Philosophy Now Forum

This is true in all other areas, as well.
This administration's idea of governance is to declare war on government itself. You can see it in every cabinet appointment: putting each department's worst enemy at its head can only suggest an intention to destroy that department.
Such a policy also stands to reason when you consider who these people are: economic parasites and predators whose depredations government has made some effort to curtail.
Well, no more! All henhouses to be guarded by foxes from now on.

Greta wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:I seriously think he is so intellectually challenged that to use a word such as "agenda" do describe his thinking is going too far.
As for who is minding the business - I doubt if DT was ever in any kind of controlling or commanding position.
When a boy has the benefit of a large bequest and inheritance he often finds himself surrounded by smart money men who basically do all the work In the last 40 years making money from the property market has been like falling off a log. The addition of advisors unscrupulous enough to play the system with several bankruptcies along the way has given him his fortune. I think it has very little to do with his own efforts.

I note a history of fighting environmental protection authorities. He has been effectively been a parasite on the Earth and he appears keen to spread that parasitism. He and his mates will be amongst the most insulated from the effects of his reckless disregard for the future.

Agreed.
There is more to come too. He has already ended protections designed to stop corrupt oil deals; and has appointed some who will directly benefit from the lifting of Russian sanctions.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Greta wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:I seriously think he is so intellectually challenged that to use a word such as "agenda" do describe his thinking is going too far.
As for who is minding the business - I doubt if DT was ever in any kind of controlling or commanding position.
When a boy has the benefit of a large bequest and inheritance he often finds himself surrounded by smart money men who basically do all the work In the last 40 years making money from the property market has been like falling off a log. The addition of advisors unscrupulous enough to play the system with several bankruptcies along the way has given him his fortune. I think it has very little to do with his own efforts.

I note a history of fighting environmental protection authorities. He has been effectively been a parasite on the Earth and he appears keen to spread that parasitism. He and his mates will be amongst the most insulated from the effects of his reckless disregard for the future.

Agreed.
There is more to come too. He has already ended protections designed to stop corrupt oil deals; and has appointed some who will directly benefit from the lifting of Russian sanctions.

Might be worth keeping track of the size of Melania's shoe collection. One day they might make it into a museum.

Might be worth keeping track of the size of Melania's shoe collection. One day they might make it into a museum.

Like this? https://www.peabody.harvard.edu/node/522
I can't help feeling sorry for that woman.

Most, not all, denigrations of Trump seem justified to an extent. But sometimes it takes a real shit kicker to bring an already corrupt system to its knees. It wasn't Trump who created a system loathed by main street and extolled by Wall Street billionaires. It was this resentment he capitalized on with success. How it turns out remains to be seen. Sometimes you have to bring corruption to an apex to regenerate. That's not to say that every one of Trump's ideas are detrimental. The logic of dismissing two laws for everyone created makes eminent sense gradually eroding a hodge bodge of contradictions which only serves to feed lawyers.

Not least, Putin is usually denoted as unpredictable but now he faces someone who is at least as unpredictable as he is which gives him more to worry about. I don't think that Trump is someone who gives a crap on whatever opinion or expectations, favorable or unfavorable, others may have including the likes of Putin. Uncertainty either way makes one tread more cautiously knowing the usual expected response may no-longer be forthcoming or worse be thoroughly deceptive in order to mislead.

Trump as President is not to my liking but even less so is the continuation of agendas which reinforces already massive discontent into revolution and anarchy the results of which can change everything in the most unexpected ways. There won't always be a Lincoln around to preempt its most dire consequences.

Arising_uk wrote:I ask because I just listened to the Trumpette say those lying sick in alleyways are not republicans so not his problem?

They fill up our rallies - as in all the people holding up placards and protesting - they are not the constituents, they are professional protesters. More or less. Nothing to do with people lying sick in alleys.

Dubious wrote:Most, not all, denigrations of Trump seem justified to an extent. But sometimes it takes a real shit kicker to bring an already corrupt system to its knees.

By destroying whatever might still be working? Sure. Make the underdogs suffer enough and they might storm the palaces, and be shot down in their thousands before a gate is breached. They might start guillotining aristocrats... and their butlers and gardeners and a lot of people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It wasn't Trump who created a system loathed by main street and extolled by Wall Street billionaires.

Not alone. It was people very much like him, though and he's made his pile in it.

It was this resentment he capitalized on with success

There was a lot of groundwork for that, as well. The Republicans did quite a lot of that, over several decades. So did the news-e-tainment media and advertising, talk radio and previous political campaigns. There has been an anti-intellectual push in America for nearly a century - which, ultimately means, a popular distrust of science, reason, critical thought, even literacy. He didn't have to capitalize - he isn't smart enough to do so: he just did whatever got the cheers, which were then widely reported, and fed off the notoriety.

Sometimes you have to bring corruption to an apex to regenerate.

How do you figure that plays out?
Trump and his cabinet are as corrupt as it is possible to be ---- and then what happens?

That's not to say that every one of Trump's ideas are detrimental. T

Ideas? What ideas has he had? I mean, besides the beoooootiful wall and lots of uses for uranium?

The logic of dismissing two laws for everyone created makes eminent sense gradually eroding a hodge bodge of contradictions which only serves to feed lawyers.

What?

Not least, Putin is usually denoted as unpredictable but now he faces someone who is at least as unpredictable as he is which gives him more to worry about.

Putin is not a nice man. But he is both intelligent and sane, while Trump is neither. I don't think Putin is worried.

I don't think that Trump is someone who gives a crap on whatever opinion or expectations, favorable or unfavorable, others may have

WHAT??? He's the most thin-skinned, irritable, vindictive, undisciplined, overreactive politician we've ever seen. he cares so desperately

Well, maybe there will still be an America to save, once he's out of the way.... but I very much doubt it will be a United States. The disuniting factors have been exploited successfully by every every Republican candidate since Nixon, while the uniting factors have been harnessed far less successfully by the democratic ones. Aside from that, a lot of government functions and agencies, their funding and their work, will have been destroyed possibly beyond redemption.

Dubious wrote:Most, not all, denigrations of Trump seem justified to an extent. But sometimes it takes a real shit kicker to bring an already corrupt system to its knees.

Skip wrote:By destroying whatever might still be working? Sure. Make the underdogs suffer enough and they might storm the palaces, and be shot down in their thousands before a gate is breached. They might start guillotining aristocrats... and their butlers and gardeners and a lot of people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

...a little bit over dramatic don’t you think!

Dubious wrote: It wasn't Trump who created a system loathed by main street and extolled by Wall Street billionaires.

Skip wrote:Not alone. It was people very much like him, though and he's made his pile in it.

...obviously! Do you know of anyone who wouldn’t if it’s all legal and the system as created allows it?

Skip wrote:Trump and his cabinet are as corrupt as it is possible to be ---- and then what happens?

...possibly a manufactured event to eliminate him. Spence would become President, knowing well what happened and what not to do if he doesn’t want it to happen again. If the Praetorians, aka, the CIA or FBI don't like you, then watch out.

Dubious wrote:That's not to say that every one of Trump's ideas are detrimental.

Skip wrote:Ideas? What ideas has he had? I mean, besides the beoooootiful wall and lots of uses for uranium?

...no doubt, he does make a fair amount of incomprehensibly stupid statements at times.

Dubious wrote:The logic of dismissing two laws for everyone created makes eminent sense gradually eroding a hodge bodge of contradictions which only serves to feed lawyers.

Skip wrote:What?

What is the “what” you’re referring to? The statement is clear enough!

Skip wrote:Putin is not a nice man. But he is both intelligent and sane, while Trump is neither. I don't think Putin is worried.

...you forgot to add also a murderer willing to get rid of any foes wherever they may be on the planet. Challenge him and you will end up in the Gulag or dead. Between the two I think I’ll take Trump. Putin is intelligent in a very sinister kind of way which is not a mystery to either the Europeans, the CIA, or the FBI. They know what he’s trying to accomplish and no doubt the more informed in Trumps cabinet. You grant Putin a “normalcy” compared to Trump or his officials which is not justified. I think Putin is worried since what he may have expected of Trump is likely to be far less than what he hoped for. Not least, Trump's emphasis on a more powerful military is no consolation to Putin.

Dubious wrote: I don't think that Trump is someone who gives a crap on whatever opinion or expectations, favorable or unfavorable, others may have

Skip wrote:WHAT??? He's the most thin-skinned, irritable, vindictive, undisciplined, overreactive politician we've ever seen. he cares so desperately

...what you say is correct but in a way it also proves my point. He seems incapable of backing down on any of his fixed opinions, ever-ready to charge against those who would impede him by any means. Granted, not very Presidential!

Skip wrote:Well, maybe there will still be an America to save, once he's out of the way.... but I very much doubt it will be a United States. The disuniting factors have been exploited successfully by every every Republican candidate since Nixon, while the uniting factors have been harnessed far less successfully by the democratic ones. Aside from that, a lot of government functions and agencies, their funding and their work, will have been destroyed possibly beyond redemption.

That could be the “defining blow” for the West as a whole if that should happen. Like it or not, it’s not Europe or any other region in the West which is keeping the powers-in-waiting at bay...but that’s a separate subject. Reformation is possible without collapsing the infrastructures of Law and identity. Europe, as you know, is strained by the same centrifugal forces as now exist in the U.S.

Skip wrote:

Might be worth keeping track of the size of Melania's shoe collection. One day they might make it into a museum.

Like this? https://www.peabody.harvard.edu/node/522
I can't help feeling sorry for that woman.

I'm thinking along these lines: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... ick-davies

It needs to be said that this is not about Imelda Marcos and her infamous collection of shoes, although her shopping habit is real. She bought perfume not by the ounce but by the gallon. She hoarded old masters; at one point, she tried to buy Tiffany & Co. But in this particular circus she was only a clown, her crazy consumption deflecting attention from the big beast that was out of its cage.

The PCGG archive tells the inside story of the biggest theft in history, and of the master criminal who organised it: skilful, arrogant, cruel. It also opens a door into the offshore world revealed by the Panama Papers. Marcos was one of the first to exploit the rats’ nest of secret jurisdictions and hidden ownership then in the early stages of being built beneath the floorboards of public life.

But what is most important about Marcos is that he committed his crimes as a politician. His career starts with a cynicism that now seems familiar – manipulating electorates, using money to buy power and power to make money. But he went one big step further in merging politics and finance, converting the instruments of government into one vast cash machine. A handful of other autocrats were also busy stealing from their people in that era – in Haiti, Nicaragua, Iran – but Marcos stole more and he stole better. Ultimately, he emerges as a laboratory specimen from the early stages of a contemporary epidemic: the global contagion of corruption that has since spread through Africa and South America, the Middle East and parts of Asia. Marcos was a model of the politician as thief.

There is also a more direct connection between Trump and Marcos: http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/08/18/16/t ... ist-report

Wyman wrote:They fill up our rallies - as in all the people holding up placards and protesting - they are not the constituents, they are professional protesters. More or less. Nothing to do with people lying sick in alleys.

No idea what you have said here?

Whose rallies?

Are you saying there are paid protesters? If so whose?

Dubious wrote:Most, not all, denigrations of Trump seem justified to an extent. But sometimes it takes a real shit kicker to bring an already corrupt system to its knees.

You are ridiculously naive. Any person with an a modicum of awareness can see through Trump like a piece of broken glass. What is the matter with you - the guy is a complete shyster.
He's building a wall of shite, not kicking it over.

To answer the thread topic, yes. That's right.

Trump is different than what came before.


When President Obama’s National Security Advisor Lied, The Media Laughed
http://thefederalist.com/2017/02/17/pre ... a-laughed/


President Trump is popular because his supporters remember intentionally dishonest crap from the press, such as that noted in the link. He points out the obvious nature of the establishment propaganda machine, and this machine is not insignificant.

The press tells the public what to think, and lies often repeated become the accepted premise for interpretation of current events.

Like it or not, an aspect of the presidency is figurehead. President Trump’s objective as figurehead is to persuade the public.

He has correctly identified the press as the enemy of his objective. They are not his enemy because he says so, but by their own dishonest acts.

And he wisely emphasizes that the corrupt press is his enemy because they are the enemy of the people.

His target is the press. That profession has crumbled into opinion hawking and pimping for the establishment, which these days means taking down the president because he is not the status quo choice of the puppeteers. For instance, crude oil transport by the Keystone Pipeline takes profits away from the rail transportation owned by Warren Buffet.

Crony capitalism, and not ostensible environmentalism or babble about global warming, is the real reason for opposition to the safer transport of crude. Anyone with a brain and some pragmatic knowledge of the world can see this.

President Trump is vastly outnumbered by his declared enemy. No matter what he says or how he says it, he knows he will be picked and parsed like a carcass at a vulture party.

Because he is outnumbered, he uses unorthodox methods such as conversational stream of consciousness, inconsistencies, self-contradictions, street-style repetition, dry humor mixed with direct confrontations when addressing the press. This gives the press irrelevancies to chew on and twist into their message.

Think of your own personal interactions with lying cheats and you have an idea of his mind-set.

He simply gives his enemy, the corrupt press, more rope to continue their own decline. Currently, trust in the press is at an all-time, historic low. Trump isn’t causing this.

He is pointing out their devious methods on behalf of the people, which is becoming more obvious every day in their outright partisan reporting and omissions.

This is why we have the BBC.

Although in the face of new mejia they have become increasingly more sensationalist rather than the serious journalists and news-reporters they used to be but they are still streets ahead of what you are describing.

Arising_uk wrote:

Wyman wrote:They fill up our rallies - as in all the people holding up placards and protesting - they are not the constituents, they are professional protesters. More or less. Nothing to do with people lying sick in alleys.

No idea what you have said here?

Whose rallies?

Are you saying there are paid protesters? If so whose?

He claims that the people who show up protesting his immigration policies and repeal of Obamacare are paid protesters, or at least some are. There has also been a surge of such people at the so-called 'town hall meetings.' He just held a rally in Florida and held them all during the campaign. He is saying that those people are not his constituents. He thinks everyone agrees with him and if they don't, they must be paid or else left-wing radicals. I'm not agreeing with him, just giving an explanation. Do you really think he is speaking of people 'filling up alleys?' There aren't any people filling up alleys over here that I know of, and that would be a very strange thing - even for him - to say.

Dubious wrote:
...a little bit over dramatic don’t you think!

The Reign of Terror happened. So did the Russian revolution. So did the Spanish colonial wars of independence. Just a few examples. Every one bloody and merciless; every one indiscriminate in its violence. What makes you think 2017 is qualitatively different from 1917, or 1790 or 1848?

Dubious wrote:
...obviously! Do you know of anyone who wouldn’t if it’s all legal and the system as created allows it?

I don't know anyone who would behave in the way Trump and his ilk do.
The law doesn't make people decent; decent people make good laws. Then the other kind of people hijack and corrode the law.

[ what happens?]
...possibly a manufactured event to eliminate him. Spence would become President, knowing well what happened and what not to do if he doesn’t want it to happen again. If the Praetorians, aka, the CIA or FBI don't like you, then watch out.

Fine. But what happens to the country? How does replacing a racist theifocrary with a misogynist theocracy displease the CIA?
How does anything improve as a result of this administration's ultimate corruption?

Dubious wrote:The logic of dismissing two laws for everyone created makes eminent sense gradually eroding a hodge bodge of contradictions which only serves to feed lawyers.
[Skip - What?]
What is the “what” you’re referring to? The statement is clear enough!

Really? What does it mean? I can't even parse it.

[Putin]
...you forgot to add also a murderer willing to get rid of any foes wherever they may be on the planet.

No, I didn't forget. I just said he's not worried about trump's unpredictability. It could bring the US down, but won't do him any harm.

You grant Putin a “normalcy” compared to Trump or his officials which is not justified.

Now, why would you put a word in quotes than I didn't use at all? Intelligent and sane. Might have added well-informed. Trump is dumb, ignorant and crazy. He likes to surround himself with people to whom he can feel superior, which doesn't bode a highly competent cabinet.

...what you say is correct but in a way it also proves my point. He seems incapable of backing down on any of his fixed opinions, ever-ready to charge against those who would impede him by any means. Granted, not very Presidential!

He backs down from statements and positions every other day. Forgets what he said last week, denies and contradicts his own lies.

Reformation is possible without collapsing the infrastructures of Law and identity.

Not if you push oppression and corruption to the limit. Not if you start by dismantling all the agencies capable of reforming the system.

Europe, as you know, is strained by the same centrifugal forces as now exist in the U.S.

Shitmeisters rule everywhere. How does that help?

Look, your general drift seems to have been that the Trump administration, by taking nepotism, greed and incompetence to an extreme, will somehow push a corrupt system over some kind of tipping point, and that this will ultimately result in a grand reform.
I'm asking how that is brought about. What's the pathway from here to there?