An interesting (and scary) New York Times about Trump’s cognitive decline:
Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age
With the passage of time, the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
Never really was an active Twitter user. I opened an account and made one tweet mainly out of curiosity a few years ago. I have been a regular reader, mainly of tweets from Ukraine. I finally got around to deactivating it today. Bluesky seems so much more civilised.
Tribalism is the bane of thought.
Tribalism is the collective unconscious that sharpens thought and forges it into weapons and plowshares. The ultimate mixed blessing.
Tribalism was kind of cool when it was Galileo vs the pope, Darwin vs the creationists.
It’s less fun when it’s western hegemonists vs communists.
Science has always been a tribe. When I was a kid it was fun to think of myself as part of a movement that would sweep away ignorance and superstition. Mickey with the sorcerer’s wand. The future promised abundance without pain or toil.
My dreams deflated over time. I am no longer a member of a tribe. No one will have me and I have no desire to belong. I resist pontificating because I have no answers. I have no wisdom to preach. I’m arrogant enough to think no one else does either.
Science gives us power, but does not answer important questions. In fact, it seems to blind us to the questions that really need answering.
I was a duck and cover child. Nuclear war was always a moment away. It was not really frightening. It was like the forest wolves from fairy tales. Lurking, but not tangible. A danger that is omnipresent but never materializes loses its power.
My generation was desensitized to horror. The idea of the end of humanity doesn’t scare us. We have lived with it all our lives.
What’s missing I think, is not the science or the power to solve problems like climate change, but the art of conversation, the practice of treating opposing tribes as people like ourselves.
Coming down to earth for a moment, I will point out that when you treat opponents as devils, you run the risk of losing.
What are the questions that really need answers? On of them, I think, is how to talk to people who disagree with us.
Are you referring to the People’s Republic of China here? Notwithstanding the credentials of Xi Jinping as a “true” communist, I’m not sure how thick the veneer of communism is in China currently.
It’s a long time since the Red Guard era.
In addition to the “rightists”, official statistics show that by 1984 around 4.4 million “landlords” and “rich farmers” had been rehabilitated, and a total of more than 20 million people who were labelled as members of the “four black categories” or their families had received rectification in their social status.[5]
Five Black Categories
No, I’m referring to the Cold War era I grew up in.
I’m so old I remember when Republican called Democrats communists, and liberals mocked John Birchers. Things are a bit more complicated now, but since 2016, it has been Democrats accusing Republicans of being Russian assets,
If you look back a bit every major nation has done terrible things. Not too long ago I recommended a book called Factfulness. It documents a general tendency in the world toward progress. That’s a loaded word, but he presents a definition that lends itself to numbers that can be documented.
Your observations on China are consistent with his conclusions.
Something he ignores is religion and ideology. His statistics come from the UN, and they cut through all the rhetoric about isms and ologies. I find it to be an island of sanity, a view of the world minus all the hateful rhetoric.
A book titled like this surely taught you a few things. First, facts do not care about your feelings. Facts are what they are.
Second, rhetoric is one thing, facts are another, and it’s up to you to decide which one is more important. Based on your behaviour, clearly you value rhetoric much higher than facts. You dismiss facts based on the tone that the facts are delivered, deeming it “hateful rhetoric” when you dislike the facts. This behaviour of yours, coupled with exclusive siding with Trumpite talking points, makes you a hopeless case of brainwashed Q/MAGA cultist.
Third, maybe it’s not nice to call someone a fascist (or cultist or devil), but what if they are? In Trump’s case, it requires special partisan blinders or utter hypocrisy to think it is some sort of hypothetical or rhetorical matter. To take just the word “fascist” as an example, purely quantitatively, the closer the people are to Trump, the more they call him fascist and Hitler. This includes his own VP candidate/elect. This means that the fact is that the people around Trump know that he is a fascist or at least that Trump likes to play the dictator – and they are okay with it and they play along. This is a fact, not up to debate. The Trump gang is the fascist gang. Not as in hateful rhetoric, but factually, and they know and acknowledge it themselves.
Also purely quantitatively, Trump has called the Democrats fascists far more often than vice versa. So to blame hateful rhetoric on Trump’s critics is, again, it requires special partisan blinders or utter hypocrisy or brainwashed cultism or all of it to be able to sideline the facts. I personally cannot fathom how one is able to recommend a book on facts and ignore very plain obvious facts at the same time. But by now I have got used to that this is very common among Americans. It’s a fact that at least half of Americans are this way and they elected their president accordingly, for the second time already, if anybody had any doubts meanwhile.
Yes I remember but I never got round to checking it out. This is it, I guess.
So I now have it on Kindle. I begin to see your point.
@ Erik
It’s only 2.99€. It addresses your point about facts being facts…
or not!
I don’t recall mentioning Trump. I did mention the epithets used in my childhood.
I don’t recall taking sides on the use of invective.
Having lunch with a couple of mates, tried one of the Factfulness questionnaires. Much hilarity (on my part) ensued.
A very convenient principle: When you don’t remember if you did anything, then you probably didn’t do it!
A hint: Look at the OP title, and the beginning of the comments.
But don’t take the hint, because you might remember and be forced to know some things. It is more convenient for me too to have you as a total ignoramus who can be ignored, instead of having to correct you all the time. It is particularly annoying to have to correct Americans about the country they live in.
Erik,
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Or in TSZ’s case, an arrogantly inane comment from Erik.
I was wrong about something, and you were right. I said Biden had family problems and you said he didn’t. He doesn’t.