Commercial:
(Disturbed looking citizen driving to work listening to radio) "Thought crime at all-time high, Good Citizenship Training camps filling up." (switches dial) "Love and Happiness party executes another 50,000 negative attitude non- compliants." (turns radio off, looks angry.)
(siren and flashing lights from black patrol car behind startle driver who pulls over as black clad officer walks up to window holding what appears to be a ticket clipboard)
"Hello citizen, looks like you've had a little too much to think." (opens up the ticket box and pulls out a Big Brother's Mind-Numbing Tea Biscuit and hands it to the driver. As the driver eats it, the voice over announcement accompanies the graphic.)
"In today's troubling and challenging world, we're all trying our best to follow the dictates of our glorious Love And Happiness party leaders, but loss of non-compliant loved ones and stresses about personal thought compliance can cause unwanted stress. But now there's Big Brother's Mind-Numbing Tea Biscuits. 11 essential mind controlling sedatives mixed into this tasty treat calm the troubled mind and the envious spirit. Plus, break it open and receive a positive message from your loving leaders to help you get through these stressful times. "COMPLY", "SUBMIT", "QUESTIONING YOUR LEADERS IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH". Graphic shows arrows going to the brain indicating chemicals going from the stomach to the head, crossing out bad thoughts, like "I miss my parents", "I miss my home that was taken away due to my laughing at a joke that was deemed counter to the good of the people" etc."
(shot shows the thought cop nodding and walking away while the driver eats the tasty treat. Voice over says "Time to unwind with Big Brother's Mind-Numbing Tea Biscuits. You'll love them! Or else!" (Final shot is a closeup of the now happy driver smiling and continuing on their way, but the camera pulls away and we see that the driver is just sitting in the car still at the side of the road un- aware that they're not moving.)-- doctorremulac3, Dec 06 2020 We Happy Few https://www.wehappyfewgame.com/ [Voice, Dec 06 2020] cannabis cookies do the same thing https://helloganja....p-cookies-for-sale/ [xandram, Dec 07 2020] Lift Restrictions on Unprocessed Materials Lift Restrictions o...processed MaterialsDecriminalisation - a possible mid-way point. [zen_tom, Dec 07 2020] Marvelous. Does the box have a picture of Big Biden, sorry, Brother on it ?-- 8th of 7, Dec 06 2020 Hmm, you're asking a lot of questions citizen, can I have your social ranking number? LOL, just kidding we already have it.
I mean, I, doctorremulac3 already have it and he has not been taken away for education for posting parodies disrespectful of our glorious leadership class. I am that 3rd doctor guy who's a remulac or whatever and I DON'T have your social ranking number in our database... my database... there is no database. I'm not your local thought crimes detection unit because those don't exist.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 06 2020 What doesn't exist?-- pocmloc, Dec 06 2020 Ah, another one who asks "too many questions" and is clearly eager to spend some time in a "re-education" camp.
// What doesn't exist? //
Everything except you. Do we have to teach you Phenomenology again ?-- 8th of 7, Dec 06 2020 // What doesn't exist? //
(speaking into hidden mic) "Central control, we have another one for the de-education camps."-- doctorremulac3, Dec 06 2020 I remember seeing a cream ceramic phenomenological head in an antiques shop. It had black lines and writing on it but I don't remember what they said.-- pocmloc, Dec 07 2020 Since cannabis has become legal in many of our states, mine being one of them, There are plenty of mind numbing cookies and biscuits and candies available. See link-- xandram, Dec 07 2020 // I don't remember what they said.//
They said "I am the only real object; everything else is an illusion", or in your case, the product of a deranged imagination*
Or maybe you just think you remember that ? Can you trust your memories ?
Do you remember the spider that lived in a bush outside your window?
Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about your mother ...
*Quite possibly belonging to [Ian Tindale]-- 8th of 7, Dec 07 2020 Speaking of the drug thing, I've always supported de-criminalization, but this new wave of legalization smacks of support for a drugged population and more tax dollars to the leadership class.
I'd support it more if it was written like this:
"To stop the horror of millions of people being locked up for drug use, I, presidentremulac3 declare that all drugs are now legal. However, there are two important additions to my decree:
1- Civil penalties still apply. If your drug hurts somebody, you can, and will be sued into oblivion.
2- Legalization does not mean endorsement. On the contrary, ALL taxes from the sale of legal drugs will go to programs to get people off this horrible crap. The remulac3 government will NOT profit off the misery of others."
Then I'd be sure not to celebrate by taking a drive in a top down limo in Dallas.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 07 2020 //If your drug hurts somebody, you can, and will be sued into oblivion//
Hello? Is that the white house? Is that President Remulac3's private secretary? Can I speak to the president please? Who is it, you say? I'm calling on behalf of the tobacco and alcohol industries. Thank you... Hello Mr President, now about clause 1 of your latest decree.. yes thank you, I'm glad you understand without me having to spell it out. How soon can you issue your retraction? Half an hour, you say? I suppose we can wait that long. Thank you and have a nice day. And don't forget, you really must check with us first before you do anything rash in the future.-- pocmloc, Dec 07 2020 // before you do anything rash //
That's a nasty rash you've got there [poc], have you been taking any medication ? You can sue, you know ...-- 8th of 7, Dec 07 2020 Corr, scary imaginary world [drremulac] on the surface, it's like ours, only with a load of made up stuff about thought-crime and compliance fed to you directly by the right-wing media. Somewhat ironically, to control you - and well done, you're lapping it up! Congratulations citizen, keep up the good work. Next time around, if we can recruit a few more of you, we might not have to invent stories about fraudulent elections to keep our grip on power, but in the meantime, keep drinking the coolaid and imagining our (waggles fingers) ~spooky~world~!! Thanks citizen.
For your scheduled forty minute hate please refer to the campaign rally diary for tickets and merchandise. Remember your mantras. Lock her up! Stop the steal! Build that wall! and everyone's favorite; Four more years!
On decriminalisation, I still think there's legs in the idea of allowing raw materials, but licensing processing and the processed end-product. Few drugs are dangerously potent in their raw form, and if you allowed them to pass borders, you'd quickly remove a lot of the danger-money and artificial price hikes that are at the root of much of the criminality behind the drug market. If nobody is making millions, few will be bothered to setup abusive slave labour working conditions, in just the same way that you don't hear about criminal wheat farmers, or rival avocado-smuggling gang punishment beatings.-- zen_tom, Dec 07 2020 Hi alcohol and tobacco industry, I've scheduled a meeting for us at the Whitehouse at 12:00 noon next Monday. I've invited members from the American Bar Association too. We're going to all sit down and discuss problems your products have caused and my proposed solution.
I'll be passing the "Responsible Executives Reward Act" which allows executives who reduce the use of their products to receive tax benefits that will make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.
Here's how it works. Bob you're the CEO of RJ Reynolds and you make a couple of million a year. If you reduce the sales of your products somehow, and I'll leave how to do that that up to you, your tax bill will be reduced by twice the amount you've decreased the use of your product. So if you reduce the use of your product by 50%, your tax bill will go to zero. Now I know what you're thinking you slimy devil, the people will just get it elsewhere. Then you don't get the tax break. Sorry pal, you want the money, you solve the problem.
Now if this puts you at odds with your shareholders, I don't care, I'm presidentremulac3, remember my campaign slogan "I don't give a shit.".
I'll expect your plans to be on my desk for review at 8:00 Monday and see you for lunch at 12:00. We're having keto friendly barbecue.
Zen tom, so does the zen refer to you being well balanced and happy or something, because you're very hateful, nasty and ugly. Your solutions to everything are simple "Hate the group I've been told to hate, put somebody into that group whether they belong in it or not because, as a sheep, I do what I'm told."
Wolves don't give a shit what the sheep think.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 07 2020 It doesn't mean much at all really, just seemed like a good idea 16 or more years ago and kind of stuck.
//because you're very hateful, nasty and ugly// Not sure what you mean about that, aren't we just making up stuff and having fun? Sorry you didn't like my little made-up fantasy. I tried to make mine in line with the themes you'd already set up. Sorry it provoked such a sharp reaction. Maybe chill out, or dare I say it, try being a bit more "zen". Whatever that means.-- zen_tom, Dec 07 2020 Discussion of individual issues, not simple minded mono-tribalism. It's a good thing.
And mono-tribalism, (a word I just made up) is the practice of thinking your tribe is perfect all the time and other tribes are wrong all the time.
I don't belong to a tribe. Tribes are slow and dumb.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 07 2020 Cool, me neither you over sensitive shit-bag! (psst, that was a joke)-- zen_tom, Dec 07 2020 //Cool, me neither you over sensitive shit-bag! (psst, that was a joke) — zen_tom, Dec 07 2020//
A joke? Like your dick?
Here's my problem with mindless, brain dead tribalist slug-farts like you. A discussion gets interesting then you over sensitive shit-bags parade into the room waving some dumb-shit tribal flag like anybody gives a fuck. Yea, right wing media is bad, what the fuck does that have to do with anything being discussed here?-- doctorremulac3, Dec 07 2020 That's more like it. Jokes are there to be laughed at, not thought-policed, which I thought was your point. Now please feel free to carry on with a renewed sense of calm and inner well being.
OK, so with that out of the way, and having mutually agreed to ignore the overtly tribal spin, what's the //discussion of individual issues// supposed to be going on here? A drugged biscuit? Like the idea of a soma holiday or a valium assisted afternoon? Both these things are fairly well known, pre-existing ideas - the first from science fiction, and the second an actual thing albeit a stereotype, just without the carbohydrate content.-- zen_tom, Dec 07 2020 Then bone it without the virtue signaling foaming at the mouth moron bullshit.
Maybe you're actually a smart guy Zen, does this injected commentary on right wing this or Fox news that achieve anything except for grinding the discussion of complicated topics to a halt?
If you are smart, say the smart stuff you're capable of. This discussion just got really interesting talking about how you mitigate damages caused by dangerous products while retaining a free market that takes into consideration that people are going to use these products anyway no matter what the law says as witnessed by decades of failed prohibition.
You solve THAT problem, I will be very impressed and will say "This Zen Tom guy solved a vexing problem brilliantly." I'm a man of my word, I will. I don't care if you called me a... whatever it was, I forgot it already. You come up with something brilliant, you're getting the kudos you deserve, understanding that kudos from me and 5 cents will get you a cup of coffee if you have a time machine.
I don't have the solution, that's why I throw ideas out there to be destroyed if necessary. Maybe one will survive, who knows?
THAT is much more interesting than talking about Fox news and WAAAAAY more interesting than us calling each other names like a couple of idiots.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 07 2020 No it's not ... don't stop now, it's getting fun. We're hoping for the face-slapping followed by a choice of swords or pistols, or at the very least fisticuffs, spilled drinks, smashed glass and broken furniture.-- 8th of 7, Dec 07 2020 Look, I see a bunch of tribal ideas about compliance and political correctness, parroting the usual right-wing tropes, hyping up something that isn't close to objective reality, and responded with my natural reaction, a lampoon of the same set of ideas from my non-tribal objective standpoint - if I took some fantastic leeway, it seemed appropriate given you'd set the fictional boundaries right at the start (your idea is written in the form of a kind of narrative, so in my eyes, that is kind of permission for others to do likewise) Those ideas interest me - how this narrative of political correctness seems to have taken root without any actual substantive reason. It fascinates me to be honest.
But you're not interested in that line of discussion - so you'd rather shut it down. Fair enough, it's your idea - and for you, those thoughts are off limits. End of discussion, I understand.
On the legalisation thing, where is that in the idea? It kind of came up in the comments. And yes, that is an interesting idea. After having had my fun, you'll notice I did (I hope) contribute to the interesting part of the discussion (I even added a link) nobody seems to have picked up on that since you threw your toys out of the pram. If that line of discussion is ok, then here I am, please feel free to comment.
//at the very least fisticuffs, spilled drinks, smashed glass and broken furniture.// [8th] don't encourage him, what the good doctor needs is a cup of tea and a jolly good lie down.-- zen_tom, Dec 07 2020 //But you're not interested in that line of discussion - so you'd rather shut it down.//
Oh Hell no I won't. I get into the ring, I'll leave when they carry one of us out.
So am I correct in seeing that you've suggested sort of a "soft prohibition" via taxation on the raw materials that supply the drug trade to change or control the supply lines?
I have to run now but I'll be back to rumble throughout the day. (or learn something from a different perspective) This is getting interesting now.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 07 2020 Yes, in a fair amount of detail.
The tl;dr version is based on the observation:
"Even in the prohibition days, we didn't impose controls on grains, sugar, hops or fruit - just the derivatives of these when processed into alcohol."
And there's an argument that if you applied the same standard to illegal drugs, tobacco and other commodities, you'd do a great deal of good (using the power of economics) with a relatively simple and logical legal principle.
It wasn't that well received at the time I wrote it, but it seemed pertinent to the part of the conversation you just said you were interested in, before derailing it with your sensitivities. The crux is to legalise all the natural precursors to any manufactured drug, pulling the mat out from beneath any criminal enterprise that needs the fuel of illicit money to sustain itself. In addition, it (at least in my eyes) benefits from not suffering from the weird idea of anything that grows in nature being illicit. Like how can a plant, minding its own business growing in a field, be illegal? Doesn't sit well with me, that idea.-- zen_tom, Dec 07 2020 //before derailing it with your sensitivities.//
You're getting repetitive with your insults and therefore boring so I didn't bother reading the rest of the post.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 07 2020 Oh, you should, he said a lot of really nasty things about you, and your family and stuff. You're not going to let him get away with that, are you ? Go on, give him a poke. Hit him. Want some more whisky ? Go on, you can take him down easy ...-- 8th of 7, Dec 07 2020 And I'm not interested in your tetchiness but have it your way, it's your idea. I'll gently bow out here.
[8th] Leave him be!-- zen_tom, Dec 07 2020 No, wait, don't, didn't you hear [doc] ? He said "You smell bad and your Mother dresses you funny".
And he's "having tremendous difficulty with his lifestyle", too.-- 8th of 7, Dec 07 2020 //Like how can a plant, minding its own business growing in a field, be illegal?//
How do they get the illegal into the plant? Was that, like, a Monsanto thing? What if the PCR test for the genes for illegal are run with too man replications, leading to misleading reports of an epidemic of illegal? If some pollen from the illegal plant blows into a neighbour's field, will he be harassed for unwittingly planting the resultant seed?
Or is there some kind of directed energy device that irradiates the illegal, thus transforming the plants at a distance? Is that what the HARP antennas are really for? Do stoners need to wear a tinfoil hat so that the illegal can't get in and harsh their buzz?</sarcasm>
There's no such thing as "illegal". It's just a stupid lie in the same vein as the divine right of kings, or the need to worship the Pharaoh to make the Nile flood. Get over it, and start living your own lives already.-- spidermother, Dec 07 2020 According to a question asked in all seriousness of the much-missed and highly authoritative MaxwellBuchanan, it would be extremely easy to insert the genes for THC into any number of commonplace plants, and indeed weeds - potatoes and nettles were prime candidates.
In fact, there's no way of knowing that this hasn't already been done. The challenge would be getting the varietal to breed true, generation after generation.-- 8th of 7, Dec 07 2020 And I'm making the serious point that it doesn't matter what labels you use to disguise the nature of your death cult, the results are never fun.
Church -> Unholy -> Inquisition
Government -> Illegal -> Police
People are in deep denial about the plain, in-your-face reality of men and women in near-black (formerly blue) gang colours, going around with devices to inflict torture and death on people who do nothing more than disobey the arbitrary whims of a would-be ruling class.
Sadly, I wanted to ask MaxwellBuchanan a question like this: As strange and unlikely-sounding as these things called "DNA", "plasmids", "genes", etc. sound, I'm sure that you could convince anyone with intelligence, patience, and an open mind that they are Real Things. You could start by spointing to the round jelly slabs with the fuzzy blobs, and the square jelly slabs with the fuzzy blue rectangles. In other words, there is objective, real-world evidence, beyond someone's say-so.
Now, can you show me any objective facts that demonstrate the existence of "government", "illegal", "president", etc., beyond mere costumes, words, and rituals?
Films such as The Matrix and They Live are good allegories of the fantasy world that members of the religion called statism inhabit; but the best allegory I can think of for people saying such absurd things as [such-and-such] "is" (or worse, "should be") "legal" or "illegal" is The Human Centipede (warning - you will not be able to un-watch The Human Centipede).
For anyone playing along at home, if you think I'm the one who's being absurd, that's fine; but try writing down what the word "illegal" is pointing at in the real world.-- spidermother, Dec 08 2020 A forensic team finish their tea break, pull on their white suits and amble over to the site of the brief flame war.
"Let's see, we've got 'THEY are controlling your thoughts', we've got 'moral equivalence of Left and Right - are they or aren't they?', and we've got some drugs.
You want some carefully balanced historical context? OK, order the pizzas, this could take a while."
First, thought-control. Every time I smile and say good morning, I am trying to control someone's thoughts, in the direction of making them (a) happier and (b) better disposed towards me. In this sense, there is nothing wrong with thought-control.
So, when is thought-control bad? Probably when it denies agency to the person whose thoughts are being controlled. Specifically, bad thought-control is characterised by one or more of three things, namely coercion, covertness and completeness. When I say good morning, my control is not coercive, because the person greeted has the option of telling me to fuck off. My control is not covert, because everyone, including the addressee, can see what I'm doing. My control is not complete, because it is limited to a very small part of the person's mental state.
To what extent, then, is bad thought-control a real thing, and to what extent can blame for it be apportioned to Left or Right?
{The team is now adjourning for another tea break.}
Regarding the first question, that fascinating living fossil Noam Chomsky directs us to consider one Edward Bernays as the pioneer of the field. Regarding the second question, Bernays was a man of the Left - specifically, the Freudian Left (as opposed to the Marxian Left - the co-opetition between these two Lefts is a whole other story).
Chomsky believes, with horror, that Bernays was telling the truth when he claimed to be able to manufacture consent by a rigorous process of engineering, which would meet the second criterion of "bad thought-control" which I listed above (namely, covertness), though not the other two. Chomsky believes that, although the concept was invented by a man of the Left, it has since been adopted by the Right with devastating effect, and many people on the Left seem to agree with Chomsky in this opinion, and have done for some time (see, for example, Huxley's "Brave New World Revisited" of 1958).
Fortunately, contra Chomsky, Bernays was full of shit, (and Huxley, by 1958, was in his dotage).
As quoted in Wikipedia, Bernays wrote this:
"But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given [the common man] a rubber stamp, a rubber stamp inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of tabloids and the profundities of history, but quite innocent of original thought. Each man's rubber stamp is the twin of millions of others, so that when these millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints."
And what's wrong with that? Well, compare it with the most recent moral panic about thought- control, namely, the one surrounding targeted messaging in social media in 2016. That panic arose from the practice of algorithmically stalking individuals around the Internet. If Bernays had been right about each man's "rubber stamp" being "the twin of millions of others", than that stalking, and that precise targeting, would have been a complete waste of time.
So, the moral panic about thought-control in, say, 1958, and the very similar new one, dating from 2016, can't both be right, and I suggest they're probably both wrong.
{more to follow}
But that's only addressed one kind of bad thought-control, namely, the covert kind. There's also ...
Never mind, this thread has gone off in a different direction now.-- pertinax, Dec 08 2020 //Now, can you show me any objective facts that demonstrate the existence of "government", "illegal", "president", etc., beyond mere costumes, words, and rituals?//
Like I've always said, it's about the hats. Hats that denote self appointed leadership have been around since the first caveman balanced a wolf skull on top of his head and said that made him the village leader. Much later we had crowns, but skulls were probably the first invention used to rule over people.
That's it. That's where leadership and power over other people comes from. It's been fine tuned over the centuries but it's all about the hats.
That and being able to kill people who question the divinity of your wolf skull hat, crown etc.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 08 2020 //it's about the hats// I agree. Go to a meeting of senior world religious figures and take your "I-Spy book of ceremonial hats" with you and you will score the most points ever.-- pocmloc, Dec 08 2020 Exactly. The pope’s massive towering hat wasn’t designed to keep the rain off his head.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 08 2020 Dear Forensic department, there's a big difference between "mind control" which sounds a bit far fetched, and "narrative management" which I think is fairly uncontroversial in terms of being objectively real.
Telling stories, and framing narratives isn't new - but in the past, it's normally been possible except in the most extreme examples to mitigate by exposure to a wide distribution of ideas out in public life.
Today however, technology makes it more possible to construct walled theaters where certain narratives thrive, and others are rejected. I don't think it's controversial to point that out when we see it happening.
For example, take the "mindcrime" narrative spelled out in the idea above - the idea that "non-compliant loved ones" can be picked up and executed due to "negative attidude"s - which as [8th] notices in his first annotation mirrors that right-wing US politics narrative that Democrats operate in some kind of "thought police" mode. That's not a narrative I have been directly exposed to (not living in the US or consuming US right-wing media) and so it comes across as being both parochial in terms of the context, but is also clearly the product of similar tropes generated, I assume, by the people who want to replace actual, rational debate, with what you see demonstrated here, high-level emotional dissonance. Meanwhile, having seen clips of Trump rallies full of people drinking in this world-view with gusto and literally chanting 3-syllable slogans, reminds me a great deal of the 4-minute hate of Orwell's 1984. It seems ironic that many of these people believe that they are freedom-loving, independently minded people, largely because it seems that's precisely what they've been told. They are the wolves, and "the left"* are the sheep, apparently.
This emotional narrative that "the left" (or anyone not in agreement) are shutting down debate through thought policing is poisonously ironic, because the net effect is to shut down debate.
It may not have been deliberately lab-grown or engineered for that purpose, but that is the effect. No mind-control necessary, just a set of shared beliefs. What is happening in the US right now in terms of all this post-election nonsense is a direct consequence. Though mind control does become a theme in 1984, I don't think it's directly raised here. All that has to happen is for people to believe the narrative that "thought police" are real and that this somehow mirrors today's lived experience, that you can be locked up just for being politically incorrect - not only is it demonstrably false, but it serves to actively destroy intelligent discourse - as demonstrated here.
The "moral panic" of 2016 isn't or wasn't about mind control, it remains a sensible reaction to clear attempts to reframe reality by people with an inordinate amount of media reach. You don't get quite the same problem across the globe because media is more balanced (or perhaps just differently skewed) in other parts of the world. The problem we have, that we've never really faced before without total state control over the media is "alternative facts" and how with technology, these can remain unchallenged - enabling entirely false world views to build and exert a very real and potent effect on our lives - both to the people who believe in them, but increasingly, thanks to an increasingly hacked democracy, for the people who don't. Check out the levels of emotion demonstrated here when a long-held narrative is challenged. Not good for rational discourse of ideas.
* I do sometimes wish I was on "the left", but they too have their own tribal ideas that I'm not a party to - I don't think they're as well developed though. All I'm interested in is objectivity and a return to a bit of old fashioned competence and plain speaking. Until many of these false narratives are watered down or gently challenged though, I fear that's going to take a long time. In the meantime, ironically, the thought police will continue to challenge me whenever I point this out, as it's a point of view that to some, it seems, is totally unacceptable and punishable with anger, insult and ungentlemanly behaviour.
Or maybe [drremulac] was just having a bad day - I hope today's a better one.
Irrespective, this false trope (among others) needs challenging since it enables demonstrably bad things to happen. Bad things that affect all of us and our ability to live happy, free and purposeful lives.
[spidermother] I don't think you're being absurd, but legal or illegal, people get sent to prison - doesn't it make sense to try and align law with some kind of self-consistent rationality? I agree, the law is an invention, but shouldn't that be an even stronger argument for it being built on some foundation of common principles? It ought to be something we use to make the world a better place - and I know it often isn't. But isn't that something we should all be trying to sort out? It seems to be being rational would be a reasonable starting place.-- zen_tom, Dec 08 2020 Couldn't stay awake through the rambling, nonsensical screed above, but I've just enjoyed a handful of Big Brother's Mind Numbing Tea Biscuits and realized that massively huge increasingly powerful governments like they have in China, and self appointed permanently entrenched ruling classes really ARE a great thing and I need to stop questioning them. If they didn't have the people's best interest at heart, why would they strive for un-challenged dominion over them?
I want to be a good citizen who does what he's told, doesn't question authority and knows his place.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 08 2020 Good boy, now please feel free to continue your intellectually stimulating and fully government- sanctioned discussion about hats.
If you ever do want to engage on a meaningful level, I'm always ready to have a polite and civil discussion. Have a great day.-- zen_tom, Dec 08 2020 Did you notice how the idea said nothing about your specific precious ruling class, yet you read into it that I was zeroing in on your chosen unquestionable beloved leaders and felt the need to defend them?
It's like if I started talking about finding who stole the mind control cookies from the cookie jar and somebody starts rambling on about how he was never near the cookie jar, and if he was, it was because he was looking for a fork, and if it wasn't because he was looking for a fork, it was because he was putting a fork back.
Me thinks thou protesteth too much eh?
Zen, if you're going to start a debate, and you DID start this debate, don't get all butt- hurt if somebody fights back and makes you look like the idiot you are.
//If you ever do want to engage on a meaningful level//
I'll talk to somebody who's not a brainwashed idiot.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 08 2020 Ho-HO_ho Santa said. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight.-- blissmiss, Dec 08 2020 Yes, I'm ready to tuck this one in.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 08 2020 To be honest, I'm a bit confused by your reaction DR, I've been nothing but civil, and I think, expressed my views with a degree of sincerity and candour. If you read into that a degree of butt hurt, I'm sorry, but try and look past that if you can, it seems to be something in your imagination, and your imagination alone. Try rereading what we've both said, and ask yourself who it is who's being the most emotional out of the two of us. I'm not trying to wind you up - but it's genuinely confusing to get this reaction in response to what I honestly believe is me being sensible, rational and level-headed. Anyone else, please fill me in, am I missing anything here?
[edit] OK, if you delete your posts, they do kind of make mine read somewhat out of context. Still genuinely confused, but have it your way Doc.-- zen_tom, Dec 08 2020 Dude, let it go. I'm not even reading these now.
If you don't like talking to somebody why would you talk to them? Let's all center our chi, eat some dolphin safe tuna and get on with our lives.-- doctorremulac3, Dec 08 2020 random, halfbakery