Ok, so how is it borderline irrelevant when you seem to agree the event may give Trump an advantage in a possibly highly consequential US election? :brow:

Don't you think the failed assassination attempt makes Trump more likely to be elected in what is bound to be a close election?

Trump being almost shot is a borderline irrelevant event in the great scheme of things — despite the cool picture. — Lionino

Hmmm. This is perhaps the one instance where I think who becomes the next US president somewhat matters.

The US establishment has been deeply split over the 'pivot to Asia' (ergo - pivot away from Europe and Ukraine). If Trump were to become president it might be the moment this pivot finally happens. That would mark a fundamental shift in US foreign policy. This is why Europeans are getting nervous, Ukrainians are getting nervous, etc.

The election might be considered irrelevant to the extent that US foreign policy will be guided by geopolitical realities anyway, which will force it to pivot sooner or later. Whether that happens now or during another presidency somewhere down the line (headed by Trump or someone else) I think does matter.

The world changed drastically over the course of Biden's presidency, and it may change drastically again over the course of the next.

The window during which the US can defend its position in the world is closing.

If the US has to endure another presidency during which it focuses on the wrong things, makes the wrong decisions and sees its international power and credibility evaporate, I think it will greatly influence the US position when the pivot to Asia finally does happen and it will most likely be too late.

Fantasizing about torture for the sake of a clown - well, where does that leave you? :brow:

Wishing death on people out of personal fancy is just poor character.

Point at something Trump did that makes him deserve to be assassinated. What illegal wars did he start? Which countries did he ruin? Which regions of the world did he plunge into chaos?

I doubt you'll get much further than "he said some words I didn't like." Compared to previous US presidents and even the current one, he's a lightweight when it comes to wanton destruction.

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

What did the guy do, other than being personally disliked by you, that makes him deserve to be assassinated?

How is entering directly into full-scale war preferable over striking a deal with the Russians which they have been signaling is their intention since the March/April 2022?

That's some crazy stuff.

Absolutely nothing suspicious here, folks.

I forgot that 5.56mm isn't used by professionals to kill people. Silly me.

The Secret Service did a terrible job. — Michael

Yea, they missed.

It's pretty much unthinkable that security was alerted of a gunman and did nothing.

Very... erm... "strange."

Our clown is better than their clown!

Isn't it time you folks got off the clown car?

I think karma is real in the sense that immoral deeds hurt the actor as well as the victim, and no good things can be obtained through immoral deeds.

Immorality therefore is like a hole one digs for themselves.

Furthermore, if one wishes to truly better themselves, they will have to atone for all the sins of the past - a painful process, if genuine.

Very spooky. Maybe we should stop producing them then, eh?

Barring a debilitating health event, can we safely conclude the US establishment favors Trump / the Republican Party over Biden?

Is there really any universe in which the events of the last week could transpire if the purpose wasn't expressly for Biden to lose? Is there really any universe in which a senile old man is allowed to hijack the fate of the most powerful country in the world?

Personally, I don't think so.

This term is quite loaded and can have multiple meanings.

In the modern-day context, I would suggest that 'multiculturalism' is essentially a doctrine adopted by states with which they try to encourage migration to their country, thus increasing the amount of souls under their yoke, and thus increasing their power. (and also sucking power away from other, potentially rival, states - the so-called "brain drain")

The historical United States is an example of a state that rose to prominence through migration, and various modern-day European states are trying to replicate that feat in order to keep their social security systems afloat.

The question: "Can people of different cultures coexist?" is easy enough to answer - obviously, yes, under the right conditions. But this is fundamentally not the question at hand whenever politicians rant about multiculturalism. They use this implied context in order to make disagreement more thorny (if you disagree "you're a racist!"), when in fact the real context is what I described in the first paragraph.

Questions like: "Should migration be used to jury rig unsustainable social security structures?", while much closer to the real context, are for some reason a lot less popular among politicians.

Then again, socialism without open borders is, well, national socialism. Also quite unpopular.


With that out of the way, I think it's clear that mass migration is doomed to fail for countries with elaborate social security (like European countries).

What made the historical United States successful is the fact that no one was getting a handout. So people went to the United States with a plan and an intention to build something. If they failed, they would likely become homeless or worse. Harsh, but ultimately a formula by which mass migration could succeed.

In modern-day Europe, the opposite is true. While the US accepted mass migration on the condition of "succeed or starve", the EU is giving a handout to literally everyone. That's why Europe is flooded with migrants who have basically no prospect of successfully integrating into European societies, which has lead to no end of trouble.

The end result will be predictably tragic.

A main point is that the focus on "peak experiences," tends to actually exclude a great deal of the people who we think of as "mystics" from the definition because they never wrote about such experiences. For example, the most famous "Beatific Vision" and "Platonic Ascent" in St. Augustine's work takes place in the Book IX of the Confessions. Yet it isn't a meditative trance but rather a conversation with his mother shortly before her death. (Book IX). Likewise, St. Bonaventure's "The Mind's Journey Into God," is cast into the mold of St. Francis' vision of the Seraphim, but that's just the mold for a heavily intellectualized ascent where the prose and ideas, not some actual singular experience, are the focus. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is why I prefer the term 'mystical' experience, because 'peak' implies something intense and lengthy, whereas it appears mystical experiences come in various forms, and not all of them are like that. Some last only an instant, though the impression they leave on the mind is very profound.

Mystical experiences do not have to involve meditative trances, but maybe this is the point the author was trying to make?

He starts off by comparing two views of mysticism, William James' influential modern view and that of Jean Gerson writing in the 14th century. With this comparison he is able to tease out the problem with James' focus on peak experiences, and as many of the case studies show, many "mystics" focus on a great deal aside from there experiences. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd be interested to hear some of the conclusions regarding this!

To be honest, there hasn't been a young world leader that has ever made a good impression on me. They appear naive, easily manipulated, sometimes overtly groomed, and they seem to have little real wisdom or understanding of the gravity of the position they are in and the consequences of their actions.

Politics should be conducted by dusty, boring, old people - people from whom there is little to gain from corruption, and people who have children and grandchildren whose futures they care about.

Today we have to admit that too radical mysticism is equivalent to fanaticism or naivety, unless it takes seriously the challenges I have talked about. But a mysticism that is not radical and not deep is just not mysticism: what makes mysticism is exactly radicality and depth. — Angelo Cannata

Just curious; why do you think mysticism is inherently radical?

I agree that the term mysticism has been thrown around very loosely, so it's probably important for us to settle on what is its essence.

A mystic, in my view, is someone who experiences something that they find impossible to put into words (the experience is 'unintelligible'), while simultaneously recognizing the experience as something so profound that they feel compelled to investigate, often ranking it above the rational world of sense experience in terms of its significance.

The so-called 'mystical experience' and the investigation of its meaning is therefore the root of mysticism.

The search and the act of priming oneself for such an experience I would probably not call mysticism. Though it is obviously related, it is a particularly prickly subject since there seems to be no reliable method of triggering a genuine mystical experience.

Plato and various Neo-Platonist works do a very good job at putting in rational terms a relationship with what is fundamentally unintelligible.

In terms of modern scholars, I found the lectures by Pierre Grimes on Plato and various related subjects a treasure trove of insight. (Freely available on his YouTube channel)

No one is interested in hearing a hundred-year-old tu quoque to distract from America's many misdeeds in the present.

If you need me to give you examples, you're proving my point. Listing America's misdeeds is pedantry at this point, and I'm not going to waste my time in doing so. Especially since you already seem so eager to start shifting the blame.

Because of the "orders of magnitude" part of my argument.

Now that would be rich - the suzerain trying to evade responsibility by pointing at the involvement of her client states.

You need me to give you an example of America's misdeeds in the modern age? Please.

If you're going to play this game, you should probably find something that does not pre-date the concept of a European state.

How is Trump worse than several other presidents in recent times, who started illegal wars and supported genocides and revolutions with literally millions of victims? (I'm thinking Vietnam, East-Timor, the Middle-East, etc.)

Appearances don't count for much anyway, and a politician's words should be disregarded off-hand.

If Trump's previous presidency is anything to go by, it's really not that bad. He can't hold a candle to some of the absolute demons that preceded him.

I don't disagree with much of what you wrote, but trust in US government and media is at very low levels, whereas trust in the EU is at high levels. That's really all I need to know about a stupid citizenry. — NOS4A2

I wouldn't say trust in the EU is at high levels. That's why right-wing populism is currently sweeping the EU. But I wouldn't say the EU citizenry is much better than the US, though Europeans are definitely less ignorant.

The difference is that the US government gets up to shit that's several orders of magnitude worse.

Their primary purpose is overseas expeditions. Not crucial for continental Europe which has airbases all over the place.

Furthermore, I think aircraft carriers will turn out to be massive sitting ducks when the next major conflict that involves them comes along. They'll be like the battleships in WWII.

During Trump's office, the British Parliament understood quite clearly that if Trump really walks out of NATO, they have to take more role in Continental Europa. — ssu

Why would continental Europe agree to that?

Island nations have a tendency to become opportunists and 'puppetmasters' due to their relative safety and limited ability for expansion. They should be kept at a safe distance.

Sure, UK wants to be the closest ally of the US, but Trump will shit on every ally it has, [...] — ssu

I think the 'Five-Eyes' alliance, or Anglosphere, plays a fundamentally different role in American geopolitics, with the American commitment to this being a lot less fickle. These nations all share the same strategic challenges. They share intelligence, which is basically the most intimate level at which states can cooperate.

So in my view, Britain searching influence in Europe is mostly political opportunism, and not a matter of security for them.

My friend Tzeentch, we have discussed much in the Ukraine, and if this thread comes too popular or the heated, likely it will whisked away to the Lounge as the Ukraine conflict -thread.

But to others, the actual story both Sweden and Finland did everything to keep the relations normal with the cranky neighbor in the East. And we really did, the whole term of Finlandization was invented for the Finnish situation. But there's a point until you try to be neutral and cordial and keeping up friendly relations to your cranky threatening neighbor. That point was crossed over in February 24th 2022. That it was it. Finland and Sweden abandoned both their neutrality, as Russia is obviously a threat to them.

I'm writing this just a few kilometers from the Russian border. There is NO traffic over the border, for years I haven't seen a single Russian truck and if you want to go to Russia, you have to go through Turkey. The Finnish Armed Forces have put the training cycle to a totally different gear to prop up the deterrence. Russia is spreading bullshit propaganda to it's people over the border that Finland is planning to invade Russian Karelia. Russian Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov yearns for the days of Finlandization and talks about it's opposite "Estonization" which for the Lavrov means Russophobia. (See here)

Well, you reap what you sow. — ssu

Be that as it may, surely you do not want the Americans and Brits to push for war between Europe and Russia?

I get the distrust towards the Russians. What I don't get is the trust towards various other warmongering nations which are just as guilty to this conflict, like the US and UK.

Israel approves legislation of five West Bank outposts, says Bezalel Smotrich

It appears this bit of news was surpressed by search algorithms, because it received little attention outside of Arab news outlets and was difficult to find through Google searches.

Perhaps it is not unimportant to know that amidst the chaos and carnage, Israel blatantly continues its illegal settlement policies, which it uses as a method of slow ethnic cleansing of territory it illegally occupies.

If anyone wonders where the animosity towards Israel comes from, this is it. Israel continues to be hell-bent on annexing territory that doesn't belong to it. When it encounters international resistance, its answer is to fall back on the barbarism it so readily condemns. Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity.

The only thing here for the EU is to check really it's defense policy and in this field make more cooperation with the UK. As the UK never did leave NATO, defense cooperation would be a natural start for the EU to warm ties with the UK — ssu

I agree roughly with what you wrote, but aren't you going a little light on the UK?

It was their errand boy that went to Ukraine to boycot peace, acting diametrically against Ukrainian and European interests to score brownie points with the Americans.

Especially from a Finn I would expect a certain critical stance towards those pushing for war, since your nation will be on the frontline paying the heaviest price if the worst comes to pass.

In my view, Europeans should not focus on which clown is driving the clown car, nor on anything the clowns are saying.

The only thing that matters is Washington's actions, and what we can reasonably glean to be Washington's interests in order to predict their future actions.

These are some things that in my view should drive European foreign policy:

1. The US must pivot to Asia sooner or later.

2. Due to waves of right-wing populism, the pivot to Asia will constitute a loss of control over Europe, at which point Europe becomes a potential rival to the US.

3. The reason the US hasn't pivoted yet, is because it is busy shaping the political landscape in Europe in a way that will benefit the US when it departs.

4. Both Europe and Russia will have a big role to play in keeping the Chinese economy going when conflict breaks out in the Pacific.

5. Additionally, both Europe and Russia stand to benefit as 'the laughing thirds' from large-scale conflict on the other side of the globe when the two superpowers beat each other to a bloody pulp.

6. Adding 2 + 2 together, the US will do everything it can to A. prevent Europe from becoming a laughing third as the result of a US-China war, and B. prevent Europe from keeping China's economy afloat during a US-China war.


In other words, the US is a major threat to Europe no matter which clown runs the White House, because US strategic interests no longer align with European strategic interests.

For Russia, virtually all the same things are true - it too stands to be the laughing third as the result of a US-China war and play an important role as a market for China.


So, what should Europe do?

First of all, it needs to understand that its strategic interests align more with Russia than they do with the US. Europe and Russia, if they act rationally, should both seek to avoid conflict between themselves and put themselves in position to benefit from a US-China war.

On the other hand, there is nothing that would suit the US agenda more than long-term conflict between Europe and Russia.

European leaders should:

1. Encourage the US (and Britain - but that's another topic) to leave NATO as soon as possible, preferably while keeping NATO itself intact as a European security structure.

2. Steer towards a return to the pre-2014 status quo between Europe and Russia. Open diplomatic talks vis-á-vis Ukraine, normalize relations, trade etc.

3. Dust off their militaries in a non-antagonistic way.

4. Completely reform the EU so that it's an actual functional basis for an independent European state instead of a dysfunctional, compliant US vassal.


In other words, should Trump become president and start threatening to leave NATO, don't stop them. At the same time realize that this is going to mark a fundamental and inevitable change in US-European relations that we are woefully underprepared for and ignorant of. In fact, we should really be acting as though this has already happened, because the US has been preparing for this since at least 2008.

I'm pretty sure the whole story that Trump was a Russian asset has been more or less proven to be utter bullshit - a literal fabrication.

... playing into the hands of hungry foreign powers? — jorndoe

The US is the quintessential hungry foreign power.

Also, wasn't the whole Russia-gate thing proven to be bullshit, just like 99.9% of everything that's written in the media?

Time to wisen up folks.

Suitable examples of the US government pulling this trick on its citizenry run all the way into the present. You really believe something changed for the better between then and now?

In terms of proof, obviously I don't have anything that qualifies as actual proof. Though, it seems self-evident to me that US domestic politics is just an inflammatory clownshow to keep people distracted and occupied with things that don't matter.

The malice is self-evident when we view the genocidal levels of mayhem the US wreaks on various parts of the world with the tacit approval of its citizenry.

Lastly, the fact that the US government has been successfully pulling this trick for decades shows that they're not stupid; their citizenry is stupid.

Alright, so what do you make of something like this?



Are the things being described the product of non-conspiratorial dummies?

Oh, don't get me started.

But doesn't that imply ruthless cunning and a double agenda, though?