It’s the psychology of a cult of personality. He can do no wrong, so he is immune. — schopenhauer1

I think though that a bunch of the personality cult is tongue-in-cheek. The Trump voter base seems far more concerned with their enemies than with their "glorious leader". Arguably Hillary Clinton as the embodiment of evil is as important to the Trump movement as Trump is.

And I think this is ultimately why nothing "sticks" to Trump. His supporters do not care so long as he destroys the evil they are convinced is trying to rule their lifes.

And this brings us back to fascism: the overwhelming sense of crisis and the threat by evil outsiders.

I think what schopenhaur1 implies, rather than that Trump himself is fascist, is that many Trump supporters are fascist, and they see his actions as an opening of the door, inviting them in. In reality he's just using them for his own personal gain, what schop describes as narcissistic. And, it appears like the number of fascists is sufficient to make opening the door to fascism worthwhile for him. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, Trump is the wrecking ball. The people with a real understanding of the political movement, people like Bannon, are the scary ones.

It's not necessarily that its not built on happiness, though that is certainly the case. — schopenhauer1

Well I picked that specifically because it's so central to our western societies. That if you're not successful and happy you're either doing something wrong or somethings missing. And since you don't want to be wrong you better buy something.

And against this it's helpful to remind oneself that evolution doesn't select for happiness.

As if this argument is about animal intelligence and not about existential differences in animal modes of life is the relevant issue. — schopenhauer1

Well I do also feel the "separation from nature" bit is the weakest part of the metaphor, largely because I see no reason to suppose other animals are somehow "in tune" with nature. They're also each separate, existing as their own little system.

Perhaps self consciousness, as being aware of your own awareness adds an extra filter that makes our experience of the outside world especially remote.

An interesting thought experiment, at some point some ancestor of ours, possibly not even a human, was presumably the first to be aware. But, being the first, they'd have no words to express this, nor anyone to mirror it back to them. So was awareness a group thing, that arose when a sufficient number of our ancestors, together, happend to have the brain capacity and just communally became aware of themselves and each other?

The Senate tries, the Chief Justice presides. If convicted he "shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law". — NOS4A2

It doesn't include it either. What precludes it is the double jeopardy clause of the 5th. — NOS4A2

This would be a contradiction though, since double jeopardy applies whether or not you've been convicted.

I find this take in existence interesting. It reminds me of the "blind idiot god": Humanity has found it's god, it's creator, only to discover that it's like a terrible monster, a blind idiot with neither desires nor goals that just shambles forwards mercilessly.

In that sense we can view humans as an "excess". Humans are the product of a runaway process of increased mental capacity, which randomly gave us consciousness. Less some crowning achievement and more some weird freak.

I think it's useful to keep such a perspective in your "arsenal", so to speak. The idea that life is not "about" anything and that there's no reason to assume your existence is built around happiness as some general state can be liberating.

It was his personal decision to accept the text of the Istanbul communiqué. It was totally different from the initial ultimatum proposal of Russia which they put before the Ukrainian delegation in Minsk.

So we managed to find a very real compromise.

Putin really wanted to reach a peaceful settlement with Ukraine.

This seems to conflict with any other source on the negotiations I have looked at so far. They all stress that a high level meeting of the two leaders was a sticking point and that without such a meeting, Ukraine was unwilling to rely on the communiqué.

That meeting - and this Putin's possible acceptance, is what was postponed and ended up never happening.

So I wonder where this insistence that Putin "personally accepted" the Istanbul communiqué comes from.

Well, as I said, you won't listen to me.

To answer your question, clearly there is evidence supporting my position. The fact that you're not even willing to look at it is your problem, not mine - your knee-jerk "CONSPIRACY!" reaction tells me all I need to know. — Tzeentch

But I did look. And came up empty. And you clearly don't have any more either or you could have simply posted it and thus exposed me as an ignorant fool.

Look, you cannot really suppose that a mention in Hillary's emails about a gold dinar and a supposed (but unsourced) russian article constitute sufficient evidence to conclude that not only had the dictator of Lybia somehow set up a functioning scheme to set up a pan-African gold currency, but also that this currency was a threat to the US dollar, and that furthermore the US then in some unspecified way caused the Arab spring to get a SC resolution to bomb Lybia.

This is an insanely complex theory. It's also fundamentally unlikely given Lybia's resources and Gaddafi's personality and known propensity for grand fanciful schemes.

It is what Sagan would have called an "extraordinary claim". More generally, the more complex the supposed scheme, the more evidence you need to support it.

Ask yourself (I'm not expecting a public answer): do you really have the evidence to support that conclusion?

You're neck-deep into conspiratorial thinking. That is unfortunate, but you'll hardly listen to me so I'm not in a position to help you get out of that swamp.

I can only tell you to check your confirmation bias yourself and try to think clearly about why you believe what you believe.

Right, so the story isn't even consistent. At least the gold seems to have been actually real.

State practice, and thus R2P, is part of international law, and thus of the rules-based order. — Tzeentch

That's not how that works. You need consistend practice by the vast majority of states, which certainly was not the case with R2P. Plus there were consistend objectors, which would also prevent it from becoming custom.

And clearly the US abused the UN to provide a casus belli for an unjust invasion and coup. — Tzeentch

Yeah? How? How do we tell a "normal" UN resolution from one gained by the US by abusing the system?

You can stick your head in the sand all you like. There's no shortage of information about why the US invaded Libya (and they all have to do with Gaddafi's resistance to, you guessed it, the American led "rules-based" order). I could link you articles, books, but you've already made up your mind, and such would be a waste of time on my part. — Tzeentch

This is just sad now.

A good thing we no longer have to deal with the weird propaganda screeds!

The point is that the 'rules-based order' is not an instrument for peace and stability, but an instrument the US uses to pursue its own objectives. In this case, it used R2P as a casus belli to invade. — Tzeentch

The problem is that R2P is not part of the rules based order, is not widely accepted as a principle and is not part of international law. Even the West is by now clearly recognising it as a failure.

The fact that there was a security council resolution changes nothing about that. — Tzeentch

Literally the only clear, unequivocal justification for the use of force under international law is irrelevant according to you?

Sometimes the US plays according to the rules of the game, but the game was rigged from the start. What nation is going to stick their neck out for poor ol' Libya and invite Washington's ire? — Tzeentch

US resolutions get vetoed in the SC all the time, before and after 2011. This is 100% bullshit.

We can look at Gaddafi to see what happens to people who make that mistake. — Tzeentch

Plenty of examples of what happens if a major power decides it rather wants you gone. But this is supposed to be about the US abusing the international system, not just directly using it's power.

The fact that Gaddafi sought to establish the gold dinar as a new African currency is not a 'conspiracy' - it's common knowledge. — Tzeentch

No it's not. The article has this to say on it:

According to a Russian article titled 'Bombing of Libya – Punishment for Gaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar', Gaddafi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. During the past year, the idea was approved by many Arab countries and most African countries. The only opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head of the League of Arab States.

And this quote comes from a book, which is then cited by the article.

No source for the article is given and no information is otherwise available about the scheme, let alone any kind of statement by the countries supposedly involved.

So the best sources are an eMail allegedly by Clinton and a supposed russian article reported by hearsay twice removed. There's more evidence that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landings than for this scheme being real.

For example, the US carried out its 2011 invasion of Libya under the banner of R2P, even though its goal was to despose Muammar Gaddafi - a person they themselves had helped to power in 1969 - for his ambitions to create a gold-backed alternative to the dollar. — Tzeentch

This seems like a really bad example because that "invasion", the no-fly-zone was backed by a resolution of the security council. One of only three (?) examples where such a sanction could actually be obtained.

So it was in accordance with the "rules based order".

There's plenty of examples of unilateral US military force of course. But then these are also not examples of the US abusing a system of control build through international institutions. They were pretty blatantly unilateral actions, justified by the responsibility to protect.

This behaviour certainly had negative effects (it also deserves to be listed as an indirect contributing factor to the Ukraine war IMHO), but seems to have little to do with the dollar or international organisations.

Just a small world on the "gold backed alternative to the USD": There's not a single source on this from any official channel, not even statements by Gaddafi himself. It seem like a conspiracy theory invented entirely from an offhand mention in an email allegedly from Hillary Clinton's server.

The problem with uncaused existence is that, if it is possible, then nothing should stop it from occuring at random.

Further, being uncaused, there is no reason to expect any specific sort of thing to come into existence over any other. So, we shouldn't just expect lots of stuff to start existing, but different sorts of stuff. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, how do we know that things don't spontaneously spring into existence all the time? Since the laws of physics as we observe them would already account for this, we wouldn't necessarily notice. We could argue that, if different things came into being constantly, existence must be chaotic and have no observable rules at all.

But then the anthropic principle strikes and says that bubbles of stability in chaos are possible and observers could only form in such a bubble, so really it's no surprise at all that observers would always find a reasonably stable, ordered world.

Or perhaps once a relatively ordered "bubble" formed, the resulting interactions keep "different" entities out. If anything goes, there's no reason not to ascribe to our universe the property of "self-stabilising".

During the unipolar moment the US used many of these systems to instate the so-called 'rules based international order', which in the case of the US usually meant: "Rules for thee, but not for me." — Tzeentch

Can you give some example for this?

Or am I just the too ignorant for you to explain further? :wink:

The problem isn't necessarily US imports and exports. It's the petrodollar, the dollar as world reserve currency, the various global financial institutions created by the US, etc.

It's essentially a system of special 'privileges' the US has created for itself during the unipolar moment, which provide it with a slew of instruments to economically pressure other nations. — Tzeentch

But these systems largely don't originate from the "unipolar" phase (I.e. post 1990) but from the Cold war, mostly the 70s.

They're not simply the result of the US abusing it's "unipolar power" in some unspecified way but rather of the massive preponderance of the US economy outside the Soviet block together with political factors.

It's not like the US somehow tricked everyone into accepting their leadership role.

This is the system much of the world is trying to subtract itself from, not in the least because the US tends to function on a "rules for thee, but not for me" basis. — Tzeentch

Which country doesn't? Everyone wants to be the leader and set the rules to their advantage. But noone is there yet. I see little reason to suspect India would grant China the privilege or vice versa. Neither Brasil nor Russia are serious contenders.

The Arab oil states are rather cleverly positioning themselves as a kind of global mediator, but I think it's to early to tell how this will work long term.

The economic incentive is certainly there.

The Ukraine war signaled to a lot of non-western countries that their money is not safe with the US dollar financial system, expediating de-dollarization. — Tzeentch

But hasn't the war - or rather the sanctions - also shown that the importance of that depends on your economic enmeshment with the US?

It seems to me that de-dollarization has a hen-and-egg problem. The more you export to the US, the more USD you hold and the more vulnerable you are to devaluation or straight up freezing of assets. But at the same time the less room to maneuver you have for de-dollarization.

I do think the USD will be replaced eventually, as the relative economic importance of the US declines. Maybe not in this decade though. Of course if the US political system continues to unravel, we might see a more precipitous drop.

What unites all BRICS countries is their effort to shake off the yoke of the US-led financial system. — Tzeentch

Efforts like that have been tried several times before though. Sure eventually something will likely replace the US dollar. For now it seems to have been simply (another) announcement at their recent summit that they're planning - in some indefinitie future - to have a dollar alternative.

The economic incentive right now is just not there. Too much trade is still bound up with the US. And the BRICS countries seem pretty far from agreeing to a mutual standard. And the unanswered question is, given the differences between the BRICS countries, who will control the new standard?

I'm not the one justifying an invasion.

The Russians are not the bad guys here, they are just interested in protecting their sovereignty, it comes down to everyone having a right to protect themselves from outside aggression. — boagie

Protecting yourself from outside aggression by invading and annexing your neighbour. So the aggression is then inside?

Don't you have some other forum to bombard with your ridiculous propaganda?

You do not seem to be aware of the global power shifting away from America as a unipolar power, the goal of much of the world in a multipolar world, one more infused with a cooperative nature rather than subjugation — boagie

A multipolar order based on cooperation would certainly be novel. So far, the default state has usually been more or less open hostility and frequent war.

With each country America took into its fold moving closer, they also placed nuclear warheads on the soil of these countries. — boagie

AFAIK there are no NATO nukes east of Germany.

Each time lying to the Russians they would go no further. — boagie

Not really.

America's dreams is world domination, — boagie

America already had world domination. The US voters don't seem particularly impressed with what it did for them.

The BRICS is the other half of the world saying, enough is enough, and drew a line in the sand, that line was Ukraine. — boagie

The only BRICS country that cares about Ukraine is Russia. Even China's support is only lukewarm.

does that excuse leading Ukraine to war and then having Ukraine sacrifice so many Ukrainian lives for American (elite) perceived interests, on false pretences? — boethius

I guess we'd have to ask the Ukrainians. Oh wait we already went over this and you didn't care about the evidence then either.

If you wish to discuss this, give me some indication you know some history, — boagie

Why don't you give me some indication that you're capable of more nuance than the average propaganda bot?

Example, what lead up to the invasion of Ukraine, start with the reunification of Germany and go on from there. — boagie

So how did you think this would go, you just jump in here and demand I write a history book to prove my credentials?

Of course, Russia invaded before the Ukrainian military was able to provide the kind of resistance that would have made a US intervention feasible, which is why the US hung them out to dry in the end. — Tzeentch

Intervention by the US airforce alone would have absolutely crushed the Russian invasion. With Ukraine's forces on the ground and the US airforce above, given Russia's performance so far, their operations would have been unfeasable very quickly.

It was not lack of means that prevented such a scenario, it was an unwillingness to risk a nuclear war (or, more precisely, to be seen as risking one).

Ukraine is being utterly wrecked in every conceivable way. — Tzeentch

Not in every conceivable way. Notably they have retained their choice of alignment - with the west. You may think they're making a mistake but polls in Ukraine seem to make pretty clear that they think it's important.

Europe threw its economy down the drain, now has a hostile great power on its doorstep while having completely stripped its military, and it has been turned into the world's laughing stock to boot. — Tzeentch

Europe's situation has not materially changed, it's merely now forced to face the truth. It's possible that this will break the EU, though perhaps then the adage that "what can be destroyed by the truth deserves to be" is true.

Europe's crisis goes much deeper and beyond Ukraine, which is merely a focal point for many of it's ills. This could be a chance as well, though arguably the leadership of the big players leaves a lot to be desired.

We are far past that point. Zelensky is not moving to negotiate. He even signed a decree to make negotiations with Russia impossible. The absolute fool. — Tzeentch

Well what is it? Can Ukraine negotiate or not?

Obviously the support is achieving the opposite of sound strategy, which is why Ukraine is slowly approaching the edge of the cliff. Quite extraordinary you're unable to see that. — Tzeentch

There's a difference though between claiming a strategy has failed and claiming it wasn't sound to begin with.

Your strategy seems to offer little other than the hope you are right about russian intentions.

It's a strategic argument. Neither Ukraine nor Europe benefits from playing into Washington's hand. — Tzeentch

Don't they? It seems to me the relationship has plenty of benefits for Europe, and historically alignment with the US has also been a good choice for many other countries, from South Korea to Poland.

From a moral perspective it is of course repugnant too. — Tzeentch

Why exactly though?

That happened after the West blocked peace talks. — Tzeentch

It was also very obviously signaled in advance. Once Russia had officially recognised the areas as independent states, what other route could it take?

It can still continue to resist militarily, unconventionally if need be, to impose a cost on Russia. This gives them leverage in negotiations — Tzeentch

If that's the case, why should we "pull the plug" on Ukraine support? The support improves Ukraine's ability to impose costs and thus their position in negotiations.

However, continuing to resist without an actual strategy of what that resistance is supposed to accomplish is remarkably foolish. Imposing a cost on Russia is a sound strategy from an American point of view, not from a Ukrainian point of view, since it would incur a much larger cost on Ukraine itself - it would destroy Ukraine. — Tzeentch

But you literally just wrote that imposing costs on Russia is the basis of the Ukrainian position in negotiations. So the strategic goal of imposing costs to demonstrate your ability to impose future costs seems entirely sound.

Neither Europe nor Ukraine should make themselves complicit in such a strategy. — Tzeentch

What exactly is the moral argument here?

How would Ukraine negotiate if it's entirely unable to resist anyways? What's there to negotiate over?

I'm not sure what 'provocation accusation' you're talking about, but what Europe should do is pull the plug on military support for Ukraine. Helping another nation exercise their right to self-defense is only rational if it has a chance of succeeding. There is no such chance in the case of the Ukraine war, and thus Europe should not contribute to the illusion that Ukraine can win this war. Stopping the support will hopefully will bring Ukraine to stop sacrificing its people in vain sooner rather than later.

If Ukraine wants to continue throwing its people's lives away, then that's their right. However, Europe should not make itself complicit in such a senseless waste of life. — Tzeentch

And if Russia then let's the tanks roll west across Ukraine, should Europe then restart their aid? Or are we giving the entirety of Ukraine to Russia (at least we're prepared to) because Ukraine is currently unable to retake the missing 20%?

Isn't the self defense of the remaining 80% of the territory succesful?

Germany is sort of the paradigmatic example of the free rider problem in alliances. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well Germany had a key role in NATO defense until the collapse of the SU and had significant forces. The domestic political opinion of Germany's armed forces has always been conflicted, and I think after the end of the (first?) cold war this created a situation of one-sided pressure to diminish the role of the armed forces. Generally none of the western European states has the capacity to maintain more than an expeditionary force on their own, so that's not necessarily unique to Germany.

Well the Antivax bit is just another arrow in the quiver for people like Bannon. What exactly one believes about any particular issue is not so important. What's important is that one accepts the fundamental creed: Something evil is going on, outsiders cannot be trusted and the people "in the know" have to act.

Interestingly these people use the language of anti-authoritarianism to further their own authoritarian control of the narrative. But this is of course not a new phenomenon.

I gave reasons for my statement, which you chose to ignore.

What are your reasons? Care to explain to us how calling the citizens of Gaza "not much better than animals" is not a tacit justification for their "extermination"?

Is there a danger of Trump pulling something like that in the future (as President)?
No! — ssu

Trump is the wrecking ball. By delegitimising democratic institutions, causing chaos and shifting what is acceptable he's paving the way for an actual dictator.

He does play with the idea. Apparently he just recently clarified that he wouldn't be a dictator - well maybe for the first day. This is just Trump being Trump, but it's also a normalisation. He won't be called out on it by his base, and that means the next time someone says this, it'll be a little less outrageous.

While I do not think Trump was planned, I do think there are forces, which we might call disaster capitalists, which seek to exploit him, perhaps to the point of an actual "managed democracy" which would perpetuate laissez-faire policies while redirecting popular anger to outsiders.

Hamas are a bunch of animals and the people who voted them into power aren't much better. — RogueAI

Is exactly the kind of rhetoric Hamas would use. Or any other person justifying mass murder.

Odd that someone would seriously adopt this rhetoric on a philosophy forum where, we should assume, they have sufficient time and capacity to evaluate their words before they post them.

What is astounding to me is the apparent lack of awareness of the overall situation. This was visible early on with the failure to make a convincing case to India, apparently forgetting that India is on the verge of becoming a major power and would have to be treated as an equal partner.

Is this simply the primacy of economics having become to ingrained, so European leaders have trouble actively shaping a geopolitical policy?

More and more voices are starting to call out the supporters of Ukraine for not preparing properly for a long war and dragging their feet on supplying equipment.

Is "the West" dropping the ball, geopolitically? At the beginning of the war there was surprising unity and a lot of strong declarations, perhaps most exemplified by the German chancellor declaring a new era in defense posture ("Zeitenwende"). Almost two years later, there seems little sign of such an epochal change.

It is not surprising that initial unity does not hold for two years of warfare. What is surprising is the appearance that many western nations are now standing here with mostly empty hands.

Should the West be unable to deal with even one major military challenge, this will no doubt embolden other actors, and reduce sharply the ability of western, primarily the European, nations to affect international trends.

Don't most aspects of Western civilization predate Christianity in some near-Eastern traditions anyway? — AmadeusD

Oh I'm sure that if you can find various aspects that predate it. That doesn't mean that their specific combination wasn't relevant though. I think it's plausible that the combination of the roman legalistic tradition with the anarchic undercurrent of Christianity made the western civilization more flexible.

It's best not to paint too broad a picture as there was more pluralistic beliefs in ancient Greece...But yes, it was taken mainly as a matter of course that some deserved power based on birth or fate. — schopenhauer1

True. There's always the danger of getting too enamoured with the big, sweeping narrative.

Also we can't really say that these ideas are necessarily unique to Christianity. It's always possible they'd have come up some other way regardless. But they are part of the historical sequence of ideas.

But, arguably, the fact that we even think about inequality as a problem is part of the Christian tradition. Greek and Roman pagans would not have considered inequality a problem in its own right. For them, people simply were not equal and that was just a normal fact of the world.

Christians certainly perpetrated inequality. But, for the christian elites, the teaching of Jesus would always be a nagging uncertainty.

Imho, one of the biggest success stories of western culture is that it turned the Christian "equality in the eyes of Christ" into a secular principle of human rights.