<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title><style type="text/css">p.MsoNormal,p.MsoNoSpacing{margin:0}</style></head><body><div style="font-family:Arial;">glen and steve,<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Nick made me do it. He asked the question. And I made the mistake or pretty much answering him, not the group as a whole with my <b>* written *</b> response. As noted in my apology to Russ, the general tenor of the paragraphs reflected the mood/tone and the mindset of those at the Mother Temple immediately post election — and my bemusement by it — but a tone that continues to reverberate.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">The nearly three years of my regular attendance at FRIAM, post-election, I made frequent attempts to do just as you suggest - tease apart the threads of belief among both pro and anti-Trump camps. When it comes to political discussion, neither heterogeneity nor nuance seems to have much value. (I think this might count as steelmanning in some sense.)<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">My rationale for the millennarian wrapper around my reply was not for comparison. It was a bad attempt to use the Nacerima technique to make "the familiar strange" in a way that allows people to become aware of that which they take for granted or to which they are usually blind - in the way that most people are unaware of the culture within which they are embedded.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">I am merely inept, not evil.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Although ...<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">"basket of deplorables" "10 to 15 percent of Americans are not very good people" I know they are talking about me. :)<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">davew<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">On Sat, Jun 6, 2020, at 8:29 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Agreed. To be fair, though, just as Dave announced he had to leave the <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> meeting, he was asked to quickly state why he thought the accusations <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> against Trump supporters was a mischaracterization. He called out the <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> anti-Trump crowd for over-generalizing those who voted for Trump and <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> briefly described a few reasons a *heterogeneous* collection of people <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> might have different reasons for doing so (conservative court <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> appointments, tough talk to China, etc. -- arguably legitimate things <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> some of us might want in a President). This post of his was, therefore, <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> a legitimate response to that request, coming up with a narrative <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> circumscribing the faulty thinking of the anti-Trump crowd.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> However, in so doing, he attempts to right one wrong with another <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> wrong. His post rightly calls out the over-generalizing fallacy of the <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> anti-Trump by then over-generalizing (or outright false narrative <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> cartooning) them. My tack would have been to demonstrate the diversity <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> of the not-pro-but-not-anti Trump tolerators first. *Then* maybe dive <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> into why the anti-Trump crowd exhibits such flawed thinking. And FWIW, <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> I agree with his gist that the anti-Trump crowd is, at least a bit, <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> eschatological. But I think lots of us, regardless of political bent, <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> are eschatological. We see it in the Singularians, the bioethicists re: <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> DIY Bio, ecologists, climatologists, Steve Guerins re: societal phase <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> transitions >8^D, etc.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> The story could easily be rounded out with a demonstration that the <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> anti-Trump crowd is also diverse. Not all of us are eschatological. <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Some of us are simply embarrassed by him. I'll take an Evil Genius over <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> a bumbling moron any day of the week. And my reasons for purposefully <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> over-generalizing my characterization of the Trump tolerators as morons <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> or cult members is a (likely misguided) attempt to shame or guilt them <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> into thinking a little harder about who they vote for. It's got nothing <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> to do with "millenarianism".<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> On 6/5/20 11:16 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> > Presumably, davew doesn't believe that the preceding characterizes the way any living human being thinks. So why pretend that it does other than to insult people? And why does he want to insult people? We don't need any more of that. We are already fully supplied with insults from the insulter-in-chief. Let's not make things worse.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> -- <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> ☣ uǝlƃ<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> - .... . -..-. . ...- --- .-.. ..- - .. --- -. -..-. .-- .. .-.. .-.. <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> -..-. -... . -..-. .-.. .. ...- . -..-. ... - .-. . .- -- . -..<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriam">bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> un/subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> archives: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">><br></div></body></html>