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Old 07-15-2018, 08:09 PM
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ebacon ebacon is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by donquixote99 View Post
Further, your painful gyrations I think are directly comparable to the pain that leads Trump supporters to the conviction that the mainstream press constantly lies about Trump. I don't mean to compare you to such people in general, I assure you, but I compare the mental pain and the class of mental event that elicit it, that is, something attacking a belief to which one is solidly committed.
Thank you. Politics is wickedly difficult to discuss. So difficult that sometimes I even forget why I wrote when I did. Thoughtful replies like yours force me to revisit my thoughts.

I do not have access to the data that bins people as Trump supporters. All I have access to is my vision of creating walkable neighborhoods and my memories of living in them to seed my internet searches.

The "eta" title that I gave this thread has a deep tap root. As an electrical engineer I am constantly worried about efficiency. The Greek letter "eta" is what engineers use to represent efficiency. We all want to be efficient. Right? That's a leading question. Don't answer it unless you want to.

When I started discussing politics here I gave it my best effort to paint politicians in good light. At the time my political antithesis were Al Gore and what I viewed as his black equivalent, Colin Powell. They both were focused on money as a tolerable substitute for truth. They made sense in a gawd-awful mess of "Visualize Whirled Peas" vs. "Who Moved My Cheese" bumper sticker kind of way, but I could not vote for their noisy mode of public discussion.

As I reflect deeper on my political leanings and pray for the best for America, I can't help but to tell a story that my dad told me about his experience in Vietnam. It is a story about efficiency in the most primal sense -- which is relying on the senses.

Eta?

Dad's only story of Vietnam is about being an artillery forward observer. His team mate was a smoker. One night they were in VC territory and living under their ponchos. The team mate lit a cigarette under his poncho and it lit up like a glow worm. Dad wanted to kill him. He wanted to kill his own.

That is anger. That is efficient war. The civil war of light.

Not of money. Money is an amplifier of bad ideas.

I'm rambling. Thank you, again.
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