Robert Reich on what Trump’s trial is showing us about Trump world:
“This cast of characters — and there are many, many others like them in Trump world — are loathsome not because they have violated the law, but because they have contributed to creating a harsh society in which everyone is potentially bought or sold.”
“#Nakba and #Shoah, the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, both mean ‘catastrophe’ in English, and because both are rooted in the 1940s, they are often equated or conflated.”
“Some Palestinians have chosen violence in response, and that’s tragic—a moral error, in my opinion—just as it’s a tragedy and moral error that some Jewish Israelis have turned their pain and fear into ethnic violence and hatred.”
“Israel’s leaders and their supporters have chosen to exist as an apartheid, racist, theocratic military occupation; all the weaponry in the world cannot secure moral defense for it—though they keep trying.”
"Stormy Daniels has reminded us of what a disgusting misogynistic creep Donald Trump is: unable to control his carnal impulses, eager to exploit his power and influence and wealth to procure sex, devoid of shame or guilt or remorse, incapable of fidelity, focused completely on his own sexual satiety, and totally fine about said sexual satiety being generated by violent means."
"A quarter of the way through the 21st century, a predilection towards sexual misconduct and misogyny is practically a BFOQ of a Republican politician. The party of trickle-down economics and tax cuts for gazillionaires has long been the party of plunder. As long as Donald Trump is its leader, it will also be the party of rape."
Are our moral #values shaped by divine love or are they a result of biological requirements of human life?
THIS WEDNESDAY April 17 at #UniversityOfTexas#Austin, #philosophers Ben Bayer and Adam Lloyd Johnson #debate the origins and interpretation of #morality, focusing on differences between secular, scientific interpretations, and theological views.
“In many ways, I actually think the real idea of #OpenSource is for it to allow everybody to be ‘selfish,’ not about trying to get everybody to contribute to some common good.
“In other words, I do not see open source as some big goody-goody ‘let's all sing kumbaya around the campfire and make the world a better place.’ No, open source only really works if everybody is contributing for their own #selfish reasons.”
If you believe that service to others is the ultimate good but choose selfishness because it works better, i.e., #pragmatism, then your #ethics are at war with reality. And you don’t even get the benefit of feeling good about yourself because that’s #selfish.
The idea that morality stems from the creator of the universe is baffling. It is "might is right" taken to its extreme, logical, horrible conclusion.
Even if there is a creator, and you can believe whatever you want about that, the idea that whatever it says is good/bad by definition is good/bad just because it says so is absurd!
Morality is hard. There are no easy answers. So naturally we want to avoid the difficulties by deferring to a higher power. But bad is not good no matter who says so.
This #thread inspired by this video by Viced Rhino, and also a recent conversation with my brother, who pretty casually implied that it is good to let people suffer unnecessarily because of what he believes the creator of the universe has tried to convey trough some book anyone can interpret however they want
“Name a force or impulse that threatens the stability of the American political system – distrust in the fairness of elections, conspiracy theorizing, the embrace of authoritarianism – and it is always more prevalent among rural Whites than among those living elsewhere."
~ Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy (New York: Random House, 2024), p. 5
“Even the common, and perfectly accurate, criticism that Trump doesn't practice what he preaches likely resonates in rural areas, where you often find a strong moral code that is regularly violated by many of the people who live there."
"The fact that rural areas have plenty of infidelity and teen parenthood (which occurs at significantly higher rates among rural Americans than city dwellers) doesn't necessarily make people reject traditional family values; it can make them cling to those values all the more fervently, as they consider them under constant, visible threat.”
I'm not quite comfortable with the za-zen, shitting-meditation, but some other features and potentialities of this in-vogue phenomenon in the Western world do bother me somewhat.
I might be worried about the buddhist thought's influence and application in the modern world with it's mandatory science-based worry about the future of our planet. Oftentimes it sounds like an excuse of not taking parts and not acting, as long as "my" peace of mind prevails. This is what the marketized version 'mindfulness' may do to many practitioners, and one's own peace of mind in a turmoiled reality might sound like an immoral escape.
I respect Buddhism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism, like other sincere and evolved religions, and of course cherish it's updated analytic presentation in the SEP.
"An anarchist who ran a store in England found that his comrades in the movement regarded it as perfectly right to take his goods without paying for them. "To each according to his/her need" seemed to them to justify letting those who were best able to foot the bills. Kropotkin was appealed to, with the result that he not only condemned such doctrine, but was moved to write the comrades this sermon." - Black Cat Pr. #kropotkin#anarchocommunism#politics#morality#books
A spokesman for #JStreet, accused Aipac of attempting to impose a narrow definition of what it is to be pro-Israel:
“#Aipac may hope to silence and intimidate political leaders who believe that settlement expansion, endless conflict and permanent occupation are harmful to Israel, the Palestinian people and US interests. Ultimately, however, these common-sense views are too popular, widespread and important to be suppressed.”
Superheroes often have a rule that they will not kill even a total criminal, a criminal. What about the topic of... abortion? Is abortion a crime according to superhero rules?