Understood about the importance of early education. My thinking is if the Federal dough is no longer going to be supporting that then what? All the "states rights" stuff is what?

Look up the Overton Window and see how what is repulsive at one time becomes "normal" in another.

Your coworker is pushing you out of the conversation because they are confident about their location within.

Does anyone have any idea whether this tidal wave of shit is malice done incompetently or incompetence done maliciously? — fdrake

No need to choose. It is a race against time. Rob the store with electric wheelbarrows before the local cops arrive.

Who or what are you quoting from? It is not in the graph page you posted.

I get the idea that supporting particular programs in very poor areas is not going to turn them into throbbing centers of opportunity, but they do help some people. The Project 2025 idea of States deciding who will be helped inclines me to cut out the money altogether. In for a penny, in for a pound of futility.

Edit to add: You were not quoting but speaking for yourself?

I complained before about the necessity of bringing a point of view to reading Plato. Even in the original, one can't tell whether a speech or argument is actually Plato's belief or just that of the dramatic speaker in the dialogue. Is the receptacle part of Plato's overall scheme or is it a tall tale from the Pythagorean sophist Timaeus? When it is emphasized as likely, is likely to be taken positively or negatively? — magritte

Those are good questions. I think there is a relationship between Timaeus and the Sophist in this regard. The Stranger brings into question the absolute separation of Being and Becoming put forward in the Timaeus. But the contrast does not resolve as one ground closer to the truth than another. That is what made Cornford's head explode.

Yes, a certain number of us quote freely from it at work.

In European versus Global news, the U.S. decision to cut off Intelligence support for Ukraine is answered by Macron announcing he will pick up the slack. Those are some large boots to fill.

At the same time the Trump Movement seems hell bent on shrinking the size of those boots:

Inside U.S. spy agencies, workers fear a cataclysmic Trump cull

The Pentagon this week is expected to begin firing up to 5,400 probationary employees, as it culls its ranks. The CIA also has started to dismiss some probationary workers, a spokeswoman said. About 80 people have been let go, said one former officer, who like other current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals for speaking out or because they work in sensitive jobs.

“Work is next to impossible right now,” said the analyst, who is still waiting to learn his fate. “Morale is through the floor.” — WPost

It looks like the plan to shut down the Department of Education is going forward. It was funny to hear the T complain about U.S. school rankings during the State of the Union address when he has already killed the means of knowing what those numbers are (as I reported earlier.),

There has been talk of moving some of the functions of DOE to other agencies. Project Management has not been a hallmark of the Administration so far. The thought so far seems to fire everybody who used to do X and dump it into the inboxes of people with no experience of the programs.

There is the plan to take Federal dough but change its vector:

During his campaign, Trump called for shifting those functions to the states. He has not offered details on how the agency’s core functions of sending federal money to local districts and schools would be handled.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a sweeping proposal outlining a far-right vision for the country, offered a blueprint. It suggested sending oversight of programs for kids with disabilities and low-income children first to the Department of Health and Human Services, before eventually phasing out the funding and converting it to no-strings-attached grants to states. — AP

Where did you read that?

Pam Bondi ends FBI effort to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics — jorndoe

That, combined with other terminations of intelligence gathering along with the attempts to delete data in each department points to a willingness for invisibility and silence.

is faith an emotion or a thought? What if it is neither — Gregory

What if it is both?

are the purpose of koans to bring out faith? — Gregory

By this measure, it sounds like you understand what faith is.

when Muslim scholars of old had the two-truth position, is this a dialectical form of faith? — Gregory

I think I know what you are saying but please provide your favorite example of such a thing.

is creativity faith? — Gregory

Or is it doubt?

) is courage faith? — Gregory

It can be described that way. But most of us experience it as a willingness to fight in bad circumstances. Perhaps you are referring to the willingness to suffer harm rather than fight. That decision is pretty darn courageous. I will give you that.

Finally, why do Christians argue whether faith must have hope and love in order to cause salvation? Are not those three things always intertwined together? — Gregory

Some views of love are based upon actually doing stuff rather than having an opinion about doing stuff.

The Founders did not figure on a Legislative Branch no longer jealous of their power.
— Paine

They hadn't come across the tactic of institutional capture. It scrambles all that natural responses to a coup. I believe that Musk and Thiel are from South Africa. Perhaps they learnt it there. — Ludwig V

The specific mechanism of U.S. politics that causes so many Republicans to act so sheepishly is the Primary Process whereby eligible candidates for offices are selected. MAGA voters have been dominating that group for years. There are those who got through despite that dominance, but it is not like they have their own caucus to assemble and criticize the others in their tribe.

I recognize that changes in voting procedures can give a great advantage to a particular group. But it is interesting to me how people with so little connection with those they empower are the principal cause of the existing regime.

The Ukrainians will decide what the fighting is worth. They are the ones who do it.

What others may think of their fortunes will not replace that decision.

It is the U.S. Marshalls who enforce court orders as well as 'contempt of congress' actions.

When a federal court imposes contempt sanctions, the U.S. Marshals Service enforces the order, including arresting persons ordered imprisoned for contempt. The U.S. Marshals Service is an executive branch agency within the Department of Justice. Some commentators have expressed concerns that, if the executive branch chose to defy a court order, it might also seek to prevent the U.S. Marshals from enforcing contempt sanctions. The U.S. Marshals are required by statute to “execute all lawful writs, process, and orders issued under the authority of the United States,” and the President’s pardon power does not apply to civil contempt sanctions. The 2018 review of contempt against the federal government notes that, historically, Presidents have complied with federal court orders and have not directed the U.S. Marshals not to enforce contempt orders. — CRS Reports

In the case of impeachment, Congress has more power than Courts because they can strip away the authority of the President altogether. Any officials who obeyed such a person after that would be committing straight up sedition.

The Founders did not figure on a Legislative Branch no longer jealous of their power.

These GSA cuts undercut the support for the digital platform of Social Security accounts.

That sucks after pretty much having to sign up to maintain contact with what the agency says is the balance of payment.

The National Guard is integrated into the Federal command structure. States have some authority toward mobilization but not an override of Executive decisions.

I take your point regarding the ineffective suction. Further attempts will occur.

The way that Trump described himself and Putin suffering from the same hoax indicates how much more important what happens to him is compared to anyone else. Trump does not understand Putin as an agent independent from himself.

I support your call for more integration in Europe. While you are at it, start diverging from the multinationals who are owning the crap out of the U.S.A.

I will leave the discussion of proxy wars for another day.

I don't want to broadly condemn any approach to reading texts.

I have found much value with starting with the original before reading other reactions. It makes it more of a matter of my perplexity approaching what is said.

My style of notetaking involves noticing connections and divergences that sometimes get picked up by others and sometimes not. Those notes connect me to texts I read decades ago. I still do not know the answer to a lot of those questions.

Alternatively, one could read the actual text.

Every day.

Pretty much what Breitbart News reports.

The part where Trump saw Putin and him as victims of the same plot does tell other nations that flattering Trump won't be enough to get the results in the world they live in.

I just don't care enough. Sorry. — frank

You did not address the role of government as highlighted by Land.

Hayek favored dictatorship as the best way to preserve the freedom of the market. He's an ideological grandfather of Land and his friends. — frank

On what basis do you say that? What do you make of Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom, where the intervention of government into private transactions is deemed the source of all tyranny?

What did he describe as conservative? He isn't conservative in any meaningful sense. He's post-Leftism. — frank

I don't understand what post-Leftism means. Land quotes Moldbug in the paragraph preceding my previous quote:

The spontaneous tolerance that characterized classical liberalism, rooted in a modest set of strictly negative rights that restricted the domain of politics, or government intolerance, surrenders during the democratic surge-tide to a positive right to be tolerated, defined ever more expansively as substantial entitlement, encompassing public affirmations of dignity, state-enforced guarantees of equal treatment by all agents (public and private), government protections against non-physical slights and humiliations, economic subsidies, and – ultimately – statistically proportional representation within all fields of employment, achievement, and recognition. That the eschatological culmination of this trend is simply impossible matters not at all to the dialectic. On the contrary, it energizes the political process, combusting any threat of policy satiation in the fuel of infinite grievance. “I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In England’s green and pleasant land.” Somewhere before Jerusalem is reached, the inarticulate pluralism of a free society has been transformed into the assertive multiculturalism of a soft-totalitarian democracy. — ibid.

Whatever is the opposite of that is what Land said had died when Bush said:

“When someone is hurting, government has got to move” — ibid

Libertarians truly want freedom and they think democracy has failed in its mission to provide that — frank

The term "libertarian" applies to many forms of expression which support starkly different political agendas. Take Hayek, for instance, who advocated for a completely free market but did not support the deletion of civic governance.

What Land describes as 'conservative' may be more accurately described as nativist. Genealogically speaking, that makes the alt-right closer to the overt racism and cultural hegemony of Pat Buchanan than to various flavors of anarchy.

Land explicitly welcomes the benefits of enlightened despotism. What shall be called libertarian in that environment?

In regard to Cornford, we talked about this two years ago in this thread.

I need to ponder the Pandora box you opened before replying.

Land (and Moldbug) have a narrow view of how tolerance works in public life:

The Jews of 17th-century Amsterdam, or the Huguenots of 18th-century London, enjoyed the right to be left alone, and enriched their host societies in return. The democratically-empowered grievance groups of later modern times are incited by political leaders to demand a (fundamentally illiberal) right to be heard, with social consequences that are predominantly malignant. For politicians, however, who identify and promote themselves as the voice of the unheard and the ignored, the self-interest at stake could hardly be more obvious.

Tolerance, which once presupposed neglect, now decries it, and in so doing becomes its opposite. Were this a partisan development, partisan politics of a democratic kind might sustain the possibility of reversion, but it is nothing of the kind. “When someone is hurting, government has got to move” declared ‘compassionate conservative’ US President George W. Bush, in a futile effort to channel the Cathedral. When the ‘right’ sounds like this it is not only dead but unmistakably reeking of advanced decomposition. ‘Progress’ has won, but is that bad? — Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment, Part 3

The expectation that people are to be respected as persons happens more in some places than others. It is a way of life that is not sustainable if enough people stop operating with that respect. The equality of civil rights and equal treatment under the law are important but are meaningless if that respect is absent from the commons.

The tolerance for the ghettos that Land applauds is encoded in the U.S. Constitution with the Establishment of Religion clause of the First Amendment. It provides a safe place for intolerance and discrimination within their members' way of life. As regards to the education of children, it gives each American the right to screw up their kids.

By that measure, the alt-right does not want to have control of the commons but to force everybody else to live in their ghetto.

The ambition of the Soviet State to control adjacent countries has been preserved under a new set of justifications.

The Chechen wars are a vivid example of a Soviet policy becoming a new Russia modus operandi. The methods of population displacement and favoring a fawning regime are identical.

The chora needs to be an indefinitely active maelstrom, a background that cannot be sensed in any way that randomly moves and changes itself and everything in it. Otherwise Plato's philosophy doesn't work for him. — magritte

Well observed. That it takes "bastard reasoning" to approach the chora puts any effort toward a systematic view of the whole into question. For instance, Cornford's framing of a Theory of the Forms assumes a level of explanation that may not be on offer.

Yes, the chora must predate the gods and the entire creation story, just as the Forms must. Otherwise the demiurge has nothing to work with in creating the physical world, such as it seems. I'm not sure how that relates the heavens of the gods to the world though. — magritte

I am not sure either.

One feature that does not appear in the pure substrate model is the "wet nurse" role of the "receptacle".

Aristotle seems to find nurture as a reflection of the active agency and teleological aspect of Coming to Be. What is decided to be "prior" in the Timaeus, as a matter of likely stories, does not appear to satisfy Aristotle's view of time and place. Is that a disagreement about creation per se or a different view of Nous/ Not Nous?

The range of possible active agency is represented to some extent by those different translations.

In regard to the discussion of Sallis' work (immediately preceding your comment), the issue was how to understand the "what" that is acted upon by Forms. Sallis focuses upon how Aristotle puts forward a function of "substrate" that is at odds with how Plato approached the idea.

Or, if not at odds, then something else to be described.

I have been anxious for my friends' and family's future, but I see that for many, the future is now.


Yes, some congress critters are already talking about codifying whatever Musk does in the next budget.
Midterms are surely a long way off. There will at least be a return of the Legislative Branch with a Democratic win.

I think that pressure will build up on the GOP as the blowback hits more and more people and local economies. I don't know if that will happen quickly enough to salvage institutions.

Perhaps this crisis of democracy is really part of a larger crisis, a crisis of "critical awareness." — Pantagruel

What do you mean by that?

Donald is grabbing what he can but how does that fit into the model you have in mind?

Keep your good spirit and a stiff upper lip. These jerks are not the only people in the scrum.

Another Musk benefit:

DOGE employee cuts fall heavily on agency that regulates Musk’s Tesla

A small government team regulating the sort of autonomous cars that Elon Musk says represent the future of Tesla, his car company, is getting cut nearly in half by the Musk-led U.S. Doge Service, according to people briefed on the reductions.

The loss of personnel from the specialized unit is part of a 10 percent overall workforce reduction at the federal agency tasked with ensuring safety on America’s roads. In all, the agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, will lose between 70 and 80 people, split roughly evenly between firings of probationary employees and buyouts, according to three people, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. — WPost

The "insurrection narrative" pertains to what Trump and his team attempted, not his believers. The criminal charge is based upon fraud:

The Grand Jury indictment reads in part:

1. The Defendant, DONALD J . TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United
States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election.
2. Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.
3. The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.
4. Shortly after election day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. In so doing, the Defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies:

a. A conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371;

b. A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified ("the certification proceeding"), in violation of 18U.S.C. § 1512(k); and

c. A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one's vote counted, in
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241.

Each of these conspiracies—which built on the widespread mistrust the Defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud—targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election ("the federal government function"). — DOJ

Gold's account may be true or not. That in no way informs us as to how others were treated or whether their charges were bogus.

The charges were not based upon participating in an insurrection. Here is a breakdown of the charges. The following point was emphasized:

There are zero cases where a defendant was charged only with corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, or attempting to do so. Every defendant also faces other criminal charges—felonies, misdemeanors, or both—for illegal conduct related to the Capitol Breach. — Department of Justice

To the degree that you are correct about Gold's case being different from more vile transgressions is the extent of the injustice perpetrated by Trump's blanket pardon.

The validity of the prosecutions or the deficiencies of the trial processes for particular defendants has no bearing on the "quasi-coup narrative." Violent or not, the participants were repeating the language of their leader. And he has blessed them all with pardons. A coup is what a regime does. A crowd protesting a stolen election is another thing. They all did not spontaneously have this idea.

There were a lot of trials. I doubt this report establishes a principle that can be applied to them all, especially those that involve assault.

Would you accept that such context is pivotal to understanding this report?

Does the man say when this happened in the context of the attacks on police lines?

Those supposed peaceful visitors are not why they got access to the building.