helped do yardwork for the elderly and handicapped.

The Baptists on the other hand, taught that one best honors God by worshiping him. When the kids were volunteered, they did things like hand out flyers and otherwise help spread the word, as the word will set you free.

In Colorado, as I was coming of age, I noticed a rather clear pattern. The Catholics were overwhelmingly liberal/Democratic while Protestants tended to be overwhelmingly conservstive/Republican. It has a lot to do with why the Denver area has always been so Democratic, even before the brain drain caused our current city/country divide.

From my vantage point I can see why Democrats care more about the underclass, and Republicans don't. It is part of their religious upbringing.

 

Maybe you realized early on that neither of those ideas hit the mark.
Both imply there is something that should be done to qualify.
Perhaps both require ritual(s) to be performed, to be officially excepted.
They basically gather into their chosen group and repeat the same old
sentences from their ancient history book. If simply quoting lines of scripture
to a mass of miserables was of any value at all, he would have saved himself
a lot of pain and agony and just stood on a street corner screaming the ten commandments.
And if those religious factions that you mentioned above had even the slightest idea
of what he is pointing to they wouldn’t be fighting among themselves.
So are they failing to see or deliberately ignorant and why?
That's the problem I see.
You seem to have experience and I would like to hear your input.
What is it that religion is missing?

 

Democrats care so much about the underclass that they support opening the borders to absolutely ensure that it is always growing. It is obvious to most that Democratic policy is intended to create and grow a poor dependent underclass that will vote for Democrats to get free gibs. What puzzles many is why Democrats pretend this immoral behavior on their part is virtuous.... creating misery for political power is sinful at best.

 

If the political power you are referring to is Trump,
then I guess we'll have to try harder.