Saturday, November 17, 2018

Facebook post from 2 years ago today.

The theory of left or right brain dominance is considered a myth, but even if it is a myth, it illustrates that people have different ways of thinking, where some people are more logical thinkers, good with math and science, and others are more artistic, subjective, and emotional.

I once took a personality test that claimed that I had 70% left brain dominance. This was in no way a surprise. I am into science, history, math and chess.

I see many assertions on here and elsewhere that seem to me to not have a sound logical basis. This is especially true of political posts in the last few weeks. I find myself reacting to things that seem totally outrageous, but reacting to these things is mostly a waste of my time. It can be entertaining, but it doesn't lead anywhere because I am never going to convince people who are already firm in their beliefs.

I have come to believe that a great many people and I will never agree on great many things because our brains are wired differently. This doesn't necessarily make one person right and the other wrong, but it does mean that we see the world very differently.

I think that politics is driven by fear. Each side has completely different things that they are afraid of. Fear is an extremely powerful motivator, therefore it takes away people's ability to be objective. Politics is mostly a reaction to things that people are against, because if people were perfectly happy, they wouldn't need politics.

Best wishes,

John Coffey

Friday, November 9, 2018

Jordan Peterson.

Jordan Peterson is a lot to take in.  He appears to ramble, but that is because he has much to say.  He looks at humanity on a kind of systems level, which is how do people function together and what values do they have?  He ties this to how mythology reflects the values that make society work.

It takes effort to understand Jordan Peterson, but he is fascinating to listen to.

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Monday, November 5, 2018

Re: Slavery's Scar on the United States

FYI.

On Thu, Nov 1, 2018 at 9:46 PM John Coffey <> wrote:


On Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 11:52 PM Albert Nelms <> wrote:

this dude chickened out in the end. he took up today's popular view that the civil war was about slavery. It's the easy way out, once your foolish enough to enter the bag of worms known as the American Civil War. After all, this guy had almost 500,000 views on this video. Supporting the popular view makes him more money due to more views. It also supports the leftist agenda to rewrite history to support their imagined framework of the American truth. I can hear the first two stanzas of Pink Floyd's song Money. The cash register's bell seems to get louder and louder as the views build up. Truth be damned or at least modified to please one's point of view. cha-ching, Cha-Ching, CHA-CHING!


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John Coffey <>
Date: Mon, Nov 5, 2018 at 11:52 AM
Subject: Re: Slavery's Scar on the United States
To: Al Nelms <>

Al,

On this matter I think that you are wrong.  To be clear, the North fought the war to reunite the Union, but I have seen enough quotes from people that it is clear that the South seceded over the slavery issue.  People claim that Lincoln never promised to free the slaves, but Lincoln tended to treat the issue with kid gloves for political reasons.  In his heart he was an abolitionist, and so was his father, and the south knew that.  I have seen quotes where southerners regarded the election of Lincoln intolerable and give this as the reason for secession..

I would like to see you provide evidence to the contrary.

Granted that wasn't the only issue, but I think that the real historical revisionism has been by people from the south who tried to give the rebellion a more noble sounding cause.  There is this organization called the United Daughters of the Confederacy that for over a century has been erecting civil war monuments to the south and literally rewriting school textbooks to deemphasize slavery and put slavery in a more positive light.

Personally I think that Lincoln should not have sent warships to Ft. Sumpter.  Lincoln also made it clear in his inaugural speech that he would not allow the south to secede peacefully.  This lead to a war that was enormously costly in terms of lives and treasure.  Even if you could say that he was in the right legally,  the consequences of his actions devastated the country.  (We can also place blame on the south for the blockade of Ft. Sumpter.)

-- 

Suppressing the Vote | Disenfranchisement


Much voter fraud does not get investigated or is ignored. https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/instances-voter-fraud-continue-mount-further-compromising-our https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSbe4fK1crg The political left is always saying that this is not a problem, but if so why did states refuse to cooperate with Trump's voter fraud commision? Fraud benefits the left, so they are always claiming it is a non-issue. Maybe it is a non-issue, but we will never really know because people ignore it and put up roadblocks to investigations.   I think it is a real issue. Political power is hotly contested in this country and we see people stoop very low to achieve their objectives. There is also a very long history of voter fraud, which likely decided the 1960 presidential election.

We have the right and obligation to protect the integrity of our voting system. If people can't be responsible enough to get a proper ID then maybe they are not responsible enough to vote. The most I have ever had to wait at a DMV is an hour, and that was in Utah. In Indiana it has always been less than 30 minutes. Maybe some voter ID laws are unfair and should be changed, but voting is such an important responsibility that it should not be considered such a heavy burden to get an ID. We are faced with all kinds of other burdens in society to be compliant with the law, such as filing taxes just for starters, that getting an ID to vote seems like a relatively minor burden.

Complaining that you have to take time off from work and wait a few weeks for your ID to arrive in the mail seems like much whining. States always provide you with a temporary license/ID until the real one arrives in the mail.

I am somewhat skeptical of a court of appeals that impugns the motives of the legislature without any direct evidence.