Tobacco gets ruled out of the job site because of danger to others. I am libertarian enough to let people decide how they die left to their own devices.

I would rather make most guns illegal.

I appreciate what OSHA has done for work site safety but the most effective guarantee of not getting hurt is paying attention to the states of awareness around you. That includes one's own state of awareness.

So, if you have a habit that makes you okay at work but nonetheless shortens your life, that is on you.

In the building trades, the limits are closely linked to how dangerous one becomes to others. Substance abuse that just kills you is different from what kills others.

It looks like Macron may be thinking that as well. This from Politico: Macron calls emergency European summit on Trump, Polish minister says.

This is an interesting move also from the point of view of reducing some of the tension between Poland and France that has developed over the last two decades. Macron has stepped away from being the Trump Whisperer.

Suddenly, you are in the game.

Okay. Read the essay and get back to me.

What then, is your interest in the present topic?

It is rare that I have been enticed to join a discussion such as you have provided.

Well, Land refers to your neck of the woods more than the U.S.A. For example, Singapore gets a big thumbs up.

frank has proposed that the ascendancy of Trump is an outcome of the processes discussed by Nick Land, whose essay is available here.

Are you saying that Land's thesis is germane to the attempts of the present administration?

It's okay if you cannot though, at that point it just feels like you wanted to use a common, albeit poor, counter to Nietzsche's own philosophy and psychology, which has little to do with what I've said here. — DifferentiatingEgg

That is a lot to gather from my modest comment.

I am not seeing a lot of references to Rousseau's or Land's actual statements In the comments as yet. Will this be forthcoming?

I live here and i don't know what precedents are helpful at this point. The proposed changes involve the fortunes of my family and friends. Your question of "But what is really needed?" is the right one to ask.

But for me and mine, the question is how do we survive the storm.

So, it would seem the legality of what the DOGE are doing turns on the question of whether or not this is a "time of crisis"? — Janus

I don't think so. In the past, there was a general agreement among the Branches that the shit had hit the fan before such a move. And a lot of that involved bad decisions. The legality of the present decisions turns upon respecting the rule of law concerning the separation of powers. That one of those powers checks out in a rubber room until the outcome is complete is not a question of legality, per se.

If there were no legal mechanism in place allowing this freezing of funds, then how is it being effected. It's a genuine question since I know little about the US system. — Janus

The Executive Branch has the prerogative of writing orders that many times are challenged by Judicial Branch objections. These can come from both Federal and State courts. The question at the moment is whether such restrictions will be respected.

According to the Constitution, it is the Legislative Branch that has power over the purse, and it is only under particular periods of crisis that the Executive Branch can intervene upon the process. Due to the present ubiquity of the GOP over all branches of Government, the jealousy of the Legislative Branch, which has often flared up in the past at their loss of power, has been neutered.

It is a place for Trump apologists to try out their messages. Perhaps it makes them stronger but sometimes they stop saying particular things.

If you read the article I linked you will find the claim that it is congress that will enact Trump's policies, and that the DOGE are only gathering the information re corruption, waste etc that congress needs in order to act. — Janus

The freeze upon funds is happening in real time. That is what some courts are opposing.

What that screed fails to observe is that many actions are being taken that have consequences for actual operations in real time. That is different from a Legislative oversight committee taking in testimony before arguing for a budget.

This just in from DOGE:

The U.S. Department of Education moved to terminate nearly $1 billion in research contracts on Monday, a decision critics said depleted the government of vital data sources on American schooling and all but decimated the agency’s research division. — USA Today

A consistent pattern in the executive decisions is that the means of finding out what happens because of them are being eliminated.

Your view does not include the parts of Nietzsche that recognizes he was a member of the tribe he railed against. The irony of being a philologist who could only serve a few scholars. Reading as an ascetic performance.

Oh well. I tried. — frank

What?

Everything will be ok. — frank

To hell with that. You have just undermined the authority that could promulgate such an assurance.

The mention of a mandate that overrules the preferences of a minority.

I am guessing from this screed that you have little interest in the topic of individual liberty that occupied your forebears.

Then I don't see the importance of insisting upon the essay being germane.

The Australians have left the building.

I am going to hang on until at least the chapters involving Aristotle.

I have been distracted by an invasion from nowhere, if the descriptions are to be believed.

And so you can't be neutral. I understand. Does it hurt if someone seems to be flippant about it? — frank

It does. But how does that element relate to the description of power that Land lays out?

I have my own experiences with divergence and all these different polities being discussed here directly involve my life as I understand it happening. That goes for my family and all the people I love and have loved.

That love extends to people who believe stuff I do not and enemies who wish me harm. That is what Rousseau meant by compassion. I will hurt you if I have to. But no fist pumps and triumphant trumpets.

In one moment, you stand outside of Land's thesis, at another you argue from it. Pick a lane.

Discourse on Inequality. In their most primitive state, humans are supposed to be free, happy, and lacking morality. — frank

He said they had a 'natural' morality, as depicted in the quote given here

I was trying to paint a picture of the Enlightenment before starting Land's essay. — frank

Then we are going to have to compare what those people actually said.

I take your point that the thesis is not based upon "classic" sources. So far, the argument seems to be presuming that all consent is manufactured and being surprised at the conclusion that consent is manufactured.

Is there a secret sauce I am failing to experience?

Rousseau says that all human evil starts with interactions — frank

Where does Rousseau say that?

As the matter relates to Land's thesis, Land seems to be making the same mistake of Oppenheimer in his The State. The source of evil in Rousseau is the idea of private property.

I argued against Oppenheimer's view of Rousseau here.

Well, Niccolo wrote two centuries before Jacques and Robert wrote 3.5 centuries after. Locke is part of the "natural man" debate in which Rousseau and Hobbes participated.

Hobbes can safely be considered "conservative" in his call for Monarchy as the best kind of government.

I got it by using Google Scholar, Try clicking from this search page. The essay is third one down the list.

and some conservative thinker whose name I can't remember. — Arcane Sandwich

You are probably thinking of Hobbes. He is the thinker Nick Land sets over against Rousseau in his essay: The Dark Enlightenment. For example,

For the hardcore neo-reactionaries, democracy is not merely doomed, it is doom itself. Fleeing it
approaches an ultimate imperative. The subterranean current that propels such anti-politics is
recognizably Hobbesian, a coherent dark enlightenment, devoid from its beginning of any Rousseauistic
enthusiasm for popular expression. — N Land

This poorly represents Rousseau's beef with Hobbes who claimed war is man's state of nature. The natural man who lived before legislation and reason is said by Rousseau to be:

Thus, setting aside all those scientific books, which teach us only to see men the way they have made themselves, and meditating upon the first and simplest operations of the human soul, I believe I discern there two principles prior to reason: one makes us passionately interested in our well-being and in our own preservation, and the other inspires in us a natural repugnance at seeing any sensitive being perish or suffer, in particular, beings like ourselves. From the cooperation and combination our mind is able to create of these two principles—without it being necessary to bring in the principle of sociability—it seems to me, all the rules of natural right follow, rules which reason is later forced to re-establish on other foundations, when, through its successive developments, it has ended up effectively suffocating nature.

In this way, we are not obliged to make man a philosopher before we make him a man. His obligations towards others are not dictated to him exclusively by later lessons in wisdom, and so long as he does not resist the internal impulse of compassion, he will never do harm to another man, or even to any other sentient being, except in the legitimate case where, since his preservation is at stake, he is obliged to give preference to himself. — Jean Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men, Preface

Yes, I am a fan of both book and movie. The book captures that "don't worry, everything is under control vibe" of the late Soviet era.

Tzeentch is Hungarian? — Arcane Sandwich

I don't think so. I only remember he has spoken approvingly of Viktor Orbán's struggle against the EU and NATO.

Do you share the enthusiasm of your man Viktor Orbán for the "current president"?

The world has been changed in a few weeks by the Trump tornado. An era has come to an end. Yesterday we were the heretics; today we are the mainstream. — Viktor Orbán