If you want to know about the law, ask a legal expert.

It's funny because I feel like sometimes you put me in this position.

Yeah, feeling pretty hopeless about the future. (Even more than I was already)

When I took the fivethirtyeight personality quiz I got very high trust, middleish respectfulness and very low compassion. (lots of other ratings but those are the biggest I strayed society)

Not really any point other than we probably tend to think of others as like us but they aren't really.

I also think it's interesting what you'd get if someone you know well answered what they think you are.

I'm not sure how else that should be interpreted-- although anytime I ever wanted to argue abortion was set up to kill black people here I've been roundly criticized. WN wouldn't even let me do it in his forum.

I think the concept of “heroes” is both fundamentally flawed and very important at the same time. I think it’s useful and healthy to look up to certain people for traits, characteristics, and accomplishments that you like, respect, and wish to emulate. I also think it’s useful and healthy to look at situations where those people fell short, and learn from their flaws and imperfections. Basically looking at others as people like yourself, who can be shameful and imperfect and admirable in different ways and areas and at different times

What quiz are you talking about here? I took one with them and I was high on agreeableness and open to experience and low on extroversion conscientiousness and negative emotionality

Is it a different one or were you paraphrasing or going from memory on the category names?

Oh I see subtraits

I’m like the exact inverse - my compassion score was super high, respectfulness was pretty high, and trust was super low lol

Herbie, I just took that and apart from being significantly higher on negative emotionality, apparently you and I are the same person, although my extroversion score was middling.

What did you mean here?

That doesn’t surprise me

probably that he no longer thinks the democrats should “play by the rules” since the GOP doesn’t

Yeah, that one I was just doing that one subtrait. Also had really high intellectual curiosity, fairly high creative imagination, and almost zero aesthetic sensitivity.

And very very low on the negative stuff.

my 538 personality quiz says i think nate silver is a tool

Aesthetic sensitivity is clearly a social construct, no reason a sunset is more beautiful than a pile of poop or a baby screaming is less a musical masterpiece than 5th symphony

Lol

I didn't need a quiz to tell me that about you.

A+

This is hard to succinctly put into words, and any attempt I make will lose some meaningful and necessary context, but I will give it a shot

I think up until about 5 years ago I was under the impression that there were more or less a shared set of beliefs and values that most Americans had and were attempting to advance. There were individuals who fell outside of that sure, and there were plenty of cases where our leaders did not actually work towards those ends, but they all at least pretended to share them as well. The main differences between Democrats and Republicans seemed to come primarily in 3 areas - how those values applied to individual circumstances and cases, which of those values were most important generally and specifically, and which tactical solutions were more likely to achieve the ends that we all generally agreed upon. While this description is missing A TON of needed caveats and context, it was nonetheless the framework on which I believed, writ large, our country generally adhered to. Implicit in this was the belief that those people who I disagreed with on issues or more broadly were, by and large, arguing things in more or less good faith.

Over the past 5 years specifically (although this overstated the suddenness of the shift) I have come to believe/realize that this is definitely not true now and I am far from convinced that it was true before, although I think reality has shifted along with my perceptions to some extent. I think much of the tactical discussion is a front and a distraction, and I think many (perhaps most) of the arguments deployed by those I “disagree” with are borne of either deep ignorance or genuine deceit and deception and attempts to mask the fact that their true values, aims, and goals are nothing remotely like mine, and their attempts to cloak those aims in language that is generally palatable to people like me is more or less akin to a long con gaslighting and obfuscation of reality.

More broadly, I think more strongly than ever that division, strife, and turning both governance and our society into a zero sum game where you either “win” or you “lose” and you have to “pick a team” based not on your opinions about issues or tactics but based on some deep seated feelings and emotions about which “team” you want to identify with and then adjust your views and beliefs to fit your “team” rather than Vice versa is by far the dominant mode of making political decisions by individuals at this point

So when Birdman asks you “are they psychos?” And “wouldn’t you want democrats to do the same if the roles were reversed” and you answer yes and yes, to me that’s a perfectly consistent and not at all hypocritical answer despite the fact that on the surface it seems contradictory, but only if you consider things to be roughly balanced and of equal moral weight on each side. When you believe the other side is the enemy instead of someone you disagree with that kind of surface hypocrisy is inevitable, because it’s no longer a tactical contest but rather a question of morality and decency.

And despite typing up a much longer answer, no, it isn’t this at all. I’ve told you a lot over the past few months I don’t have any good answers and I mean it. Treating Democrats as though they are some kind of magic bullet by which all of society can be made right is superficial at best and hugely destructive at worst

If the Democrats simply “beat Republicans at their own game” that may very well be worse than letting Republicans win by cheating

I think Nate silver is a tool too but I can’t pass up a personality quiz, can someone link I’m not finding it

I think my point with fanmail was that he seemed to be suggesting the GOP were psychos specifically for trying to ram someone through. Obviously the GOP sucks but it’s not for trying to get one of their judges on the court.

If there was a political party I believed in and supported, and they were in power, I would want them to do everything they could while they had that power. Decorum be damned.

I think fanmail did originally mean that the GOP were “psychos” for trying to ram a judge through but then gave a snarky answer when he said “yes and yes” which no longer applied to the original meaning of his post that i responded to

”Quiz”

I have no idea what Fanmail meant by his answer or his original post, but when you asked your question it struck me just how meaningless I thought that kind of comparison based thinking was to me at this point. It’s really just an issue of how you do or don’t connect the various clauses in his previous post, but that element of the question wasn’t really interesting to me

I’ve kind of toyed around with making a pog politics quiz that everyone could take to see where you fall on the political spectrum

Better be better than the quadrant one!