Swagnarok

The deadline's either tonight (already passed) or sometime tomorrow. If by this time Kavanaugh's accuser does not decide to testify then in all likelihood the Senate is just gonna begin with the confirmation vote.

It seems clear that a few "swing democrats" cannot be counted on this time, and in all likelihood you're gonna have a handful of "moderate" Republicans who're gonna break with their party. Given how slim the GOP's majority is, there is a very good chance that Kavanaugh's just not gonna make it.

Seeing as how Dems are already demanding an FBI investigation (which flat out isn't going to happen, unless they can get it done in one month's time), the GOP doesn't want to make it look like they're just rushing Kavanaugh's confirmation through, so I'm sure they're gonna give her some more time, while putting heavy emphasis on how patient they've been with her.

If you're not well-established on here socially, then PM me and provide me your name and a link to your Facebook profile (I may require that you accept a Facebook friend request from me). You'll be put on a "list", and if you stop posting for a long time then I'll check out your Facebook profile to see if you're still alive. If I observe by looking at your profile that you've died, then I will notify the DART community. If you stop posting but you appear to still be alive then from time to time I'll go back and check. Because I'm just some guy on the internet doing this, it may be the case that there's some delay in between when you die and when I find out about this and notify the DDO community. Also, you can be pretty much guaranteed no matter who you are that if your death occurs more than, say, 5-10 years from now then I won't bother to check for this, much less notify anyone.

If you've made virtually zero effort to participate here in any meaningful way (for example, your total count is 10 posts) then I'll be especially likely not to follow through on my obligations here towards you. But maybe. Who knows.

All such information disclosed to me in confidence will remain confident. If the Admin has a problem with this idea then he's free to just shut it down now and delete this thread. Otherwise, think of this as insurance of sorts that should you just suddenly die this fact won't go completely unnoticed by the DART community. I say "DART" community but this extends to whatever website this general bloc of people might one day migrate to, such as perhaps back to DDO or to some third party site.

What's a stat exam?

No. We all know that he probably had brown-ish skin, somewhere on a spectrum. Historically most visual depictions of Jesus have been made by Europeans, as most Christians until the modern era have been Europeans, so it makes sense that they would make him look like one of them (though to be fair most just try to imitate how He was depicted in certain mosaics from Antiquity, which had Him as being white-ish, rather than being overly fixated on the ideal of a specifically white Jesus). Go to Africa and you'd likely see artwork depicting a black Jesus. Is that historically accurate either? No, not as far as we can tell. Does it matter? No. Heck, I think there are even churches in China that have Jesus looking like Confucius or something, with the full Chinese look and everything. America is and always has been a predominantly white country, so it only makes sense that most artwork in this country would have Him being white.

Depicting Him with a high degree of historical accuracy could result a culture shock and give the impression that Jesus was this strange foreign "other", when all Christians need to be focused on is that He lived on earth as a human being, like any of us, that He died for all of us, and that He is freely available to all of us. Debate over His physical appearance or accusations of "whitewashing" would be an unwelcome distraction from things that matter. It would serve to divide people when what Jesus wanted was a strong, united church.

This question doesn't relate so much to your prophecy stuff but rather to your more general claim of having founded Anonymous:

Even if it's true, why is it important that people should acknowledge this? They are a group which by design has no leader, no top dog. To assume a higher than normal position within the organization as its "Founder" seems to go against this ideal. To me it would appear that your main motivation is egotism and vanity, negative qualities which in your videos you claimed were not things that defined or controlled you.

"You like to see women getting abortions in alleys, back of cars, and other non-clinical settings?"

 Yes, the same as I'd like to see serial killers have to act in secret and risk leaving evidence or otherwise getting caught than to live in a society where serial killers are allowed to openly practice their vile craft with impunity.

Abortion is probably the single most barbaric practice ever seen in human history. It puts female genital mutilation, slavery, segregation, child rape, cannibalism, etc. to shame, no question about it. It had no rightful place in the 20th or 19th centuries, much less the 21st. It's what we'd expect to see in the darkest, most backward parts of Africa, and yet people like you want to ensure that abortion continues in the United States of America, one of the world's most advanced and enlightened nations. It makes no sense why any "progressive" party would ever support abortion, but apparently they do, and they all have blood on their hands as a result.

That we might have for President a spoiled, billionaire playboy who has a troubled relationship with the truth is a small price to pay to liberate our land from this last vestige of the stone age.

"You like presidents who lie constantly every day after day after day?"

 I also have to dispute the degree to which it is alleged that Donald Trump tells lies. Most of the figures we have come from the "fact checking" done by journalists  employed by big media companies (90℅ of which are owned by 6 larger corporations), which clearly have a vested interest in making the President look as bad as possible. Their factchecking process takes place outside the watchful eye of the general public; we have no idea what goes into that, and there is virtually zero accountability to make them be entirely truthful. Especially if they don't allow dissenting media groups like Fox News to observe their process there's nobody to call them out on BS. We just have to trust that they are not lying to us. So I'd take the "Donald Trump lies constantly" narrative with a grain of salt.

"You like presients whose narcissim takes precdent over integrity of USA demoracy ex his placing Putins hacks above our claims of our security peoeples?"

Seeing as how from day one the Left has used the allegations of Russian collusion to question the very legitimacy of Trump's presidency, and that they'd use any open admission on his part as an excuse to impeach him, should anyone really be surprised by this? Would ANY President not deny the allegations under such circumstances?

"You prefer his support of white nationalist reacist bigoted violent nutcases?"

Besides the fact that they're not generally anymore violent than their Antifa counterparts, it's natural that the ascendancy of any President would embolden those with a more radical version of his views. I'm sure that there were a lot of communists celebrating in the wake of Obama's 2008 victory.

It really is quite simple:

1. Donald Trump, being a political outsider, lacking the key connections that many veteran congressmen have made over the course of decades, and running on a platform which was universally panned by the elites, had to rely upon fellow political outsiders to help him run his campaign, and then his government. These outsiders, of course, sometimes were outsiders for good reason, because they were people of suspect character. But Trump didn't know or care; he just went with whoever was willing to work with him, which was not an extensive list. Perhaps many of these people, seizing opportunity when it presented itself, took the initiative of approaching Trump first and offering to serve in X position/capacity, and he unwisely accepted.

2. Given that Trump has been accused of colluding with the Russians, and that there's a "special counsel" breathing down his neck and looking into every person closely connected to Trump, we know what the dirt on these people are, and this is also why some of them were prosecuted and convicted in the first place. On the other hand, the likes of Obama did not have to deal with an FBI investigation into their day to day activities. So if there was widespread corruption within the Obama Administration, we simply would not know. We have info on the former but not the latter, so to claim that one had a problem with systemic corruption whereas the other did not cannot rightfully be concluded.

3. Defining "the swamp" as the President's cabinet is a very narrow way of looking at it. When Trump said "drain the swamp", he did not mean "audit and investigate all the Obama era staffers". The Swamp as Trump used the term can be seen more as an overarching narrative of a massive web of connections between individuals employed in the public and private sectors, in Congress, the media, academia, lobbyist organizations, PACs, and big corporations, with corrupt and self-serving motives that drive them to collaborate (or "collude") for nefarious purposes. The most readily apparent form of this is the collusion between Democratic politicians and the people who for arbitrary reasons we blindly trust to tell us the news and what is/isn't factual, despite the fact that theirs is a private enterprise largely unregulated by the government, with no federal ethics committees to punish them should they print blatant falsehoods (that is, there is no moral distinction between them and the big scary oil giants who you think conspired with Dick Cheney to oppress those good ole' peace loving Iraqis).

It was stupid of Trump to insinuate that he could dismantle this network, but acknowledging its existence is a big first step towards diminishing its grip on our country.

I swear, American politics has become like a contest between two enraged, dumb gorillas looking to see who can shriek the loudest.

Yes, that's right. Let the paranoia and susceptibility to wild conspiracy theories flow within you. Because this is totally conducive to a healthy democracy.

Everyone here seems to be doing these extremely obscure pieces, so I almost feel bad for picking this, but:

Sore wa Chiisana Hikari no Youna by Sayuri:

I'm currently on what could be my last semester of college, provided that I don't fail or drop anything. If I fail a single class, I won't meet the requirements to graduate, and I'll have to take another full semester in Spring 2019.

If I'm not mistaken, I'm taking fewer hours this semester than ever before (12 a week). But as one class is the big capstone for history majors and another is apparently at the level of a law school course, that doesn't mean a whole lot. Of the remaining two, one is ridiculously easy, like freshman-level stuff.

And then there's the art class. Having to write case briefs and a 20 page senior thesis paper is quite annoying, but neither of these things have actually driven me to the point of rage as of yet. Art class, on the other hand, has.

I'm not lying or exaggerating: with the possible exception of one other guy in the class, I am the single worst student there. Everyone else just goes ahead and makes these amazing sketches of cow skulls (which is pretty much all we've drawn in the class so far) whereas I keep spewing out these sh*tty doodles of the same. I've done it over and over and over and over and over again, and I'm not getting a lick better, whereas everyone else apparently is. And apparently, it's even harder whenever you try it with a brush and ink, but for everyone else the change in tools just seems to raise the quality of what they're drawing.

Again, it I fail this class then I'll have to do another whole semester. But there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to keep from failing. Soon enough the teacher's inevitably going to lose his patience with my near-total lack of progress and then he's gonna start marking me up, until finally I'm gonna get awarded an F. It's not as though I'm not trying, but...

Albeit with a strict burden of proof, if it can be proven that a person levied a false sexual assault charge in court that person ought to be charged with a felony crime with a sentence of equal severity to that for sexual assault, and put on a sex offender blacklist upon release.

Whenever Oprah's finally got her two terms in, people've long forgotten the anti-Trump outrage incited by the leftist propaganda machine, and the Dems are scrambling to find somebody to fill her shoes, I'd gladly vote for this man as the GOP nominee in 2028.

It's pretty straightforward. Jesus is considered by Christians to be part of the Trinity, which is the triune manifestation of God. Thus, Jesus is God. As God created man, man owes God his allegiance, worship, adoration, and servitude. To describe this relationship, the old term "Lord" is used, a reference to the Medieval relationship between a large landholder and the serfs who worked, subsisted off of, and resided on his land, who were totally subject to the authority of that person, who was their Lord.

It should be noted that the first English translations of the Bible, derived from earlier Latin translations which for God used the term "Dominus" (trans. "Lord"), happened during a time when such feudal arrangements were commonplace.

I woke up in the middle of the night to what sounded like an archaic horned instrument...my first reaction was to check the bedrooms to make sure nobody had disappeared or whatnot, lol.

Alright, since "SupaDudz" is kind of a lame name for a character, and especially for a serious work, would you mind disclosing your real first name, or is that something you're not comfortable with?

I might be interested, but a few questions:

1. When does it start? I already got one idea for a short story but it'll definitely take me longer than 48 hours to write, so I'd have to begin early.

2. Can it just be about whatever I want? Or are we gonna be restricted to a particular topic or theme?

3. How many stories are we gonna have to write?

4. Would we be required to include users of this site as characters in the fics?

Well, if the average employee and small business owner suddenly had one million dollars, probably 2/3rds of them would just cease everything work-related and spend the next 5-10 years living off that sum. In the blink of an eye you'd have catastrophic shortages in almost every basic good and service required by human beings. The result would be utter chaos.

If you just give people a butt ton of money out of nowhere, they're gonna blow right through it, because they didn't earn it and thus have a lesser ability to appreciate its true value. And in the long term they'll be even worse off.

And as other people have pointed out, to print that much money would result in hyperinflation. The current GDP per capita is about $50,000. 50,000x20=1,000,000. So it stands to reason that from that point on the average good would be 20 times as expensive. Buying milk at the store would cost $50. After you used up your million bucks, you'd find it extremely difficult to afford anything on a normal salary (assuming all establishments where you might possibly find employment haven't already ceased to exist). A new car which might cost $10,000 today would be $500,000 under this scenario, or more expensive than a reasonably large and nice house (which can often take decades to pay off).

Libya was good for us, because Gaddhafi was a loose cannon who flirted with nuclear weapons. Syria was a failure because ultimately Assad didn't go anywhere, but at least it distracted Hezbollah from the matter of Israel and in turn helped to erode their reputation among Muslims (before, Muslims everywhere could get behind them simply because they're so anti-Israel; but now they're in the thick of a blatantly sectarian conflict, defending a Shi'ite government against Sunni rebels). Both were bad in that they sparked refugee crises, which lessened Europe's security and sparked a new wave of right-wing populism on the continent.

To be fair, this was right after we withdrew from Iraq. Obama was extremely reluctant to get the US involved in another war so soon, so of course it made sense to use ostensibly pro-democracy insurgents to do the dirty work for us.

By the end of Obama's term, oil prices were at their lowest in a long time (thanks in part to the increasingly prominent oil industry in the US) and employment was at its highest since the Great Recession. Economic growth was slow but steady. He wasn't hardline on immigration (for obvious reasons), but apparently he did help stymie and contain the rate of illegal immigration.

And also to be fair, even if you disagree with Obama's policies he had a lot of class. He was a good role model, and he was very presidential in his conduct throughout his presidency. There's no evidence to suggest that he was corrupt.

On the downside, his statements on BLM and the shooting of Trayvon Martin served to empower hooligans and other malcontents, shown by the crime spike starting c. 2014 after a decade and a half of declining crime (even if the goal for which these statements were made, ending disproportionate and supposedly unjust police brutality towards blacks, was a noble one). This opened old wounds in regards to race and paved the way for Donald Trump. When he left office, America was more divided than it was when he took office.

Likewise, his foreign policy gave the impression to our geopolitical adversaries that America was a power in decline, and especially starting in 2014 countries like Russia and China began to do all they could to undermine the international order. It could very well be argued that the 2016 Russian interference in the US election, as miniscule as it ultimately was, might not have happened did Obama take a harder line against Putin.

The "crown jewel" of the Obama Administration was probably the PPACA. There is no clear consensus at this point on how well this extensive healthcare reform package worked out, or whether it'll even get the chance to do so (thanks to Trump). Another was the Paris Agreement, which probably wouldn't have accomplished much and in any case is irrelevant now that Trump withdrew from it.

I think it's fair to say that the Obama administration was a mixed bag. He did some stuff right and some stuff wrong.

I'm just apathetic and irrelevant enough here to be considered a neutral party, and I can confirm that I've heard Zeichen on the Hangouts before. She's neither a man nor YYW, and it's 99℅ likely that she has never committed a felony crime in her life, much less murder.

The brain is a muscle. Like with actual muscles, some people got the genes for a more "athletic build" than others, while some people are predisposed to be less fit.

However, it is my belief that hard work can overcome any such barriers, within reasonable limits. I would go so far as to say that even a guy with Down Syndrome could eventually build himself up to the point of quickly performing advanced mathematical calculations or computer programming, should he/she be willing to put himself through the sheer hell needed to develop his or her mind to that fine point. That's to say, it's all about using what you've got as efficiently as possible.

That is to say, it's harder but not impossible. Of course, people don't really like to work extremely hard, so most, perhaps the overwhelming majority of people with lower IQs end up living like one would normally expect from dumb people. Oftentimes the only hope for these people (perhaps including myself) is that somebody comes along and makes them put in the work needed to perform highly.

*overrepresented

In regards to post #22, however, the Jews are not recorded as having committed idolatry since their return from the Babylonian Captivity. Likewise, they were not recorded as having slacked off significantly in regards to the Mosaic Law. Likewise, there were no new prophets who came along and condemned their practices; probably the only exception would be Jesus, who condemned them for rejecting Him. If anything, they remained faithful to G-d over the course of the nearly 1900 year diaspora, and of course throughout the Second Temple Period. So what did they do that G-d should punish them with the Holocaust? The Medieval and early modern pogroms? Or were these meant to try to spur them to return to Israel?

Likewise, Jews today are almost certainly less likely to be observant and more likely to, say, be promiscuous than the Jews who lived 200 years ago. Heck, a lot of ethnic and cultural Jews today are in fact atheists. And yet those Jews today enjoy political independence and sovereignty in Israel (or at least have the possible option of moving to Israel) whereas the Jews 200 years ago did not.

Finally, I would like to add that Jews today appear to be more prosperous on average in the West, where they're vastly underrepresented among lawyers, economists, artists, political theorists and philosophers, etc, than in Israel, where GDP per capita is only about $40,000, though this could be skewed by a large, poor Arab population.

Classical Polytheism assumed the existence of a number of finitely powerful "gods" who each served as a personification of some unexplained or imposing natural occurence or geographical feature. To these beings was attributed the power to shoot lightning bolts or whatnot, and the way that they were described suggested that there was a clear upper limit to what they could do and what they could withstand. They frequently exercised their wills in a manner contrary to those of other gods, so it could not be said that they were all different manifestations of the same otherwise unknowable monist Deity, since the end result would be a being which arbitrarily shot itself In the foot squabbling with itself over stupid crap.

In short, the classical understanding of polytheism simply makes no sense in the modern era. A polytheist seeking to advocate for his position would have to describe a feasible alternative way of understanding the concept.

Holy cow, I thought he said he could have up to five more years to live. This just came out of nowhere.

Okay...? Why does this matter? Somebody like him will never be in a position to act on his convictions in regards to how gays ought to be treated. The overwhelmingly Christian USA did away altogether with the death penalty for homosexuality in the mid 19th century. There's zero evidence to suggest that modern Christians as a whole are in any way, shape, or form more hardcore than their 19th century ancestors.

-Is Sheol in Judaism equivalent to Hell in Christianity?

-What is the purpose of man? For what was he created?

-Is there an end of days in Judaism? Or do Jews merely look forward to the eternal continued existence of the nation of Israel? Do Jews believe that their nation is destined to one day assume some kind of superpower status? Do Jews believe that eventually the rest of the world shall look to their success and adopt their faith in G-d?

-What is the orthodox Jewish position on the Messiah?

-How would Judaism handle modern issues with no equivalent in the Torah? Can the writings of, say, Isaiah be used to help establish precedent? Or is the Mosaic Law the only thing that can be reliably drawn upon? Are there books in the Christian Old Testament that are no longer considered canon in mainstream Judaism today?

And now, there's this article by Matt Bai, displayed prominently on the Yahoo news website and also not marked as an opinion piece.

The tone, rather than merely speculating on what might happen from this point out, is quite blatantly anti-Trump, accusing him of, among other things, having a Caligula-esque personality.

At one point he inadvertently acknowledges the truth we've all known: what liberals really want, far from being patriots who only want justice and rule of law, is to call into question the legitimacy of Trump's election and presidency. And yet he still has the audacity to say that Trump is the "bully" here.

Any economic benefits to mass immigration are temporary. After a certain point they'll be numerous to tip elections in the favor of the Democratic Party, and after that they'll just start siphoning off all our national resources for themselves.

At the gym near my college today I sat down and ate a sandwich, and right there was a TV playing Fox News. The woman on there appeared to be ripping into Trump over Cohen. And at the time of writing on the Fox News website the thing most prominently displayed presently is about Manafort. So the idea that they're flat out ignoring or trying to downplay the story is preposterous.

A lot of people try to downplay Left-Wing media bias by pointing to Fox as a kind of "whataboutism". But in practice they're not nearly as bats**t crazy as a lot of people try to make them out to be.

Even if there was somebody I wanted dead badly enough to act on it, venturing out to commit the deed would be extremely dangerous and I'd likely end up dead before I could even get to his house. And if that person were to successfully kill me in self-defense before I could do anything to him, not only would I have accomplished nothing and lost everything but I'd also be remembered as a bad person.

So no. I'd just retreat to an innocuous and remote hiding place with a loaded shotgun in hand and wait it out.

Hey guys, how about this:

I ought to devise a pseudo-history of mankind. Then when I'm done with that one I ought to make another, and then another, then another, and another, and so on. Then, I'll ask historians whether they believe in these stories I made up. Whenever they inevitably say no, I'll say "The overwhelming majority of historians reject the overwhelming majority of histories. Therefore, there is no history! Our species and planet don't have any past at all, and we ought to mock and discriminate against anyone who believes otherwise!"

To our military's credit, the Navy will be developing a variant of the Tomahawk (range: 1000+ miles) that can hit seaborne targets, which should serve to counter China's edge in IRBMs.

They've also upgraded the Sea Sparrow missile, which is Navy's defensive weapon of choice against anti-ship missiles.

This marks changes in their procurement policies, in which they now opt to upgrade existing platforms instead of designing new ones from scratch every time there is a need for further innovation to counter a new development in the capabilities of our foes. This should save considerable amounts of money and raise the overall cost-efficiency of the military.

I do not, for the same reason that I do not include the Huffington Post.

"Do you believe in the devil?"

 No.

"If so who or what is the devil?"

The Devil is a malevolent spiritual entity described in the Abrahamic Religions but especially Christianity. In Christianity, the Devil is an archangel of God who rebelled against his Creator, and in the process incited other angels to join his rebellion. He was motivated to rebel chiefly by pride. Either he wanted to directly usurp the glory and power due to God or he thought himself as wise as God and took issue with the way that God was running things. Either directly or indirectly he appeared to the woman in the Garden of Eden and incited mankind to join his rebellion against God.

The decision by the first human couple to disobey God's command meant either that they introduced sin into the world and caused their own offspring to be born sinful and in need of a Savior OR they rebelled because man was sinful from the onset. It can be assumed that Satan desires for humans to go to Hell because either he hates them for being created in the image of God (and perhaps is jealous of such a privileged position that humans enjoy), or because he knows that doing so serves to break God's heart, or because he's headed there and wants company, or because he doesn't want humans glorifying God, or perhaps all of the above.

"What effects does this being have on our world?"

As described above, but to elaborate further: Satan according to Christianity is active in the world today, either directly or indirectly, with the purposes of swaying the behavior of the masses and the governments of the world for the purpose of stifling the spread of Christianity and eroding it wherever it exists presently. While he has already been described in the Bible as the Prince of this World, in the end of days he shall assume total control over human civilization and direct all of its resources towards the eradication of the Church, but the return of Jesus shall put an end to his reign of terror and he shall be cast into Hell.

"Would this being mind, do you think, if we call it Stan for the purposes of this discussion?"

Were such a being to exist, I suspect he would be delighted that you treat all of this as one big joke.

One of the most valuable assets of a civilization is its dignity.

Dignity Ranking:

1. Western Europe/Wealthy East Asian Countries/Canada

2. United States/Australia/Israel

3. Russia/China

4. South America/Middle East

5. Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, which is at the bottom of the totem pole

Things that may serve to confer dignity:

-A long history of independence

-Material prosperity (most important)

-A fascinating traditional culture and for your country to have been around for a long time

-A strong military/high performance in wars

-A strong democracy and low levels of corruption

-A longstanding peaceful society

Things that may serve to detract from dignity:

-Having long been under subjugation

-Being economically underdeveloped (most important)

-Being a recently born "artificial" country (like, say, the Democratic Republic of the Congo)

-Underperformance in wars

-A weak or nonexistent democracy, and high levels of corruption

-A reputation for violence, civil wars, and coups

When a country has dignity, we human beings are more likely to give a crap whenever something bad happens to its citizens. That is, we actually place a higher value on their lives than we do on the lives of people from countries which lack dignity. This isn't fair, as nobody can help what country they were born into, but that's the way things are and, for all intents and purposes, have always been. Donald Trump said aloud about Haiti what a lot of people have long thought.

When a people lack dignity in the eyes of others, outsiders have lower inhibitions about imposing crap upon them. When a people do not perceive themselves as having dignity, they're less likely to resist when outsiders impose crap upon them. In a country that lacks dignity, the people of said country are less likely to work to maintain what they have. It encourages corrupt leadership.

Dignity in the eyes of others is something that must be worked for. It usually takes a minimum of several decades to build it up. Dignity in one's own eyes is much easier. The likes of Booker T. Washington, W.E. Dubois, the various great thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, MLK, and Malcom X helped the black community attain this. However, with the exception of MLK (though to be fair people before him laid the groundwork for his success), they failed to attain the long-term dignity of Black Americans in the eyes of outsiders. Blacks initially started out with no dignity, having emerged from centuries of enslavement. The quickest way to gain dignity would've been to become economically well off, but this didn't pan out. With the exception of Booker T. Washington, these various intellectuals failed to put enough emphasis on economic development.

South American republics used redistributive economic policies in part as an assertion of dignity, a declaration that "We have a right to not live in abject poverty and not take crap from rich people". However, as this usually served to erode democracy and prosperity, in the long term they were reducing their own dignity.

Russia has sought to increase its dignity though military might, but they're doing this instead of investing in a modern economy so in the long term they're going to end up quite undignified. Saudi Arabia has used oil to become wealthy and buy instant dignity for itself, but this hasn't translated into a viable modern, post-oil economy so 20-30 years from now they'll likely end up quite undignified also.

China has taken concrete steps to build up its dignity through economic development and a sort of faux pacifism that's lasted for decades, though under communist rule there is probably an upper ceiling as to how much dignity they can have, and in coming years they could erode much of what they've gained.

In this world there is a type of person who believes himself to be altruistic and deserving to be above the rules so that he can impose his "help" upon other people. This kind of person is in practice shallow and narcissistic, and he will only hurt those who he claims to be helping, since he is not actually a good person, his "charity" doesn't actually have altruistic motives behind them, and the fact of his dishonesty to even himself makes him unable to realize the damage he's causing. Rather, what he does is exploitative. For purposes of narcissistic supply he must be in control of everything, though he isn't near competent enough to run everything competently, and all the countless inefficiencies of this arrangement inevitably come to the surface soon enough.

Thus is the danger of overambition. That's why in a functional society national leaders understand the limits to how much they can accomplish for their people in the span of their administrations, the boundaries which they must always operate within, and the fact that they are ultimately insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and indeed replaceable, and not a lick smarter than their peers.

A blatant dictator can solve the problems of his country easier than a democratically elected leader in that he can simply force unpopular changes that are necessary.

An elected dictator cannot do this, nor is he usually interested in helping anyone but himself. This is arguably the worst form of government, second only to a dictator who outright desires to inflict harm. There was an Ancient Greek philosopher (Plato, maybe?) who predicted that all democracies would ultimately end with a lawless, amoral demagogue, resulting in an endless loop of Dictatorship-to-Democracy-and-then-back-again-to-Dictatorship.

It should be noted that all of this is contingent on a citizenry who lack discipline and fail to put in the work needed to maintain a Republic.

I suspect that what you want is an outright dictator who'll force the nation to reform and rejuvenate itself. A benevolent dictator. But a people who would try to vote in somebody like that usually end up with a dissolute and corrupt fellow over them.

Dictatorship simply isn't cool nowadays. Even a thug like Putin would rather have a veneer of democracy (thus, popular legitimacy) to his government. Under the new framework, master manipulators will rise to the top of the pack. These are men who know exactly what buttons to push to get the public to keep voting them in, no matter how unscrupulous their methods are. They rely heavily on the intelligence apparati of the government in their attempts to manipulate the public (such as to suppress unfavorable information), upon the promise of stability and national unity (especially in the face of an external threat, often conjured from thin air), and upon the ideal of themselves as the face of their country to the rest of the world.

This is simply an adaptation by old-fashioned strongman to the threat posed to them by the global export of democracy by the US. It's most likely to happen in countries that've fallen into the middle income trap and/or where there's an exceptionally strong sense of national pride, usually in countries that've existed for a very long time.

People can use nationalism as an opiate to avoid having to face the hard realities of their country, which in turn leads to social, political, economic stagnation and decline. History has shown that a country whose people were stupid enough to turn down hard work and gradual progress for the siren's lure of a messianic leader who'll fix all their problems in one generation will one day end up being remembered as a "s**thole country".

According to this source, about 1/3 of Syrian refugees are men ages 18-59. The majority of the refugees are male, constituting roughly 50-something to 60 percent of the refugees. However, many of these are minors. There are more women age 60+ than men 60+.

Source:

While the majority of Syrians in general are male, the natural gender ratio imbalance is small enough that it cannot possibly make up for this disparity.

As for young men being duty-bound to fight in their country's wars (or at least are not allowed to flee the way zone), I agree to this only so far as there is due compensation to them for this sacrifice (that is, they'd be regarded as heroes and they'd be able to find wives, should they survive). If a large number of women flee, that creates a gender imbalance, reducing the likelihood that there'd be any payoff in that regard for the men in question.

My younger brother and roommate for the past 15-16 years moved out of the house today.

I think a more helpful mode of comparison, rather than spelling out which group has more members that have resorted to violence (given that both sides at Charlottesville hated each other equally, it just as easily could've been a leftie who plowed his car into a crowd), we should ask which group puts a greater emphasis on violent action in its rhetoric (among its members), which is more willing to state (and believes) that violence is necessary to accomplish their aims and therefore justified, etc.

It's also helpful to ask what the end goal of either group is.

Alright. Thank you, and thanks airmax.

If somebody with at least one functional account on DDO could ask airmax to re-open my account, I'd really prefer not to have to create another email to make another DDO account just to ask that one thing from him.

So long as everything but their brains are functional (that is to say, their bodily functions are sustained by machines). That's what I mean. They are anatomically still living humans for the most part, so testing should yield results very similar to those that would be seen for actual living humans. Comatose isn't really what I meant, because people can and sometimes do wake up from comas and resume normal lives, and there is some evidence to suggest that comatose people can have a level of awareness of external stimulus (such as perhaps pain). I mean a situation where there's nothing left of their consciousness to be revived.

I wouldn't take the offer unless it was possible to "reset" my brain from time to time (which would perhaps entail resetting my memories), so that I wouldn't eventually become totally jaded and unresponsive from having exhausted myself in everything.

I had a thought: what if we used clinically brain dead people who had no hope of ever regaining consciousness? This obviously wouldn't work for, say, neurological drugs (such as antidepressants), but I'm sure the results would be more accurate than what we get from testing stuff on animals. Of course, this could only be done with people who donated their bodies to science ahead of time.

The big problem I could see stemming from this would be that there simply wouldn't be enough available bodies to substitute for the huge number of animals used every year for testing.

The following rule should apply with political public gatherings that turn violent:

The side which first gets the permit to hold the demonstration should be considered the innocent party if it's unclear who was the instigator in the clashes. In such an event, the second party (the counterdemonstrators) should be held responsible, since their presence is a challenge to the first amendment rights of the first party to assemble peaceably.

Good grief, somebody please update the edit feature. It only allowed for one time.