Sunday School

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake:

Don’t forgot Trump also abandoned the Kurds. And i think it was Trump who got US out of Afghanistan which enabled the Taliban to be purely Islamic and the consequent suffering and misery to follow.

Afghanistan was the end result of four Administrations dithering about it starting with Bush, going through Obama and Trump 1.0, and ending with the beginning on Biden’s reign. It should not have taken twenty years to destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban who harbored them.

Would not surprise me if he is an atheist though. His god is the one who appears in the mirror. Imagine the absurdity of domestic and foreign policy being inexorably entwined with how it makes him feel?

That would make make Trump not an Atheist, but an Egotheist or Autotheist. Please, don’t paint us all with his filth:

Egotheism–Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egotheism

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake:

So wouldn’t it be prudent to conduct experiments in which people identifying as trans pass those tests? Seems like validation would have multiple benefits. Where is Autumn to rip me a new asshole for a stupid query?

I think Autumn ran away after I told her to fuck off after she called me a bigot after I defended Jewish students on New York campuses who were beseiged in a library post-October 7. I’d have to review the posts to confirm that. Autumn was just acting like a bitch, regardless of identity.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Enco,

Those labels might be applicable to Trump but it does not negate the essential feature if my guess is correct.

It should not be a badge of honor to be an atheist. Nor is it some feat of ratiocination to be an atheist. The persistence of religion is testament to how very amenable to manipulation we are. If you discover life on some other planet and it is rife with gods and mythology you can assume there is no intelligent life or that intelligent life is the exception. If things progress to the point in which AI is generated then artificial may give rise to artificial and ultimately Actual intelligence.

Older i get the more sour i become. If we simply examine the predominant contemporary ideologies of the far left and far right you are either ignorant or a moron if you fall in either camp.

In USA if Trump makes you feel confident in his leadership and capability you are a moron. It ought take only a minute or two when he is at his nadir to write him off. Never mind any of the countless transgressions.

If you buy into Palestinianism and believe Israel is an outliear pariah state characterized by an apartheid, genocide, White colonial zionist blah blah you are either a moron or you are using the transparent tropes and narratives as cover for your Jew hatred. It is literally inversion after inversion and lie after lie and the faithful lick it up like its ambrosia.

[StregaModerator]

@jake  I can’t disagree with any of your comment regarding intelligence, and I particularly like the capitalised Actual Intelligence. Really good food for thought.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake:

Those labels might be applicable to Trump but it does not negate the essential feature if my guess is correct.

It should not be a badge of honor to be an atheist. Nor is it some feat of ratiocination to be an atheist.

This is true. Atheism is only lacking in one specific irrationality. Others irrationalities need ditching as well

Still, people are confused enough about Atheism without equating it to philosophical narcissism, which some Theists already do.

The persistence of religion is testament to how very amenable to manipulation we are. If you discover life on some other planet and it is rife with gods and mythology you can assume there is no intelligent life or that intelligent life is the exception. If things progress to the point in which AI is generated then artificial may give rise to artificial and ultimately Actual intelligence.

It seems some of the loudest voices proclaiming the apocalyptic danger of AI are the very people involved in creating it. Then after they proclaim it, they go back to work on making AI. If this work does not entail making AI without apocalyptic slop, how intelligent is that? 🤔🤪

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake:

Older i get the more sour i become. If we simply examine the predominant contemporary ideologies of the far left and far right you are either ignorant or a moron if you fall in either camp.

In USA if Trump makes you feel confident in his leadership and capability you are a moron. It ought take only a minute or two when he is at his nadir to write him off. Never mind any of the countless transgressions.

If you buy into Palestinianism and believe Israel is an outliear pariah state characterized by an apartheid, genocide, White colonial zionist blah blah you are either a moron or you are using the transparent tropes and narratives as cover for your Jew hatred. It is literally inversion after inversion and lie after lie and the faithful lick it up like its ambrosia.

All correct, and no AI required to understand it all.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Fellow Unbelievers:

Because there are fewer people alive to remember it and would be repeaters out to take advantage of that lack of memory.

World pauses to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day
By VANESSA GERA
Updated 1:54 PM EST, January 27, 2026
https://apnews.com/article/holocaust-remembrance-auschwitz-un-anniversary-2273ee4e2b86ee9161c8ccc4c543851a

[jakelafortParticipant]

Enco,

One story from one survivor quoting JP.

A Holocaust survivor gave a speech in Hebrew at the United Nations General Assembly session to commemorate the Holocaust Remembrance Day for the first time in history on Tuesday.

Born in Poland, Weinstein talked about her life before the Second World War, her parents and siblings, her grandmother, and her house by the river. She also described how nothing beyond fading memories of the time remains. “I don’t remember my mother’s face nor my grandmother,” she said.

Weinstein also told the story about how she was smuggled out of the Jewish ghetto by a non-Jewish Ukrainian family.

“Every Ukrainian knew that if you helped the Jews, you would end up dead,” she explained, and told how her family was found out when other villagers noticed that the Ukrainian family protecting them was buying more food than they needed.

According to Weinstein, the villagers discovered the house where they were hiding, shot and killed the non-Jewish owners, then her family, and burned the house down. She was saved by her mother, who lay on top of her and shielded her from the bullets.

She then recounted how, after escaping, she lived in a nearby forest with her father and her two sisters, the only survivors of the family. “On the day the war ended, my father was murdered by villagers. My sisters and I were left alone,” she said.

After being transferred around through several orphanages, Weinstein arrived at a Kibbutz in Israel, where she established her home. She got married, had children, grandchildren, and eventually great-grandchildren.

“The Holocaust didn’t start with the gas chambers; it started with words, incitement, propaganda, jokes, accusations, and indifference. And today, I see it again, antisemitism rising its head, Jews being attacked while the world is silent,” she concluded.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake:

One of millions of awful recollections.

And nowhere could there be more antisemitic “words, incitement, propaganda, jokes, accusations, and indifference” than today’s United Nations.

Good thing the memories of the survivors live outside of that monster on the East River.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Yeah Enco,

UN is a bad joke. I was just listening to an Iranian woman and her jeremiad regarding lefties, and how the cause of human right have been abandoned to an ideology. One amusingly disgusting woe regarding how the UN Council on Women’s Rights was headed by Islamic Republic of Iran! Also how badly fucked over they were by OBammy and Bidun. And now of course it looks like Trump has sold em down the river like Martin luther sold out the peasants. He is warning em to make a deal on nucs or else….

The simplest objectives are obviated by ideology. Stupid mofo lefties and their constructs. Imagine a world in which we acknowledge how the masses are influenced in their beliefs and norms? How Islam has victimized its adherents? How religion has no place in governance. Further how the people who care about human rights just posit some simple rights that all civilization should uphold. Ya know stuff like women and their autonomy, not being married off at age 9, having equal rights under the law. Not persecuting for sexual orientation. etc. Just basic shit. None of the good guy/bad guy oppressor/oppressed drech. Never gonna create a utopia but we are gonna make the world a better place for human thriving. We are gonna be flexible in our approach.

I honestly can not conceive of anything that sensible.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

The UN stated out with noble ideals but it has lost a lot of respect. It was never a moral body, just a diplomatic one that existed to keep states talking to each other. We will never get moral clarity out of a system where Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Russia, and liberal democracies all get equal seats at the table. At best we get a consensus of the lowest common denominator. When Iran ends up chairing anything with “women” in the title, that isn’t a bug. It’s a feature of a system designed around state legitimacy, not human legitimacy.

Jake, you have made the point often. I agree completely. The same thing that fractured modern progressive ideology on the campus is reflected in other modern organizations, including any dealing with “human rights”. My take (yours may differ) on the cause of the fracture was replacing (or displacing) the concept of universal individual rights in favor of group-identity moral ranking. A lot of modern progressiveness has moved away from treating everyone as equal individuals and toward treating people primarily as members of identity groups.

Individuals possessing inherent rights  now reads as  ‘group membership endows moral rank”. States existing to protect rights is replaced with “power determining the truth” (4 legs good 2 legs better). Violations of human rights used to be wrong regardless of culture but now we need to “see it in context” which excuses wrong doers and blames victims. When a masked paramilitary mob murders unarmed citizens in the street and in full view of the world, it is wrong in any country. It is worse when government mouth pieces then blame the victim. Individual rights for “the others” are now on the way out the door. When a state ignores the rights of one citizen a precedent is set and it happens more often. Next they build interment camps. We had them in Ireland in my lifetime.

Oppression committed by a “non-Western” actor becomes “complex”  but when it is committed by a Western actor it becomes “structural evil.” That asymmetry alone leaves the possibility of principled human rights fubared.

You can’t defend women’s autonomy while simultaneously granting cultural immunity to systems that explicitly deny women autonomy. You can’t oppose homophobia while excusing regimes that execute gay people because they’re “post-colonial.” You can’t claim secular governance is colonial while enjoying the freedoms produced by secular governance.

Religion in governance always (yes always) lead to the diminishing of human rights because it does not care about the individual, no matter what platitudes the religious spew out. Great powers don’t have friends. They have common interests; the main one is staying in power. Iranian dissidents were never a top-tier strategic priority for “the West”. But neither are Saudi or Chinese  dissidents.

I just do not expect any consistent moral foreign policy from any “empire”. When their leaders sit around a table, they think in terms of “empire” not “individual rights”. I think that that is political realism even when laced with cynicism.

Imagine a world where we just posit simple rights that all civilization should uphold. We did. It was called “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)”. It was the original post-WWII liberal project. It was classical liberal humanism written down. What happened is the UN has no teeth to enforce anything. It can condemn all day  long, but “empires” don’t care what it says because the UN cannot compel any major power to do (or not do) anything. So, we have now reached the point where “cultural relativism” has gained legitimacy, and this allows states to change what were once “non-negotiable individual entitlements” (Inalienable rights) to be viewed as “context-dependent cultural expressions”. (Yes, FGM is bad, but you must see it in terms of their culture, not the individual young girls’ rights or some other verbal leftist BS). The UN project was real. It worked imperfectly but better than anything before it. Now we are watching it decay. We know it but the “empires” will keep it going because it suits them, not us.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Reg, you articulated the dynamic accurately. No issue with anything you’re written. I confess i was unaware or perhaps forgot about Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

After WW2 the ideals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sounded good. But ““Lest we forget” implies history contains lessons that we should learn from and  remember past catastrophes to avoid repeating them. But with human nature this always becomes “History is bunk” and the past becomes obsolete noise and only the present matters. We have ritualized remembrance (memorial days, slogans, hashtags), while simultaneously discarding the actual causal knowledge of how bad ideas arise, spread, normalize, and capture institutions. The truth is that every generation thinks it has transcended the failures of previous generations.Well, just look around…..

[jakelafortParticipant]

The best democracy money can buy?

How about best University Qatar can buy?

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-884966

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

My take (yours may differ) on the cause of the fracture was replacing (or displacing) the concept of universal individual rights in favor of group-identity moral ranking. A lot of modern progressiveness has moved away from treating everyone as equal individuals and toward treating people primarily as members of identity groups.

There is a weaponising of vulnerability.  All a student has to do is say they feel “unsafe” because of x, y, z political statement made in their presence, and everyone jumps, and whoever caused it is immediately cancelled out of their job.  The students don’t seem to mind looking like childish snowflakes.  People should realise what’s going on.  It’s disingenuous, crying wolf, cynical, and destructive.

[Author]

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