2026 Congressional Elections

[gehringer_2]

21 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Platner is the embodiment of the horseshoe theory. The far left is sacrificing all their principles to support a guy who has the right aesthetic and says the right buzzwords. He's sufficiently anti Jew, at least he says he is, he was very much pro Israel in the past. Buttigieg working at McKinsey was a dealbreaker. Platner working at Blackwater is just shrugged off the same way evangelicals shrug off Trump. Platner is against gun control and that little **** David Hogg supports him but not Peltola. Platner is the first test and Dems are failing miserably. Dems were so united in burying Biden but not this lump of ****. 

he's also playing the to a repentance/redemption trope - he's not Kavanuagh denying he ever was that guy, Platner pretty much admits admits he *was* that guy, so he's not going to argue the details of his reddit posts. You can believe him or not, and you don't, and I don't really care, but it is harder to attack someone for what they don't deny - that's part of his strategy - the only one he could adopt really - but it can work if he can appear authentic consistently in the present tense. If he slips up in the present, if the facade breaks and you see the other guy is still there,  then he's more likely doomed. 

Steve Miller is Nazi because he talks like a facsist today and supports cruelty as policy today. You can call Platner a Nazi because he wore a tattoo or posted a lot of crap, but he's running against all that and that is a difference. So it's all a matter of his *present* credibility, and that's why I think he can survive a lot of what has come out so far about his past. This risk is it does get worse, or he loses that present tense credibility.

Edited 10 hours ago by gehringer_2

[RatkoVarda]

8 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

then he's more likely doomed. 

MAGA will pour a few million into a 3rd party candidate, siphon off 3-4%, and Collins wins again. It's not complicated.

[Motown Bombers]

No, MAGA is going to drop $50 million in oppo against Platner and all the Dems who supported this filth will look like fools. 

[gehringer_2]

28 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

No, MAGA is going to drop $50 million in oppo against Platner and all the Dems who supported this filth will look like fools. 

Heck - does the oppo research even matter in today's politics?. (Not talking just Maine). Folks will AI fab deep fakes of stuff whether real or not. In that sense it almost doesn't matter any more - the process is so debased that there is always going to be grist provided for the people on both sides of any issue to grind whether it's real or not. 

Edited 9 hours ago by gehringer_2

[Motown Bombers]

Just the beginning

 

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

Paul (supposedly) has it exactly right in the Letter to the Hebrews "Faith is the evidence of things not seen"  This statement functions on two levels (at least) - the 1st is individual - the fact that you believe something is a kind of supra-intellectual evidence - at some level you should trust your sense of what is true sort of a priori (gnosis).  But it also functions at a social level: You should take the faith of other people that what they believe is true as evidence that you should believe it too. We all do the 1st to some degree - it's part of human nature, but to me it's the 2nd that can get tricky and be the more dangerous because it's abdication of your own judgement. We all accept the veracity of various 'authorities', you have to in the modern world to survive, you can't know everything, but it's a life's work to learn how to vet the authorities you decide to accept.

I don't disagree with your characterization of a 1st degree versus 2nd degree faith, although I do believe that even though they contemplate different things, they manifest in the same way: believers don't need evidence to prove whatever the thing is to them, because they already believe, and that's enough.

And besides, it could be fairly hypothesized that most, if not all, faith is is what you refer to as 2nd degree, since it is one's social circle—starting with the family and extending to neighbors, friends, classmates, co-workers, fellow congregants, whatever—that ratifies your faith through social approval along the way and validates it as an idea and, by extension, you as a person. I think this is particularly true when it comes to faith in a god, because that gets taught to you by your family from a very early age during the initial socialization process. Very few people if any come to believe in a god without any information from outside, and I highly doubt that without that outside information, that practically any child would start questioning their place in the universe and seek to place their belief in a supernatural being.

[LaceyLou]

2 hours ago, Motown Bombers said:

Platner is the embodiment of the horseshoe theory. The far left is sacrificing all their principles to support a guy who has the right aesthetic and says the right buzzwords. He's sufficiently anti Jew, at least he says he is, he was very much pro Israel in the past. Buttigieg working at McKinsey was a dealbreaker. Platner working at Blackwater is just shrugged off the same way evangelicals shrug off Trump. Platner is against gun control and that little **** David Hogg supports him but not Peltola. Platner is the first test and Dems are failing miserably. Dems were so united in burying Biden but not this lump of ****. 

Sadly there are misogynists on all parts of the political spectrum, from left to right to everything in between. Women are often told they can pick either being (insert political belief system here) or fighting for women's rights. Most end up fighting along with the others in the movement, and hope that they'll get a scrap or two for women's rights-only to find that these are the first things that those who told them to choose decide to 'compromise' on.

 

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

I don't disagree with your characterization of a 1st degree versus 2nd degree faith, although I do believe that even though they contemplate different things, they manifest in the same way: believers don't need evidence to prove whatever the thing is to them, because they already believe, and that's enough.

The possibility of a priori knowledge - 

IIRC Eric Coe used this gif as his avatar on the old site. Kant spent many hundreds of pages of dense german syntax to prove the impossibility of most of the 'transcendental' knowledge that philosophy had long accepted, including almost all the classic arguments for the existence of God. The work was considered monumental.

Then he wrote another shorter work to try and carve out his own exception to his prior proofs to create an argument for the existence of God - It is largely forgotten. 🤯

[Motown Bombers]

 

[Motown Bombers]

Nancy Mace crashed hard.