Thatcher was being disingenuous because socialism involves "our money," in which everyone works together for mutual benefit. Capitalism can't function without other people's labor being exploited and under-compensated. I want my taxes to help pay for a portion of things I couldn't afford by myself and for it to benefit others because then I'm not being price gouged by others who are only demanding more because more is being demanded of them by the greediest among us.
Apparently even actual war crimes aren't war crimes if you just call it a military operation. We've always never been at war with the genetic cilantro soapers.
When asked about the concerns by KOIN reporters, PBOT spokesperson Dylan Rivera acknowledged the shortage of parking in the Goose Hollow area. “That’s why we need to get more people biking and walking, as much as possible. And that’s what a project like this is part of,” he said.
The problem with this approach is the assumption that everyone can just switch to biking and walking. The city makes decisions that functionally encourage alternative transportation by making driving more difficult. It's like a vice tax except with physical frustrations rather than added financial costs. But some people have to drive for work. And some people can't walk or bike long distances. And as the article points out, some people are caring for elderly relatives who can't walk or bike. And some buildings aren't close enough to grocery stores and shopping centers. And some people who walk or bike will still also drive cars that will need parking. And not everyone has the extra hours in the day to take longer to get everywhere.
It's fair to say that not all theocratic systems are fascist, but they're also not mutually exclusive. A particular theocratic system can also be fascist in nature.
Some common points:
Appeal to tradition
Rejection of modernism
Anti-intellectualism
Absolute factual authority of leaders
Obsession with outgroups as enemies, such as sinners and atheists and believers of other faiths
Special jargon to control the masses
Subordination of people to a greater cause
Jingoist militarism (ironic for a lot of "peaceful" religions)
Not all social goods can be distributed evenly over a geographic region. Not all social goods make sense at a small scale. Springfield doesn't need a monorail or an escalator to nowhere.
It's fine to argue for a change to the taxation scheme, but if Portland contributes more in the current system, it makes sense it would benefit more.
At the opposite end, there are some social goods that rural counties can't afford on their own, so saying they should be left to primarily their own local tax base to fund things would leave them without essential services.
Otherwise you get into a right wing libertarian system with too little tax revenue and no social goods. Bears roaming the streets. People dying in car accidents because seatbelts aren't mandatory.
Except the Portland metro area that Trimet serves is the biggest tax base and largest population center for the state. Should the state spend the money they collected from the area elsewhere instead of spending it on a large portion of the state population?
It wasn't just "don't bow to a king" but also "taxes are a legitimate method of funding the public welfare," which directly contradicts the right wing libertarian ethos. It was also saying that more permanent safety was an achievable goal without having to give up freedom. He wasn't saying that freedom (to regulate and tax as a representative body) and safety were always mutually exclusive. So to use such an example to say that people need the freedom to endanger multiple lives even though the safety provided by the regulation isn't just temporary is an absurd misappropriation. Dying in a car accident because a selfish asshole decides not to wear a seatbelt or removes the seatbelts from his vehicle isn't very free.
It's not an interpretation. You're ignoring the verifiable context of the quote and the speaker. You're actively choosing to misrepresent it for your propaganda. This undermines your narrative and marks you as transparently untrustworthy. If you don't care about that, then nothing you say has value.
The irony is that you don't need to be dishonest to undermine your propaganda. You've already been doing that with your honest enthusiasm for deregulation as if everyone thinks seatbelt laws are oppressive government overreach.
Except it's not a subjective topic like which flavor of ice cream is better. We can actually see whether the speaker of the quote would agree with your positions. You're not agreeing to disagree. You're saying you don't care about verifiable facts because you're not interested in intellectual honesty. You're saying you don't care what he actually thought and just want to use him to push your propaganda.
And that doesn't contradict the fact that the quote was used to support the right of the legislature to tax the wealthy and property owners for the greater good of all citizens, including their long term (not short term) safety. The point still stands. The quote is not in defense of right wing libertarian philosophy and is being used out of context.
If you're just going to transparently use unrelated quotes for your propaganda, you might as well just make up the quotes.
I love it when libertarians quote this out of context, not realizing that it often contradicts their positions.
The quote is backing the right of the state legislature to levy taxes on wealthy assholes who want the benefit of property ownership and political power but who don't want to contribute to the welfare of society.
One of the greatest propaganda losses for the lower left quadrant is just always getting associated with LGBTQ issues. Yes, it's more empathetic and welcoming, but that's a co-condition of the anti-authoritarianism and desire for actual freedom, whether it's from dictators, capitalists, feudal lords, or tech bro anarcho-fascists.
So a bad parent tells the story of how his child was innocently engaging his creativity with a tool his father provided and then the father taught the child in a potentially traumatizing way that there's wrongthink possible when some wealthy people have decided they need to collect rent from everyone for engaging with culture. And dad blames the tool rather than the IP laws he supports that actually created the problem he now punished his child for unwittingly encountering with natural human behaviors such as curiosity and imagination.
And dad writes about it like he wants a cookie from the other IP profiteers since he was willing to throw his son under the bus to make a bad and misdirected point.
Good bedtime story. And the dragon slept happily on his hoard of IP forever knowing that the guards would stop even their own children from trying to "steal" it. The end.
I stopped biting my fingernails in high school when I viewed one under a microscope in science class. Washing your hands likely won't get rid of all the gross stuff on your nail that you won't want in your mouth, especially your gums, which are especially susceptible to bacteria and infection. You might need to gross yourself out with the reality of that to get yourself to stop using a fingernail.
If you can't stop the desire to "floss" that much, maybe at least carry disposable floss around with you and use that instead.
There might be a different, less dangerous sensation you can find instead. Chewing gum?
Yeah, the wealthy guy who prayed in public like a Pharisee would have definitely given up all his wealth to follow a dude who told you to give free food and healthcare to the poor.
This might not be a philosophical issue for you. You seem to be having an emotional response to your dilemma, which means the solution may not be to find belief, but to find hope or solace or even just a temporary distraction (and distractions can be productive). If the cognitive process doesn't yield desirable results, maybe look at the issue from a different angle. If you can imagine this state of disbelief mixed with desire for belief never going away, what circumstances might make the dilemma less distressing? If it might be around for a while, you can always come back to it later when you've had new experiences that may change your perspective.
Something I experienced when I was younger was my certainty about what was wrong with the world and I felt righteous in raging against it as if being angry at it was a worthy excuse not to have to put effort into improving things. The older I got, the more I saw that it was "yes, and..." in that I wasn't wrong, but there was a bigger picture I just couldn't see at the time. I was hyper focused in pointing out what was wrong as if I was the only one who could see it, but then I realized I could be doing something about it, even if the world was never going to be a sane or just place or my efforts weren't going to be highly impactful.
But your stated wish for believing in a benevolent deity is functionally like optimistic nihilism. Existence appears to lack inherent meaning from a creator deity, so you get to decide what is meaningful to you.
It's not really "nihilism" because it specifically finds something worth valuing in life. And being a nihilist isn't functionally incompatible with being a practicing Christian either, so they're not really mutually exclusive.
Yeah, but that doesn't apply here since he was drinking Miller Lite, not beer.
Thatcher was being disingenuous because socialism involves "our money," in which everyone works together for mutual benefit. Capitalism can't function without other people's labor being exploited and under-compensated. I want my taxes to help pay for a portion of things I couldn't afford by myself and for it to benefit others because then I'm not being price gouged by others who are only demanding more because more is being demanded of them by the greediest among us.
How so?
Apparently even actual war crimes aren't war crimes if you just call it a military operation. We've always never been at war with the genetic cilantro soapers.
The problem with this approach is the assumption that everyone can just switch to biking and walking. The city makes decisions that functionally encourage alternative transportation by making driving more difficult. It's like a vice tax except with physical frustrations rather than added financial costs. But some people have to drive for work. And some people can't walk or bike long distances. And as the article points out, some people are caring for elderly relatives who can't walk or bike. And some buildings aren't close enough to grocery stores and shopping centers. And some people who walk or bike will still also drive cars that will need parking. And not everyone has the extra hours in the day to take longer to get everywhere.
It's fair to say that not all theocratic systems are fascist, but they're also not mutually exclusive. A particular theocratic system can also be fascist in nature.
Some common points:
Not all social goods can be distributed evenly over a geographic region. Not all social goods make sense at a small scale. Springfield doesn't need a monorail or an escalator to nowhere.
It's fine to argue for a change to the taxation scheme, but if Portland contributes more in the current system, it makes sense it would benefit more.
At the opposite end, there are some social goods that rural counties can't afford on their own, so saying they should be left to primarily their own local tax base to fund things would leave them without essential services.
Otherwise you get into a right wing libertarian system with too little tax revenue and no social goods. Bears roaming the streets. People dying in car accidents because seatbelts aren't mandatory.
Except the Portland metro area that Trimet serves is the biggest tax base and largest population center for the state. Should the state spend the money they collected from the area elsewhere instead of spending it on a large portion of the state population?
It wasn't just "don't bow to a king" but also "taxes are a legitimate method of funding the public welfare," which directly contradicts the right wing libertarian ethos. It was also saying that more permanent safety was an achievable goal without having to give up freedom. He wasn't saying that freedom (to regulate and tax as a representative body) and safety were always mutually exclusive. So to use such an example to say that people need the freedom to endanger multiple lives even though the safety provided by the regulation isn't just temporary is an absurd misappropriation. Dying in a car accident because a selfish asshole decides not to wear a seatbelt or removes the seatbelts from his vehicle isn't very free.
It's not an interpretation. You're ignoring the verifiable context of the quote and the speaker. You're actively choosing to misrepresent it for your propaganda. This undermines your narrative and marks you as transparently untrustworthy. If you don't care about that, then nothing you say has value.
The irony is that you don't need to be dishonest to undermine your propaganda. You've already been doing that with your honest enthusiasm for deregulation as if everyone thinks seatbelt laws are oppressive government overreach.
Except it's not a subjective topic like which flavor of ice cream is better. We can actually see whether the speaker of the quote would agree with your positions. You're not agreeing to disagree. You're saying you don't care about verifiable facts because you're not interested in intellectual honesty. You're saying you don't care what he actually thought and just want to use him to push your propaganda.
And that doesn't contradict the fact that the quote was used to support the right of the legislature to tax the wealthy and property owners for the greater good of all citizens, including their long term (not short term) safety. The point still stands. The quote is not in defense of right wing libertarian philosophy and is being used out of context.
If you're just going to transparently use unrelated quotes for your propaganda, you might as well just make up the quotes.
I love it when libertarians quote this out of context, not realizing that it often contradicts their positions.
The quote is backing the right of the state legislature to levy taxes on wealthy assholes who want the benefit of property ownership and political power but who don't want to contribute to the welfare of society.
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century
One of the greatest propaganda losses for the lower left quadrant is just always getting associated with LGBTQ issues. Yes, it's more empathetic and welcoming, but that's a co-condition of the anti-authoritarianism and desire for actual freedom, whether it's from dictators, capitalists, feudal lords, or tech bro anarcho-fascists.
Maybe use image editing software instead?
So a bad parent tells the story of how his child was innocently engaging his creativity with a tool his father provided and then the father taught the child in a potentially traumatizing way that there's wrongthink possible when some wealthy people have decided they need to collect rent from everyone for engaging with culture. And dad blames the tool rather than the IP laws he supports that actually created the problem he now punished his child for unwittingly encountering with natural human behaviors such as curiosity and imagination.
And dad writes about it like he wants a cookie from the other IP profiteers since he was willing to throw his son under the bus to make a bad and misdirected point.
Good bedtime story. And the dragon slept happily on his hoard of IP forever knowing that the guards would stop even their own children from trying to "steal" it. The end.
I stopped biting my fingernails in high school when I viewed one under a microscope in science class. Washing your hands likely won't get rid of all the gross stuff on your nail that you won't want in your mouth, especially your gums, which are especially susceptible to bacteria and infection. You might need to gross yourself out with the reality of that to get yourself to stop using a fingernail.
If you can't stop the desire to "floss" that much, maybe at least carry disposable floss around with you and use that instead.
There might be a different, less dangerous sensation you can find instead. Chewing gum?
Yeah, the wealthy guy who prayed in public like a Pharisee would have definitely given up all his wealth to follow a dude who told you to give free food and healthcare to the poor.
This might not be a philosophical issue for you. You seem to be having an emotional response to your dilemma, which means the solution may not be to find belief, but to find hope or solace or even just a temporary distraction (and distractions can be productive). If the cognitive process doesn't yield desirable results, maybe look at the issue from a different angle. If you can imagine this state of disbelief mixed with desire for belief never going away, what circumstances might make the dilemma less distressing? If it might be around for a while, you can always come back to it later when you've had new experiences that may change your perspective.
Something I experienced when I was younger was my certainty about what was wrong with the world and I felt righteous in raging against it as if being angry at it was a worthy excuse not to have to put effort into improving things. The older I got, the more I saw that it was "yes, and..." in that I wasn't wrong, but there was a bigger picture I just couldn't see at the time. I was hyper focused in pointing out what was wrong as if I was the only one who could see it, but then I realized I could be doing something about it, even if the world was never going to be a sane or just place or my efforts weren't going to be highly impactful.
But your stated wish for believing in a benevolent deity is functionally like optimistic nihilism. Existence appears to lack inherent meaning from a creator deity, so you get to decide what is meaningful to you.
It's not really "nihilism" because it specifically finds something worth valuing in life. And being a nihilist isn't functionally incompatible with being a practicing Christian either, so they're not really mutually exclusive.