Nothing new under the sun. The US has been an oligarchy for decades, and it still is. It's just that the previous oligarchs have been ousted and they don't like the new ones, so we have to suffer through the whole sanctimonious melodrama.

If anyone truly believed it was going to turn into something remotely fascist, I'm sure someone would have taken me up on my bet; predictably no one did, because all of them know they're just coping like disgruntled children, but unwilling to admit it.

Hey I'm only going by your definition of fascism here. If you felt the need to call the EU "fascists" earlier then you should do the same for Trump as well. Either both are fascists or none are. — Mr Bee

I never gave my definition of fascism, nor did I call the EU fascist, but this is just a dumb argument to make.

The EU is untransparent, overtly undemocratic and authoritarian. The unelected Queen Ursula has recently started her second term - a spot she only got because of her friendship with Merkel.

This situation cannot be compared to the US, and obviously between the two if any are closer to fascism it is the EU by a mile and a half.

This has been common practice in the US for decades. The only difference now is that the billionaires are not on the team you like, so suddenly it's fascism. :yawn:

Trump said he’d end this war on day 1. — Mikie

A bit of a cheap gotcha, but ok.

Let's say he ends the war in 100 days, as the Trump administration now says it intends, what then?

Apparently all weapon shipments to Ukraine have been halted for the next 90 days.

An aggressive foreign policy is nothing new for the US. It's not pretty, obviously, but it's not fascism in the way that it looms over the EU under the unelected Queen Ursula.

Define what is "of particular note". — ssu

Fascism, obviously.

I don't see how the two are remotely comparable.

If you want to believe economic rivalry between two independent nations equals fascism then you've thrown all sense of reason and proportion out of the window.

You're playing some victim card here now? Oof... You must be quite far gone.

As they do under any president. Trump's first presidency was nothing special, no fascism, no World War 3, no end of days, etc. and I see no reason to believe his second will be any different.

But by all means, believe the hysteria and propaganda. We'll see in four years. Take me up on my bet. There's a 1000 Tzeentch-coins in it if you win.

Not sure if you've noticed, but your boy is currently wanted for crimes against humanity.

That's a very exclusive little club he made himself, and by extension Israel, a part of.

Who'd like to take me up on a bet that in 4 years nothing of particular note will have happened, and you all are a bunch of hysterics?

I bet a 1000 Tzeentch-coins on it.

An unmitigated trainwreck is the only proper name for the Biden administration.

It completely mishandled Ukraine and Gaza, and estranged half the world causing US power in the Persian Gulf and much of South-East Asia to all but collapse. It pushed Russia into the arms of the Chinese, and it pushed various influential countries to join the BRICS.

It did all of this by exhibiting the same sense of self-importance and estrangement from reality as the people who are having a breakdown over Trump's second term.

:lol:

Are you really defending Trump and his followers with that? — Christoffer

I'm defending no one. I'm scolding you lot.

The pretense that Trump is somehow uniquely bad, while categorically ignoring that the Biden administration was objectively an unmitigated trainwreck and probably among the worst of all time, is childish and suggests a delusional view of reality that is unbecoming of adults, let alone philosophically-inclined, intelligent people.

And these people simultaneously fail to understand that they are part of the problem. America (and large parts of the world, for that matter) are done with them, and people like them, the ideas they uphold and their hypocrisy.

The total lack of self-reflection amidst the moral whinging makes this collective mental breakdown even harder to watch.

It's like watching children getting confronted with reality. But they throw a tantrum and there is no adult around to spank them.

This forum is turning into a clownshow with all the adults whinging over a lost election. Jesus.

The Biden administration was 'involved' in the same way it has been 'involved' the last year - ceaseless groveling before the lobby and writing blank checks to Netanyahu in the vain hope it would lead to a Dem victory.

The fact that Steve Witkoff was able to achieve this in a single sitting just goes to show how reluctant Biden was to put any meaningful pressure on Netanyahu.

What is 'quite telling' is that in light of this you're still trying to give Biden credit, while unwilling to acknowledge Trump did a good thing.

Meanwhile, instead of continuing on Biden's policy of wanton destruction, Trump achieved a cease-fire in Gaza.

I wonder if folks on this forum are able to acknowledge that, or if the cognitive dissonance would make their brains implode.

You can say what you want about Trump, but by pressuring Israel into accepting a cease-fire his team has done more good in a single sitting than the Biden administration over its entire term.

Well, it looks like the cease-fire is going to happen, and in my opinion this would clearly show that the Biden administration was simply reluctant to put any pressure on Israel whatsoever, likely in the hopes that stooging for the lobby would get the Dems re-elected.

The Trump administration apparently was able to achieve more in a single sitting than the Biden administration over its entire term.

Hopefully this will be the final nail on Netanyahu's coffin, and that will also be the only redeeming thing about the entire Biden administration. What a total disaster it has been.

China will in all likelihood not resort to military means to incorporate Taiwan. It probably feels there is no immediate need to force the issue, and over time political options will become available to reach unification without bloodshed.

However, if Taiwan were to declare its independence a Chinese intervention is all but a guarantee.

To put it quite simply, Western institutions have ran their course, and have now reached the terminal endpoint of any power structure, which is total delusion and corruption, and inevitable collapse.

One glance at the clowns that are running the show in the West tells you all you need to know.

The crisis is one of corrupt leadership, that has, in an effort to cling to its power and delusions, are increasingly painting the citizens of their countries as the problem.

Fortunately, those are the death throes of a dying system, but unfortunately, it may take a couple more years before it finally dies.

Trump's Mideast Envoy Forced Netanyahu to Accept a Gaza Plan He Repeatedly Rejected

Too early to celebrate, but the implications of this will be major if it sticks.

You can look up yourself what the various countries in the Middle-East looked like before US-Israeli intervention. Modern and even prosperous.

The way it has now been framed by the West is to make it seem like this problem is somehow inherent to Islam, to avoid facing the backlash of decades of malpractice.

In reality, virtually every Islamic extremist group can be directly tied to US-Israeli interventions, and regularly these extremist groups were directly supported by the US and/or Israeli government and secrets services at one point or another - IS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, etc.

The US and Israel are the pink elephant in the room, occasionally supported by English or French lackeys.

Islamic extremism is almost entirely a US-Israeli creation - the product of decades of meddling, interventions (and assorted war crimes) and the intentional spreading of chaos, so that the US would maintain control of the oil in the Persian Gulf, and Israel would not have to worry about a potential rival in the region.

Maybe you should make a seperate cope thread.

Genuinely, who cares?

Presidents that preceded him ruined entire countries, aided and abetted war crimes, constructed torture facilities, went to war on false pretenses, etc.

What Trump did doesn't even register on the same scale.

Individualism and the concept of civil rights is hundreds of years old, and in the West it has served as a model for relations between states and citizens for a very long time as well.

Atomization is a recent phenomenon.

I think that's indication enough that the relation you're suggesting exists between atomization and individualism is unsubstantiated and not obvious at all.

Who?

I wouldn't necessarily say this attack on traditional values is the product of communism, but I get where the association comes from since it seems to feature this same intention of reshaping identities and destroying old ones.

It also has the same outcome: atomization, nihilism, etc. - the desastrous effects of which you can still see in countries which were formerly communist.


Cultures used to be a product of an authentic process that spanned hundreds of years of shared history.

Those tended to be quite homogeneous, but not collectivist. It didn't have as its specific purpose to instrumentalize the individual for the benefit of the state.

Collectivism and the idea that people's identities could be artificially reshaped to suit the state's needs really only found practical success with the advent of mass media (propaganda and mass manipulation), with its most egregious examples being fascism and communism, which are basically two sides of the same coin; communism being fascism for ethnically diverse nations that could not forge a national identity around racial superiority.


Do note that these types of processes can happen alongside natural processes by which a society changes and reflects upon its customs. Whether we are currently looking at something natural or artificial is up for debate, but I lean towards the latter.

'Hyper-individualism' is a bit of a confused term.

What I assume means is atomization: a situation in which social bonds break down and people are increasingly isolated from each other mentally and emotionally.

Calling it 'hyper-individualism' suggests that this is a trend that people desire and actively pursue - an effect of an Ayn Randian political movement that puts the individual on a pedestal (or something like that). The reality is that atomization is pretty much categorically experienced as negative.

If individuals are left to their own devices without interference of the state, they will continue to create and seek out community. It's a fundamental human need.

Therefore the frame of atomization being an effect of individualism is unsubtantiated.

Blaming "individualism" for this indeed looks a bit like the type of scapegoating one finds within collectivist enterprises, who will happily use it as an excuse to start interfering more in people's private lives. But I doubt that was the direction Benkei was thinking in.

The thread could use a little clarification and direction.

How can hyper-individualism be collectivist? — Hanover

The breaking down of traditional, cultural and national identities in favor of the communist 'identity' of total uniformity is commonplace historically.

Notice that this breakdown is often sold to people under the banner of 'independence' or emancipation, when in actual fact it trades dependency on social structures for dependency on the state.

Atomization also makes people isolated, fearful, anxious, etc. - susceptible to the worst types of human tendencies, which make them more likely to accept arbitrary use of power and power centralization as long as it promises solutions.

People will tend to see themselves as individuals vis-a-vis the state, but also vis-a-vis religion, race, class, sex, geographic locale, and even sexual preference/orientation. — Leontiskos

The first part is individualism, the second is liberalism.

A small nitpick; individualism inherently is about the relation between states and citizens. In my view, the type of problems in the OP have more to do with a cultural trend of extreme liberalism, perhaps even nihilism, and the resulting atomization.


The problems named are of course very recognizable.

In the western world, cultural values and a sense of shared history have been under attack for decades. Despite all the criticism no replacement for this has been offered (and all attempts at constructing an artificial sense of common identity have historically failed).

So people young and old are left to figure things out on their own, and predictably they will do so via the internet, which is a problematic medium for various reasons.

Nowhere does the echo chamber effect appear to be so great as on the internet, and as such it has a tendency to amplify trends on an individual and societal level. Moreover, age groups are largely seperated (with older generations not even using the internet), meaning the younger generations grow up without the guidance of older generations.

Young people grow up feeling confused, resentful and isolated, carrying teenage themes into adulthood for which they were offered no solutions. It's all quite understandable, but understanding and wisdom are sparse on the internet, so instead you see all kinds of equally dysfunctional counter-reactions.


The fact that people are starting to make all sorts of strange leaps in attempts to break out of this situation I view only as a symptom of the deeper problem which is a trend of cultural repression, which has clear precedents in history. The communist episodes in the Soviet Union and Maoist China left entire generations lost, and both Russia and China are putting efforts into restoring their links to the past.


At any rate, I don't think any of it is spontaneous. The destruction of culture historically has had the purpose of either pacifying unruly populations (for example repression of Hungarian culture in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and/or forging a wider sense of unity by destroying subcultures (various communist regimes).

In my view, this isn't a natural human trend, nor is it healthy.

I think it's safer to assume that whatever filth one side is accusing the other of, the accusing side is guilty of too.

For instance, I would imagine that many Platonists (capital P) would deny that anything has the sort of "mind-independent" existence that some contemporary philosophers would take them to be arguing for. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is because they believed 'mind' (nous, if memory serves me right) emanates from the One, and it is through participation in this quality that we are able to gain an understanding of matters that goes beyond sense perception. The quality must exist as some form of emanation from the One for us to be able to participate in it.

Plato and certainly Neoplatonists like Plotinus were quite mystical in their beliefs, where they believed experiences of higher realities were possible, but exceedingly difficult to describe because they encompassed qualities that preceded nous or the intellect, and were, literally, unintelligible.

In a nutshell, 'mathematical platonism' would suggest people have experienced these higher realities and found mathematics to be existing within them.

However, it does seem like you have made "objective knowledge" apply to essentially nothing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which is essentially platonic, and that's exactly my objection to people using the term 'mathematical platonism'.

I'm not rejecting platonism. I'm pointing out that it's being misappropriated here.

Yet this is just assuming the conclusion. At best you've argued for a sort of nescience on this question, but skepticism and agnosticism are not the same thing as rejecting a thesis. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Didn't I just tell you that what I am doing is expressing skepticism, and not making claims about what does and doesn't objectively exist?

Ok, why can't this involve numbers, which are essential to modern science? Can we infer what biology and evolution tells us about how our sense organs work in some way corresponds to reality, but not that the math that underpins these finding does? Why is that? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Our sense organs do not show us the whole picture, and the same thing appears to be true for math and science.

They're tools that help us model reality.

Your position seems far more similar to Locke, Hume, Kant, etc. To be sure, Plato acknowledges a distinction between reality and appearances, but he does not suppose that reality is some sort of noumenal "reality as divorced from all appearances." Indeed, his supposition is that threeness, circles, etc. are more real than the world of sensible appearances because they are more intelligible/necessary/what-they-are. This is, in an important sense, the exact opposite of supposing that reality is the world with all appearances (including intelligibility) somehow pumped out of it or abstracted away. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Plato's objective reality is 'the One' - an indivisible, all-encompassing unity.

Hm. But how would one substantiate this idea that numbers exist in this different way?

And why would numbers be able to exist in this way, and not flying spaghetti monsters?

You certainly seem to be. Your claim is that, for something to be properly "real" it must exist wholly outside appearances. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's not what I'm asserting, because how would I know?

The core of what I'm saying is that, as Plato argued, it is very difficult to even access the reality that underlies our world of sense experience, let alone make statements about this reality.

So rather I am expressing skepticism towards those who would claim mathematics is 'objectively real', and also pointing out the contradiction in the term 'mathematical platonism'.

Does that make sense?

Do you think making a statue of a fictional character makes them real? I don't. Yet is chess fictional? Is world history fiction? Temperature? Dates?

Scientific theories and paradigms are human creations. Yet if these are thereby fictions, then your appeal to "inferring reality from science" would amount to "inferring what is real from fiction." — Count Timothy von Icarus

In the context of a philosophical debate, I would argue all of those things are indeed human 'fictions', that serve a purpose for our human needs.

Note that I am not saying that science shows us what is real, rather it seems to heavily suggest the existence of an underlying reality because it is able to make models of how that reality works to a degree that is at least accurate enough for our human endeavors.

Shouldn't the usefulness of mathematics in science lead us to "infer" that it says something about reality? — Count Timothy von Icarus

They're both tools for modeling an inferred underlying reality. But they themselves are human creations, accurate enough for our human purposes.

They're useful because they're accurate enough. But it would be a mistake to believe they convey the objective nature of reality.

He does not make a distinction between appearances as "subjectivity," and reality as the "objective/noumenal" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Neither am I, as far as I am aware.

Presumably, the latter is an intentional fiction created to critique religion. It is one thing to claim that Homer's Achilles is a "fictional character." It is another to claim that the Iliad doesn't "really exist" because Homer wrote it. Do airplanes also not exist because they are the invention of man? States? World history? Chess? — Count Timothy von Icarus

If someone were to create a gigantic effigy of a flying spaghetti monster, would that suddenly make the flying spaghetti monster real?

I'd argue all of those things you named are human creations, and therefore not 'real' in the sense that we are talking about right now.

Obviously, we can make all sorts of practical concessions in what we colloquially refer to as 'real'.

Have you looked on both sides to see if the veil itself is real? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is inferred that there exists our world of sense experience, and a reality underlies it. Science has gone a long way in confirming this, showing how our senses mislead us, and only show us the tip of the iceberg.

At least, Plato himself would reject such a cleavage in reality, — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is pretty much the central theme of Plato. It's not that reality is cleaved, but that we do not experience reality - only a reflection of it. That's the cave.

But presumably it tells us something about the reality of chess. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the word 'reality' is a misnomer here. Chess is something we made up. Would you accept it if people were arguing for the reality of the flying spaghetti monster?

You would not know whether equations describe true things. Maybe the universe does not work according to such rules, but we can make equations accurate enough to 'do the job' for our human purposes?

I think knowledge here refers to absolute certainty, or objective knowledge, and the platonists were highly skeptical of that.