Philosophy Now Forum

Walker wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 7:56 am
Campaigning from courthouse steps. Defy gag orders. Turn bad into good. Good philosophy.

If you can’t see Donald’s dictatorial qualities, you’ve been duped by MAGA tactics.

Yo bidenomics went so beast mode it doubled the number of jobs the economists expected would be added to the economy.

promethean75 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 1:41 pm Yo bidenomics went so beast mode it doubled the number of jobs the economists expected would be added to the economy.

Umm... you don't get to claim "job increases" after you've killed the job market with COVID stupidity, and it eventually rebounds when people realize you lied and go back to work. That's not how statistics are properly used.

The truth is that the employment rate has barely recovered, even now, and not if you include migrants and those who have simply quit looking for work at all. Meanwhile, productivity and supply lines are still badly down, while prices are soaring. And everybody can see it and feel it, every day, in places like the grocery store and the gas station. I don't know where you're living.

This is not time for proclaiming a triumph. It's a time for apologizing to America for having screwed things up so badly, and a time for promising never, never to do anything like that again. But we won't be hearing that from the Dems or the "legacy" media, you can be sure.

commonsense wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 1:37 pm

Walker wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 7:56 am Campaigning from courthouse steps. Defy gag orders. Turn bad into good. Good philosophy.

If you can’t see Donald’s dictatorial qualities, you’ve been duped by MAGA tactics.

This only hints at the *real issue*. There is a cultural war going on in the United States and it has a great deal to do with issues of ethics. There are concerns about deliberate demographic dispossession and the current of "anti-White sentiment*. There is a great deal of concern about the strange gender dysphoria epidemic (?) and the issue of the expansion of the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industry into this new, expanding market of sex-change. Especially consequential is this issue in respect to children. There are concerns about the immigration crisis and the Southern Border. There are concerns about the national debt. The increase of riotous robbery and looting and other crimes. Homeless encampments in the cities. Drug issues. I could go on.

Within this context -- social upheaval, lack of agreement, and open, intractable conflict and increasing social problems -- there naturally arises a will to find a means to rein it in. That involves developing a will to oppose the weakness or complicity that has enabled these problems to arise in the first place. Obviously these are moral and ethical issues. And also obviously there seems to be an augmentation of frustration among many people and with it, as often happens, a desire to become less tolerant, more strict.

All this is pretty obvious. Similar things are happening in Europe and, naturally, there is more support for the candidates with intolerant policies. To confront liberal excess requires liberal excess's opposite. But how can this take shape in a generally permissive, or over-permissive society where one large faction desires to steer culture toward more liberal excess and describes any effort to rein it in as 'dictatorial' and 'fascistic'?

Here again the Left/Progressives always place labels on those who oppose their excessive liberalism, who have other visions, other values, other social and cultural and personal concerns. If you are not with the progressive program you are regressive. And this is a moral shortcoming according to the Left. Those who oppose Left/Progressive policies -- social transformation -- are described as moral reprobates who stall *good* and *decent* social policies from gaining ascendence.

Here again I suggest that the opposing, reacting Right must become immune to the Left's moralizing and blaming and denigrating insinuations. The inner will and force to do this involves an inner revolution within us. We have to get out from under the opprobrium cast on us by these strange radicals. You see?

In fact I am not so much making a statement about the rightness or wrongness of Trump and his administration as having used the National Guard or a helicopter in intimidating a crowd that likely would have become riotous (as so many protests have). I am trying to describe a social situation that is obviously volatile and to talk about an *intolerant will* that is taking shape among right-leaning, conservative, but also centrist-oriented people.

If it does occur that a counter-movement is put into motion and gains ground in the US (and elsewhere), it will be violently opposed by the same riotous crowd that burned cities and did such extraordinary damage under the banner of *social justice* and an entire set of lies. In fact, all of this seems to have very little to do with social justice and more to do with lawlessness and anarchy: the breakdown of convention laws and general social rules. You see this seems to be the essence of the "woke" modus operandi: destruction. But it tarts itself up in a costume of moral righteousness.

Though I have numerous issues with Steve Bannon, and certainly with Donald Trump, when Bannon described Trump as an "armor piercing shell" he was onto something. There is a movement that Trump has inspired. It is chaotic and in fact inchoate because it is being undertaken by people with so little experience in the realms of ideation that the social crisis demands. It transcends Donald Trump and, even among those who are within the ideological camp of MAGA, there are those who feel that Donald Trump is not the right man to carry it forward (take Ann Coulter as an example).

The ultimate point here is that we are heading into unknown uncharted and certainly strange and dangerous territory over the next 12 months. Nothing quite like this has ever occurred in the United States.

"Umm... you don't get to claim "job increases" after you've killed the job market with COVID stupidity, and it eventually rebounds when people realize you lied and go back to work. That's not how statistics are properly used"

1. the CDC and Trump's administration were the one's to upgrade us to defcon 2 becuz of covid.

2. and rightly so, becuz the precautions taken (that incidentally effected and slowed the economy) saved thousands of lives most likely. Unless you're a covid hoax guy who doesn't believe that shit was real.

So, in fact, bidenomics did do very well at rebounding an economy that took a beating from a pandemic.

Here's the thing tho. I shouldn't even need to have this conversation becuz a country should be able to take a hit like that and keep gettin' it. But ours, becuz it's a fucked up capitalistic mess of disorganized nonsense, fell completely apart.

Walker wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 2:40 pm The Democrat Party Hates America

Absurd.

I mean look at how fast the Chinaman got that shit under control over there (wherever China is). Would u feel a bit restricted and overwhelmed by a lockdown like that? Of course u would. But the COVID wouldn't kill u. u live... u live to fight another day, IC.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 2:58 pm This only hints at the *real issue*.

Well put, but nonetheless if you can’t see Donald’s dictatorial qualities, you’ve been duped by MAGA tactics.

commonsense wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 3:04 pm

Walker wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 2:40 pm The Democrat Party Hates America

Absurd.

Yes and also no. The Democrat Party is a convenient term describing a Left-Liberal/Progressive and also Radical Left segment. That faction embodies, ideologically, a new set of definitions for what America is. For example you are aware of the riots in which bands of people went out in the streets and tore down historical monuments? (Here is one compiled list). I should point out that the lists that you can pull up through a search are generally slanted by the list-composer. So the one I included shows most of the Confederate monuments (to try to be fair). But all kinds of American figures were defaced or toppled.

How shall this be looked upon? In my view it has to do with the rise of a new definition of America. The old definition is no longer acceptable. There is a whole group of reasons and explanations as to how this change came about, and also who and what directs it, but it extends from cultural and ideological movements begun in the early 20th century but gained ground and reach in the Sixties.

So the present *flowering* that we all witness -- social upheaval, breakdown of agreements, social unrest, violence, rancor, resentment and all the rest -- have their root in former times. But my main point has to do with a new definition of what America is.

I could mention Lincoln and his (questionable) notion of a "propositional nation" as having a good deal of relevancy here. The ideology behind a propositional nation is that it is not the people who make it up but rather the "proposition" that some people accept. Therefore, in the old America the nation was defined as a specific people, and largely of European extraction. These definitions were very strong and completely prevalent. America was defined as a white European nation. The Founders certainly believed that.

Demographically therefore, the nation has been or is being revamped. This leads to the undermining of a former cultural base and it requires different levels of liberal progressive or radical reformers to push it forward.

To say "the Democrat Party hates America" is partly true insofar as they hate or revile or repudiate, in essence, the views and ideas of the Founders in many areas. That leads to all manner of ideological conflicts of course. Their zealousness, of course, seems to know no bounds at least among the extreme factions.

Those who oppose the present current of radicalism, as I have said, are being forced to examine their core value-structures. That is, what will they defend and what can they no longer defend when, if you will, they contemplate their own interests? They -- these conservatives -- are in ideological disarray. Among themselves they do not agree. If they could agree, or if they could many years back have settled on agreement and opposed the present radicalism, things would now be different.

So it is absurd to say that the Left *hates America* because they hate a certain America connected to an older definition that is being outmoded.

commonsense wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 3:27 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 2:58 pm This only hints at the *real issue*.

Well put, but nonetheless if you can’t see Donald’s dictatorial qualities, you’ve been duped by MAGA tactics.

I do not get the impression from what you write that you can accurately assess what to be duped means.

As I try to point out we (a general we) come from competing and opposed value-sets. One must see and understand this at the foundational level. Then one can discuss the differences and adjudicate them.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 3:53 pm Those who oppose the present current of radicalism, as I have said, are being forced to examine their core value-structures. That is, what will they defend and what can they no longer defend when, if you will, they contemplate their own interests? They -- these conservatives -- are in ideological disarray. Among themselves they do not agree. If they could agree, or if they could many years back have settled on agreement and opposed the present radicalism, things would now be different.

I draw to your attention that here on this forum, among those who describe themselves as 'Conservative", that we can hardly agree in a range of areas. We can it seems mount some united opposition to the more extreme Left-Progressive-Radicals who write here, but when we discuss and argue among ourselves our own divisions become apparent immediately. Unity falls to pieces.

As long as this is the case the (so-called) Progressive Radical Left will have a powerful tool: their own unity, their own dedication to certain tenets. It does seem that as long as they have something concrete to oppose that they tend to remain ideologically united. And the figure of Donald Trump is supremely useful in this sense (as is the description of the Capital riot as an *insurrection*).

Who are the *true patriots* then? Who holds the *genuine banner* for America?

promethean75 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 3:03 pm 1. the CDC and Trump's administration were the one's to upgrade us to defcon 2 becuz of covid.

Biden was in charge when the supply lines, the fuel supply, the mask mandates, and the border influx of infected persons were created. Trump was out. Gas and groceries were much cheaper before Biden. Even you can see that.

2. and rightly so, becuz the precautions taken (that incidentally effected and slowed the economy) saved thousands of lives most likely.

That's actually not even a bit true. The "precautions" are all gone now, though COVID 19 is not. You can see it for yourself; you were lied to. You're not still wearing one of those silly masks, are you? And how about countries like Sweden, that refused to panic and did far better than the US on recovering from COVID? And how about the young men who are dropping dead as a result of the vaccines (let me guess: athletic 30 year olds are just having a wave of heart attacks? ) If you open your eyes, you'll see you're wrong.

...a country should be able to take a hit like that and keep gettin' it.

A country should be able to survive being crippled in every way by its incompetent and corrupt government? It's hard to imagine why you'd imagine so. And you want them to have more power?

Meanwhile, "Capitalism" isn't a real thing. It wasn't even heard of until it was invented, just prior to Marx, as a bogeyman for Socialists to critique: being ideologically-possessed themselves, they projected and imagined that other people must also be ideologically-possessed, rather than, say, just interested in free markets and individual rights.

And "capital" didn't do this: Democrat governance did. America's done very well on free markets, actually...better than any other country in the world, up to now. It's the Democrats who've turned it all to what it is now.

commonsense wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 3:04 pm

Walker wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 2:40 pm The Democrat Party Hates America

Absurd.

More correctly, Socialists, being believers in dialectics, hate all things status quo and seek their destruction in the name of "Historical progress."The Dems are strongly influenced by Socialism, and see the future as being Socialist. So they hate all things status quo, and seek their destruction in the dialectical conflict which will allegedly produce progress.

Why do you think the Dems support rioters who burn cities, and hate cops? For Socialists, all "existing orders" are always "oppressive," and all deserve to be "problematized" and then destroyed in the name of "liberation" from "systemic oppression."

America is a status quo entity. It's part of the world that already exists, a system of governance, economics, institutions, beliefs, cultures, and so on. It's oppressive, and must not be "made great again," but rather torn to pieces in order to produce Socialist "progress." Therefore, the Dems hate it.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 4:33 pm

commonsense wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2023 3:04 pm

Walker wrote: ↑Sat Sep 23, 2023 2:40 pm The Democrat Party Hates America

Absurd.

More correctly, Socialists, being believers in dialectics, hate all things status quo and seek their destruction in the name of "Historical progress."The Dems are strongly influenced by Socialism, and see the future as being Socialist. So they hate all things status quo, and seek their destruction in the dialectical conflict which will allegedly produce progress.

Why do you think the Dems support rioters who burn cities, and hate cops? For Socialists, all "existing orders" are always "oppressive," and all deserve to be "problematized" and then destroyed in the name of "liberation" from "systemic oppression."

America is a status quo entity. It's part of the world that already exists, a system of governance, economics, institutions, beliefs, cultures, and so on. It's oppressive, and must not be "made great again," but rather torn to pieces in order to produce Socialist "progress." Therefore, the Dems hate it.

More reasonable.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2023 9:08 pm I’m done with your question and issue.

?