I don’t mean that literally 80-85% of the country is hostile to the philosophical and political values that urban America stands for. My point is that the cities give us the closest
thing to a consensus on these values, allowing us to think of them as representing a ‘country within a country’ — Joshs

:up: This is a view of Chicago from the suburbs. It looks like Oz.

I’m focusing on the high population-dense cities themselves, not ‘urban areas’ inclusive of vast stretches of sprawling conservative suburbs. The former are the communities I have in mind. Around 15-20% of Americans live within the city limits of the 50 largest U.S. cities by population. — Joshs

Ok, but doesn't that mean the "other America" you spoke of is 80-85% of the population? Is that what you meant?

80% of the US population is considered urban., but Trump got 49.1% of the popular vote..

I think the community you're referring to is educated urbanites, probably mostly white, so it's the 45% of whites who didn't vote for Trump. The group to watch is Latinos, who are now 20% of the US population, and voted for Trump in larger numbers in 2024 than previously.

According to CBS, the FCC's threats are clearly unconstitutional, and ABC/Disney could easily bring it to the Supreme Court, where all nine justices would affirm that the FCC's actions were illegal.

The reason Disney won't do that is because of a multi-billion dollar deal Nexstar was engaged in where they would increase their numbers of ABC affiliates above what the FCC has traditionally allowed. So Nexstar needs the FCC's favor. It was Nexstar that "rushed to cave into" Carr's threats. This is explained in a NY Times article.

It's not "the Jews." It's Soros and maybe a handful of others. He's like Magneto. — BitconnectCarlos

That's incorrect. It's "Jews.". But Soros is legendary among day traders. More like Hell Boy.

Regular Christians don't think Jews are trying to destroy white people. Kirk did believe that.

That's correct.

.

If your objective it to make me remove Kirk from the Saint list, I never put him there, but if it's to have some understanding for those who felt a fleeting sense of joy at his having been shot in the neck, you'll be wasting your time. — Hanover

You said he represented views that might be distasteful to the left. I think it was a little worse than that. He openly disagreed with the principle of separation of church and state, he advocated Christian nationalism, and he embraced the replacement conspiracy theory.

I agree his assassination was a terrible thing, for a variety of reasons. And I'm sure there are evil Jews in the world, but when a person is found to have rambled on about that from a stage in front of crowds of people, a little blip ought to appear on your Neo-Nazi radar. I'm just saying, stop saying he was just a regular devout Christian. That's not true.

He was not a firebrand and he really didn't spew hatred in the sense that I think some on the left think he did. — Hanover

He was like: 'I love Jews, but they hate white people, they want to destroy them by importing non-whites.'

I think we probably disagree on which direction his boat was eventually going to tip.

..In October 2023, Kirk said on The Charlie Kirk Show that "Jewish donors have been the Number 1 funding mechanism of radical, open border, neoliberal, quasi‑Marxist policies ... This is a beast created by secular Jews, and now it's coming for Jews", and also suggested that these Jews control "not just the colleges; it's the nonprofits, it's the movies, it's Hollywood, it's all of it". Soon after, he said that "Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years."[211] Kirk called on American Jews to stop "subsidizing your own demise by supporting institutions that breed Anti-Semites and endorse genocidal killers".[144]

In November 2023, Kirk said that "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them."[212] He went on to claim "the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors", but said he was glad that some donors were reconsidering.[213] Some Jewish public figures have defended Kirk against accusations of antisemitism, citing his pro-Israel stance. Kirk was funded by some Jewish donors, including Bernard Marcus.[214]

In July 2025, Kirk warned his followers against hatred of Jews, calling it "evil" and "demonic".[215] He was quoted as saying that "no non-Jewish person my age has a longer or clearer record of support for Israel, sympathy with the Jewish people, or opposition to antisemitism than I do".[144] However, Kirk was also accused of antisemitism by multiple people and organizations;[144][212][216] the Anti-Defamation League accused Kirk of creating a "vast platform for extremists and far-right conspiracy theorists".[144] — Wikipedia, NYT

Have you been paying attention to the same courts I have? — Michael

I'm saying we aren't at dictatorship yet. What's happening now is we're all getting used to the ideas associated with it, like censorship, domestic use of the military, rigged elections. Going forward, nothing could stand in the way except the courts. If the courts go under, it's over.

I think right now the only thing that stand between us and dictatorship is the courts.

I think JTB is a characterization of internalism..

"That is a prime number" is true (or false) regardless of what John thinks about it. The question is, How confident can he be that he knows which is which? — J

If he read Descartes' Meditations, he would be cautious about knowledge claims. If he asserts things in spite of Descartes, he could say he's secretly prefacing the assertion with "If the Evil Demon isn't tricking me right now, ..."

Under the strongest possible interpretation of truth-conditional semantics (the principle of maximal charity), the meaning of your use of a sentence S refers to the actual cause of your use of S; — sime

John points to the white board, which has the figure 2 written on it. He says, "That is a prime number." We'll call the sentence he uttered S.

The cause of his use of S is a factor in determining the truth conditions. That cause is not the truth conditions, though. Or if it is, how?

On the other hand, if the community gets to decide the truth-maker of your use of S irrespective of whatever caused you to utter S (the principle of minimal charity), then you cannot know that S is true until after you have used S and received feedback. In which case, the truth of S isn't a quality of your mental state when you used S. — sime

"Truth-maker of your use of S" doesn't make sense to me. What are you talking about?

The problem wasn't what Kimmel said. The problem was that he didn't have anyone on his show to provide an alternate view or argument to what he said. — Harry Hindu

I think the real problem is that ratings are down for all the late night talk shows. They're a vestige. Colbert's show was losing money. In order to be provocative, you have to have a fort from which to shoot.

That's one of those vacuous merely logical possibilities that are best ignored, because even in the unlikely event that it were true (which we could never know) it would be a difference that makes no difference. — Janus

Ah, the sound of intellectual impotence. It's uninteresting. It's unimportant. It's irrelevant. Why in the name of John Locke should I be concerned about what you find to be uninteresting?

A. a belief merely refers to the coexistence of a believer's mental state and an external truth-maker, — sime

Did you mean correspondence? I don't see what coexistence does there.

No belief is an island. Any particular belief implies a web of associated propositional attitudes, much of which is worldview, the present generation's heritage. Being wrong involves miscalculation, misinformation, misconception. What's wrong with that account?

See what I mean?

Anybody else notice that Charlie Kirk's face was too small for his head?

OK. But if you say we don't know, you are suggesting that if certain things happened, you would know. What might those be? — Ludwig V

I don't think we have any criteria for determining what's real and what isn't in the philosophical sense. It's interesting to consider that this might be a dream or some kind of collective construct.

Still, it could be a collective dream. It really could be. We don't know. :grin:
— frank
What's the evidence that it is? — Ludwig V

I didn't say that it is, just that it could be. We don't know.

So this may be a collective dream. We don't know.
— frank
I don't think it is a question of whether it is or is not a collective dream, but of how one chooses to think about it or how one decides to approach and cope with the reality we experience. — Ludwig V

Still, it could be a collective dream. It really could be. We don't know. :grin:

I'm more a positive nihilist. A sad nihilist is trying, but failing to accept life on its terms.
— frank

A vestige of science's physicalism, which kills the soul. Defining the world according to empirical discovery (which usually carries with it a philosophy of foundational physicalism) is such bad thinking. Hard to imagine taking it seriously. — Constance

I'm not sure what you're talking about. My baseline view is Neoplatonic, not physicalist, although I think one ontology is as good as another.

but it does suggest that our ordinary tests are pragmatic rather than metaphysical. — Truth Seeker

:up: So this may be a collective dream. We don't know.

There's no criteria for testing which of your experiences are of something real and which are false, for instance, drug induced, right?

Maybe the first idea was money. Not bartering items, but coinage. It's a blank space that can be filled with a thousand things of value, so it's value itself, in the abstract. As you say, value is part of a web of ideas, some directly opposing and some kin, but different. No idea is an island. They always belong to a web, so it takes only one idea to establish all ideas.

You can only put off becoming fascist for so long until BAM! You're there. Deal with it.

You are full of surprises Frank. I took you for a cynic, a nihilist. — Constance

I'm more a positive nihilist. A sad nihilist is trying, but failing to accept life on its terms.

identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives. — NY Times

The only people who believe there are organizations that would fund violence against conservatives are people like Kirk, who believed Jews are attempting to eliminate all white people by importing non-whites. So it appears the cabinet is being motivated by conspiracy theories, to no one's surprise.

See Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith in Fear and Trembling. — Constance

I have passages of that memorized. One of my favorites.

I think JTB is intended as a test for knowledge — J

I think it's just meant to express what we mean by know, especially if we're knowledge internalists, which means we believe knowledge requires access to justification. A knowledge externalist doesn't require that.

So if we say Bill knows that Carrie was written by Stephen King, it's implied that the proposition is true. We aren't worried about how we know it's true.

I don't see how it matters what we call it.

. I cannot know false propositions a priori. — sime

What does it mean to know a false proposition?

Jon Stewart
https://youtube.com/shorts/OvjsN7h1Zc8?si=ZdYk_0Rt6e0To95o

Yep. But isn't satisfaction fleeting? Pain endures, the pain of guilt, the pain of regret, the pain of resentment, the pain of longing for forgiveness.

Once the pain is gone, the mind wanders to find the next problem to solve. Pure, eternal satisfaction is the end of all quests. It's the end of the life of the mind.

Life is pain, satisfaction is death. More Schopenhauer.

These are negative. What about wonder, happiness, love, hagen dazs, Debussy, — Constance

I said engine of emotion. For that, you need emotional wounds. That's what morality is all about.

We need to clone that guy. He's amazing.

Sacrifices have to be made apparently.

I've noticed that everyone around me is happy Kirk is dead, not happy that people are going around shooting each other, just happy one jackass is gone.