Was search for the Yanis capitalism/democracy post & returned here instead. Reading the article, i couldn't get past this near the opening:

>Karl Marx, a 29-year-old philosopher with a taste for epicurean hedonism and Hegelian rationality

Which led down a few rabbit holes... His dissertation was on Epicureanism, which isn't mere foodie-ism, and there were some interesting bits on hedonism in the mix. Quite a clever quip from Yanis...

edit to add a few leads:
http://epicurus.today/epicureanism-after-epicurus-the-influence-of-epicurus-on-western-thought/
(notes "Marx wrote his doctoral thesis on Epicurus. Marx saw Epicurus as a kindred rebel spirit. Thus Epicurus sought to overthrow the philosophy of Aristotle, just as the post-Hegelians — including the young Marx–rose up against Hegel." -- so maybe Yanis wasn't quite on point about Marx being rationally Hegelian? hm.)

This book looks super interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Swerve-How-World-Became-Modern/dp/0393343405

Also, this argues against the hedonism label:

https://np.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/1uvl9n/does_marxist_thought_promote_hedonism_does_it/cem7w8w/?context=3

Reading this, I was reminded of a passage from one of my favorite books (Shantaram):

> Justice is a judgement that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us. You can see, by what we have done with these two boys, that justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.

The Weimar Germany versions of the Koch brothers (whose father btw built a refinery for Hitler) were very unhappy with democracy. They liked the old patronage system under the Kaiser. They believed they could control Hitler and the Nazis and were all too happy to support him (if not officially) in order to get rid of democracy. Great books if you have time are Ian Kershaw's two volume biography of Hitler (Hubris and Nemesis).

Found one on amazon, not pink but close enough. I love the graphic.
https://www.amazon.com/Bernie-Bro-Shirt-funny-Sanders/dp/B07M5YHYB9?customId=B07HPWT5Z2&th=1&psc=1

FYI other good resources on the matter:

The Black Swan

Bailout Nation

>Why do you think he intimately understand the problems, in a way no one else does?

Well, it's mainly due to reading his book.


>It seems like a president without political experience is too much of a risk. It also seems like a president without experience would not be productive or effective

I think this would be balanced by a competent cabinet and VP.

Absolutely. And furthermore, let me say this: if they push me to the point where I feel the need to filibuster, I will take the opportunity to educate them. How? By reading books on the floor of the House like Guns, Germs, and Steel (so they understand better where we came from), The Black Hole War, Bully for Brontosaurus (so they understand a little bit about science), and Subliminal, so they know how the NRA and Fox News is killing their minds.

Read and learn

The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government by Former Congressional Staffer Mike Lofgren
https://www.amazon.com/Deep-State-Mike-Lofgren/dp/0143109936

I think you alerady made this point. Are you telling us that the same media that sold us "Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction" is any more credible than Russia Today?

Do you know that the US CIA had over 400 journalists on its payroll and they were working in every sector of the media?

Did you ever hear of William S. Paley and the role that the Pentagon and what Eisenhower came to call the "Military Industrial Complex" played in the establishment of the television media in the USA, circa 1950?

I don't imagine you do, or you might be a bit more skeptical about the Stenography corps.

Here is a short (very short since I don't have time to run a free education service) bibliography and reading list:

U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960 by Nancy E. Bernhard

Memorandum From the Executive Secretary (Souers) to the Members of the National Security Council

NSC 4

Washington, December 9, 1947.

//Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 273, Records of the National Security Council, NSC Minutes, 4th Meeting. Confidential. Copies sent to the President, the Secretaries of State, Defense, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, and the Chairman of the National Security Resources Board. For an early version of this document, see the memorandum from "REN" to Souers, November 25, and the two undated attachments (ibid.) in the Supplement.

COORDINATION OF FOREIGN INFORMATION MEASURES

NSC4-A
256. Department of State Briefing Memorandum0
Washington, December 17, 1947.

COORDINATION OF FOREIGN INFORMATION MEASURES (NSC 4) PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS (NSC 4–A)

I. Discussion

I really do need to read that. I recently read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow which is largely based on Epstein's work on dual processing.

I just checked out Tom Stafford's For Argument's Sake: Evidence That Reason Can Change Minds

>Are we irrational creatures, swayed by emotion and entrenched biases? Modern psychology and neuroscience are often reported as showing that we can't overcome our prejudices and selfish motivations. Challenging this view, cognitive scientist Tom Stafford looks at the actual evidence. Re-analysing classic experiments on persuasion, as well as summarising more recent research into how arguments change minds, he shows why persuasion by reason alone can be a powerful force.This is a collection of previously published essays, revised and expanded by the author, and accompanied by a previously unpublished introduction and annotated bibliography to guide further reading on the topic.Tom Stafford is Lecturer in Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Sheffield.

I have my doubts, but we shall see.

Are you open to the concept of psychogenic pain? I was in constant pain for 10 years until I read this book (Actually listened to the audio book). It cured me in about 6 months. (For me it was bodywide fibromyalgia & tendonitis, not back pain, but it was psychosomatic in origin)

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446557684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503681372&sr=8-1&keywords=healing+back+pain+by+dr.+john+sarno

The hardest part is getting yourself truly open to the idea


Someone made a Documentary about the doctor, he helped cure Larry David and Howard Stern of their chronic pain problems:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ3OL7dIbmg

I'm struggling to accept I just read that.

Do you think that because "political science" has the word "political" in it, you're free to ignore the "science" part, and substitute in "opinion"?

Serious question.

Because you just did the equivalent of telling a Mathematician that 5 + 5 = 10 is in fact a matter of opinion.

You just told a Geologist that alternating layers of rock containing organic material being sedimentary rock is actually subjective.

You just told an English professor that two independent clauses needing to be separated by a comma and a conjunction is open to interpretation.

The term "spoiler" is a fixed concept. It's not open to what you "think" it means. The arrogance in thinking so is astounding. A propaganda tool of donors? Are you fucking kidding me? The parties say it because it's a repeated pattern proven time and time again by political scientists like Gabriel Almond and Justin Buchler. I challenge you to read Gabriel's book Comparative Politics Today because it's a good introduction to comparative politics and its theories (to clarify, theories here being scientific theories, not your opinion.)

Political science is not a secret club where we all just spout our opinions on gun control. It's a literal science that dedicates time to studying how voters behave, understanding party actions, concrete cause and effect, international relations, and a host of other topics I doubt you never considered.

Bruce Bueno De Mesquita is a political science who turned international politics and nation reactions into a mathematical problem able to predict actions based on Game Theory as just one example.

And you're going to trounce all of that because, what, you don't want to accept it? You think Political Science is actually just a big conspiracy set up by Big Pharma?

You'll go and trash a Republican for refusing to listen to science on climate change but refuse to listen to science in politics because it disagrees with your view of the world all the same?

Go away.

He published a memoir last year, so I guess that took a lot of time. But he's definitely working on something.

Just the other day, I was curious about what he's been up to and looked up recent (like, within the last two years) interviews. There are some tantalizing clues. Like from the Washingtonian:

> Hersh acknowledged he wasn’t writing—sort of. “It’s complicated. The critics say I’m not working on much. How would anybody know that?” he said, annoyed. “It’s also a very complicated time to write stories, because the media’s never been so fixed as it is now—fixated, it’s just fixed. We’ve got the people we hate, the people we like, la la la—there’s no middle ground, it seems to me. So it’s a tough time to do stuff.”

> Unprompted, he brought up the President. “There’s no focal point for serious reporting. The New York Times is in an all-out war with Trump,” he said. “They’re playing in his little dirty box. It’s all tweet and counter-tweet. They’re not playing to the core issues.” He mentioned Trump’s latest tweet distraction—the President (again) calling on special counsel Robert Mueller to end his probe. “I mean, is it that hard to say, ‘Whew, let’s take a deep thought about this—maybe he wants us to jump on this story!’ ”

> (...)

> Shortly afterward, the phone rang. “Yeah. Uh-huh. What? Indicted?” Hersh chuckled. “What, are they all living in the USSR?” Earlier that morning, Mueller had charged 12 Russians with interference in the 2016 election. The indictment was detailed down to the keystroke, by far the clearest evidence yet that Putin had played us. But Hersh refused to buy the story. “Bullshit stuff,” he huffed, hanging up the phone. “This is the f—ing dumbest case you’ve ever made up in your life.” He went on, “I know a lot about Russia. I know a lot about this crazy story that’s going on—the whole notion that the Russians hacked and defeated Hillary. That’s part of something I’ve been working on, something like six or seven years.”

>“I’ve got a truck I want to drive through it,” he added. “It’s a comedy act.”

By definition, Cornyn is an anti-semite if he backs the BDS New Nazis. Supporting BDS is anti-Semitic since Israel is now the Jewish homeland for this tiny religious minority, and oftentimes you will find the anti-Israel and BDS sentiment expressed with anti-Jew racism and calls for implied genocide against the Jews. Polite criticism of Israel and its handling of Palestinian terrorism is not inherently anti-Semitic, but the BDS New Nazis and its sympathizers have taken it to such an extreme that it is clearly hatred of Jews.

Much of that anti-Israel sentiment is completely devoid of any context of how the Palestinians and Arabs have acted against the Jews in the past. It's also just assumed that the Jews invaded the land and took over as opposed to moving into and often purchasing unoccupied wasteland and terraforming it into productive land through blood, sweat, and tears, nor that the British were governing the area and designated the area for the Jews; that concept never even occurs to the anti-Israel people. You would think that many of the anti-Israel people never heard of The Mufti, the PLO, Palestinian terrorist attacks, or how the Arabs tried to or at least intended to genocidally exterminate the Jews in the 1940s and 1960s. That sort of willful ignorance by BDS supporters is anti-Jew.

They all need to read Exodus and The Haj, excellent historical fiction novels to expose themselves to a different perspective.