Top 1% starts at around $10mm-$11mm net worth, of which Bernie is a part of. But doesn't $10mm seem excessive? Why should anyone be allowed to have $10MM? Maybe 5 or even 1mm is excessive when you have homeless people living on the streets.

It would be excessive if wealth was fixed and finite. If that was the case, one person’s gain means another person’s loss. But this is zero-sum thinking, a common bias, not much different in naivety than saying “immigrants take our jobs”. Wealth, work, jobs, and the factors of production are not finite, therefor any commie plundering of wealth is not only unjust, but also an indictment against their creativity and resourcefulness, the absence of which leads them to steal wealth from others instead of creating themselves.

Thanks for putting that together.

I also think the whole “preventing suffering” argument is lacking because it could be used as an excuse for the prevention of a variety of ills, to prevent greed or bad gas for instance. One could just as easily say it prevents any number of good things, too, even the exact opposite of suffering. That they present the prevention of life as a prevention of suffering suggests some degree of bad faith. We should not let them pretend that life is a one-to-one ratio with suffering.

They made themselves angry. Before Trump came on the scene the gutter press could end a political campaign if the candidate happened to scream awkwardly. They had no power here, and overestimated their king-making status. They failed and lashed out because of it.

You don’t mention that Trump acted the same with pretty much every other leader he met—only Putin. The difference is, the Helsinki meeting, framed as it was in the midst of the Russia hoax, was sensationalized for appetites such as yours.

There was no red scare scare when leading Democrats were found to have CCP agents on their teams. Obama praised China in joint press conferences after this and other ugly incidents (the killing of CIA informants, hacking and theft of intellectual property). Merkel didn’t stoop to criticize Obama when Snowden revealed his NSA was spying on her. Is this the normal you’re speaking of?

No; what was not normal was drum of war banging in the background, especially as a McCarthyite red scare rippled through the DC establishment, disrupting the entire country with a dangerous, media-induced fantasy. That’s not normal, and as far as I can tell your own thinking has only served to defend those actions.

Trump is no more a genius than is the preacher who cries from the pulpit while he gathers the last dimes from the congregants. Believers aren't stupid, just vulnerable.

Trump has had most of the corporate global media, Hollywood, the intelligence community, and Big Tech against him. The most lucrative, influential and comprehensive machinery of propaganda in human history delivered an undoubtedly anti-Trump message, fitting the propaganda model to a T. The canard of a Kremlin-linked president still rattles in the heads of true believers while they remain mostly ignorant that the Chinese politburo had already reached the highest echelons of the opposing party. There was the sensationalism around violence at Trump’s rallies while hardly a whisper about violence against his rally-goers. Information gatekeepers actively suppress Trump and his supporters and anything that might reflect poorly on his opponents.

I think Trump’s Twitter feed and the reach of the few commentators who support him are utterly mild in comparison. That’s why I would also think Trump’s opponents are far more vulnerable.

No, Bezos does not control your life and is master of no one. You willingly use his services or you do not. You willingly engage with his company or not. You willingly work for him or you do not. Having an “impact on society” is not the same as being in control of other human beings, nor is it confined to the ultra-wealthy, and no amount of word-twisting can alter that. So it’s utter nonsense to suggest these people control anything beyond their own company and property.

You have less of a say in the government than you do in the market. And I doubt you know or have any say in where your tax money goes, unless of course you are living off the government’s plundered cash already. But assuming you also pay taxes instead of just fellate your master, try forgetting to submit them to your government and see how much of a say you have then.

The state has the monopoly on violence. But they essentially own the state. To say they're subjected to the "same laws and penalties" as anyone else is naive. Yes, according to cypto-neoliberals like you, "government is the problem," and so it's no surprise that you want to divert the focus to "bureaucrats." Very typical.

My only contention is that the so-called 1% are not your masters. Elon Musk is unable to assert any control over you, and if he did, he would be subject to legal penalty. So if a person of this evil, (and in the last analysis) psychopathic class is unable to assert control over you, how is he at the same time your master?

At any rate, I become suspicious of hatred when it becomes indistinguishable from envy.



Sure, it’s easier to purchase favor from those in power when one is wealthy. But it is impossible to purchase favor when favor isn’t for sale. The reason the so-called 1% are able to seek their advantage from those in power is because those in power give it to them.

I would rather live under robber barons than under the consistent bureaucratic scrutiny of moral busybodies. The moral busybodies rule over us for our own good and with the approval of their conscience.

Since they're the "masters of the universe," it's worth understanding exactly who they are.

The 1% is not the “masters of the universe” because they do not possess the monopoly on violence. They are private citizens and are beholden to the same laws and penalties. You are more likely to lose your property or be thrown in jail by some mediocre bureaucrat than Elon Musk.

Thanks for writing that.

In cognizance of the outline above, why isn't misanthropy a justifiable philosophical resolution to the fact of human existence? Why isn't a misanthropic stance consistent with an existentialist one? Can't one believe in the truth of human existence, dissociate it from its fact in the real world, and then champion an amelioration of its vices?

As some have mentioned, misanthropy finds one or two crimes of which only some are guilty and indicts the entire species. It’s unjust, fallacious, and as such, worthy of its own condemnation and ridicule.

I can only respectfully disagree. For me, and I mean no disrespect to anyone, but for me, wearing masks as prescribed is a little too close to wearing tinfoil hats to block out all the radiowaves penetrating your skull.

There are millions of healthy people wearing masks, not because they are sick and risk infecting someone, but because they are ignorant of whether they are sick or not. Ignorance, not illness. Conformity, not heroism.

In the lead up to his election and beyond, Trump’s opponents compared him to a litany of tyrants, from Nero to Mao to Adolph Hitler. But during a national emergency, and presented the perfect opportunity to seize absolute control, he ended up leaving public health measures to the states where they belong. Now he is criticized for not doing enough. Meanwhile, as the boys who cried wolf were busy pointing their finger, the walls of state oppression grew up all around us.

This embarrassing irony should not be understated. Vast sums of human beings throughout the world now find themselves under some version or other of state control and coercion, none of which Trump decreed. Police checkpoints, curfews, lockdowns, state cessation of the economy, mask mandates, banned gatherings, the restriction of movement—those who promised us a Trumpian fascism never once warned us that the same tyranny has found its perfect breeding ground in the nostrums of paternalistic nanny-statism.

Where are they now? Santayana reasoned that “Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”; one might excuse their mistake had they turned their mental machinery to the unprecedented erosion of civil liberties and human rights we are now seeing. But no. From beneath the state jackboot we can still hear their cries of wolf.

The assassination of Mohsen Fakrizadeh seems to be the final Trump era action on Iran before the Biden administration takes over.

There is zero evidence to support this fantasy because Iran has refused to offer any.

The US needs not lose its “status”, nor must it remain absent from world affairs while retreating from the mess of its former interventionist policies, which arguably exacerbated the problems to begin with. Afghanistan and Iraq were deadly mistakes. And, as critics of Trump’s foreign policy often fail to mention, until Trump came along ISIS was marauding across the land with near impunity. No amount of hopey-changey rhetoric or Biden’s finger-wagging could stop any of that.

Yes, when the US leaves some area the US leaves some area. That’s the entire point.

I thought it was obvious, but the term “witch hunt” has never been used in the sense of a hunt for evil witches. It was used to describe political harassment and a form of McCarthyism.

You suspect a lot of things and make many predictions. But I have yet to see one come true.

You’re right, none of that matters to me. The idea that the US should not leave the Middle East to the Middle East because Turkey might flirt with Russia is absurd. This kind of globalist fear-mongering is what held us there in the first place.

Undoing the anti-Trumpist witch-hunt by pardoning Michael Flynn was expected. At least now we can put a strike through one of the most embarrassing moments in American history.

Do you require laws to teach you right from wrong?

“ Well, good afternoon, everyone. Today, I’m pleased to announce nominations and staff for critical foreign policy national security positions in my administration. It’s a team that will keep our country and our people safe and secure. And it’s a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it. Once again sit at the head of the table. Ready to confront our adversaries and not reject our allies. Ready to stand up for our values. In fact, in calls from world leaders that I’ve had, about 18 or 20 so far, I’m not sure the exact number, in the week since we won the election, I’ve been struck by how much they’re looking forward to the United States reasserting its historic role as a global leader, both in the Pacific, as well as the Atlantic, all across the world.”

-Joe Biden


I hope you’re ready to bow to your American overlords. Though, as history attests, suspect incompetence beneath a veneer of grandiloquence.

In a society of absolute freedom the only restrictions required are the ones we place on ourselves. Tempered by ethics and morality, one can live in a free society without infringing on the freedom of others.

The idea that one requires statism and laws to prevent him from doing harm to others is infantile.

Except there's no evidence that America has a shoddy election process. There's been no actual evidence presented and every meaningful claim he's filed in court has failed, even before some of his own appointees. I'm just not following how he's making anyone look silly by making unsubstantiated allegations.

The US has a federal agency to regulate cheese but not an agency to regulate federal elections. America doesn’t have an election process.

You don’t have to follow but I explained it well enough. While these Twitter-parrots go on about Rudy’s hair dye, they leave his arguments completely untouched. Sworn affidavits, of which Rudy claims to have hundreds, is considered evidence the last time I checked.

I’m loving Trump’s efforts contesting the results of the election and his refusal to concede, not only because it puts a spotlight on America’s shoddy election process, but also because it renders his opponents silly.

As predictable as morning, the same voices that for three years spread misinformation and conspiracy theories of the 2016 election are now shedding tears about Trump’s threat to “our most sacred right” in 2020. The cliché “you reap what you sow” comes to mind.

Some are even saying Trump is staging a coup, as if he wasn’t already the leader of the free world—and this after years of failed investigations and frivolous impeachment attempts, all of which hindered the administration during a time when it might have focused on threats based in reality instead of the deep-state dinner-theater.

Never mind that the establishment’s parrots were silent when democrats such as Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar raised concerns in 2019 about voting machines, reports of “vote flipping”, and other problems; when the president expresses the same concerns he is doing so out of spite and revenge, at least according to “people familiar with the president’s thinking”, whose gossip could come from any self-appointed Trump mind reader. The tendency to assign motives to Trump is a consistent propaganda technique, but it is always based on two assumptions: that one can assume Trump holds the worst possible intentions, and that one can further assume that, if he has found the lowest possible motive, he has found the right one. One could just as easily say the concerns of Trump’s opponents about his refusal to concede is born of fear and megalomania and ignorance. At any rate, that is why the motive canard is so uninteresting. Each side can go on playing the game ad nauseam, but when all the mud has been flung every man’s views still remain to be considered on their merits.

As for the merits, that will be for the courts to decide.

It prevents suffering because it prevents birth. You are implying that this is drastic. The trillions of unborn babies not being born is not drastic. Cutting off a thumb to prevent a thumbnail (which doesn't even make sense) is drastic, yes.

I’m not implying it’s drastic. In fact, insofar as anti-natalism involves no one but the one practicing it, I think it is completely mild. I’m implying that preventing life in order to prevent suffering is nonsensical. It suspiciously leaves out other aspects of the human condition. You’d deny the entire gamut of human experience so as to avoid one degree of it. Someone could just as easily come along and say that you’re preventing joy and laughter and love. I just think it’s a stupid argument, almost a fallacy of composition.

The anti-natalist should be honest and admit that his principles are born from fear, not virtue. Only then could he ever hope to grapple with them. After all, as an ethic, anti-natalism turns out to be little more than a principle of self-concern.

It prevents future suffering, not alleviates current ones. True, it literally helps no "one". The last part is just a straw man argument you are trying to knock down. I never stated how noble people are for not procreating, and how amazingly rewarded they should be. That is your false attribution.

It doesn’t prevent suffering. It prevents birth. It prevents life. But no, it doesn’t present suffering any more than cutting your thumb off prevents a thumbnail.

I never stated that you stated how noble people are for not procreating. The false attribution is yours.

Globalist efforts are back on the table. For instance, listen to the “great reset” nonsense from the World Economic Forum, or Agenda 2030 from the UN. I suspect that with Biden as president the US will take back its role as the neoliberal spearhead.

How does this not lend cause to abstaining from procreation?

One has nothing to do with the other. Besides, those who alleviate suffering and work to care for the ill were born first. On the other hand, refusing to procreate alleviates zero suffering, helps no one, does nothing to innovate beyond our current circumstances, so one shouldn’t expect any cookies for it.

I would propose that we're inclined to find and should find certain conduct objectionable, or ignoble, even if it doesn't directly infringe on what we consider to be the rights of others. So, what is proper conduct isn't limited by considerations of claimed rights of each individual.

I agree with that. Even so, we should defend their right to engage in that conduct, and for the same reason we would do so for anyone else.

I’m reminded of the Jewish refugee from Nazi germany, Aryeh Neier, who while director of the ACLU defended the free speech rights of American Nazis to hold a rally in Chicago neighborhoods where many Holocaust survivors lived. Clearly the Nazi’s behavior was objectionable, ugly, and immoral, but the ACLU was right and moral in defending their right to engage in such conduct.

On what basis is their conduct objectionable, if it doesn't involve infringing the rights of others?

I suppose the basis would be intolerance and superstition. History is filled with beliefs, expressions, lifestyles, religions deemed objectionable and unacceptable and worthy of sanction.

One of the difficulties I have with the concept of rights is that I think acceptance of them gives rise to an ethics in which good, or moral, conduct is defined as that conduct which doesn't interfere with them. Each person has the right to do certain things as long as they don't infringe on or violate the rights of others. Rights are deemed possessions we each have, to which we're entitled, and nobody may take or interfere with those possessions. As long as they don't their conduct isn't objectionable, and they're free to do whatever they like and refrain from doing whatever they don't want to do without censure.

Rightfully so in my opinion. To me, refusing to interfere in such a manner is good conduct, and defending their rights even better. Censure and objection are not infringements on another’s right, however. An infringement would be some sort of unjust reprisal, like imprisonment.

It is difficult to defend the rights of those who engage in objectionable conduct. But with practice it can be done and those who do so are moral and decent.

If meanings were in the words we’d understand a foreign language as soon as we heard it. Meaning is generated within.

This is why I believe that any platitude about the “power of words” is magical thinking and censorship a fool’s errand, because words have as much power as any other guttural sound or mark on paper. Meaning, and any feelings derived from this process (arousal, stress, fear, laughter), is entirely self-generated. In theory, one could learn to control this process and realize his power over language.

My mistake. Sorry my eyes gloss over after about a few of your sentences. I didn’t realize you were actively excluding one of the countries under discussion.

Actually it is true because a Cold War is a war without direct military action by definition. I wasn’t aware of Soviet soldiers in the Vietnam, and I will give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you are arguing it was a hot war I might need more than that.

After checking your statement that “not ONE of those Gulf States have ever deployed a single soldier to fight Israel. Ever”, I found that to be false. Sudan sent a few thousand soldiers during the Yom Kippur war in the 70’s.

Either way I remain unconvinced. I cannot believe that a peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, as shaky as that may be, is not serious.

If that’s true I guess the Cold War ended during the 50’s. So did the North-Soth Korean conflict, apparently. No peaceful breakthroughs are possible when the soldiers aren’t shooting each other.

Actually, especially Saudi Arabia and Israel have already found each other as both fear Iran. Saudi-Arabia here is important as the largest GCC member, which also creates the opportunity for smaller states simply to start normalizing their relations.

As I have repeated again and again, not ONE of those Gulf States have ever deployed a single soldier to fight Israel. Ever. The Saudis haven't done that since the Israeli war of Independence. It's a positive move, yes, but it really isn't as a breakthrough as you think, especially after Egypt and Jordan have already normalized their relations with Israel. Still, it's a positive thing.

Yet tone down those superlatives, NOS4A2.

Soviet Russia never had any direct battles with the US in the Cold War, therefor the end of those tensions wasn’t much of a breakthrough, because it wasn’t a “meaningful” conflict.

The Arab-Isreali conflict, the Khartoum resolution, and the years of “meaningful” conflict between these countries is well known, despite your hand waves. Until now Israeli planes couldn’t even enter Sudanese or UAE airspace, let alone begin talks for embassies, ambassadors, tourism, investment and telecommunications.

Because the actual work is not much. Just look at the wall. And not starting a new war (just killing an Iranian general and getting Iran to lob missiles into US bases didn't start it) is actually, really, not a huge accomplishment.

But “normalization” and the brokering of diplomatic relations between Israel and some Arab states is a huge accomplishment.

I remember you telling me that putting your son-in-law in charge of the Middle East policy with absolutely no idea about politics in the area is absurd. This was during the fear-mongering about the brief Turkey-PLK spat—so much talk of genocide, world war 3, and ISIS, none of which occurred. Yet during his brief time there the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan normalize relations with Israel. These are countries that were a part of the Khartoum resolution of 1967, which essentially forbids peace with Israel. Even Ambassador Jim Jeffry, who once signed a letter proclaiming Trump a danger to the world, is going to recommend the Biden administration continue the Trump administration Middle East policies. He says it yielded better stability in the area than his predecessors.

So it’s not only that he didn’t start new wars, but he moved forward on peace in the Middle East, something that no virtue-signalling, “compassionate conservatism”, hopey-changey government could ever hope to accomplish.

In a sense the concept of rights is about behavior. Your right to free and independent thought is my duty not to suppress or punish you for it. Your right to property is my duty not to plunder it, and so on. Every right afforded a man depends on a corresponding duty which the rest of us ought to, at least in theory, act out.

The discourse around rights serve well to define the reasonable limits of power, and I think the justifications for why we afford others these rights has been well reasoned and put to the grindstone of trial and error for hundreds if not thousands of years.

It's certainly true rights are codified and bestowed by legal systems. But each of us also have the power to afford another a right, simply by affirming it and acting out the corresponding duty. I think it's a damn shame we seek to relegate rights to the state, as if we haven't the power to afford other rights ourselves.

But obviously I was looking for a clear-cut case: wouldn't you agree that there are cases that are clear-cut enough for pacifism to be morally reprehensible, even without an explicit call for help?

As an aside, here are some great arguments against pacifism written during times when such an ideology would have been disastrous.

Orwell wrote a great article against pacifism called Pacifism and the War.

CS Lewis makes a great argument against pacifism in Why I am not a pacifist.

I believe Biden will be just a figurehead for the same technocratic foreign policy we’ve seen before, where the government’s actions will be set in motion by the will of career advisors, intelligence officials and bureaucrats instead of his constituents. Expect drone strikes, foreign meddling, the arming of opposition forces, information and cyber warfare, sweeping counter-intelligence powers—“counter-terrorism plus”—while at the same time hiding behind the US government’s massive PR machine and media allies.

Ukraine, Libya, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq—almost everything Biden touches turns to instability, poverty and rubble.

Hm?
Anyway, seems kind of odd that, out of millions of Americans, lots of cool people, Trump and Biden of all people would be the two candidates.

A viable candidate requires a movement, or a wealthy cabal of political, celebrity, establishment and media complicity in order to compete. Not many people possess either.

That’s not the case because the economy was doing great before it was subverted by worldwide lockdowns. The US is brokering peace in the Middle East. We get massive prison reform. We get deregulation. Turkey and Belarus could not do this. We hit Turkey and Belarus status (and worse; see gun death statistics in Chicago for instance) only in enclaves where democrats have always held power.