(November 5, 2020 at 6:29 pm)tackattack Wrote: because half of 'merica identify with trump on some level.
They might think that, the cheeto in chief certainly doesn't identify with
his voters.
(November 6, 2020 at 12:11 am)AFTT47 Wrote: (November 5, 2020 at 7:03 pm)polymath257 Wrote: It depresses me that this is even close.
Indeed.
I am 61 now and I've lived my whole life as an optimist. I've always made an assumption of a basic goodness of the human species. If we see one of us kicking a puppy, we revile that individual, right? We rise up as a majority and set a standard that that kind of thing is unacceptable. That standard is passed down to the next generation and we improve as a species.
But now it seems we have taken multiple steps back.
Trump is amoral, shallow, ignorant and cruel. How can any decent human being look upon him and not recoil in revulsion? This is before we even address his competency to lead a nation. Yet 48% of Americans voted for this human shit stain. What does that say about us as a culture?
VERY depressing.
(bold mine)
We've always been shit, just ask @
The Valkyrie, she knows.
I'm not gonna spin some psychological or anthropological or whatever bullshit about why we're so shit, because I honestly have no actual & tangible clue, but I will point to our "Very Nice" history (without actually giving specific examples, y'all know what I'm getting at).
Ask any historian worth his salt what they think about the shitstory of humanity, and I can almost guarantee you that without fail that it won't be pretty. From ancient archaeological digs and research all the way up to modern historians, will all say pretty much the same thing, but just at different epochs: "X did that for Y reasons and it was
this much shit" or some variation of that historical recount. I honestly believe that.
I've found, from what little I know about humanity's history (I'm not a historian or an anthropologist), the same bullshit pattern emerges every fucking time, but never for the same reason. This pattern - I think - is that we are motivated ultimately by self-interest, and if that means bashing in some skulls at the oldest, or fucking with an election in the current epoch, so be it, it will be done without question and without hesitation.
We won't make it, but even with all this negativity, I'm still an optimist. We
can change, we just have no incentive to do so. People throughout history - again, from what little I know from history - attempted to manufacture positive incentive for changing. The latest project is just called democracy and free speech, IMO.
Yeah, I'll go into a corner and cry from all this stupid speculation. /s
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman