Yeah, if you're not rich by 30 I got news for you: you ain't never gonna be rich. So why worry about the estate tax? Thanks for digging this up. It helps make the forum more efficient.
Your posts lately are kind of the same experience I have with my brother. He believes all this right wing nonsense that my dad feeds him but when I sit down with him and we go over numbers and things in a factual manner, he gets really flustered and confused. He's a big FOX News watcher and all that jazz. It's like taking someone's comfort blanket away.
i used to watch fox news every day, listen to conservative talk radio, read the drudge report, posted on stormfront and other forums. lately i stopped all that cold turkey. calling it a comfort blanket being snatched away is underselling it. its more like losing your identity. you sound little liberal so imagine if npr came out tomorrow with data that the democrats were lying about the economic numbers, that scientists falsified data, that global warming was a myth, unions are bad etc. if you feel strongly about that stuff you will feel very down about the world and life. thats cool that your family is like that. most of family and friends dont speak to me no more b.c of this and becoming agnostic over xmas and wanting to do things like go back to school instead of giving them money. you lose your identity and your old life and it gets very lonely not having your loved ones having your back.
That sucks, I'm sorry to hear that. I guess it's like the Matrix thing, which pill do you want to take. Hopefully you find people in your life that are a little more enlightened and open minded.
That's the conflict between thinking and feeling. Feeling is easier, you get the basic 'fight or flight' visceral response from your more ancient brain parts. FAUX and the conservative dogma spewers appeal to your basic instinct for self preservation; there is no stronger feeling than self-righteous indignation. Thinking involves higher brain functions that can result in actions that promote the greater social returns even to the detriment of the self. Oddly it's one of the bases that make Christian philosophy such a departure in human behaviour. But thinking more rarely produces immediate positive feedback like feeling, so it's easily divertible, like prosperity mega-churches or christian conservatives. They are both inseparable parts of human nature and the root of balance in politics.
I've always been an independent, but members of the republican party over the last 14 years have given me less and less reasons to vote for them especially here in Texas. Guys like Cruz, Paul and Cornyn have gone full r****d.
Wow that sucks. Hang in there. Keep being as friendly as you can with them and the best of them will eventually settle down and remain your friends. There is a whole world out there of new friends to make.
