War Room Lounge v64

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I actually agree with this line of thought moreso in its description of conservatism than religion. In my experience the preponderance of reasonable believers are doing something like leaning onto one side of an uncertain proposition. It's a firm belief, sure, but it's one that sits in a hole of uncertainty, where the believer weighs that uncertainty as more than what we know, or worse, more than *everything we'd be able to know*. So when you throw evidence against that proposition their way, it merely disappears into vast, gaping(!) hole of uncertainty. This also correlates with resistance against such "historical" sciences, which lay down a set of facts against a blank canvas of everything we don't, and some of what we can't, know about the past. The issue is that the blank space of the canvas is much more expansive than the puzzle pieces of knowledge.

The conservative doesn't have a similar void to depend on - especially in the information age, it's a pretty radical proposition that there are aspects of the natural or social world that are enclosed in an impenetrable boundary that can't be known. The central problem for the conservative is that he doesn't want or need to know anything new, not because it can't be done, but because doing so would alter a preferable set of circumstances. Hence the boundaries around his belief system have to be asserted, rather than just taken for granted. That produces a lot more rabid, defensive behaviour.
This is incredibly weird considering the regularity with which conservatives dip into uncertainty (or rather the lack of knowledge or denial of knowledge) to defend these hard boundaries...they're saying they are right because nobody can know, and not just that their guess is as good as any, but not knowing is a positive thing because it forces you to believe despite not knowing- the so-called virtue of faith. It's entirely broken and incoherent and nearly incapable of accepting the truth beyond the imaginary bubble. But the cognitive dissonance is not a problem for them because - and this is where I think you have it wrong when you say it's not particularly a religious belief description - faith trades on the currency of that uncertainty. It's all faith-based thinking, both the conservatism and the religion. It's nearly the same thing.
 
Speaking of Africa, I'm surprised the Ebola outbreak isn't bigger news.
I think it has pretty much come, peaked, and is starting to be on its way out now (?), and very little news yeah. If we had another case in the US like last time I'm sure it would be big again. I swear it's going to catch in Florida one of these days, and I'll have mixed feelings about that.
 
I think it has pretty much come, peaked, and is starting to be on its way out now (?), and very little news yeah. If we had another case in the US like last time I'm sure it would be big again. I swear it's going to catch in Florida one of these days, and I'll have mixed feelings about that.


this is from the Ebola thread in the war room forum:

The Ebola virus has spread to a new area

The yearlong Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has spread to a third province, health officials said.
Two new patients, a 24-year-old woman and her 7-month-old child, tested positive for the virus in the Mwenga area of South Kivu province on Thursday night. They fell ill after returning from a visit to Beni in North Kivu province, the epicenter of the current outbreak. The mother has since died, and her child is receiving treatment, according to a statement released Friday from Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's National Institute for Biomedical Research and head of the country's Ebola response team.

Officials have identified dozens of people who may have been infected by coming in contact with the woman and her child. They will receive the experimental vaccine that has been used to inoculate some 200,000 people in the outbreak zone, according to Muyembe.

A third Ebola case was confirmed in the same area of South Kivu on Saturday, according to the latest data from the Congolese health ministry and the World Health Organization, the global health arm of the United Nations which last month declared the current outbreak an international emergency.


Since Aug. 1, 2018, a total of 2,877 people have reported symptoms of hemorrhagic fever in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's eastern provinces of North Kivu, Ituri and now South Kivu, according to the latest data. Among those cases, some 2,783 have tested positive for Ebola virus disease, which causes an often-fatal type of hemorrhagic fever and is transmitted through contact with blood or secretions from an infected person. An average of 81 new Ebola cases are confirmed each week.

The ongoing outbreak has a case fatality rate of about 67%. There have been 1,934 deaths so far, most from confirmed cases of Ebola, according to the latest data.

The vast majority of cases have been concentrated in North Kivu, specifically around the northeastern areas of Beni, Butembo, Katwa, and Mabalako. There are currently no confirmed cases of Ebola outside the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
https://abcnews.go.com/Internationa...eastern-democratic-republic/story?id=65051770
 
I think it has pretty much come, peaked, and is starting to be on its way out now (?), and very little news yeah. If we had another case in the US like last time I'm sure it would be big again. I swear it's going to catch in Florida one of these days, and I'll have mixed feelings about that.


thankfully ("thankfully") it's been contained to Congo. it hasn't spread beyond that.

but there are some startling stats.

only 1 in 4 believe the virus is real.
 
thankfully ("thankfully") it's been contained to Congo. it hasn't spread beyond that.

but there are some startling stats.

only 1 in 4 believe the virus is real.
A while back I heard somebody on NPR describing the local superstitions and denial they encounter when trying to treat it. It's really depressing, like a country full of Trump supporters.
 
A while back I heard somebody on NPR describing the local superstitions and denial they encounter when trying to treat it. It's really depressing, like a country full of Trump supporters.

HIV/AIDS also had a similar effect on many denizens of AFrica. many denied its existence, many others believed that it was purposely being spread by White folk. If I remember correctly there was conspiracy theory that the Gates Foundation was behind this.
 


Which one of you is this? @Sketch @Happy Man @Stoic1


Although this is old, it's a timeless classic. I can't believe he stayed and tried for that long. The woman making banter with him while he tries to rip the sign is hilarious. I love how he walks away with it after because he is so ashamed and embarrassed.
 
Although this is old, it's a timeless classic. I can't believe he stayed and tried for that long. The woman making banter with him while he tries to rip the sign is hilarious. I love how he walks away with it after because he is so ashamed and embarrassed.

what happened to your sigs?
 
That's fine (I mean, I think it's irresponsible but I understand what you're saying), but you express a lot of vitriol toward the left, but I don't understand how that's seen as the main threat when we're facing this kind of barbaric right. The mental separation from reality by the right is why the economic recovery took longer than it should have (and why the economy took much longer and the economy got much worse in other countries), why we're not adequately responding to the threat from climate change, and why we're losing our status as the best country for immigrants, which will cause other problems. In other words, we're facing serious and concrete harm from the intellectual regression of the right. Meanwhile college students protesting fascist speakers or transgendered folks reading to kids or whatever right-wingers are freaking out about today does no harm to the country.
Well said. I have slowly become more sympathetic to certain concerns of conservatives but it hasn't altered my voting preferences at all. So for instance, I am not a fan of some of the excesses of the LGBTQ movement and I believe the integrity of the family is important to society. But that's not enough to convince me to vote for regressive taxation and climate denial policies.

And even on the issues that I agree with conservatives on I don't see how voting for the GOP would help. Will voting for Trump end drag queen storytimes? Does a GOP controlled Congress lead to policies that strengthen families? Not that I can tell so what's the point? The logic that culture war bullshit is a good reason to vote for the GOP is something that can only make sense if you don't give a single fuck about actual policy.
 
Bringing a duck call with me to work to quietly play with at my desk has been worth it.

We have a lightwell in my 5 story office building and I can clearly hear someone at least a floor above me going "anyone else hear a fucking duck?"
 
Bringing a duck call with me to work to quietly play with at my desk has been worth it.

We have a lightwell in my 5 story office building and I can clearly hear someone at least a floor above me going "anyone else hear a fucking duck?"
Outstanding lol
 
@Lead could you add @Broke Lester to the war room fantasy football league PM? He's our 10th and final member

I really appreciate you making that oversized pm for us, especially since you've been dealing with the nuisance of getting all the pms still that you're uninterested in and dealing with the annoyance of a unread message at all times
 
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