internationalist posted:

You see how confused the left gets when they're not willing to blame the people?

The people want to be lied to. If you don't lie to the people and tell them what they want then you don't get to lead them.

And I use the word "lead" loosely. They don't want actual leaders, they want people to tell them what they want to hear and look like them. Ralph Nader better not even waste the energy to dream of being elected because he never married and had a family. If you can't bang some broad and crank out a little one or two how are you gonna run the country? Doesn't make sense? Fuck you, people power!

So you have to pretend you're religious or the people believe you have no system of moral values. Religion is made up anyway so it's not like it has ever done anything to hurt anyone, it's the people who claim to represent religion who are the problem. If you're good then you're religion looks good, if you're not good, well lookie here, you're religion looks like shit.

animedad posted:
what a bleak and colorless rant. i just feel sad for his bitterness

thats how i feel about a lot of atheists

DRUXXX posted:

when i was like 12 i saw two magicians named penn and teller at the mount pleasant indian casino in mount pleasant, michigan. not even two decades later and now people actually base their opinions on Important Things on the word of one of those magicians.

what about adam carolla, star of Loveline and The Man Show

thirdplace posted:
it's all about drive, motivation, and charisma

hahaha whoa, wrong

thirdplace posted:
i think intellectuals/atheists seriously underestimate just how much powerful people can swoon for kooky mysticism, let alone vanilla religion. look at greek orgs/masonry (and if you don't think a large number of rich old fuckers don't take that shit very very seriously i don't blame you but you're still wrong)

intelligence and rationality have nothing to do with obtaining power in most structures (certainly not american politics). it's all about drive, motivation, and charisma, all of which can exist very comfortably with any manner of spirituality

Those who buy into that crap may be powerful but they aren't intelligent. Being educated is basically being anti-mystical. The only reason religious appeals are made at all by politicians is because they are useful to influencing dumb people to vote for them in a democratic system and everyone likes feel-good references to divine justice and forgiveness.

thirdplace posted:
now it is my turn to say "hahaha woah"

i'll say because i am familiar with it and it is certainly among the most important power structures in america, that in finance (again, putting aside as best you can the factors of privilege) that doing your job well is how you advance. and to do your job well, you have to be smart. charismatic people can skate by for a few years but end up deadended in their careers.

there's a myth that there are masters of the universe, larger than life personality types (and this is stoked by the financial press and the very targets of it) but it's really not the case.

isn't it not a stretch to say that people in banking, defense, media, etc., are very good at what they do?

Groulxsmith posted:
i'll say because i am familiar with it and it is certainly among the most important power structures in america, that in finance (again, putting aside as best you can the factors of privilege) that doing your job well is how you advance. and to do your job well, you have to be smart. charismatic people can skate by for a few years but end up deadended in their careers.

there's a myth that there are masters of the universe, larger than life personality types (and this is stoked by the financial press and the very targets of it) but it's really not the case.

isn't it not a stretch to say that people in banking, defense, media, etc., are very good at what they do?

when i replied to you i almost went with something around the lines of "but in a lot of business and especially politics charisma and drive are the merits" instead of the snarky one-liner; now i wish I had. makes sense that in finance it would be the way you describe, actually, just based on the metric of merit being "huge sums of money" which is both easy to measure and important enough to the decision makers to overwhelm something like charisma. but most fields are a lot more people-oriented than that. like, what does it take to succeed in politics? fund-raising, mostly, which only requires enough intelligence to not be an idiot; otherwise it's all about charisma. a lot of business is the same way--sure you need to make money, but the way you do so boils down to various forms of salesmanship. and in pretty much every field, skill alone isn't enough, the motivation to apply it needs to be there.

thirdplace posted:

christmas_cheer posted:
Those who buy into that crap may be powerful but they aren't intelligent. Being educated is basically being anti-mystical. The only reason religious appeals are made at all by politicians is because they are useful to influencing dumb people to vote for them in a democratic system and everyone likes feel-good references to divine justice and forgiveness.

imagine me scrolling up to BABY FINLAND's post and upvoting it after reading this

the kuffar have sold their souls to the devil, my bro

babyfinland posted:

thirdplace posted:
i think intellectuals/atheists seriously underestimate just how much powerful people can swoon for kooky mysticism, let alone vanilla religion. look at greek orgs/masonry (and if you don't think a large number of rich old fuckers don't take that shit very very seriously i don't blame you but you're still wrong)

intelligence and rationality have nothing to do with obtaining power in most structures (certainly not american politics). it's all about drive, motivation, and charisma, all of which can exist very comfortably with any manner of spirituality

they make this underestimation because it is applicable to themselves, and like all rationalist-positivists they assume everyone shares exactly their own subjectivity. these sorts of beliefs lie on a mountain of articles of faith but they are mystified by hand-wavey arguments and mythologies about science and such

well at least our arbitrary subjectivism does not rely on a narrow interpetation of certain etchnocentric cultural traditions. if atheism is a religion it truly is a universal one allowing for an immense variety in practice while encouraging personal judgement and appealing to each individual's sense of morality.