Any Dice, Wood, Crowder, and/or Shapiro fans?

[sub_thug]

I don't see any inconsistency there. Haven't done any research on it, but the impression I get is that true titans of industry mostly lean a little left *despite* the fact that the right has policy preferences that are much better for their material interests. One interesting thing about the last election is that even though Trump's platform probably was the most extreme ever in terms of promoting upward redistribution, he lost support among professionals and gained it among the working class.

The impression that I get is that many have more a libertarian mentality, but I haven't done any research on it either. I think Jeff Bezos is firmly in the liberal camp, but even guys like Elon Musk are more libertarians than they are anything else. I like to think that they understand the value of maximizing freedom of opportunity for everyone Trump absolutely lost support of some professionals, but I would say that's less about his actual policies and more about his temperament and how he presents himself.

The case is often made. Where I see a difference is that climate-science denial and various dumb economic ideas are mainstream on the right in a way that Trigglypuff or whatever is not on the left. And intelligent people on both sides is a given, but one side appealing more to intelligent people is, too. See the point about the Indians and Angels. Also, I don't think common ground is really possible on the big issues.

Look at healthcare. Should the gov't do more to ensure its affordability or less? There's no middle ground there. Even keeping things the same isn't on the table and isn't acceptable to either side. It's not a matter of intelligence (though I think a careful look at the arguments shows that the popular reasons given by the right are bunk); it's a matter of values. Some people think it is immoral to tax wealthy people more to ensure that everyone has access to care and some think that it's immoral not to. My position on this forum is mostly that we should get the facts right first and then argue (meaning the argument should be "is it good or not good to redistribute downward to ensure that everyone can get care?" rather than having to go through mountains of bullshit), but that still enrages many people.

I'm not so sure. Rightly or wrongly (as I think these are all separate issues that probably deserve their own threads), there have been some pretty obvious examples of extremism from the left that include the shooting of a US Congressman, shooting of police officers, and rioting and destruction of cities. And after the Baltimore riots, the mayor said that those rioting needed a space away from the police to express their discontent instead of saying, "Hey, quit destroying the city you live in." You may think that I'm setting up a strawman argument, but I think that these extreme outliers show something that largely isn't there on the other side of the aisle. However, I do agree with you that the collective right has gone on for far too long about denying climate change. This is a really stupid position that clearly isn't correct, and it's stopping the real debate from happening, which is how to deal with it. Perhaps it's about getting tax credits for reducing carbon output, creating incentives for alternative fuel sources, additional regulation (which I think may not be the right option), or other things. I mean, look at China! In the past few weeks, they reported that cutting carbon outputs has forced them to become more efficient in their manufacturing strategies as a means of reducing overhead, so they've essentially broken even while producing less environmental waste. There is not a person alive today that can reasonably argue that this isn't a good thing (unless you want to make the argument that China is out-innovating us, and to that, it's a simple response of saying that there isn't anything holding us back from doing the same thing other than ourselves). So yes, there are some stupid positions held. Based on some of your posts that I've read, I might ascertain that you're not such a big fan of the argument for increasing gun regulation or banning firearms? I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'll let you answer that one. But this is one issue where I think that the rank-and-file Democrats are doing things with their feelings rather than the facts.

Yeah, there some issues that we won't find common ground on. And we should debate them. And we should have people interested in the facts of the debate instead of sound bytes. I guess the real questions are how do we get the voters to care about the details of the issue, and how do we present those facts in a manner that people will digest?

Sure, if everyone is on the level, there are issues that can be settled. But what about, say, immigration? The economic case against low-skill immigration is weak, and the economic case for high-skill immigration having clear benefits to the native population is overwhelming. So if someone really buys the economic case against immigration, an agreement can probably be reached, but what about people who advance those arguments not because they believe them but because they have other reasons for not wanting immigration that they prefer not to express? Can't really expect much from them other than resentment that their surface argument is trampled. People aren't going to be argued out of their emotions.

I agree that people will not be argued out of their emotions. We really do live in an era of "snowflakes." One of the things that I had drilled into my head when I was going through the Special Forces Qualification Course was to leave all ego at the door and to not be too arrogant to learn. For many, regardless of political ideology, this is a really hard concept to learn. We, as a society, have forgotten how to deal with failure, be honest about what our mistakes were, and learn from them. The people we should be most critical of is ourselves. If we do that, we will actually find that we can learn an absolute ton from life, watching others, and our successes and failures. I worry about our resilience as a people.

The economy under Obama did outperform almost the entire Western world, and inflation was extremely low (and below wage growth). And further, we could have improved much faster if we had a stronger monetary and fiscal policy response, and Congressional obstructionism was a big reason that it was muted on the fiscal side (and irrational fear of inflation hurt the monetary response). But anyway, ridiculous notions pop up everywhere but are shot down on the left because the left doesn't have an alternative bullshit media structure.

The recession was a rough go for everyone. At this point, the American economy is almost too big to fail. Systems of economic interdependence will drag the European and Asian markets down with us if we go down, and that's probably a good thing. Generally speaking, that should create incentives to use diplomacy, trade, and intelligence instead of using military might to solve problems. The truth of the matter is that no one was really talking about the stuff that matters on the MSM. I've thought for a long time that if you want to get the best political news out there, turn on the financial news reports. What are the Central Banks doing around the world? What are the big mergers? How are the markets reacting? As they say, follow the money. Everything else is a passing issue, the flavor of the week.

Again, see the baseball example. As written, this is true.

I'm calling that a success then

Sure, but if Clinton had come out as an anti-vaxxer, she would have been crucified in the media for it and rightly lost huge amounts of support and the nomination if it were at the same point in the campaign.

Donald Trump is a black swan event in a lot of ways. He was hounded by the media, and his response was that the media was worthless, simply out to get him, and that their opinion of him shouldn't matter. And people went along with it. For virtually every other candidate, they reacted to what the media said about them. Trump getting called out by journalists is just another Tuesday to him, so it's honestly hard to compare them. A better examination of the media might be George W Bush. At the very beginning, the media largely held an adversarial approach, which can be pretty common. They were adversarial with Bill Clinton, George HW Bush, Reagan, Carter, and others. And the W Administration just kept being very tight-lipped and non-disclosing. So they tried playing nice with them to get them to come out of their hole, and that didn't work for a few years. After the reelection, they decided to quit that and went for blood. And they got it. McCain was going to lose that election, and most people could see that coming a mile out. So my point that any usual candidate would have been slaughtered for holding such positions, but Trump was anything but usual, so normal metrics don't apply to him.

 

[Denter]

Little Ben lmao, does anyone take that dwarf seriously.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I'm not so sure. Rightly or wrongly (as I think these are all separate issues that probably deserve their own threads), there have been some pretty obvious examples of extremism from the left that include the shooting of a US Congressman, shooting of police officers, and rioting and destruction of cities. And after the Baltimore riots, the mayor said that those rioting needed a space away from the police to express their discontent instead of saying, "Hey, quit destroying the city you live in." You may think that I'm setting up a strawman argument, but I think that these extreme outliers show something that largely isn't there on the other side of the aisle.

Violent extremism is all over the place, more on the right, but what I'm talking about is how craziness or belief in stuff that is objectively false is mainstream on the right (climate is just one example) and marginal on the left. And the right-wing media (generally the existence of partisan news that is trusted more than real news) is the reason for that.

So yes, there are some stupid positions held. Based on some of your posts that I've read, I might ascertain that you're not such a big fan of the argument for increasing gun regulation or banning firearms? I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'll let you answer that one. But this is one issue where I think that the rank-and-file Democrats are doing things with their feelings rather than the facts.

I don't agree with banning firearms. Some increased regs would be OK with me (would have to look on a case-by-case basis, but I don't oppose regs on principle). I don't think banning firearms is a mainstream position (unless you're talking about particular types).

And I tend to agree that the public debate on what to do about our relatively high gun violence rates is not very enlightened.

Yeah, there some issues that we won't find common ground on. And we should debate them. And we should have people interested in the facts of the debate instead of sound bytes. I guess the real questions are how do we get the voters to care about the details of the issue, and how do we present those facts in a manner that people will digest?

That will never happen, IMO. People have other things going on in their lives and they tend to trust trust people they identify with for most issues. If you have two parties that are tethered to reality and basically honest (and a trusted media in the middle to rule on that) but with different values, that's good enough. But we don't even have that because of the right-wing media and CTs about the MSM.

One of the things that I had drilled into my head when I was going through the Special Forces Qualification Course was to leave all ego at the door and to not be too arrogant to learn. For many, regardless of political ideology, this is a really hard concept to learn. We, as a society, have forgotten how to deal with failure, be honest about what our mistakes were, and learn from them. The people we should be most critical of is ourselves. If we do that, we will actually find that we can learn an absolute ton from life, watching others, and our successes and failures.

Agreed.

Donald Trump is a black swan event in a lot of ways. He was hounded by the media, and his response was that the media was worthless, simply out to get him, and that their opinion of him shouldn't matter. And people went along with it. For virtually every other candidate, they reacted to what the media said about them. Trump getting called out by journalists is just another Tuesday to him, so it's honestly hard to compare them.

My take here is that Trump is just the latest symptom of a disease that has affected the right for a while. Palin was really no different, and the mainstream GOP was 100% complicit in that. Remember, too, that Trump wasn't even the only Anti-Vaxxer in the primary (Paul and Carson, who was leading at the time, also were). Rubio, who was supposed to be the reformicon's darling, was openly accusing Obama of trying to hurt the country. Rubio and Kasich, who was supposed to be the sane one, were both talking about deficits as an apocalyptic threat while at the same time proposing plans that would have exploded it. None of the people that get talked about here as right-wing intellectuals spoke out against that. Meanwhile, Sanders' campaign linked to a flawed and unrealistically rosy study about the impact of his healthcare proposal, and liberal economists fired off a joint letter condemning it.

A better examination of the media might be George W Bush. At the very beginning, the media largely held an adversarial approach, which can be pretty common. They were adversarial with Bill Clinton, George HW Bush, Reagan, Carter, and others. And the W Administration just kept being very tight-lipped and non-disclosing. So they tried playing nice with them to get them to come out of their hole, and that didn't work for a few years. After the reelection, they decided to quit that and went for blood. And they got it. McCain was going to lose that election, and most people could see that coming a mile out. So my point that any usual candidate would have been slaughtered for holding such positions, but Trump was anything but usual, so normal metrics don't apply to him.

I think things are going to get worse before they get better. Trump is showing that a president can just constantly tell obvious lies and bungle every task and pay almost no consequences because you have essentially state-controlled propaganda outlets (Fox and Breitbart, most notably) that will defend him blindly and be more trusted by the base. As long as that condition persists, why would any Republican politician acknowledge fuck-ups or policy trade-offs? Shit, there's not even any consequences to openly profiting from their office. At worst, you have some part of the base saying that it's bad but everyone does it so it's still OK.

 

[HomerThompson]

Because they're wrong, Obama is obviously highly intelligent. But two wrongs don't make a right.
I'm not a member of the Shapiro fan club and nobody is forced to think the guy is a genius or something but I tend to agree with the original comment on how it's pretty laughable when bums here on Sherdog who try to get a degree from their local community college constantly call clearly intelligent people "stupid" because they don't like their views.

That being said, I think some people overestimate the implications of having a degree from a reputable university and confuse talent/hard work/knowledge/success in one specific discipline with being an universal genius or intellectual or something. Case in point, I also graduated from a top university and I mean, just look at my posts. Really makes you think.

I like this post, but still find Shapiro worthless. He's not stupid in a general sense, but as an academic/political mind, he is quite stupid. We just need to consider what statistical group we're referencing when we call people stupid.

 

[Merlotte's]

Don't know Wood. The rest of them make me laugh sometimes. 10min YT videos ain't too much to get excited about.

 

[sub_thug]

Violent extremism is all over the place, more on the right, but what I'm talking about is how craziness or belief in stuff that is objectively false is mainstream on the right (climate is just one example) and marginal on the left. And the right-wing media (generally the existence of partisan news that is trusted more than real news) is the reason for that.

I think violent extremism happens more from the side that isn't in power. As for talking about issues regarding what is objectively false, how would you explain socialism's rise in popularity then? Liberalism is all well and good, if that's your preference, but honest-to-god socialism is just a bad idea. It has never turned a poor country into a rich one, and it has never truly aided the poor. And yet it is becoming more popular as the fringes expand their numbers and moderates disappear. This gets at the heart of what I'm talking about.

And we all have biases. That's part of being human. Sometimes they manifest in rationalization for support of an idea, which is probably the case for most people who doubt climate change, but sometimes, it's based in exceptionalism. For example, I've seen you call Katy Perry (a high school dropout turned pop singer) intelligent while calling Ivy League graduates dumb. I want to be clear: I'm not having a "gotcha" moment, and I'm not doing the thing that I've seen others do where they point and yell, "Oh, Jack is dishonest!" I'm merely saying that we are all human, that none of us are objective all the time, and that we should be conscious of how our potential biases might influence our perspective on certain topics. Because we all do it. We all believe in stuff that is more wrong than right, particularly as it pertains to politics where the problems are so complex and so heavily influenced by our world views, but we need to identify where those things may be.

I don't agree with banning firearms. Some increased regs would be OK with me (would have to look on a case-by-case basis, but I don't oppose regs on principle). I don't think banning firearms is a mainstream position (unless you're talking about particular types).

And I tend to agree that the public debate on what to do about our relatively high gun violence rates is not very enlightened.

I'm still waiting for a regulation proposal that will actually have a meaningful effect and won't violate existing laws/the US Constitution.

Agreed.

That will never happen, IMO. People have other things going on in their lives and they tend to trust trust people they identify with for most issues. If you have two parties that are tethered to reality and basically honest (and a trusted media in the middle to rule on that) but with different values, that's good enough. But we don't even have that because of the right-wing media and CTs about the MSM.

I don't think that we meet those conditions. But this goes back to our disagreement on where the media actually sits on the political spectrum.

My take here is that Trump is just the latest symptom of a disease that has affected the right for a while. Palin was really no different, and the mainstream GOP was 100% complicit in that. Remember, too, that Trump wasn't even the only Anti-Vaxxer in the primary (Paul and Carson, who was leading at the time, also were). Rubio, who was supposed to be the reformicon's darling, was openly accusing Obama of trying to hurt the country. Rubio and Kasich, who was supposed to be the sane one, were both talking about deficits as an apocalyptic threat while at the same time proposing plans that would have exploded it. None of the people that get talked about here as right-wing intellectuals spoke out against that. Meanwhile, Sanders' campaign linked to a flawed and unrealistically rosy study about the impact of his healthcare proposal, and liberal economists fired off a joint letter condemning it.

Palin was just stupid. That was a cheap political ploy by McCain to pick up disaffected Hillary voters when Obama won the nomination. And deficits could actually be a massive, massive problem, so those issues are probably worth bringing up. It's not the most pressing thing this very second, but deficit spending definitely needs to be addressed for much the same reason that climate change does: If you wait too long to start working on the problem, you'll be trying to upright a sinking ship. It'll be too late.

I think things are going to get worse before they get better. Trump is showing that a president can just constantly tell obvious lies and bungle every task and pay almost no consequences because you have essentially state-controlled propaganda outlets (Fox and Breitbart, most notably) that will defend him blindly and be more trusted by the base. As long as that condition persists, why would any Republican politician acknowledge fuck-ups or policy trade-offs? Shit, there's not even any consequences to openly profiting from their office. At worst, you have some part of the base saying that it's bad but everyone does it so it's still OK.

Things may get worse before they get better, I agree. I'm also hesitant to draw trends from one data point. President Trump is extremely unique in a lot of ways, much the way a President Nixon was. I'm hoping that this will be the event that makes us all take note and say, "Ok, so maybe we should start seeking out more moderate candidates. No more political extremes and outliers here." But alas, what I'm seeing on these boards, which may be a reflection of America (not sure on that), is that you have largely one group that's in love with President Trump and another talking about how Senator Sanders should be the one sitting in the Oval Office. And then you have a smaller group in the middle, myself included, left scratching our heads, wondering how we let things get to this point. Time will tell, and the best we can hope for is to always try to converse with people on the other side of an issue in a manner that's respectful. I'm hoping that this conversation is setting a good example.

 

[Jack V Savage]

As for talking about issues regarding what is objectively false, how would you explain socialism's rise in popularity then? Liberalism is all well and good, if that's your preference, but honest-to-god socialism is just a bad idea. It has never turned a poor country into a rich one, and it has never truly aided the poor. And yet it is becoming more popular as the fringes expand their numbers and moderates disappear. This gets at the heart of what I'm talking about.

Earlier, I mentioned that I don't think there are innate differences on the left and the right. I think there are institutional controls that effectively keep the left in America in check that have been eroded if not completely destroyed on the right. So if honest-to-goodness socialism is rising in popularity on the left, it hasn't yet actually hit the Democratic platform, and that backs up my point.

I will say that I thought the $15/hr MW was a horrible idea, and that did make it to the platform, but still, that was driven by a (over)reaction to research showing minimal effects of MW increases rather than just letting the barbarians through the gate.

And we all have biases. That's part of being human. Sometimes they manifest in rationalization for support of an idea, which is probably the case for most people who doubt climate change, but sometimes, it's based in exceptionalism. For example, I've seen you call Katy Perry (a high school dropout turned pop singer) intelligent while calling Ivy League graduates dumb.

One Ivy League graduate, who was called by a professor he had "the dumbest student I ever had." Also, she got her GED at 15 to pursue a career in music, which she succeeded spectacularly at. That's an indication of very high intelligence (as his writing a hit song and generally rising to the top of an industry). Has nothing at all to do with her politics, of which I'm only vaguely familiar.

Palin was just stupid. That was a cheap political ploy by McCain to pick up disaffected Hillary voters when Obama won the nomination.

But she connected big time with a portion of the electorate--the same people who like Trump, really. I guess we won't resolve this one, but I think it's been clear for a while that something like Trump was on the way.

And deficits could actually be a massive, massive problem, so those issues are probably worth bringing up. It's not the most pressing thing this very second, but deficit spending definitely needs to be addressed for much the same reason that climate change does: If you wait too long to start working on the problem, you'll be trying to upright a sinking ship. It'll be too late.

Depends. No signs that debt is currently a problem at all (and by "currently," I mean "on the present path"). But the point I was making there was that in addition to the deficit hysteria promoted by those allegedly respectable candidates, they were *also* proposing fiscal policy changes that would greatly increase it. How do you reconcile that? Were they just baldly lying or do they believe in magic? Either way, that's a serious problem and one that is not paralleled on the other side.

Things may get worse before they get better, I agree. I'm also hesitant to draw trends from one data point. President Trump is extremely unique in a lot of ways, much the way a President Nixon was.

This might be our biggest disagreement. I just think Trump is the latest symptom of a longer-term disease (with the cause being a combination of CTs about the MSM and a dishonest and/or crazy right-wing media system).

I'm hoping that this will be the event that makes us all take note and say, "Ok, so maybe we should start seeking out more moderate candidates. No more political extremes and outliers here." But alas, what I'm seeing on these boards, which may be a reflection of America (not sure on that), is that you have largely one group that's in love with President Trump and another talking about how Senator Sanders should be the one sitting in the Oval Office. And then you have a smaller group in the middle, myself included, left scratching our heads, wondering how we let things get to this point. Time will tell, and the best we can hope for is to always try to converse with people on the other side of an issue in a manner that's respectful. I'm hoping that this conversation is setting a good example.

Well, I'm kind of in that middle but I think what got us to that point isn't a huge mystery--it's an atmosphere of fear, hatred and separation from reality stirred up by the right-wing media.

 

[Islam Imamate]

I feel the same way about Cruz
like he doesn't appear on camera to be overly intelligent, but he was national debator of the year (twice) at Princeton, then went to Harvard Law and was the editor of the Law Review

clearly something just isn't translating on camera, b/c he is apparently significantly more intelligent than he appears

I've never thought Ted Cruz to be unintelligent, just creepy.

 

[Bendo MMA Hero]

Why do so many of you think Shapiro is just fantastic? He's a coastal elite who cries about how terrible coastal elites are. He makes a career out of out-witting college undergrads. What a man. He sure puts those 19 year olds in their place.

Shapiro also wrote a letter while he was in college declaring himself better than his peers because he was still a virgin. He's been smelling his own farts while beating off his entire life.


Crowder got outwitted by Joe fucking Rogan and cried on air about it. He isn't funny, nor is he intelligent or well educated.

I don't know or care about the other ones. Peterson is the best you guys get and he is pretty bad.

 

[Bendo MMA Hero]

Spoiler: RESTORING AMERICA'S INNOCENCE

https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2005/06/15/rescuing-a-generation-n1226748