He's not incompent, illiterate or clueless but he's spot on about his other traits. And @Xandrith in this world money is the means to force and resource control, which is power, and " power" is how you control humans. So do I trust power? Not at all. Edited for Xandrith
I'm of the opinion that armed populations don't prevent tyranny, it's just post hoc. The Jews of Germany made up less than 1 percent of the country's population. I find it kind of ridiculous to suggest firearms would have made them less vulnerable to tyranny when the German population mostly supported/tolerated systemic anti-semitism and persecution. Armed populations really only work in organised, able-bodied, well-trained militias. Sure if every Jew was a Bielski partisan, that would have made the Germans lives hell, but that's not realistic. Most instances of armed resistance by the Jews in WW2 resulted in them getting ****ed, and their defiance was little more than symbolism. If the Polish and French armies couldn't stop the ****'s, how are a rabble of Jews with shotguns or pistols meant to? They clearly had no qualms about killing civilians. The armed pockets of resistance in the Armenian genocide also got ****ed, bar Russian and French interference. If guns could have stopped Mao's purges, they would have during the civil war in which he rose to power, same goes for Stalin , and Pol Pot, so on, so on. Armed resistances even spurred later atrocities on in Guatemala, they didn't protect the people at all, it worsened it. Tyranny doesn't just happen, it mostly seems to emerge from sets of socioeconomic conditions which unite the populace with the tyrant, or divides the people, and divided populaces don't really stand a chance against military states anyway. I think tools like censorship and legislation regarding wealth/industry/education are much more instrumental in creating tyranny than gun control. Impoverishing people seems much more effective than disarming them. Look at places in the Middle East with high gun ownership per capita, not exactly free states, or Syria with its many many militias. Does this perceived self defence reduce their vulnerability to tyranny? Or does it just add to it? I think it's a complex question that shouldn't just be dismissed. This probably comes off hostile or pointless, but that's not the intention, I just find it very interesting to think on whenever people cite the Holocaust in the same context as gun control.
There is alot of evidence to suggest that Jews are responsible for the Holocaust of the Jews. If your confused what I mean by this, it's important to remember there are ethnic or "Hebrew Jews" and then Jews of varing other ethnic backgrounds. That kind of puts a spin on your entire post wouldn't you say? PM me if you wanna discuss this more
I would imagine that you understand that the idea of "resource" is one that we absolutely cannot escape from. There will be things that have value because we need to value certain things over others to survive. Hierarchies of value are both inherent and necessary to our existence. Okay, so now that we have that laid out, I'll ask you this. What is the difference between "Money" or currency, and resources? Isn't controlling a resource the same thing as controlling money IF controlling money controls resources? And more than that, in what way is the control of resources, even a lot of them, even a ton of them, attributed to absolute power? I think it's fair to say that money, because it is essentially the same thing as a valued resource, and therefore because it is necessary to our existence (or any form of currency), that money cannot be called inherently and absolutely powerful or evil. I would also say that absolute power simply doesn't exist. Sure, someone with more resources probably has more "power" than you, but do they have absolute power? I don't think that assumption is warranted. So, if you want to say that you don't trust "power" in general, then sure, I can understand that. However, so say that money, and therefore valued resources, are the source of absolute power and evil, just doesn't add up. To put it simply, I think that resources can be used in any the person who has access to them wants, and that it's up to the person, not to the money. After all, the saying goes: "The love of money is the root of all evil." Which is a very different sentiment than if you were to erase the first three words of that sentence. Also, since I like talking about this stuff... A lot of people tend to think that the accumulation of resources at the top is a result of a broken system that rewards sly individuals who are willing to anything in the name of money, and that they didn't fairly get that many resources. While it may be true that a willingness to do anything to secure more resources is an advantage (which isn't obvious because tyrannical and socio/psychopathic institutions are incredibly unstable and tend not to stay at the top very long) it's absolutely not true that the top 1% holds almost all of the resources solely because of injustices they or the systems committed. This distribution (called the Pareto distribution in graphing or the Matthew principal in economics) is something of a natural law. It's true for literally all creative production. Almost all goals scored in hockey are scored by the same few people. Of all composers, a few of them are listened to the most, and of those top composers songs, only a few of them are listened to almost all of the time. Hell, it's even true for the mass of stars. A relatively few number of stars hold almost all of the mass among stars in the universe. The reason for it is something like this. Opportunity compounds. As a star, the bigger you get, the larger your gravitational pull, right? And the larger your gravitational pull, the more likely it is that you will assimilate other stars or planets or asteroids or whatever. Then your mass increases, and your gravity increases, and so on. This phenomenon has been around for... well forever. Extreme inequality is just a natural occurrence. The problem comes when people are born into or enter such extreme poverty that there's now way out. They stack up at zero, and even though opportunity compounds, zero times zero is still nothing. So, we need a way to help those people. Past that, I think as much equality of opportunity as possible is our best bet. Okay I'll stop.
I think that the best defense is one that you never have to use, and I think that it's absolutely effective as a deterrent. Whether or not you can win against the armies of the state isn't really the point. Whether we win or lose with our guns, we 1) had a chance (most would take death over enslavement and no freedom after having experience it) and 2) probably deterred a lot of ideologically possessed people from arbitrarily supporting the state. Like you said, the emergence of tyranny, as illustrated by history, is often the slow and creeping acceptance of self deceit through the acceptance of one small lie after another. If the government is beholden to the rights of the people BY the people themselves, then I think it is a lot less likely for this tragedy to take place from the get-go, as the people are steering the boat guided by unchanging ideas. Honestly though, I think the threat of a tyrannical government, while relevant, is the weaker of the two schools of thought in regards to pro-gun arguments. I think the statistical data of how many crimes are stopped yearly by people with guns (anywhere from 500 thousand to 2 million, a statistic that doesn't even count events where the gun was never fired and only brandished) is much more relevant.
I'd agree with that, the tyranny argument relies too much on this sort of instantaneous false dichotomy of government versus people for me to agree with. I think the emphasis belongs elsewhere in that discussion. The latter argument is definitely more relevant.
1.Water 2.Food 3.Shelter These are the most basic tenants of Human survival. To ensure all 3 of these criteria for living are met, a human MUST use resources in order to obtain them. Money is a means of trade to gain these resources in exchange for a resource. So yes, I'll agree in this day and age money is essentially a resource and not inheritly evil. I used absolute incorrectly, which is rare for me. I was simply trying to prove a point, and that point is that those who control the means of trade, or money, have power over those who control less. I'm not arguing that this is avoidable or overcomeable. In a world corrupted by "sin" or rather an imperfect world, of course it's unavoidable. Like you said, it's the way of this tainted universe. I merely wanted to drive home the point that I do not trust individuals in political postions that have power over the people poltically and financially. I just don't trust money. Like yes I know why crocodiles exist and have purpose in this world, but that doesn't mean I'm about to go jump in a croc infested river lmao. Let' have a live chat about this soon, I believe it will be easier to discuss.
Smart people make things complicated, smarter people make things simple; but simple does not always mean digestible. Stupid or otherwise intellectually impaired people will still (likely) be unable to understand the simple version of things, as they lack the necessary conception of the building blocks used in the simple version. Or will read whatever they already hold into what is was said.
I think you're right, but I find that only to be the case with extreme examples. I work at Walmart (evil capitalist Walmart employs a ton of mentally impaired people) and one girl I work with laughs uncontrollably at almost everything, and when she doesn't, it takes her about 30 seconds (not kidding) to process any given sentence you throw at her. She'll just stare at you for a really, really awkward amount of time. However, I've found that it's still possible, with near perfect word choice, that I can have a conversation with her and get my ideas across well enough for her to understand what I'm asking for and what I mean. If I can make my ideas digestible to her with enough patience, I think one could do that for almost anyone, and I think that's a goal that everyone should set for their speech.
Oh yeah no question - you can totally make it digestible, that’s part of the challenge though; the smarter you are the more likely it is you think that what you’re boiling it down to is bite-sized, but usually isn’t. I work with African and Arab immigrants and we can have very interesting and enlightening conversations because of the limited vocabulary we can use. Just the other day this guy Joseph and I were discussing the migrant crisis, and he tells me in impeccably broken English “French? Iss Dead. Germany? Iss Dead. No baby. African, many baby!”