Occupiers Celebrate 4th of July by…Burning American Flags and Vandalizing Police Property

reply to post by petrus4

I'm a lot of things - but focused isn't one of them :-)

No. If you want to accuse me of being narrow or closed minded, that is fine. I will seek to honestly evaluate that.

No - it wasn't an accusation. No need to look at it that way. It's not about being narrow minded - it's about the trap we all fall into of needing things to be decided before we can move on to defend what we already believe. You believe there are true, honest open Marxists - and then in the closet Marxists or Marxists in denial. I once heard a psychologist say: it's no use trying to second guess what someone is telling you. More often than not what they're trying to tell you is what they really mean. I'm on a conspiracy site - so, I can hear the laughter ringing in my ears as I write this...

Look at the photo I posted earlier though, Spira. I'm not just doing what Seabag is. I've looked at Occupy's websites. I've looked at takethesquare.net. I've seen video footage of Zucotti Park, some of which was recorded by an Australian man who was actually there, who I met with, while I lived among the hippie population in Nimbin for six months.

:-) you sound a bit like Jane Goodall... I know what you posted wasn't the same thing - but in the end, only you really know what you were going after. My only point is - you can accomplish so much more with your words. Some people either can't use words - or they won't. I'm sure they have their reasons

(The hippie population of Nimbin...has such a nice ring to it) :-)

As hard as I tried, however, I realised that I just didn't fit among them. The single main reason why, is because while I'm autistic and have been unemployed for most of my life, I've never completely been able to give up the dream of being normal. Of maybe even wearing a suit; and getting a job, and actually having a kind, non-psychopathic employer.

Well - there's a whole thread right there. What's normal? About the Freaks - some might be poseurs, but most people can't escape who and what they are. After that - it's just a matter of congregating. Suit or no, you are a free thinker - and a true freak. I hope you realize your dream - if that's what you really want. But no matter where you end up you'll still have your open and ever-questioning mind

I feel somewhat guilty about writing that, because they were very kind to me...

Why feel guilty? They're grownups and free people. They know who and what they are. Reasonable people - no matter what kind - are reasonable. They're comfortable with who they are. This allows them the freedom to let you - and everyone else - be who and what they are. We don't have to agree with someone to respect them or like them

The more I learn about Karl Marx and what he thought, the less I like him.

Karl Marx was a man. He was once a young man - same as Thomas Jefferson. Thinkers, dreamers - brilliant young men who see things they don't like and want to make things better. But they're just men with ideas

It's the rest of us that need to find a star and then hitch our wagons to it. We tend to idolize then hand over our thinking to someone that burns brighter than we can. Ideas can be interpreted and implemented by anyone. One idea can help people accomplish great things - or horrible, ugly things. Give it time, and with different people (or even the original person) in different circumstances the same idea can be both good and bad

Thus, the whole of human nature is not understood, as in classical idealist philosophy, as permanent and universal: the species-being is always determined in a specific social and historical formation, with some aspects being biological.

en.wikipedia.org...

The Republic is dead, at this point.

It's not dead - don't write it off yet. As long as people are talking about and fighting over it, it's still alive

My perspective on nationalism actually comes from engineering, not economics or politics. I'm a computer programmer, and when I want to write a program that is going to work well, I'm generally going to want to write something as small and as simple as possible. This is because simplicity has less potential points of failure, and also because as a human being, I can only keep so much information in my head at once. Let things get too big, and I become overwhelmed.

Do you have an idea how interesting that is? You've just given a beautiful example of why people can rarely look at the same thing and agree about what they're looking at - much less anything else

It takes all kinds - this is why I love our system - why I think it works, and will probably (hopefully) continue to work: en.wikipedia.org...