U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for "Armageddon,"

What you are doing in this field is re-interpreting works of literature to find common themes and shed insight on human nature by looking at these themes. The fundamental assumption here -- which is a radical assumption -- is that works of literature that are considered classic or great works of literature -- contain within them information about human nature, that is, hidden information, and this applies even to, or especially with respect to, fictional works such as Don Quixote.

As an example, you can claim children desire power. And as evidence of this, point to children's stories, reintepreting them as power fantasies. Which is basically correct. Now let's say that you are talking about Lord of the Rings, and arguing that here we have the lowly hobbit that ends up saving the whole world and Kings bow to him, you can use that as one piece of data. But now comes the "takedown", and the critic says "No! You have it wrong! The point of destroying the ring is to get rid of power! You have it all backwards". But the critic is missing the point. I hope everyone can see that. Tolkien might have been consciously warning readers about the dangers of power, but it would not have been a successful children's book if it did not involve the lead character starting out powerless, acquiring power, and being someone the child reader identified with. Or at least the odds of it being successful would be much lower. In most children's books, you are acquiring power -- because children fantasize about that, it is human nature. It does not matter what moral lesson the author is trying to get across, his human nature finds a way of expressing itself in the work.

Now, you can reject the core assumption that literature reveals aspects of human nature, it's fine, but there is no point in arguing that core assumption. If you reject it, then don't read Girard.

But if you don't reject it, then because you are re-interpreting works and looking for overlooked themes, the name of the game is to accumulate a large body of examples, not to debate a single example. And you judge the success of your examples primarily by their explanatory power, not because you think the original author intentionally made a certain theme that heretofore was overlooked.

But because you are providing novel interpretations of existing works, you can always find plenty of arguments that the original works were intended to be interpreted differently. It's trivial, but not a compelling critique. It is up to the reader to decide whether interpreting the work through this lense sheds more light on the work in the sense that applying the same interpretation to the large body of works cited results in something that "makes sense", as Girard is building a case that a certain theme in human nature occurs in works of literature over and over again, and having this theme available helps you to better understand the work.

This is very different from theology, or legalism, where people focus on debating a single verb tense in a specific verse. Because Girard is not doing theology or legalism, he is doing comparative literature, so he provides a hundred examples of common themes, and after you read him, the next time you read literature your mind is trained to look for these themes and you can identify them and interpret what you are reading in a different way.

Now going back to the original sharp assumption, this means that you do not only know something new about literature, but something new about human nature.

Then they tend to clash, fight and blame the other group for their problems.

Kids don't really do it but it's why dad has to go bomb the islamists or jihad the infidels or similar.

Our electoral system is designed to disenfranchise the most populated areas.

Here in the authoritarian hellhole that is the Commonwealth of Australia, showing up to the voting booth is mandatory. We also have preferential voting, and in a few jurisdictions we even have proportional representation.

It was specifically proposed to counter the Texas special redistricting which was done by the Texas legislature and government with no concern over whether or not Texas voters approved (and polls show that more Texas voters disapprove than approve).

That's not a bad thing. The bad thing happened when the Democrats decided to alienate those areas and lost them. You may forget, but a lot of those "small right-leaning states" were solid blue until relatively recently. For instance 100% of North Dakota's congressional delegation was Democratic until ~2010, Iowa was the quintessential purple state, the Senate majority leader was from South Dakota (but unlike today he was a Democrat), and I could go on.

I will grant you that more of the small states lean right than lean left, but it's not completely one-sided.

My insurance is more expensive than ever and quality of care lower quality than ever.

>Do you think there was any other system Democrats could have passed instead that would have lasted that long?

Medicare for all. Or lower the age gradually (cover kids and elderly first). They should have voted on it during the pandemic but Pelosi blocked it and AOC wouldn't do anything. They're all fakes.

You're buying into the paradigm wherein sandbagging it was necessary for pragmatic reasons, and justifying within that. While this is true to an extent, it doesn't really change my overall point.

I do get that the ACA was a significant piece of legislation that has helped many people. And if you want to talk system design, such a mandate might make sense in a system with much much more regulatory bandwidth than ours, where it's not just forcing people into a corrupt system. But as it stands, they didn't even address the antitrust issues of bundling healthcare plans with employment or price fixing between insurers and providers. So I stand by my characterization of the dynamic as brazen regulatory capture.

It's hard to tell if it's more accurate to still label the Republican party as also "complete corporate sell outs", or if the real dynamic is its controlling corpos got bought by foreign interests aiming to take down the whole United States (rather than merely being content extracting wealth from the masses).

I swallowed my pride and started voting conservative (aka Democrat) in 2020, but that doesn't mean I'll stop criticizing them.

I do have to wonder if say pushing the Democratic party itself to adopt something like ranked pairs voting for primaries would be more effective than hoping for it in the finals. The idea being that as time goes on that becomes the "real" election where more people feel enfranchised from being able to express themselves, and generally happier with the results if they still have to end up supporting a compromise in the finals.

(This is assuming what's left of the Republican party doesn't dramatically reinvent itself after it's finished crashing and burning)

The right spends *far* more money and airtime on these issues than democrats actually do: https://abcnews.com/US/trump-spends-millions-anti-trans-ads-...

In other words, it is largely a moral panic manufactured by the right. If democrats give in, the right will concoct a new one, ad infinitum, until democrats and republicans are indistinguishable.

I can see how you think this, since othering and dehumanizing responses rise to the top when people ask how Republicans can support this administration.

Who benefits from amplifying those voices?