Been a few... Years

Been AFK for a while... LOL just about 2+ years..

Life threw some curveballs ... good to be back

 

Welcome back bro!

 

Yeah, actually, LOL I'd forgotten what email I used to register... just remembered today!

 

Welcome Back!

 

Welcome back, mate.

Also, greetings from across the pond in Europe!

 

Curveballs, yes. As you get older, they seem to increase in frequency. I tell the young people I teach that getting old is not always fun, and that I do not advise it.

 

Getting old is fine, if you got the Right Medicine!

 

Welll, as they say, it's better than the alternative.

 

Over the last years
you may notice more of the membership
seems more Right of Center.
The Lefties are more mantra, less thoughtful than years ago.
And the "hate mongers" seem to be gone.


What say @Just_a_Citizen observations?


Moi
Still here after all those years

Don't ize, ​

 

I think there's a Gresham's Law of political forums, at least those in the US in the period of its decline. They start off with quality people on both sides, and over a few years, end up with just a few tired old obsessives ... everyone else drifts away. I've seen it happen twice. You (me) register for a forum, and ... whoa, within a few days or couple of weeks you've roughly identified the cast of characters, from Left to Right. There will be some heavy hitters on both sides, some of always putting up links, others just wielding good powerful arguments. Each side will have some low-content semi-trolls. I always feel ambiguous about those on my side ... on the one hand, they're defending The Light. You know how they feel. And they show the rest of us we're not alone. On the other hand, when their arguments are weak.... it's not a win.

On the other side, their heavy hitters keep you on your toes. You learn very quickly not to post an assertion that you have not previously checked. I learned not to trust all of the conservative media/websites the hard way, by incautiously posting as fact something I had been told was fact ... and then getting skewered by a Lefty because i had been a naive. I recall one incident where a teacher was supposedly fired for mentioning Jesus in his class or something ... turned out that he had practically been running a catechism class -- or whatever the Protestant version of that is, handing out tracts to the whole class -- sorry, brother, separation of church and state. After school, ideally to students whose grades you can influence, fine. In school, most unprofessional.

And sometimes ... the other side makes good points and you find your mind being changed over time. Perhaps helped along by reality -- as in the famous definition of a conservative, a liberal who's been mugged. A non-interventionist is a neo-con who's been mugged by Iraq. But it's very hard to put yourself in the right frame of mind reading a serious (and therefore not short) post from the Other Side. You've got to keep saying to yourself, "They may be right ... they may be right .. read it and think about it. Don't just automatically dismiss it."

The problem is, there is always one or two on the other side who are hysterical, illogical and, I am sorry to say, nowadays, outright dishonest (or so it appears to me). It's so easy to waste valuable time refuting them. Even when you can do easily, what's the point. They won't be convinced, they're probably be ignored by the thoughtful people on their side, it might provide some entertainment for your side, but ... life is short. I suppose the IGNORE button can be used, but it seems like a defeat somehow. They'll probably keep posting inane things and think they've stunned you into silence.

All of this is highly subjective, but I do think a lot of the Left, at least those who have that peculiar neurosis that makes them spend time arguing with strangers, have moved far away from the traditions of the old Left -- not many Voltaires among them. "YER A WHITE RACIST NEO NAZI!" ... hmmm, how does one respond to such a weighty argument?

I've wondered why this is so ... why is today's Left so different from the Left in which I spent about 25 years? I think it has something to do with the decline of America, as it slides off its place as King of the Global Hill ... and also with how a disappointed Left in academia adopted 'post-modernism' as its new world view, replacing rational Marxism of various flavors ... but these are only speculative theses.

As for "Hate Mongers"... who were they? Left-haters or Right-haters or what?

 

@Just_a_Citizen

Synopsis please.


And
Do you notice a change over your absence?

 

Yeah... That...

About the same. I mean, I joined during the '16 POTUS cycle... same feeling to be expected you know?

Honestly, it's like I was never really "gone".

A great thing, in a community like this you know?

 

Yep, welcome back.

 

LOL I just noticed your posts. This is hilarious:

http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/new-guy.560271/

Short term memory can be a bummer sometimes

 

When you read anything by me, you've always got to remember to switch your Irony Detectors on.

 

Yet it comes for us all.

 

As it supposedly says on WC Fields' tombstone: "All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."
But the tombstone inscription I like best, whose it is I don't know, is this one. "I told you I was feeling ill!"

 

Well ... what if it didn't? Here's a plot for someone who is a writer:

there are some people who never die, never age. Some mutation that keeps their telomeres from unravelling or something. Or maybe they age at just 1/1000th the rate of the rest of us ... like giant redwoods.
Now ... imagine you are such a person. What was it like the 'first time'? Your friends age around you ... they notice you're keeping your looks ... they're a bit envious... but as the years go on, and they're 65 while you look like you're 25 ... if it's a few centuries ago, what will they think? That you've made a pact with the Devil, and it's the stake for you.

So you have to hide it... you've got to move every ten or so years and start over... okay, by the time the 20th Century rolls around, it's only certain adherents of the Religion of Peace that burn people alive, but still... the envy ... and you've developed the habit... and anyway, maybe if they find out about you they'll want to do experiments on you .. so you keep hiding... but you're lonely ... are there others? After all, anyone you become romantically involved with, fall in love with... will age away from you and die... so you avoid deep attachments, like soldiers in situations where there are likely to be high casualty rates... but you would just love to find someone like you ... how would you go about it?

Anyway, I give this for free to an enterprising writer. I recall a sci-fi story, many years ago, on a similar theme, except I think the 'hiders' were very very high IQ kids.

If anyone can remember such a story ... in fact I remember two, one which ends with them meeting each other, and developing a force-field around an island where they can live in peace, the other ends with them going to the moon (this was before 1969) and finishes with one of my favorite Bible verses:,
"When I consider your heavens,
the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which You have set in place,
what is man that You are mindful of him?"

I stopped reading sci-fi when it became dystopian, sometime in the late 70s and early 80s -- maybe the authors were sensing what was coming.

 

Reads like Dune...

 

I read the first one or two but cannot remember the plot, just the giant sandworms.

 

And the SPICE!

 

Oh yes... the Spice. Turned you blue or something, didn't it? Or am I thinking of something else?

 

LOL Something else!

(TBH, outside of euphoria, and telepathy I forget what else it... "imparted"!)