MeisterEckhart wrote on Jul 17^th, 2025 at 9:02am:



Trump is exploiting the cultural hypnosis .

I don't think Michael Jordan won 5 NBA rings by eating big macs or wearing Nike pumps but the sheep in the cultural hypnosis are happy to walk like zombies into Mecca's.

In the same way Trump understands marketing, the winner effect and is exploiting the cultural hypnosis.

He didn't create it.

He is winning the game because he understands the current psychological state of the sheep.

Gavin newsome has a different flock and he understands their cultural hypnosis.

Rather then get mad at Trump or newsome or Michael Jordan or the kardashians, people need to study Dan Kennedy and read marketing books.

But I guess it's just easier  to watch Netflix and stay in the durr state

MeisterEckhart wrote on Jul 16^th, 2025 at 9:00am:




In an essay called “The Self-Poisoning of the Open Society,” Kolakowski dilates on this basic antinomy of liberalism. Liberalism implies openness to other points of view, even (it would seem) those points of view whose success would destroy liberalism. But tolerance to those points of view is a prescription for suicide. Intolerance betrays the fundamental premise of liberalism, i.e., openness. As Robert Frost once put it, a liberal is someone who refuses to take his own part in an argument.

Kolakowski is surely right that our liberal, pluralist democracy depends for its survival not only on the continued existence of its institutions, but also “on a belief in their value and a widespread will to defend them.” The question is: Do we, as a society, still enjoy that belief? Do we possess the requisite will? Or was François Revel right when he said that “Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it”?

..
The “openness” or tlerance that liberal society rightly cherishes is not a vacuous openness to all points of view: it is not “value neutral.” It need not, indeed it cannot, say Yes to all comers, to the Islamofascist who after all has his point of view, just as much as the soccer mom, who has hers. American democracy, for example, affords its citizens great latitude, but great latitude is not synonymous with the proposition that “anything goes.”
https://newcriterion.com/article/after-the-suicide-of-the-west/


Tolerance is not value-neutral.  It is not 'phobic' to oppose and resist certain views, values and practices.
Not tolerating certain views and practices that are antithetical to a humane, enlightened society is not itself intolerance. It is an intellectiual, political immune system An immune system that does not detect and protect against destructive incursioins is defective.
A pseudo-liberal outlook that does not detect and protect against destructive incursiions of ideology is likewise a defective, suicidal outlook.

MeisterEckhart wrote on Jul 17^th, 2025 at 11:56am:

Nonsense.

Every culture is expansionist.
Some are just more competent than others.

The British Empire was in competition with other European empires, especially the French, Spanish and Dutch and later the Germans and Russians.

China is an empire. Latin America is a Spanish and Portugese legacy, North America British, Spanish, French. Indo-China is a French legacy, Indonesia Dutch. Africa is a mix of precolonial African empires and various European colonial influences.
The entire world is shaped by European, not just British, expansion.

freediver wrote on Jul 17^th, 2025 at 12:34pm:

You can't separate them.

MeisterEckhart wrote on Jul 17^th, 2025 at 12:39pm:


Well, the tinted chappies across the world are constantly demanding an apology for the civilising effects of the British Empire, from Aborigines through Indians, Arabs and Africans.

British culture, more self-reflecting and self-critical than most, has taught them the method of thinking which they have deployed for decades to flagellate Britain for giving them railways, sanitation, education, rule of law and proper forms of self-government.

You step on someone toes in England and he will say sorry. Not so in Paris, Rome or Madrid.

freediver wrote on Jul 17^th, 2025 at 10:46am:




Do you think , therefore that elite athletes should do that as well?

freediver wrote on Jul 17^th, 2025 at 12:34pm:

True.  Empire is a military thing and Emperors are their prime individual.
Kings, Masters of Ceremony (entertainers) make poor military leaders.

Macca's is great for sea sickness.
Sits heavy in the stomach like an anchor ⚓ and stops the swell.