TheTexan
Member

Honestly, if I had several billion dollars, I'd be donating to everybody as well. It's a trivial amount of money to me, and gets my foot in the door if I need influence with any of them. There are plenty of things to criticize Trump on (e.g. the topic of this thread), but I don't consider his polltical funding habits, personally, to be one of them.

He's not the dictator we want, but he's the dictator we need :up:

What's reasonable for an individual making their own purchase decisions, is not always what's best for the nation as a whole. As mentioned previously, I have proven this in a separate thread and I welcome any rebuttals. (here)

It’s a real tragedy how far the levels of discourse and civility have plummeted here since the rise of Trump.

No, I don’t believe he is.

Microchips is just one of many things we no longer produce in any meaningful way domestically, that is both critical to our national security, and economic future, in terms of keeping technological advancement and innovation here in America, rather than letting other countries lead the way: https://nstxl.org/how-computer-chips-became-essential/#:~:text=The%20biggest%20designers%20of%20FPGAs,chips%20for%20its%20military%20applications While it's not practical for every "family" or a "neighborhood" to have its own microchip factory, its nothing short of irresponsible for a country the size of America to not have factories that are on the leading edge of this technology.

Why would they buy AKs when they get M4's for free

To put it differently, I think people tend to put a lot of misplaced blame onto central planning. I don't think the problem is central planning per se, but rather central planning of enslaved populations. Clearly the problem there is the "enslavement", and not the "planning". There isn't anything wrong with "planning", whether it's "central" or otherwise. If part of that planning, is hey, maybe we shouldn't buy cheap disposable shit from China and instead invest into our own infrastructure so we can build better products at a similar price, then maybe that's a good thing.

To go off on somewhat of a tangent - One thing I would note is that "central planning" is not necessarily bad. The free market is almost entirely reliant on central planning - the central planning done by CEO's, executives, and even the central planning done by your local family owned restaurant. (It's owned by the "family" but the patriarch is usually making the decisions) There in fact cannot be much "planning" at all, without it being "central". To oppose "central planning" as an universal evil, is to oppose "planning" in general. Because nearly all "planning" is "centralized" to some degree or another. So when people oppose "central planning", what they are really opposing, (or should be), is either 1) too much central planning, and/or 2) bad forms of central planning. What we have in this country right now is certainly both "too much" and "bad form". And by "bad form", I mean a statist government that is enslaving your participation by rejecting your right to secede and thus has no right to be planning anything.

The ridiculousness goes both ways. It's not reasonable to expect a neighborhood or a family to have its own microchip factories. But at the same time it's not exactly reasonable to have huge couches and other shit built & shipped from 6,000 miles away. It's not a sustainable practice.

I'm not confused at all. I have simply pointed out that even if a trade is "equitable" with "both sides benefiting", it does not mean that the trade is "good" for both parties. When I originally said that its too early to tell if free trade is "good" for the economy, you responded by saying trades are fair and equitable. I responded by pointing out that just because a trade is "fair" and "equitable", does not make it "good" for both parties. This is a demonstrably true statement, and not at all a "strawman". A trade can be "equitable" and "benefiting" while simultaneous being extremely irresponsible. The terms are not mutually exclusive. Language has historically been one of the main barriers between political integration. When the entire world is speaking the same language, that's one less barrier to one a world government. Language has also historically been one of the key ways that independent cultures have been preserved. Language served as a "barrier to entry" that prevented people from entering into a culture and diluting it with their foreign influences. With that barrier gone, cultures are gonna be a lot harder to preserve.

Lips that touch liquor will never touch theirs? I find their terms acceptable. Don’t think I’d care to even be in the same room with any of those sour looking shrews let alone kiss any of them. Ugh

Just donated $50!* (*ok not really. don't be an asshole like me. donate!!)

:rolleyes:

I do not advocate globalism and never have. That is a lie. You know it’s a lie. Yet you keep making the accusation. I won’t bother asking you to stop. I know how that would work out. I just wanted to point it out for anyone who might not already know how disingenuous you are.

Careful what you say there, Swordy. People might mistake you for an advocate of economic freedom rather than the prponent of socialistic central economic planning that you actually are!

Hmmmm….

Another way to think about it, is that the word "Cow" is pretty well defined. To the extent that it isn't, we have a species/subspecies classification system to remove the ambiguity of which "Bos taurus" you might be referring to. There is no reason that "murder" couldn't be classified in a sufficient manner accordingly to remove ambiguity. The existing classifications are clearly lacking. But if the same level of scientific robustness was applied to classifying murders as we do classifying species, I am sure we could come up with a system that defines "murder" in such a way that it is scientifically rigorous to the same level of species classification. The reason people disagree about what a "murderer" is, is less about the definition, and more about the consequences, and the morality. The morality of the many different types of murder and its associated consequences is something we will be absolutely never all agree on. But there is no physical limitation in the world that is preventing us from having a shared understanding of the meaning of the words that we use. Ambiguity in the word "murder" is a deficiency in our language, but similar to species classification, it is not something that can't physically be overcome.

Everything was philosophy before it was science. Science became science because we came to a shared understanding and developed a shared framework. It is entirely possible - though extraordinarily (cannot be emphasized enough) unlikely - that in the future, we will have a shared framework that "is agreed upon by all reasonable people" that defines the words "crime" and "law" in a manner that is objectively testable within that framework. One could certainly argue that we shouldn't. And that would be a strong argument to make. To say that we can't, is technically not true. To say that we won't, is a very strong bet. One of the reasons people might reasonably reject that, is because there is no shared common definition. If there was a clear definition, built with terms that were also clearly defined, it would be more reasonable for people to agree. To the extent that there is any ambiguity in terms across different social groups (e.g., "state", or "anarchism") simply provide different words and definitions for every meaning, or simply avoid using existing words that have any ambiguity at all. Eventually every known meaning of every word would be defined and ambiguity would be near non existent (to the point of "science"). It would be a difficult language to learn certainly, and not very practical, but it's not theoretically impossible.

My thoughts exactly

Why would a Pro-Ukrainian message get a community note? At least back when I was following this (pre-Musk-takeover), it was only pro-Russian messages that got censored (post would be removed and author usually banned, certainly not a "community note")

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see how he's channeling Ron Paul. Is there a clip with additional context that I'm missing? My understanding is that when Trump says that "it wouldnt have happened" under his Presidency, its because Trump believes he is intimidating and other countries are scared to cross him. And that may or may not be true, but what is true, is that the 2nd Minsk agreement was broken during his Presidency, which is what directly led to the war in Ukraine. He certainly didn't seem to care about any of this back then. Either way, I'm totally missing the Ron Paul vibe on this one.

Sure, it's clear now that you've explained it. I hope it's also clear that whatever deflections AF may or may not be guilty of, does not really have much relevance to my posts? The point still stands that when white people shoot up schools, they are universally demonized (universal minus AF who apparently deflects on the issue).

Ah, the Jews. Something we can agree on :cool:

Apparently. But in my defense, your point made very little sense - and still doesn't, and requires clarification. I'm not gonna try to decode whatever hidden meaning you were trying to imply. Just say what you meant to say.

Well I certainly agree with their first, and presumably most important point, that people should be allowed to unify based on self determination. (At the time, such unification was prohibited by Treaty of Versailles and some other treaty(s))

Ok so "white people" basically. That's not a very specific club. But I guess at the end of the day, white people as a group are ultimately responsible for everything in the world (not even being sarcastic) based on the group's wealth and influence. If you really want to get specific about wealth and influence, we could start talking about "the Jews" but I'm sure we can leave that tangent for another thread.

What deflection are you referring to, besides perhaps your own? Where have I deflected? I made a point about the black culture of violence, you deflected and tried to make it about white people, I addressed your points, and then again you deflected and tried to make it about white people again. Who's funding it? White people. Who's doing it? Black people. Who is more responsible for it? I don't give a shit but the culture of violence needs to stop and both parties need to be called out on it.

If the Jews were anything then like they are now, perhaps they were right to place at least some blame on that particular ethnicity.

Two separate foundations, as far as I can tell.