Looks like Trump has been shot

[MrJesterium]

As @"727Sky"#11 so frequently tries to remind us of Voltaire. I have three I would like to add to think about... It is a time to think, not a time to react.

I like the sound of that!

I wanted to weigh in on Trump being shot, but waited for things to simmer down first. Most just react to the news right away, few analyze the event, but I prefer to analyze the discussion itself.
From the news, we only what know what most people know, which is practically nothing. This has been my approach to the Ukraine and Palestine conflicts: everything I write is in reaction to what someone else commented about it.

For 727Sky, I'd recommend reading humanist Georg Brandes' biography, he accounts for the social conditions in the 17-18th century and is the most representative, emphasizing Voltaire's ideas. (I've also sampled his biography for Shakespeare, Brandes' consistently adheres to the facts.)

If it wasn't for the number of people ready to lay down their lives for him, and the number of innocents that will be harmed because they trust a system that is corroded, corrupt, evil, and sees them as useless pawns, it would be almost comedic.

This realization seems like the best starting point for any free-spirited American, question is, how can we help the others see the absurdity of this situation?

I recently dug up this old quote while reading Gertrude Stein's book: "It is funny, this business of being right. Everybody wants to be right, even the one who said he would rather be right than president. It is so natural to say 'and I was right, was I not?'"

I have seen the ugly coming out of both sides. I see nothing promoting unity. I just see the divide getting wider, and the behavior becoming more aggressive, and bold.

Every situation comes with a positive side, we musn't look for ugliness everywhere; it's what led Luther to make his tragic mistake.

"Instead of grasping, with profound thanksgiving, the miracle that had taken place: the conquest of Christianity at its capital—instead of this, his hatred was stimulated by the spectacle. A religious man thinks only of himself." (Nietzsche)

"If given more time, I think the Church would have reformed from within. Erasmus had about the right ideas and he was offered a cardinal's hat before his death, though he refused it." (Alfred North Whitehead)

Instead we must focus on what attracts, unites, and builds up; meditate on these things daily, and you'll start noticing it everywhere.

Weishaupt wrote in Diogenes Lamp about how different the world would look if we were strictly concerned with the continuation of human existence, the preservation of the species:

"What a gathering-place of delight this Earth would be, if this manner of thinking would only become the primary one for all humanity? For people of this type there would be no discontent... All our discontent results from our inability to see into the future."

Idolizing anyone is a bad business. It's religiously WRONG for Christian types to do so, at a minimum.

Idolizing is wrong, but whatever fosters admiration for another person is good.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk once observed, “These nice fellows take Communion fifty-two times yearly, have five or six hundred Masses said, and follow in all the processions,” yet did not understand the most basic principles of their faith.

Goethe: "Worship and love were the only things the good woman understood; disinterested admiration for a noble work of art, brotherly reverence for another human spirit were utterly beyond her ken."
https://books.google.com/books?id=ioXNoJ...&q&f=false

I am not mad at Trump. He has never tried to hide what he is. It is not his fault that so many people are insistent on making him what they want him to be and remain blind to what he is.

Jacque Fresco was once interviewed about how he managed to dismantle a KKK organization by befriending its leader, he repeatedly emphasized people project their values on others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WbZqFQFA-s

An American hiker once told me, "Most people have knee jerk reactions to any mention of Hitler's name, but they know nothing of him and they have never read a word he said. They don't even have any curiosity about something they claim to be passionate about. Their passionate hatred has no connection to any actual reality."

I felt the same about Gerald Ford. He didn't do a damned thing to help the country, but he didn't do anything to hurt it, either. He just didn't really do anything at all.

This is how Hitler actually viewed the Jews who remained in Germany, he accused them of not coming out into the open with their views against their tribe, they only behaved acceptably insofar as they abstained from aggression. Wagner also got upset with his Jewish friend Berthold Auerbach about not accepting an invitatation from his friends to openly publish his views about Wagner's poems which had been ignored by the establishment.

These anecdotes illustrate how inaction, neglecting one's duty, can be just as harmful as actively combating new ideas.

"Man thinks, feels, acts, wishes, enjoys unceasingly; he has daily a hundred opportunities of doing right: if he make good use of them, it is his merit—if he neglect them, his fault. But worse than the neglecting of good, is the doing of evil;" (Justinus Kerner)

"In estimating the value of India or Greece, we compare the good with the evil. In estimating the value of Christianity, we set the evil aside. We set things aside without knowing we are doing so; that is precisely where the danger lies. Or, which is still worse, we set them aside by an act of the will, but by an act of the will that is furtive in relation to ourselves." (Simone Weil)

“And by spiritual life I do not mean just setting aside one hour of one day of one week for worship, but to seek the things of the spirit every moment of every day. I ask you, then: What did these people do to seek spiritual enlightenment and rapture? Did they just give in to a life that was little more than work?” (Tom Brown, Jr.)

It's a sad fact of life that only narcissists even WANT that thankless job.

I think that's because we make life difficult for those who want to officially help, I remember reading a comment once about how decent people who entered into politics felt discouraged or hardened by people's unreasonably high expectations for them. Because people forget politicians are still people.

When I was reading up on this discussion, a few commenters pointed out that their politicians seemed very much like themselves when they weren't putting on a show:
https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOB/comments/1..._the_scif/

Only people seeking power for themselves will seek power at all. One has to be a narcissist to think they know what is better for other folks than those other folks know themselves.

Not necessarily. Stalin was an exception, he sought power not for himself, but for his revolution, he was once called "man of the idea."

According to Stalin's interpreter Berezhkov, Stalin "amazed everyone with his ostensible modesty and total lack of desire to impress. Unlike Hitler, Stalin thought that if his limitless power over millions of his subjects was evident, there was no need to advertise it."

Of Hitler, Ernst Hanfstaengl said he "did not make a revolution to acquire power, but acquired power in order to make a revolution. It was a process which very few people foresaw."

Stalin once told Khruschev, "You are blind like young kittens. What will happen without me? The country will perish because you do not know how to recognize enemies." Incidentally, he also called Hitler a kitten, Berzehkov asked, "He could have called him a hyena or a jackal or some such other offensive word. Why a kitten?"

Recently, there was a dream shared about Trump being cast as a Jackal in a new movie, what are the odds? https://old.reddit.com/r/Dream/comments/...ootopia_2/