And the net result will be saving lives. — Banno

Sad to see you lick boots this way.

Fetishising free speech — Banno

Wrong. This isn't some abstract argument over bookworm principles. This is about letting the most bloodthristy government on the planet work with the most duplicitous corporate stooges on on the planet in order to control what can and cannot be expressed in the among the largest forums of expression on the planet.

Way to miss the issue entirely.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/07/16/biden-administration-completely-kills-the-its-a-private-company-so-its-not-censorship-argument/

"The most common argument you’ll hear from those who support monopolistic social media giants controlling speech on their platforms is that these are private corporations, not the government, so it doesn’t count as censorship. Whenever you object to Silicon Valley oligarchs exerting total control over the political speech of billions of people, mainstream liberals instantly transform into an army of Ayn Rands defending the private property rights of those companies. The fact that these platforms are inseparably interwoven with the highest branches of the US federal government kills such arguments stone dead.

In a corporatist system of government, where there is no separation between corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship. The actual government as it actually exists is censoring the speech not just of its own people, but people around the world. If US law had placed as much emphasis on the separation of corporation and state as it had on the separation of church and state, the country would be unrecognizably different from what we see today.

Only infantile narcissists and power-worshipping bootlickers want the most powerful government on earth controlling what people are allowed to say to each other about a virus response which affects everybody, and only those with no sense of self-preservation entrust worldwide human speech to an alliance of government agencies and powerful tech plutocrats."

On this issue I happen to agree. If Trump had moved to work with private companies to censor speech, liberals would have had cried and moaned like the little bitches they are. Yet somehow Biden, who is in every way as shit as Trump, in many way worse, does exactly this, suddenly it's OK. If these morons want a daddy who will tell them what they are allowed to access, they will get one.

Because the maximal horizon of US 'progressivism' amounts to nothing more than capitalism with a human face, where everyone gets to be exploited with equal opportunity. But yeah, @pfhorrest is right - there is no organized left except for those who occasionally intervene to stem the blood loss in the form of providing tents to the homeless and airing podcasts now and then. Not a US exclusive problem by any means.

There is no left wing in the US. Just a bunch of effete liberals - all of whom are centre right - who confuse politeness and table manners for politics.

Also, the idea that Russia is responsible for the insanity of American politics and not the fact that Americans are endogenously politically insane is hilarious.

Hendrik Spruyt - The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of System Change

I kinda like it. I especially like that it's only positive and not negative (no downvotes). I do miss seeing postcounts tho. Wish there was a way to show both. Makes it harder to pick users out.

Banned @MikeListeral for low quality posting.

Also, this sounds more like meaning as use rather than the picture theory, so I'm curious why you compared it to the picture theory instead. — Luke

Yeah, it wouldn't be wrong to see this as another angle of attack with respect to meaning as use. Importantly though, I'm expressly not comparing it to the picture theory. For as I read it, the picture theory can be jettisoned while still retaining the distinction between saying and showing that is at work in the TLP. For instance, take 4.022: "A proposition shows its sense. A proposition shows how things stand if it is true. And it says that they do so stand." I think the first sentence of this is exactly correct, while I think the second sentence - which sets a constraint upon what 'sense' is - is exactly wrong. Moreover, I think the PI is a recognition of exactly this, and that it too is a working out of what it means to jettison the picture theory while maintaining the saying/showing distinction. If I quoted the TLP rather than the PI, its simply because I think the TLP is much clearer about this, while the PI is alot more circumlocutious.

I may have missed something, but if Brot and pain both signify bread, then I don't follow why "these words are not interchangeable for them" or how they "strive to exclude each other". — Luke

That part of the quote kinda puzzles me too, but I think he just means that you're not likely to code switch from French to German and vice versa while speaking about bread. I think anyway.

I can't see Albo steering the ship of state anytime in the future. — Wayfarer

Out of curiosity, why not?

I'm not sure it's apathy so much as cowardice. Australian national culture is generally one of petty minded fear of losing the little we think we have, and change of any kind is anathema to it. We're a village of supplicants pretending to be a country, and it shows. The control of the press by corporate power has not helped.

The most terrifying aspect of this is that this kind of looking-out-for-each-other's-corruption is that it becomes structural - if everyone is compromised, it only encourages more. Corruption is named so because it spreads, radiates outward. It's so fucked.

It was better when he was in hiding.

No, no, this is quite off topic. I'm not here to address Israel. I'm just using discourse around its genocide of Palestinians as an example.

I would stop you at the word "apartheid" and we would begin a detail comparison of both the apartheid system in South Africa and the current state of racial affairs in Israel. — BitconnectCarlos

You would indeed find out that Israel is far worse than anything remotely achieved by apartheid South Africa, as reported by Nelson Mandela's grandson, say. But that's neither here nor there. Just a random example. The point is that when dealing with such claims, the immediate pearl clutching involved in an appeal to civility is a power play through and through - one that aims to disable political claims by diverting the issues into personal or psychological ones. Which, happily, you did not do in your response to my genocidal Israel example.

They are just random examples. But it's undoubtable that civility politics is a thing, that, when faced with expressions of incivility motivated by, say, gross injustice - no matter how cogent the point - there are certain people whose immediate priority always goes to dismissing said expressions because of the mode of expression and not the substance of the claim.

The responses "misses the point" only if the person agrees with you in regard to your last points - — BitconnectCarlos

How so? A disagreement would normally occasion an attempt to refute the claim. Whether or not you agree or disagree is irrelevant to, well, the irrelevancy of tone policing.

But, if you'd rather not waste time, then thanks for your posts they have been wonderful :)

Ah, just waiting to scratch a particular itch are you? In any case, your response misses the point. What's central here - and I should have made this more explicit - is the asymmetry between the exercise of power (to take some totally random examples of indisputable evil: the genocidal state of Israel and the war criminality of Donald Rumsfeld and most of America's political leadership) and the politics of discourse around these kind of topics. When for instance, someone points out that Israel is an apartheid state that regularly murders Palestinians and steals their land, or that Donald Rumsfeld is an architect of mass murder, and the response is: "why can't you be civil about these things?", well, the response has missed the point. To use the author's words, it "enforces a false equation between incivility and violence that works to mask everyday violence as a civic norm". You and I on the other hand, are nobodies. There's no asymmetry of power here. And if your takeaway from the OP is "oh boy I get to be a meanie", then you have not read the OP with any care.

A good opportunity for clarification though, so I thank you for that.

Charles Tilly - Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990-1992

:up:

https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-ranked-dead-last-in-world-for-climate-action-in-latest-un-report/

Australia has been ranked dead last for climate action in the latest Sustainable Development Report, which assesses the progress of countries towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. In the latest edition of the report, produced by the UN-backed Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Australia received the lowest score awarded to any of the 193 members of the United Nations for the level of climate action, a withering repudiation of the Coalition government’s climate efforts.

Anthony Blinkin even had the temerity to refer to them as 'self-defense'. Fuckers.

Even the most cursory knowledge of human history will expose as laughable the idea that the 'rule of the mob' could even be considered as a viable threat with respect to any sustained mode of political rule. It's one of those made up fairy tales proffered by elites to justify their continued hold on power, which has always been the predominant basis of political domination anywhere one cares to look. The American 'founding daddies', concerned above all to keep land and resources in the hands of the already propertied, knew this above all.

How could an indifferent third party determine whether A is right? — ltlee1

You're being obtuse. Whatever the US says about itself or others is totally irrelavent to assessing democracy in China. Democracy is not, and has never been, an exclusive American posession. Especially given that America's political structure is in many ways explicitly anti-democratic. If you cannot bring yourself to talk about China's lack of democracy without having to detour through the US, then you are incapable of carrying out a discussion on the topic.

Anyone stupid enough to take the claims of a stupid person telling everyone else that they are not stupid at face value is the stupidest person in the room.

What? No. Whether or not A is rubbish has nothing to do with whether B is rubbish.

The issue is how to really judge whether a country is democratic or not. — ltlee1

And whether the US is democratic or not is totally irrelevant to this. I take it as obvious that the US is an excellent example of what to avoid when aiming run a democratic nation. If the US is doing it, it should probably be avoided, whatever 'it' is.

Whether or not the US is a democracy - it is not - has no bearing on whether or not China is. Not one bit. And China is about as democratic as my butt is hairless.

jfc

Like you, he's not clear on what the US actually is — frank

A mall cop for corporate interests. Nothing more.

As I mentioned, China has change ahead of them and they have no recipe. They're making it up as they go. — frank

I think this view is both paternalistic and naive. China commands an extremely well oiled state apparatus that has proven time and time again to execute on long term strategy with results in hand. The idea that China is some wide-eyed baby fawn may have passed muster in the 70s, but that time is long past. it certainly has far more strategic vision than anything the West can muster up in response, which has been a confused mix of total economic dependency on China combined with stoking up xenophobia as a response to internal failures all around. The West as it stands is undergoing a process of regression to juvenilia with respect to China's own maturity of state. The US is a bumbling fool on the world scene, not 'was'. With democracy already a walking zombie in the West, the last thing anyone needs is to give it up to an out and out authoritarian superpower.

Democracy is where people vote directly on issues of concern to them. — Banno

I deeply, deeply dislike this definition, which confuses a mechanism of democratic rule with democratic rule as such. If democracy is the exercise of political power by the people, this is a principle which can be cashed out in many ways, of which 'voting' is a minimal and barely sufficient one.

As for the notion that China is simply 'using the word differently' - well sure, but it is the kind of different that ought to be contested and opposed at every turn. As utterly empty as "Western" claims to democracy are, China is expressly anti-democratic at all levels, and cedeing to propaganda is a stupid move.

Nah, Leg is some other existing user who recently asked to have his or her name changed to Leghorn because Idk they have nothing better to do and we obliged.

Knew this would be some racial segregationist bullshit right from the 2nd sentence.

So many paragraphs just to say "I don't like race mixing, and you shouldn't either".

It's OK to post video links, so long as they contribute to a conversation, and that they are not the whole content of an opening post.

Oh nice, an object lesson. There are things beneath or beside refutation, and their dismissal does not constitute an ad hom, insofar as it doesn't function as part of an argument. It's not a conclusion drawn from an (invalid) inference, which is what an ad hom would be. A nice negative example for the OPs question.

And if the allegorical representation of those ideas are discarded, what is discarded with them? — Wayfarer

Your inability to function - much less think - without a mythic crutch does not warrant an arrogation of this impotence to cosmic proportions. Much less make the basis of rendering judgements upon other modes of ethics that do not find their raison d'etre in a dearth of imagination.

:up: Theism is existential cowardice writ large.

Hence the incomparable superiority of Spinoza over even a single page of Schopenhauer: "The free person thinks least of all of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life". Schopenhauer being exactly the kind of miserable person who made his personality a philosophy.

One wonders how it is the not the height of infantialism to demand that 'meaning' be handed to one on a silver platter from on high, with the alternative being that one is consigned to some kind of drooling existential incapacity. One imagines that the theist - for all his inventions of sky daddies and karmic mysteries - has a lack of imagination so severe that he has to invent a whole 'mythos' to cover over their total inability to recognize 'meaning' seeping through every pore of the universe without all that trash. Theism is and will always be simply a hatred of the world, motivated by a deep existential impotence, projected outward as a defense mechanism, and then demanded of everyone else on pain of suffering that same complete failure of imagination as they have.