realibrad: You are using hyperbolic language that is misleading. I did not attack Jhhnn. He also made no claim of me being right or wrong. The last interaction we had before this, and the time before that were situations where his input did not seem to be connected to reality. He seemed to be agreeing with things I had said in this thread, so why you think I felt attacked, or thought I was defending my position is at best confusing. So, why do you feel like I was defending myself there?
M: Misleading or not something you agree with? Maybe you don't know what an attack is. Did not seem connected in reality in your view of reality? I see you defending yourself by believing in your own story. You create a your own interpretation of reality that I see differently than you do.
r: We are in a time of action, but this notion that we are in a time of war is absurd. The reason Trump is doing the harm he is doing, is because the electorate that supported him is angry. The solution to our problems in the long run is do deal with that anger. That does not mean we do not have short run issues to also deal with.
M: When angry people pose an immediate threat to me it’s war. You are viewing the situation from La La land.
r: The reason I believe our institutions will hold, is not only because of how they were built. Its also important that the people that make up those institutions are not happy with how things are going right now. Institutions are only as strong as the people that are contained within them. There are far too many that do not support Trump and what he is doing to not put up resistance. Does not mean we just sit by and watch either. Part of what makes up those systems are voters.
M: What you believe is fine by me. I do find, however the above to be very generalized and somewhat incoherent. That our institutions are strong because of how they are built tells me basically nothing. What about their structure is it to which you refer? Some people are unhappy, but will it be enough. How will that unhappiness be expressed? Will it have to be war? I find the people who make up our system to be in the grips of a mass right wing explosion of fear which expresses itself as hate and generates the same thing on the left. If there will be resistance and there will be, why do you not call that war? You attribute free will to machines that I do not. Fear and demonizing of others creates that very reaction. Hate will be returned by hate. My father, who seems to be a bit more self reflective than your Mom was, used to say he was 200% American because he hated everybody. Perhaps his tremendous sense of wit helped me see with more frankness who I am. Hate at the extremes is a real and definite problem but you always make the mistake that you are free of it, in my opinion, as if the problem was out there and you are just an observer.
r: Now, this language of war nonsense, do you realize how much of a Righty you sound? The Right has gone extreme and your calling for the left to go extreme to meet them, because, you think its too late. What I think is more likely is that you are so angry at people that you want to punish them. You are consumed by that anger and are pointing those feelings at people that you feel are the cause of it. The sad part is that you are not entirely incorrect. The problem is you want to do damage to those people instead of fixing the problem. You want vengeance instead of progress.
M: The point I have been making to you for a long long time now is that you are caught in a blindness trap created by the paradox of opposites that arise when you approach reality:
I know that I sound like the right because I see the right in me, that I am filled with hate. You, however, are in a state of denial. You have no idea at all, according to what you say, that you hate yourself and the fear that would create in your consciousness if you were to feel it. So you see it out there in the other. It's out there that you have to cure the problem, while hoping never having to face the pain of self-realization to discover yourself to be just like that other. We create the world and self hate, contempt for evil, creates the world of ego. It is the denial of this inner reality that makes you unreal in my opinion. Have trouble understanding this, of course you do. I had to pay everything I owned in the way of sacred cows to understand get an insight into the ego and a lot of effort and help to begin to feel what I really feel. So the bottom line is that I know far better than you do how consumed I am by hatred and you have no idea how consumed you are and the result of that is that because I am more aware than you are I am less of a machine. You imagine my intent is to make you feel bad, I am saying I know you do feel bad and you wouldn't feel that bad if you has the self awareness I have. Now you may think this is all about some contest about me needing to tell you how superior I am, how much deeper my self awareness runs, some ego trip or another and that, in my opinion is because you are the one on the ego trip. I am a nobody and I know you would be better off if you could see what I see. All of your dreams of a beautiful loving world, your hopes for humanity, your desire to see people not suffer, the reality of the good, all of that can't be taken when you lose your personal definitions of what is sacred, They just are and you need to do nothing, go nowhere, fix anything, become anything to create that reality. You are standing right in the middle of heaven and don't see it. It is there the war ends. Only you can prevent forest fires, says Smokey the Bear.
Trump is bad.
Trump is the product of the Right.
The Right has gone extreme.
The Right is consumed by their anger and fear.
Can you also see the problems the Left have?
I am not arguing the superiority of the left or the right or anything on that plane. The left and the right blame each other and you blame both. I say the problem is that I will not feel my hate because it arises out of my have for me. There is only one enemy and he is me. You are at war with hate and I see it as my friend because the deeper I feel it as directed at myself the less I need to imagine the other as my real enemy. Evil is good and down is up. Truth always involves the resolution of opposites when seen from a different angle.