But most people don't really want to be out in the woods trapping rabbits. They want to live more sophisticated lives of the kind that can only be found in society. So isn't the idea that you buy-in to the laws with some assurance that you're contributing to them, if not 100%? No?

One doesn’t need to live in the woods. He can live in a city if he wants.

By buy-in and contribute to the laws, do you mean he doesn’t violate them? Personally, the only reason I don’t violate any laws is because I do not want the authorities to have a reason to punish me. So I don’t drive through red lights. Other than that morality is the only thing that guides my behavior.

The will of a "faction" is a "general will". It is not a "particular will". So in one sentence after the other, you have granted what you explicitly denied.

According to Rousseau the will of a faction is a particular will, not the general will. I was using his terms. What have I granted by using them?

Let's get this straight. By your own words, there is no general will. He is carrying out what is wanted by the president, not what is wanted by the people. By your principles, there is no such thing as "what is wanted by the people". (Incidentally, those are the principles commonly exploited by the strategy known as "divide and conquer".)

Yes, there is no such thing as the general will. That’s not a principle. It’s just a fact.

You don’t think people wanted DOGE? I mean, Trump and Musk both campaigned on it.

Remember when Biden cancelled the border wall then two years later his own party begged him to restart it again? I bet life was a breeze not having to pay attention back then.

By “people” I mean those who voted for him. Not everyone voted, and not everyone voted for Trump. I figured that would be obvious.

He needs no congressional approval. He’s a special government employee, in this case appointed by the president to carry out the president’s mandate.

He works for the president of the United States. The people voted in the president to get Musk to do just what he is doing. Those offices are executive branch offices.

Every illegal alien has committed a crime. That’s a 100% crime rate.

If a bunch of tools barge into an office, would the office not require a warrant?

It’s not their office. They just work there, or used to.

But why was he wrong? Why does democracy fail to bring about what he hoped?

Rousseau takes great pains to distinguish between the particular and general will, but I think he failed. There is no general will, and thus no Sovereign. In practice the “general will” always turns out to be the will of some individual or faction or other (a particular will), namely, the rule of those who claim to know and represent the “general will”. The rule of this group or any other can never be the rule of the people. A republic or any other state is necessarily an oligarchy, and no one living in one can ever free.

So could a society be constructed so that the laws are the general will of the people? If we could, then wouldn't people finally be free?

I fear we should limit the term “society” to what it used to mean: a companionship, alliance, or fellowship, rather than taking it to be a nation-state. A State or country is not a society because we can’t know or interact with all members of any given nation, and therefore there can be no natural and social allegiance between countrymen as there would be between family, friends, and others we commonly deal with. I suppose only those kinds of societies ought to be constructed and nurtured, and only there can the rule of the people be found.

To be fair it is a free for all in this thread, so go nuts and remind us of Vietnam. I don’t care. I just think it’s stupid to insult people for writing about the topic of a thread. Maybe start a new one.

Well, we could test it. Go out and incite someone to do something. You can try it on me if you wish. You might find that it’s actually quite difficult to incite people to do anything, let alone something illegal.

That’s because the whole theory of incitement is magical thinking top-to-bottom. It is physically impossible to animate someone with your words and to suggest that one can is tantamount to sorcery.

Do want us to add a little addendum that excoriates the Vietnam War after each comment, in a thread that has nothing to do with the topics you mention?

If you want more anti-American threads go check out Reddit.

He literally said the election was stolen in that speech. How can that be anything but inciting?

The history of first amendment jurisprudence. He has to first advocate for criminal activity, and second, that his advocacy was directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action. None of that occurred, I’m afraid. In fact he advocated the opposite, that they act “peacefully”.

It was not Trump who designated the payments, which were legal. It was others at the organization. There is no evidence that Trump even knew what they were for. He only signed for it, as he often did with his money. Big crime, I guess.

The alleged crime was that he falsified business records with the intent to disguise another crime, and that alleged crime was that he used “unlawful means” to promote his election, or some obscure bullshit. The problem is no intent to disguise another crime was proven, no “unlawful means” were found. Nor was there any crime to disguise in the first place.

In any case, Trump’s new elite law team has recently formed to appeal the ruling, and we’ll find out who the real criminals are.

A little more salt-mining.

They used to be so proud of a Swift endorsement. Now no one is into their brand.

Taylor Swift Was Booed at the Super Bowl—and Donald Trump Was Cheered. What Is Going on?

Then what should he have written?

Same one, repeated 33 times.

His accountant wrote “legal fees” instead of “hush money”. This might have been a misdemeanor whose statute of limitations ran out in 2019 (if ndas were illegal), but now a felony proven with inadmissible evidence, allegedly to hide another crime that cannot be mentioned. This the first time in history anyone has been convicted of this shit.

You’ve convicted him of crimes but no one else has. Crazy how that works out.

None of which resulted in any criminal convictions, correct?

Civil cases misconstrued as criminal ones. Why won’t you tell the truth and say he lost some lawsuits, I wonder? Amnesia?

The kleptocracy is falling apart, one day at a time:

You say “crimes” plural but refuse to name one. That’s because all you got is the trumped-up Bragg charges, and now you can say he’s a felon because his accountant wrote “legal expenses” instead of “hush money”, a charge so laughable it puts everything into perspective. So horrific are Trump’s crimes in the perversion of anti-Trump mythology that you let yourself use OJ Simpson as an analogy.

Which crimes are those again?

Not according to them, at least.

What type of funding is permitted to move forward?

The original order, dated January 24, 2025, contained several important exceptions, including “emergency food assistance,” and outlined the process to secure additional exceptions. Requests were reviewed and, where needed, approved within hours. Subsequently, the Secretary approved a broad waiver on January 28, 2025, for humanitarian aid, which is defined as “life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.”

https://www.state.gov/prioritizing-americas-national-interests-one-dollar-at-a-time/

From what little I've seen not much of the "aid" part has been cut from the program, and both Trump and Rubio like the idea of foreign aid. Except not much of USAID is aid, as far as I can tell, save for the clever acronym. Hopefully we'll get to see a full audit.

DOGE shares some of their cuts on X.com:

This will be his best executive order yet:

I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work. BACK TO PLASTIC!

I love watching the USAID debacle unfold. It proves a few things.

The whole intersectional and progressive grip on culture throughout the world is largely astroturfed, payed for by American tax-payer dollars. It is forced; there is nothing organic about it.

Americans have been thanklessly funding foreign NGOs, media, Universities, and subsidizing the aid of other wealthy countries, like Australia.

Hidden beneath the facade of humanitarian benevolence is routine imperialism. “Experts” who lament a lack of access to such a piggy bank are now fearful China will step in to fill the void.

“After this therefor because of this”. The consequences and damage occurs in the reaction to Trump’s statements, not in the statements themselves. The ebbs and flows of the markets are indicative of this.

I see them when I both preview and look at my posts. They are still there when I look right now.

Thanks for letting me know I probably looked like a madman without all that context.

Yeah they’re X posts. God, have I been the only one seeing them this whole time I wonder?

Watch Netanyahu squirm here. If the Whitehouse press secretary was right, Trump thought up his Gaza idea on the spot and Bibi found out on live television.

The old GOP died when Trump took over. The Dems are a walking corpse.

In any case it’s an innovative and bold idea. Though if Biden’s Gaza Pier is any indication (another wasteful USAID boondoggle), it will be difficult to implement. Let’s see what comes of it.

That didn’t take long.

Yeah, it’s a bad idea. I cringed when I heard it. It contradicts “America first” and the reasons people voted for him.

What makes Iraqi Sesame Street "bullshit"? It's been part of the effort to restore the country to normalcy after the devastation inflicted by Bush's war. Pottery Barn rule.

Regardless, Trump could have ordered review of all the programs and done selective shutdowns. It's a product of executing a simplistic solution with callous disregard for the consequences. That's why I labeled it manslaughter, and not murder.

Sesame Street is normalcy in Iraq? USAID is a division of America’s so-called “soft power”, an imperialist arm of the US government. Think of what they did in cuba, for instance. There is no intent to restore anything to normalcy, but to further US interests in those regions and abroad.

It’s stupid to blame Trump and not the people who fund bullshit like Iraqi Sesame Street. It’s their fault aid is tied to massive government waste and corruption.