Good to know! I too had astounding experiences with lysergines, when it was still legal, which says something (I am after all a baby boomer). As you say, impossible to really describe, and even to remember, in some ways. Although one vivid memory that stays with me was seeing something like 'the great perfection' - this sudden realisation of the overwhelming beauty of all nature, one morning at dawn, looking at a young sapling growing from the crevice in a moss-covoured rock. Along with the realisation that we're generally dead to that beauty because of the weight of habituation (gee, I said that well).

At some point, the drugs wear off, and you're back to your ordinary life, with ordinary experiences. — Arcane Sandwich

Buddhist meditation teacher, Jack Kornfield, wrote a book called After the Esctacy, the Laundry, which is exactly about this point (although not specifically related to hallucinogens).

I'm sure that hallucinogens do provide a window to a higher or alternative reality - once you've seen it, you can't deny it. But integrating that insight or vision with daily life is a very different matter. Part of those insights have stayed with me, but there's a lot of it buried under...well, I've already said that.

I know a current Zen master, an American roshi called Meido Moore. He often emphasises that with some training and diligent application, an initial satori is not that uncommon. But what's really hard, is stablising that insight and actually living from it day in, day out. I guess that's why Zen training is so legendarily rigorous.

This is just behaviourism restricted, for some reason, to animals. But many people were quite happy to explain human beings in that way as well as animals. It is a way of thinking about them, not vulnerable to a simple refutation. (Compare religious belief).

But If "a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder;" how does it not see or smell the sugar or the intruder and know perfectly well what they are - what the appropriate reaction is?. I'm bewildered. — Ludwig V

We discussed this at length on that thread on rationality in humans and animals. I distinctly recall holding the minority view in that thread, as I maintained that the Aristotelian distinction of h.sapiens as 'the rational animal' is a valid ontological distinction. In other words that h.sapiens and canids (etc) are beings of different kinds. I said that the ability to speak, count, create technology, pursue science, and the like, amounts to a difference in kind, not simply one of degree.

Now as for whether that is a 'religious belief'. The reluctance to acknowledge what I take to be a clear ontological distinction between homo sapiens and other species seems to stem from a broader philosophical commitment—one shaped by the widespread influence of Darwinian naturalism on our conception of human nature. In many ways, evolutionary biology has reinforced the view that we are fundamentally continuous with the rest of nature, which is something many cherish, both as an expression of scientific understanding and as a foundation for ecological and ethical values. And I do not in any way wish to diminish the importance of those values.

However, I believe this perspective risks overlooking a real distinction that has profound existential implications. Our capacity for self-awareness, symbolic language, and complex tool-use sets us apart in ways that are not merely matters of degree but of kind. While we should certainly recognize our biological continuity with the rest of nature, we should not let that recognition obscure the radical difference that defines our cognitive and cultural life. I suspect that some resistance to acknowledging this distinction arises because evolutionary theory has, in some sense, come to function as a meta-narrative—a way of understanding our place in the cosmos that, in its broadest cultural expression, tends to downplay discontinuities in favor of an overarching unity by flattening such ontological distinctions. It is one of the consequences of the cultural impact of empiricism that Jacques Maritain (and, in a different way, George Berkeley, are criticizing.)

If he (the dog) has not the idea or concept, he does not know the thing. But since he responds appropriately to the thing, he has a concept of it. Not necessarily the same as yours and mine, but similar. — Ludwig V

The point of Maritain's essay is precisely that a dog (or other non-rational sentient beings) lack the specifically human capacity to form concepts. 'The human intellect grasps' says Maritain, 'first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in the real as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real).' This is, of course, Aristotelian realism, and Maritain says he is an Aristotelian.

The Edward Feser blog I posted puts it like this:

As Aristotelians and Thomists use the term, intellect is that faculty by which we grasp abstract concepts (like the concepts man and mortal), put them together into judgments (like the judgment that all men are mortal), and reason logically from one judgment to another (as when we reason from all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal). It is to be distinguished from imagination, the faculty by which we form mental images (such as a visual mental image of what your mother looks like, an auditory mental image of what your favorite song sounds like, a gustatory mental image of what pizza tastes like, and so forth); and from sensation, the faculty by which we perceive the goings on in the external material world and the internal world of the body (such as a visual experience of the computer in front of you, the auditory experience of the cars passing by on the street outside your window, the awareness you have of the position of your legs, etc.).

That intellectual activity -- thought in the strictest sense of the term -- is irreducible to sensation and imagination is a thesis that unites Platonists, Aristotelians, and rationalists of either the ancient Parmenidean sort or the modern Cartesian sort. The thesis is either explicitly or implicitly denied by modern empiricists and by ancients like Democritus...

I would say 'reason' rather than 'thought' but I think the point is clear. So, no, I don't think that dogs and cats entertain concepts, but I hold that on philosophical, not religious, grounds. And that this goes against the grain of modern culture, precisely because of the cultural impact of empiricism.

Here you have a bunch of unelected officials shoveling out US taxpayer money to foreigners. They know the democratically elected head of state doesn't want them to keep doing this, and thus that they have no real mandate to do it. They no doubt know that their work is not very popular with the American public. But they scramble to get as much cash out the door as possible. The recalcitrance! — Count Timothy von Icarus

I kind of understand the hostility to foreign aid but as I said, a change in policy ought to be discussed, circulated, and executed carefully with due oversight, not carried out in the dead of night by a hastily-assembled group with no Congressional approval or oversight. That article I copied in above is one of many showing the ripple effects all throughout the developing nations and crises situations as clinics and food distribution centres go dark. Large numbers of people are suffering and dying as a result, although of course, they're not American, so what?

But U.S. government officials privately warn Musk’s blitz appears illegal. 'Privately', because nobody dare criticize Dear Leader.

The chaotic blitz by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has triggered legal objections across Washington, with officials in at least a half-dozen federal agencies and departments raising alarms about whether the billionaire’s assault on government is breaking the law.

Over the past two weeks, Musk’s team has moved to dismantle some U.S. agencies, push out hundreds of thousands of civil servants and gain access to some of the federal government’s most sensitive payment systems. Musk has said these changes are necessary to overhaul what he’s characterized as a sclerotic federal bureaucracy and to stop payments that he says are bankrupting the country and driving inflation.

But many of these moves appear to violate federal law, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, one audio recording, and several internal messages obtained by The Washington Post. Internal legal objections have been raised at the Treasury Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the White House budget office, among others.

“So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once,” said David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School. ...

“The big-picture constitutional worry is that there is a kind of shadow executive branch that is existing and operating and exercising power outside of the channels the Constitution and the statutes that Congress authorized,” said Blake Emerson, a professor of constitutional law at the UCLA School of Law.

Another story notes that Congress has basically capitulated to Trump, even though many of his demands and actions are borderline illegal and clearly in violation of what had been previous Republican policy.

It’s not business as usual.

A report on the immediate and drastic impacts of the USAID closure in Africa.

Foreign Strongmen Cheer as Musk Dismantles U.S. Aid Agency

The DOGE Troupe:

Musk’s team of youngsters, as first reported by WIRED on Sunday, is Akash Bobba, 21, a student at the University of California, Berkeley; Edward Coristine, 19, a student at Northeastern University in Boston; and Ethan Shaotran, 22, who said in September he was a senior at Harvard.

The ones who actually have degrees, or at least have left college, are: Luke Farritor, 23, who attended the University of Nebraska without graduating; Gautier Cole Killian, a 24-year-old who attended McGill University; and Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old who attended Berkeley;

The group’s relative lack of experience—especially no previous positions in government work—has Democrats crying foul they were granted access to sensitive records while remaining largely in the shadows, away from public scrutiny.
All six desperately tried to cover their digital tracks recently, almost all of them deleting LinkedIn profiles, X accounts and even Facebook. — TheDailyBeast

These are the experts who Trusk is using to manhandle ten thousand employees out of their jobs.

After looking up the definitions, I've changed the thread title.

Oligarchy - government by a select group.

Plutocracy - government by the very wealthy.

As the Trump cabinet comprises 13 billionaires, and as the World's Richest Man is acting as a kind of freelance change agent on Trump's behalf, 'plutocracy' is nearer the mark that 'oligarchy'.

:up:

If we can squeeze a trillion dollars out our worker pockets, think how much can be squeezed out of the pockets of the 1%? — BC

The US ultra rich pay obscenely low amounts of income tax, something that will never be challenged by MAGA, which is after all has a record number of billionaires in Cabinet.

Read the passage in my last post. Lifelong conservative Republican, ran USAID under W. He and others are saying that the forced merger of USAID into State without congressional approval is illegal and that Musk is acting without clearly-defined authority or oversight. (Trump is too busy making up foreign policy on the run to pay attention.) Many politicians expressed the view that the termination of Inspectors General without notice or due cause was illegal. Opinions have been published that this act was, if not outright illegal, in violation of the requirement that due cause and notice is given, see American Oversight Opens Investigation into Mass Firings of Inspectors General by Trump Administration

The source for the Politico quote is here. FWIW, mentions that Australia and Canada folder their foreign aid organisations into State departments.

From what I have seen Musk did not do anything without approval from the White House. I mean, what is the objection, here? — Leontiskos

A nod and a wink from Trump does not a proper authorisation make. Again, surprised by your view, but from now on I will confine any conversations with you to matters philosophical.

Andrew Natsios, who ran USAID under President George W. Bush and is a lifelong conservative Republican, calls such moves “illegal” and “outrageous.” What Musk and Rubio are doing “is criminal. They can’t abolish the aid program without a vote of Congress.” — Politico

The President appoints the administrator of USAID (and other executive agencies). Congress approves the appointment. — Leontiskos

But Rubio was confirmed as Secretary of State. The decision to merge USAID with State was not approved by Congress, nor even floated with them. As for job cuts:

The Trump administration said today that it is pulling almost all US Agency for International Development (USAID) workers off the job and out of the field worldwide, moving to all but end the agency's six-decade mission overseas that fought starvation, funded education and worked to end epidemics.

The administration notified USAID workers in emails and a notice posted online, the latest in a steady dismantling of the aid agency by returning political appointees from President Donald Trump's first term and billionaire Elon Musk's government-efficiency teams who call much of the spending on programs overseas wasteful.

The order takes effect just before midnight on Friday and gives direct hires of the agency overseas – many of whom have been frantically packing up households in expectation of layoffs – 30 days to return home unless they are deemed essential. — Channel 9 Sydney 5th Feb

Did you hear what Musk said at the top of this thread? “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Mr. Musk gloated on X at 1:54 a.m. Monday. “Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” This is a guy who is literally barging into some of the most sensitive offices in the Government and threatening anyone who stands in the way with arrest, making decisions on the fly as to what programs, jobs and spending should be cut, and directing a bunch of 20-something y.o. engineers to carry out his orders. And you're OK with that? I really don't understand.

Trump summarily fired a dozen Inspectors general 10 days ago. That also was illegal as each act requires approval by Congress and 30 days notice.
— Wayfarer

Are you just making things up? — Leontiskos

No, I'm reading international media.

From your link:

A recent amendment to the Inspector General Act, the Securing Inspector General Independence Act of 2022 (Title LII, Subtitle A), changed the notice provision to require a “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” for the removal. It also narrowed the president’s options under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 (FVRA), for replacing a terminated IG. The 2022 law was mainly a response to Trump’s first-term IG firings and manipulations of the IG system. It was one of very few executive branch reforms during the Biden administration.

The Friday IG terminations were announced in emails from Sergio Gor, the White House Director of Presidential Personnel. Gor said the removals were immediate and reflected “changing priorities.”

So, your opinion piece says one thing, but plenty of others differ. And the whole point of Inspectors General is that they're not political appointees, and generally none of those fired were. They're being fired to make way for MAGA appartchiks.

If the American people didn't want cuts they shouldn't have asked for them. — Leontiskos

Right - cuts are perfectly understandable. Had the debate been had, USAID been informed that it was to be merged with State, staff told that it was happened and had a chance to respond and wind up operations, it wouldn't be a story, and I wouldn't be complaining about it. But that is not what is happening. This is like the US equivalent of Kystalnacht.

scare-mongering. — Leontiskos

The Myth of Cassandra

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a Trojan princess blessed with the gift of prophecy by the god Apollo. However, after she rejected his advances, he cursed her: she would always see the truth, but no one would ever believe her. This left her in a tragic position—she foresaw the fall of Troy, warned her people not to trust the Greeks and their wooden horse, and later predicted her own death at the hands of Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra. Each time, her warnings were ignored, leading to inevitable disaster.

I'm sort of surprised to see Australians with a bookmark in the New York Times expressing such strong opinions on U.S. politics. — Leontiskos

Two of my grandchildren are American. Their father is a dual citizen. And as the old saying goes, if America sneezes, the world catches cold. America is going to do much worse than sneeze, and the world is going to get much worse than a cold.

Senator Rubio, who is now the acting head of USAID — Leontiskos

An illegal appointment. U.S.A.I.D. was established by an act of Congress, and can't be dissolved or merged into State without Congressional approval. Of course the MAGA congress is totally supine, but the point of principle remains.

Or does it? Trump summarily fired a dozen Inspectors general 10 days ago. That also was illegal as each act requires approval by Congress and 30 days notice.

So, question: do you support the right of Trump to act illegally in such cases, and the right of the Executive to ignore Congress and established law? That Trump can, in effect, rule by decree, as he is appearing to do? Why bother with Congress and Senate at all? Frank's already said democracy has failed.

the idea that everything within USAID is being cut seems like scare-mongering. — Leontiskos

It is far from scaremongering. All of USAIDS websites have gone dark and nearly all their employees have been frozen out of their accounts. A few exceptions have been made but there are thousands of programs that have been terminated without notice.

What's the opposite of scaremongering? What do you say when you see a real clear and present danger, and the people standing next to you shrug it off?

I imagine you have to work for a living. Put yourself in the position of a USAID staffer, who is told on Sunday night, without notice, that their job is terminated, and find themselves locked out of the office and their systems the next day. How would you feel about that? All for a good cause?

If you like Husserl then you are in a good position to evaluate if Lonergan improves on the general landscape of phenomenology, and the particular features of realism, naive realism and critical realism. thanks for writing! — theThomist

Hey I'm open to what you're saying, but you're not giving us much to go on! How about, put together an OP - have a look in https://thephilosophyforum.com/categories/44/help first particularly Creating an OP, and Forum Tips and Tricks - and then maybe link to an article or introductory text.

And let me ask you this: the USAID projects that have been abruptly terminated without notice, run things like medical clinics, malaria prevention programs, countless food aid and charity programs, all throughout Africa, Asia and the Middle East. These services actually do save many thousands of lives every year. Do you think if their abrupt termination due to Musk's unilateral decision that USAID is 'an evil organisation', results in thousand of deaths, then that is justified in the name of the United States balancing its budget?

Secondly, as USAID is at the forefront of US 'soft power', then what of the sudden, massive vacuum in international aid caused by this withdrawal, what with tens of thousands of people going begging, who do you think might be the most likely of the global political powers to rush in and fill that vacuum? Would that have any bearing on considerations?

Trump and his allies will be dead long before much more ice melts off of Greenland's chilly shores. — BC

actually not that long, going on recent data. And their gravesites may well be underwater.

One of Trump's campaign promises was to address the federal debt. Musk and others are the ones he put on that job. — Leontiskos

I'm sorry but the way he's going about it is an outrage. He's being given latitude to prevent programs being executed that have already been approved by Congress. There are many things that he's doing, and that Trump has done, that are blatantly illegal and unconstitutional. I'm really dismayed that an intelligent contributor such as yourself can be so sanguine about it, it's really completely beyond the pale.

If Trump wanted to do it formally, DOGE would be an advisory panel, and they'd draw up a list of programs and expenditures to cut, and take it through Congress and Senate. Barging into Federal offices without any authorisation other than 'Trump says so', and cutting programs and expenditures that are already in progress, is a completely different thing.

Strange, that. I went back to Gemini after making that post and asked again, and it just kept saying 'I can't help with responses on elections and political figures right now.' Maybe because I used 'President Bill Clinton' in the prompt? It's kind of creepy, though. What with the Orange Emperor just having been handed a list of 5000 FBI agents he wants to sack.

ChatGPT showed no such reticence about Bill Clinton, saying

From 1998 to 2001, the federal government ran a budget surplus, meaning revenues exceeded expenditures. This was the first time the U.S. had a balanced budget since 1969. Several factors contributed to this:

*Economic Growth – The 1990s saw strong economic expansion, partly driven by technological advancements and the dot-com boom.
* Tax Increases & Spending Restraint – Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, which raised taxes on higher-income earners and controlled government spending.
* Bipartisan Cooperation – In 1997, Clinton worked with the Republican-controlled Congress to pass the Balanced Budget Act, which further limited spending.
* Defense Cuts & Welfare Reform – Post-Cold War defense spending reductions and welfare reform measures helped reduce expenditures.

By 2000, the U.S. had a budget surplus of about $236 billion, the largest surplus in U.S. history at that time. However, these surpluses did not last long, as tax cuts, increased military spending, and economic downturns in the early 2000s led to deficits again.

Of course, the merest suggestion of raising taxes causes apoplexy amongst the MAGA, never mind that tarrifs are, of course, a tax on imports.

President Clinton's 1993 Economic Plan included $255 billion in spending cuts over five years. — BC

I seem to recall Clinton balanced the budget. (I asked gemini.google about this fact, and it demurred, saying 'I can't help with responses on elections and political figures right now.' And people are freaking out because DeepSeek won't answer questions in Tianamen.)

As has been pointed out, Musk is the democratic bureaucrat, given that his job derives from a mandate. — Leontiskos

In what sense, derives from a mandate? He has been summarily appointed, without Congressional or Senate oversight, and the barest of instructions, no guidelines, and not even the appropriate security clearances. Of course the US debt is an international calamity, and economic collapse is a real possibility. But having an unelected, unsupervised oligarch making unilateral decisions that affect millions of lives and thousands of employees is not any kind of solution to that.

My thoughts exactly. Surprised and delighted by the quality and the conversational style. (Right now I'm using ChatGPT to re-learn basic web scripting skills and GitHub, which I've done before but then forgotten. Don't know how I did it first time around! Oh, and I visited Oxford in 2022 - high point of our European tour - although we weren't allowed into the Bodleian itself, apparently a high privilege.)

I'm going to need to ask you two if you have horses in this race, before proceeding any further. — Arcane Sandwich

If you’re asking whether I think it matters, then ‘yes’.

I'm open to the idea that God might exist, and that Jesus might be God. — Arcane Sandwich

I suppose that's something. But let me make an observation here. I don't generally make it my business to argue for belief in God on this forum. I'm not an atheist, so I do believe that religion has a real referent, it is about a reality, not a 'social construct' or psychological projection. But when you ask the question as what that referent might be, it is very difficult to answer. If it were a straightforward matter, one could point to something by way of definition. But defining the nature of deity or the idea of the Sacred is not at all straightforward. This is why the question tends to fragment into innummerable, and often conflicting, mythological or philosophical accounts. And of course there's nothing remotely like a consensus possible in any of this in today's cultural landscape.

In any case, and in a roundabout way, what I meant by my earlier remark was that for an atheist, the question of the nature of God's existence doesn't matter in an existential sense; it doesn't mean anything for her conception of the nature of existence. It's a theoretical or hypothetical matter. Whereas for the believer, the question has real import: she believes that there is something at stake beyond the hypothetical. Something like the fate of her immortal soul, which, of course, means nothing to those who don't believe it's even a meaningful idea.

As to the question of whether and in what sense Jesus is identical with God, there is, on the one hand, 'I and the Father are One' (John 10:30). But then on the other, Mark 10:18 'Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God.'

I interpret that against a kind of pan-religious perspective which understands the figures in these expressions as archetypal realities. So that here when Jesus says 'why call Me good?', he's gesturing towards his particular self, the ego or persona. That is precisely what Jesus says must die, when He says, 'He who saves his own life will loose it, he who looses his life for My sake will be saved'( Mt 16:25). In other words, 'dying to the self' or the selfish or egoic perspective is required to be 'born again' into the Holy spirit. That 'ego death' is not unique to the Christian faith (although of course, for Christians, Jesus is the archetype.)

But understanding the themes of 'union with the Divine' (in Christianity, called 'theosis' or 'beatification') at least on a literary, if not an existential, level, is necessary to understand what the question of the identity of Jesus with the Divine means.

Since I'm an atheist... — Arcane Sandwich

...the question is actually meaningless to you, and is basically a form of entertainment, if that.

Around 8 p.m. on Sunday, a USAID staffer pushed forward $78 million for food and shelter to Palestinians living in Gaza. Two hours later, that staffer and contractors working in over 100 countries were locked out of their email accounts. Then just past midnight, staff received an email from Gavin Kliger, a young engineer working for Elon Musk, announcing that headquarters was closed for business. By Monday morning, the U.S. government agency that sends assistance to tens of millions of the world’s neediest people “from the American people,” as its motto states, was effectively dead.

Over the past 72 hours, a dozen sources recounted the final days of the U.S. Agency for International Development before an effort led by Musk and supported by President Donald Trump crippled the agency and put it under the control of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is now acting director. It appears to be the first of an untold number of federal agencies that the Trump administration seeks to remake without the approval of Congress. Democrats have accused the administration of breaking the law.

As the agency began to crumble under an attack from its own government, staffers worked frantically to send money keeping hospitals and soup kitchens from Gaza to Sudan running, saying that people may die as a result of the chaos. As of Monday afternoon, they were trying to send $305 million to the World Food Program. “We’re blowing through all the normal processes to get this out as quickly as possible,” says one staffer. Employees couldn’t even tell their partner organizations, with which they were communicating regularly as recently as last week, how much money was coming. “I don’t think anyone has any idea what’s going on.” — New Yorker

Many people will die because of these actions. Perhaps that's OK with the American electors, although you can bet that their chosen media outlets will not report it.

Lonergan demonstrates how you can't have science without the scientist. — theThomist

As did Edmund Husserl. Any similarities there?

As Elon Musk digs into the federal bureaucracy in his crusade to slash government spending, he has a tool that no aspiring cost-cutter has had before: his own giant social media platform to debate, shame and bludgeon anyone who stands in his way.

Since the inauguration, Mr. Musk has attacked journalists and X users for posting the names of people working with him, calling it “a crime.” He’s accused Treasury Department officials of “breaking the law every hour of every day.” And Mr. Musk has mocked Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, as “hysterical.”

On Monday, Mr. Musk celebrated his progress, posting he had fed the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government’s lead agency for humanitarian aid, “into the wood chipper.”

And on Tuesday, Mr. Musk began a poll on X: “Would you like DOGE to audit the IRS?”

The comments show how Mr. Musk, who unlike traditional government figures rarely holds news conferences or speaks to reporters, is using his social media site as a powerful tool to promote his goals as part of the Trump administration. Since the inauguration, Mr. Musk has unleashed a barrage of posts to his more than 215 million followers, promoting conspiratorial rumors about his adversaries, pressuring senators to confirm the president’s cabinet picks and weighing in on foreign elections.

On top of that, Mr. Musk’s account is becoming one of the few sources for information about the billionaire’s secretive stampede to slash the federal budget, an initiative he calls the Department of Government Efficiency.

X has given Mr. Musk an unusual avenue to showcase his unapologetically confrontational approach to cost cutting in a way that appeals to President Trump’s base, tech policy experts said.

“The performative aspect of this is key. It’s a big part of what populism is,” said Sarah Kreps, the director of the Cornell Brooks School Tech Policy Institute. “To be able to have this very visible shake-up really is important to the constituency that rose the administration to power.”

Mr. Musk and a spokeswoman for the cost-cutting initiative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Musk’s transformation of X into his political megaphone began when he bought the social media company in October 2022. The next year, he became the most followed person on the site. Engagement with his posts has since mushroomed, according to X’s metrics, making him the loudest voice on the platform.

Now, Mr. Musk, who is chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, has charged into his new role to cut government spending, swiftly moving to transform at least half a dozen government agencies, challenging congressional authority and potentially breaching civil service protections.

His project has worked to shut down U.S.A.I.D. Leaders of the cost-cutting initiative have also pushed out top officials there and at the Treasury Department who objected to the actions of his representatives, and ended leases on government office spaces.

As part of those efforts, Mr. Musk has used his X account to critique federal agencies in his cross hairs. U.S.A.I.D. is “evil” and “a criminal organization,” Mr. Musk wrote in separate posts on Sunday.

Lawmakers including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, and Mr. Schumer have accused Mr. Musk of overreach.

Early Tuesday, Mr. Musk reposted a comment by Mr. Schumer, who said Congress must stop what amounted to an unauthorized hostile takeover of the government.

“Hysterical reactions like this is how you know that DOGE is doing work that really matters,” Mr. Musk said in response to Mr. Schumer. “This is the one shot American people have to defeat BUREAUcracy, rule of the bureaucrats, and restore DEMOcracy, rule of the people.”

Mr. Musk’s business portfolio, which relies in part on government contracts and subsidies, has raised conflict-of-interest concerns, although Mr. Trump has brushed off those fears.

After Ms. Ocasio-Cortez criticized Mr. Musk’s conflicts of interest, Mr. Musk replied, “Do you actually write these or am I replying to your intern?”

Mr. Musk also turned to the platform in recent days to defend those working on his initiative. The billionaire has likened identifying those assisting his cost-cutting effort to doxxing, an online harassment tactic that involves posting private information like addresses and phone numbers.

After several workers’ names were published in media reports, X removed some posts on the platform that publicized the employees’ identities and suspended some accounts that had shared the information.

“Don’t mess with @DOGE,” Mr. Musk wrote in a post on Monday night in response to people attempting to name and shame the workers.

Mr. Musk also boasted on X about the removal of the account for 18F, a digital services agency that is part of the General Services Administration. After fans raised concerns about projects the agency had worked on, including one that critiqued racial bias in facial recognition systems, Mr. Musk posted that the agency was “deleted.”

While its X account is gone, the agency so far has survived. — Elon Musk’s X Becomes Weapon in Government Cost Cutting

Not for long, one must surmise.


Source
Some of the nefarious activities undertaken by the criminal organisation.

Well, there is no effective opposition. The Democrats are in a complete muddle, leaderless and rudderless. All of the Republican opposition to the Musk oligarchy has been driven out or marginalised. Who honestly is going to listen to a Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney now? Trump doesn't even need to try and hound them, they've become irrelevant. The readers of NY Times and Washington Post are outraged, but they're the minority even if a sizeable minority.

What I think might bring Trump down is what I'm expecting him to deliver: an economic mess (if not catastrophe, and let's hope not). He still thinks, to this day, that the Chinese pay the American tarrifs on their exports and nobody can persuade him otherwise. He lives in an alternative reality, one devoid of fact, but the unfortunate thing is that tens of millions of people have decided to join him there.

:100:

Somebody now buying a Tesla will make a clear political statement. — ssu

I read an article, I think even before the election, about some lucky internet trader, who's making a small fortune selling these bumper stickers:

What basically is happening in the US is what happened in Hungary. Basically one should learn what Victor Orban has achieved in Hungary, as that would be the objective of Trump. — ssu

The media has been reporting the Republican infatuation with Orban for a long time https://wapo.st/40KD1NN . The Republican Party, or should we now say, the MAGA party, is clearly wanting to implement something similar.

As I see it, the modern period is characteristically domineering rather than receptive. It is a kind of grasping at being God, which is the antithesis of Philippians 2:6. Everything is in our hands; everything is up to us; knowledge is primarily something we do; we are the occupants of the view from nowhere; and making-knowledge is the highest form of knowledge. Now Scientism is a kind of grotesque epitome of this attitude, and one which is widely recognized to be aberrant. But it is only an epitome. That is, the basic mindset is much more widespread than Scientism. — Leontiskos

Agree. I've often remarked that the mentality of modern culture can be summed up in the motto 'nihil ultra ego'. The Cartesian ego becomes the fulcrum, the arbiter, of truth, buttressed on the ramparts of scientific truth. And this is fundamental to liberal individualism. (Not that I would prefer any kind of social collectivism per Asiatic cultures.)

Democratic space must remain inside itself. To put it in Latin: It must be immanent. Tocqueville noticed that aristocratic man was constantly sent back to something that is placed outside his own self, something above him. Democratic man, on the other hand, refers only to himself.

The democratic social space is not only flat but closed. And it is closed because it is has to be flat. What is outside, whatever claims to have worth and authority in itself and not as part of the game, must be excluded. Whoever and whatever will not take a seat at the table at the same level as all other claims and authorities, however mundane, is barred from the game. — Remi Braque

(I'm a bit disquieted to find myself in agreement with these sentiments, as part of me sees it as reactionary conservatism, but it can't be helped.)

However - the post of mine that you quoted from, while related to all of the above, attempts to analyse it from a specific perspective: that of the history of ideas, and the decline and fall of classical metaphysics. There's a quote given in the Joshua Hochschild lecture that we've discussed previously:

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence. — Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences

For what it's worth, I agree with this sentiment. I see the advent of materialism as inextricably connected with abandonment of the understanding of universals (scholastic or Aristotelian realism.) Not that there wasn't a great deal of dogma in those musty schools that had to be jettisoned, but that something vitally important went with it. Why? Because of the very nature of universals or Augustine's 'intelligible objects': real but immaterial. And as you will know, it was the capacity of nous to apprehend those immaterial realities which was the very essence of the rational psuchē. Thereafter the link between intellect and faith was severed, culminating in Luther's salvation by faith alone and the fideistic nature of much of modern Christianity.

That's the background to the idea I'm trying to sketch out in the post I asked you to comment on. I think I might make it subject of an essay (even if I'm out of my depth in much of it.)

I believe this is what Hume does as well, so it must have been a trend at that time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Right! As Ludwig says

I would attribute this to his empiricist approach to philosophy, especially to the doctrine that all our knowledge comes from the senses. — Ludwig V

That's the source of it.

I don't know about Thomism in enough detail to respond to that alternative approach in detail, though I think I can see the sense in it. — Ludwig V

I'm no scholar of Thomism, but I've got a grasp of the basic outlines of what Edward Feser (who's a good source in these matters) calls 'Aristotelian-Thomist' (A-T) philosophy - Aristotle's matter-form philosophy. I also read a little of Jacques Maritain, who was hugely influential in the Catholic left in the mid 20th c. and a profound philosopher. From whom The Cultural Impact of Empiricism:

For Empiricism there is no essential difference between the intellect and the senses. The fact which obliges a correct theory of knowledge to recognize this essential difference is simply disregarded. What fact? The fact that the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in the real as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real).

Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is 'sugar' or what is 'intruder'. He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows, that is, from which he receives sensory impressions; his knowledge remains immersed in the subjectivity of his own feelings -- only in man, with the universal idea, does knowledge achieve objectivity. And his field of knowledge is strictly limited: only the universal idea sets free -- in man -- the potential infinity of knowledge.

Such are the basic facts which Empiricism ignores, and in the disregard of which it undertakes to philosophize.

The US government doesn't even have a health service — unenlightened

"Fast fact: As of November 2022, Medicaid and Child's Health Insurance Program covered more than 91.7 million individuals in the United States."

Any system that doesn't have proper safeguards is bound to such a fate, surely? — Outlander

But it does have layers of safeguards, very strict security requirements. But Musk and his troupe just barge in, basically saying 'Don't you know who we are??' and demanding access. Some of the Musk personnel didn't even have the level 1 security clearances required to gain authorisation. The story relates that some of the senior officials in those departments that tried to refuse Musk access were told that US Marshalls would be called and they would be arrested unless they complied. This is the outrage of it - there has been no vetting, no Congressional approval, no real authority beyond Musk invoking the support of Trump. (There's also a story circulating that some of those who tried to refuse access to Musk will now be facing indictment for interferring with Government enquiries.)

So, I'm not sure if the problem with a populist demagogue is a dearth of democracy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Very sane post, as always. Trump is a demagogue, of that there is not a shred of doubt. But Elon Musk's activities are another dimension to his disastrous rule. Do peruse that article linked in the OP.

I've just now had a most illuminating and insightful conversation with ChatGPT 4 which started with the distinction between noumena and the ding an sich in Kant, and wended its way through the real meaning of noumena and whether Kant understood noesis, then touching on phenomenology and recent critiques of Kant.

“Oh, hey, we’re going to impose huge sanctions on our two nearest and main trading partners, Mexico and Canada. …Wait on. What? They’re on the phone? Lemme talk to them…”

“OK, we’re NOT going to impose huge sanctions on our two nearest and main trading partners, Mexico and Canada. They were real nice to me, told me what a great president I am, and said they’ll send troops.”

Yet more ‘volleys of incompetence’, as the NYT put it last week.

Meanwhile, Trump is insisting that the FBI is 'corrupt' and that the investigations into the January 6th insurrection and his illegal retention of classified documents were the 'weaponisation of the Justice Department' which should 'never happen again'. :vomit:

Anyone else? Surely there must be an alarm bell ringing somewhere about this?

You just earned yourself a place on my banned list. Have a nice life.

I’ve been a member here since inception and hardly recall him being mentioned. I’ve read some references to him and articles about him, but he’s one of those philosophers whose work is so voluminous that it would require considerable reading to get a start. Others may have a different view of course. That said, if you could point to something pithy and on-point I’d be more than happy to read it.

You sound remarkably sanguine about it.