Republicans will be anti-labor, no matter the elegies written. Trump already proved this with his presidency. — Moliere

I think we're watching the Republican party going into metamorphosis. The message Trump won with was that China and immigrants are the reason for the diminished security of blue collar workers. The answer was to stop immigration from the south, put tariffs on China's goods, stop spending money on foreign wars, and withdraw from NATO. None of that is Reagan. This is all stuff that would have been palatable to Democrats in the 1980s, loosely, anyway. Instead of seeing government as the problem, the Republican agenda going forward will be to put Trump allies in all corners of the civil service including the Pentagon so the next time Trump wants help, nobody is pushing back. There won't be a coup. The presidency will just change into a rightist instrument.

Now that this blueprint is in play, it's energizing the Republican party, propelling the change. Even if Biden or Harris wins this time, Vance will be there next go round with the same network ready to go. And if Trump wins, all bets are off.

The key to understanding how this is happening is to see the similarities between young Democrats and young Republicans. If you listen closely, you'll notice that they're saying the same thing: get out of Ukraine, get out of the Middle East, and focus on Main St. The people who are trying to say no to that are mainstream Democrats: Bill Clinton's people with their NAFTA and reduced support for the poor.

Look behind the curtain of Trump's bullshit and you'll see a pending American reformation. That's how the puzzle pieces are coming together for me. How about you?

Vance is hyper-isolationist and concerned with real wages. The two issues are linked for him. It's like he wants to turn the USA into a bubble country. He's what Trump has been missing: brains and a real social agenda.

I just brought up climate change because that's the issue that made me start thinking about abandoning democracy. It's wild for me to see the Republican party morphing before my eyes into a party that embraces the dark Enlightenment principles.

For a while now the polls have been showing that young Americans favor Trump over Biden. I think Trump is just a sort of vanguard. I don't think politics in America is ever going to go back to the way it's been.

Vance is growing on me. He's in favor of monarchy. Can you imagine? Think about how easy it would be to do something substantial about climate change if we had a king. Wall St's power could easily be broken. The US becomes hyper isolationist. Let China and Russia do whatever they want. Project 2025? I'm asking why not? For real.

I suspect they will cheat or assassinate or jail their opponent in Stalinist fashion. — NOS4A2

The world is full of angry, bitter people. Each one thinks his cries mean something. :razz:

Trump isn’t going to win. Biden campaigned from his bunker, drew crowds of max. 50 people at his rallies, was the first virtual candidate, and for some strange reason got the most votes in US history. Never underestimate the corrupt abilities of his party. — NOS4A2

So you predict a Biden win. I'll take it. Trump isolated himself until he was just flailing. Biden at least can gather a group capable of doing the job.

Pelosi told Biden this. He pushed back.

If Harris runs in his place, she'll lose.

Trump's going to win, then Vance. Vance will change the presidential term limits and rule for the rest of his life.

Did you see Vance's back story? He's isolationist and skeptical about democracy.

They even had a mock gallows that could hang pence if only he was 2 feet tall — NOS4A2

Mike Pence is 20 inches tall. Like a hobbit.

Yea, but that's child's play compared to the way the Republican party has gerrymandered North Carolina. So the attack on the Capitol where they appeared to be prepared to freakin execute the Vice President is like infant's play. Like with a rattle or something.

So in America, criminality is more acceptable than aging? — L'éléphant

Criminality is better than dementia. There's a worry that Biden will soon be unable to recognize people around him. We don't know.

What's wrong with Biden? Why is he being criticized so much? — L'éléphant

He has a speech impediment. He stutters. Old people tell me that every year after 80 gets harder. I don't think that's true for everyone, but the basic idea is that as a person's mental and physical health decline, whatever problems they've always had get a little worse. For Biden, this means his ability to communicate gets worse.

"Vance has embraced aspects of the Dark Enlightenment, a movement that sees mass participatory democracy, particularly liberal democracy, as a threat to or incompatible with freedom.". wikipedia

Dark Enlightenment:

"The ideology generally rejects Whig historiography[2]—the concept that history shows an inevitable progression towards greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy[2]—in favor of a return to traditional societal constructs and forms of government, including absolute monarchism and other older forms of leadership such as cameralism.[3]". wikipedia2

This is the shift I was talking about.

Not sure that'd improve matters for those opposed to Trumpism oder the republican platform to be honest.

I think a sufficiently ruthless politician armed with the spirit of Trump might end up much more effective at getting their way than Trump will ever be. — Echarmion

Yea. I just don't want to have to hear his big mouth for the next four years. Either way, I think the US is headed for some kind of political shift.

I don't think he deserves to die. Like many, I just wish someone would assassinate him. I never claimed to be a saint.

:up:

I've seen several comments that our members wish death on Trump — AmadeusD

I don't think he's like Hitler. I'm just one of the millions of people who wish that shooter hadn't missed. Or how about just badly injured him so he'd have to be in rehab during the election, and after that, he'd be just fine. :halo:

You could do the exact same thing with "do flowers exist." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Or Santa Claus

Of course you could impose one on yourself, but that you could change at whim. — Tobias

If you do what's right because you're trying to satisfy others, that's a lesser form of morality. If you do what's right because otherwise you'd let yourself down, that's the higher form.

l. They wanted Trump to be assassinated. — NOS4A2

I don't know about them, but I sure did.

Maybe I shouldn't have used "incorporeal," due to its past associations. I really just wanted to get at how these things exist in a way that is substrate independent and without any definite/discrete "body." A recession has existence within time, it begins and ends. I think cultures, along with their laws, do as well. "Minoan culture," doesn't exist anymore, although we can certainly point to it (same with material artefacts that no longer exist, e.g. the Twin Towers). — Count Timothy von Icarus

It sounds like you're most comfortable leaving the parameters of the issue fuzzy. You don't want reduction, you don't want obligation to reduce to personal feelings, which are mental objects, and you don't want it to be described by the established jargon of abstract object.

It's possible that your cup of tea would be the ordinary language philosophical approach. That way you don't really need to talk about anything metaphysical. The cost of that approach is mass confusion, though. Always the best ingredient of an interesting discussion, huh? :grin:

I feel like the right word for things like laws, recessions, culture, etc. would be "incorporeal" as in "lacking a specific body." — Count Timothy von Icarus

So you'd be ok saying they don't exist in corporeal form, wouldn't you? In a context where you detect that "exist" is being used to talk about corporeal entities, would you agree that they don't exist?

Likewise laws continue to exist regardless of whether anyone is thinking of them at any particular moment. It would seem weird to say they flit in and out of existence as they enter someone's mental awareness. "Japanese culture," would be the same way. It exists in mental awareness, in synapses, in artifacts of all sorts, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Incorporeal entities might be described as eternal, in that they don't age. We imagine that the law written in 1860 is the same law we have today. It hasn't changed at all. Nothing that exists in time is changeless in that way. One term that mathematicians use for this sort of entity is "abstract.". If it's incorporeal, but I can be wrong about it's properties, it's an abstract object. Are you cool with that language?

But for the person committed to reductive materialism it seems that "personal preference," cannot be were explanation stops. Why is personal preference what it is? Well here we are going to need to call in biology, psychology, economics, sociology, history, etc. People don't have the preferences they have for no reason at all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

For a reductive materialist, the explanation would have to stop wherever physics says it stops. Particles? Waves? Somewhere in there.

The driving assumption behind reductive explanations seems to generally be smallism, the idea that any facts about large scale things must be reducible to facts about smaller parts — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think it's because of discomfort with the idea that parts of the universe are alive and conscious. Seems like voodoo. As Tobias mentioned, it's a minority view at this point.

For one thing, laws themselves end up affecting history, sociology, psychology, etc. The influence is bidirectional. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Does it interest you to ask what kind of thing a law is? You don't feel it must be reducible, you don't believe they're mental objects. What are they?

Even if they are reducible to something else, they certainly exist, and I think you'd be hard pressed to make a compelling argument that they reduce to "individual preferences," as some sort of unanalyzable primitive either. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What do you think laws reduce to?

Yea, it's an epic like Star Wars where Trump is Luke Skywalker and his wife is the lady with the bobs on her ears so they can't be ripped off by stray bullets.

I know, right? It so feels that way to me too. I can like remember every detail so clearly. — Hanover

Every detail of what?

It was yesterday

I think obligation is something people feel sometimes. "He didn't want to go to the party, but he felt obligated.". Or it could be something that people in the area believe. "Most Americans believed he was obliged to resign.". It's just describing how people feel or attitudes they have.
— frank

There are of course multiple senses in which we use the word obliged. One indeed often feel obliged to do x. But consider the difference between these two sentences: "He felt obliged to go to the party" and "he was obliged to go to the party". They are not the same sentences, but in your account of obligation they are. That is because you think an obligation is subjective. The obligation though has an objective side to it. We are bound to certain acts and that bind we call an obligation. They arise out of certain procedures, being you signing a contract, or a legislator promulgating a law. — Tobias

I think we're just going to disagree here. I said earlier that what exists is people saying and doing things. The rest is feelings and ad hoc explanations. I was hoping you'd agree that obligation comes down to personal sentiment because we could finally explore the way the private language argument blasts away the veracity of the stories we tell about obligation. But instead, you're saying the binding is out there for all to see. I'm not sure what you're talking about.

It's been interesting and fun to talk with you. :smile:

The use of "I promise" over "I intend" is just to emphasise the strength of one's belief that it will happen. — Michael

Or it could come from an attempt to assure someone. Meaning depends on context.

I think it's probably context dependent. Noam Chomsky said "real" is like an honorific, just specifying that a certain thing is special. Promising can be like that for a declaration of intent.

I mean, the emphasis placed on putting things in writing shows that verbal announcements are of dubious value.

If that shot had been just a few inches to the right. :sad:

You could think of a promise as an act prolonged through time, just like the turning on of a light. — Leontiskos

I guess you could. I don't.

I guess you're asking what "obligation" is supposed to be adding to the act of uttering a promise.

It's a mind-dependent thingy.

I think obligation is something people feel sometimes. "He didn't want to go to the party, but he felt obligated.". Or it could be something that people in the area believe. "Most Americans believed he was obliged to resign.". It's just describing how people feel or attitudes they have.

It's like when Margaret Thatcher said, "There's no such thing as Society." If you really don't understand what she was saying, that's your choice. Most of us understand it perfectly.
— frank

The question is, was she right? Of course I understand what she was saying. I also understand what it does when saying that. It was a way to get rid of social policy. I think that is always. Metaphysics, the question what is really real, is idle speculation. What we need to know is, what does ascribing 'reality' or 'existence' to a certain something do? The question is not 'does a promise exist'. — Tobias

I'm an ontological anti-realist. I don't believe the categories of physical, mental, and abstract should be cashed out as more than elements of a worldview. I take that a lot more seriously than most, but I'm still bound to pay attention to what my worldview says. It says mind-dependent items don't exist as any more than the shenanigans of the mind. Is that part of my worldview problematic? Sure. But my worldview grew organically out of the experiences of my kind. It's part of my foundation.

The 'I' that does things is also shaped by the institutions in which it exists. — Tobias

True. I'm conditioned by my environment, including the human world. Still, what exists is me and other individuals, not a phantom society. Don't jump to the conclusion that my take on Thatcher's comment is simple. My interest is in understanding the world. It's not a football game where I cheer for one side.

it's an element of intellectual life. So yes, they exist. In another sense, they don't.
— frank

If that is the conclusion I would think it merits some investigation in what you consider meaningful for existence. What does it matter for the existence of something to be an aspect of intellectual life? My hunch is that it is 'dirt and dunamis' as you put it in an earlier post. What advantage does it have to hold on to a position that cannot make sense of the distinction between rules of evidence and existence? — Tobias

My worldview says dirt and dynamos exist. A philosophical analysis will say we should probably deflate the concept of existence so that we don't run into problems denying the existence of things we can't do without. By and large, I think we're in agreement.

This kind of borderline freaks me out every time I watch it. Look especially for when the muzzle starts receding until the lips are actually behind the nose.

I think promises are for societies where people lie all the time. If you make an oath, you're signaling that you're telling the truth for a change. Otherwise, there's no difference between giving a promise and just doing as Jesus advised, "let your yes mean yes:"

Mattew 5:33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago: Don’t make a false solemn pledge, but you should follow through on what you have pledged to the Lord.[d] 34 But I say to you that you must not pledge at all. You must not pledge by heaven, because it’s God’s throne. 35 You must not pledge by the earth, because it’s God’s footstool. You must not pledge by Jerusalem, because it’s the city of the great king. 36 And you must not pledge by your head, because you can’t turn one hair white or black. 37 Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. Anything more than this comes from the evil one."

Too bad that the implementation of the whole process has proven fragile/vulnerable; — jorndoe

But another thing people forget is that the vaccine was revolutionary. The massive pile of cash coming in to fund it from governments and rich guys was amazing. I really wonder what a socialist world would have done. I'd like to think the freedom to go with a crazy solution would exist there, but I don't know.