A Futile and Stupid Gesture: The History of the First Trump Presidency & Q-Anon

We all discard things we don't like, I discard conceptual art on this principal. Of course, there's things we don't like we have to confront, or do, but the motivation is always to remove it.

Probably wise on the conceptual art bit.
 
Housing Secretary Ben Carson calls poverty a 'state of mind'
"I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind," he said in an interview that aired on Wednesday.

You're not poor..you just think you're poor. It's like climate change.

Ben Carson is exactly correct. Poor people are poor because of their mentality, not to mention they're stupid and terrible at managing money.

If you need as clear an example of this mentality, watch the ESPN 30 for 30 called "Broke". How do so many uber millionaires end up broke? They have that poor person mentality.
 
Ben Carson is exactly correct. Poor people are poor because of their mentality, not to mention they're stupid and terrible at managing money.

If you need as clear an example of this mentality, watch the ESPN 30 for 30 called "Broke". How do so many uber millionaires end up broke? They have that poor person mentality.

But you're pretty poor too? Why don't you earn more money if you can simply change your mentality?
 
Housing Secretary Ben Carson calls poverty a 'state of mind'
"I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind," he said in an interview that aired on Wednesday.

You're not poor..you just think you're poor. It's like climate change.

Housing is interesting, from my own experience: the council housing (in general) in the UK built from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s was excellent build quality and reasonable size. This was a massive step-up for the working classes with inside toilets, central heating, gardens and proper bathrooms. Not to mention excellent sound proofing.

Now the private semi-detached estates built in the 1970's and early 1980's were much smaller, non-existence sound proofing, cramped, awful and yet....they were commanding 3 times plus the price of the ex-council housing stock. I could never figure it out, okay, who you put in there was an issue.

My uncle bought one of the last council houses to be built in my home town in the mid-1990s. They were built in the mid-1970s. Semi-detached, but massive and large gardens. A good 2/3 bigger and equal quality to my brother's house which was detached, but cost GBP 150,000 at the time, but my uncle's cost a third of the cost.

Well, it soon became apparent why there is a problem, despite the excellent housing the estate where my uncle lived which still included mostly council house tenants - i.e. the unemployed with large families - the place was like a war zone of an evening. Drug parties, feral youth driving through the gardens on motorbikes, my uncle decided to put his house up for sale soon after.

The reality was and is, it doesn't matter what you give to some people, they are still going to fall to their own level of cultural poverty. You could give them a million pounds and they would still end up pissing it all up against a wall.
 
But you're pretty poor too? Why don't you earn more money if you can simply change your mentality?

Why am I pretty poor too? You say strange stuff.

Changing that mentality is not that simple. Like it isn't simple to change a criminal mentality.

I can earn more money tomorrow if I wanted to, which is why I don't have the mentality Ben Carson is alluding to.
 
Why am I pretty poor too? You say strange stuff.

Changing that mentality is not that simple. Like it isn't simple to change a criminal mentality.

I can earn more money tomorrow if I wanted to, which is why I don't have the mentality Ben Carson is alluding to.

Because you're not part of the elite! Did you know it's a big club, and you're not in it?
 
I got my hands on Carson's original speech (nothing is safe from those leftist leakers!!):


Cash rules everything around me
C.R.E.A.M., get the money
Dollar dollar bill, y'all
Cash rules everything around me
C.R.E.A.M., get the money
Dollar dollar bill, y'all
 
Mentality is also partially a product of systemic poverty #culturalcapital #habitus

Because it's not just due to mentality. To take an extreme example, a child born in DR Congo will probably never be a billionaire, no matter his or her mentality.
Bitch shoulda been born upper class WASP. Not my fault, bad choices.
 
Or that mentality partially creates systematic poverty.

Agreed, it leads to systematic poverty, though I was speaking to systemic poverty.

Take 1,000 individuals (Group A) whose parents have graduate degrees, read books and watch the news, reinforce the importance education, and serve as evidence and a constant reminder that hard work pays off and compare that to 1,000 individuals (Group B) growing up in a dying factory town in Ohio with parents who provided or demonstrates none of that. In terms of habitus (mentality + some other stuff), the clearest effect of cultural capital is that a far higher percentage of Group A will believe that education is important, as they are regularly exposed to its positive outcomes, and that those outcomes are achievable, as members of their in-group have attained them. Additionally, they have parents and other role models which model attitudes and behaviors which result in success.

This does not mean everyone from Group B will be poor.

In sum:
1. Poverty at the individual level is a product of a number of factors (true at the collective level too).
2. One of those factors is mentality.
3. Mentality is partially a product of environment.
4. Successful environments are more likely to foster mentalities conducive to individual success.

I am not making any sort of policy argument based on that. It's just a description of how mentality mediates the relationship between different generations of the poor.
 
All the above is very well. But take any of us, with the exception of jungle trained special forces and throw us in with an un-contacted and in-bred Amazonian tribe and all of our IQ shit will fall silent. We will not have the intelligence to survive, that is, the intelligence that is needed to survive in that environment. Be it learnt or whatever.

That is the ultimate test: intelligence is culturally defined and very much only kicks in, as we perceive, when you're covering several bases of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
 
Agreed, though mentality =/= intelligence (though intelligence might be a part of habitus...it's been a long time since I endured Bourdieu). But yeah, we'd definitely lack the cultural capital to succeed or even survive. I do think that I've probably worked up a tolerance to blow darts.

*puts on glasses, developed a sinus infection, raises a finger into the air*

Maslow's hierarchy has largely been dismissed as lacking empirical support. Mwah

Also, I cracked up that that reporter that was assaulted straight up said "he broke my glasses!"
 
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Agreed, though mentality =/= intelligence (though intelligence might be a part of habitus...it's been a long time since I endured Bourdieu). But yeah, we'd definitely lack the cultural capital to succeed or even survive. I do think that I've probably worked up a tolerance to blow darts.

*puts on glasses, developed a sinus infection, raises a finger into the air*

Maslow's hierarchy has largely been dismissed as lacking empirical support. Mwah

Also, I cracked up that that reporter that was assaulted straight up said "he broke my glasses!"

Maslow's hierarchy is common sense: if you're enduring the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840's, you really have no time or capacity to appreciate Turner's Rain, Steam and Speed. You don't need any empirical evidence to back that up. A man who is starving has no time for art.
 
Maslow's hierarchy is common sense: if you're enduring the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840's, you really have no time or capacity to appreciate Turner's Rain, Steam and Speed. You don't need any empirical evidence to back that up. A man who is starving has no time for art.

In cases where common sense is correct, you find the expected relationship in reality.

I don't research motivation, but I believe that ERG theory, which builds on and addresses the issues with Maslow's hierarchy*, is more supported empirically.

Anyway, I was agreeing with you, just giving you a hard time over a very pedantic point. :-p

* I think the primary issues were that once one need is met, it ceases to motivate, that we can't be motivated by multiple needs simultaneously, and that there was no mechanism to explain compensatory attention to one need over another.
 
I am not making any sort of policy argument based on that. It's just a description of how mentality mediates the relationship between different generations of the poor.

Its a chicken and egg thing. Poor people are stupid, and you are likely to breed stupid kids, and stupid people have a poor mentality and are shit managing money.
 
Social determinants, health, poors
IMG_8044.webp
 
All the above is very well. But take any of us, with the exception of jungle trained special forces and throw us in with an un-contacted and in-bred Amazonian tribe and all of our IQ shit will fall silent. We will not have the intelligence to survive, that is, the intelligence that is needed to survive in that environment. Be it learnt or whatever.

That is the ultimate test: intelligence is culturally defined and very much only kicks in, as we perceive, when you're covering several bases of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

You maybe.
 
No, I am jungle trained so I would survive, but only because I would get in with the ayahuasca quaffing medicine man as the local eccentric nutcase.
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...d1a016-4230-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html

"Some White House aides have discreetly discussed among one another whether Kushner should play a lesser role — or even take a leave — at least until the Russia-related issues calm, but they have been reluctant to discuss that view with Kushner himself, and Kushner’s network of allies within the West Wing has rallied behind him. Those close to Kushner said he has no plans to take a reduced role, though people who have spoken to him say that he is increasingly weary of the nonstop frenzy."

Kushner may step aside!? Who will run the White House then? Preibus is heading to Greece. Bannon is hiding somewhere. Ivanka? I hope she has a blemish free record and didn't talk to the Russians.
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...d1a016-4230-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html

"Some White House aides have discreetly discussed among one another whether Kushner should play a lesser role — or even take a leave — at least until the Russia-related issues calm, but they have been reluctant to discuss that view with Kushner himself, and Kushner’s network of allies within the West Wing has rallied behind him. Those close to Kushner said he has no plans to take a reduced role, though people who have spoken to him say that he is increasingly weary of the nonstop frenzy."

Kushner may step aside!? Who will run the White House then? Preibus is heading to Greece. Bannon is hiding somewhere. Ivanka? I hope she has a blemish free record and didn't talk to the Russians.

Balderdash.
 

But what has that got to do with Trump's presidency? The man was raving against several ethnicities and religions and yet the alleged two Muslim girls are what the media has focused on, but they vanished into the ether after the event. The chap was clearly a lunatic, bi-polar by accounts in the UK press, so how can Trump be held accountable for someone who's doctor didn't get the lithium dose right?
 
You don't think honoring those who died trying to stop hatred should be acknowledged by our Tweeter in Chief?

But mostly it's quite obvious that anyone with rudimentary math skills will be more worried about getting killed by a crazy white or black dude than a Muslim terrorist. Even if you choose not to believe it.
 

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