NOS, how would you not see this as unhinged, echoing well-trodden fascist rhetoric for political opponents? Trump is saying all the stuff upfront, political opponents are going to be “rooted out”. This is literally fascist dictator playbook 101.

Perhaps you can quote him and we can analyze his "echoing" of "fascist rhetoric", words that are plucked directly from the headlines that report on it.

On the one hand I'd implore you tell me in your own words what was wrong with Trump's speech, but on the other hand I don't need you to because I know what you're going to say.

Big Lie, capital letters, exactly as written by political operatives. Everything is decided for you. Your only duty (and ability) is to repeat it. You cannot do otherwise. But your sorcery theory of words suggests you’d blame them and not yourself for being their parrot.

No. They saw a virtual candidate in Joe Biden, someone who didn’t leave his bunker and had abysmal attendance at his rallies, but got the most votes of any president ever. That’s the problem: you pretend Trump convinced everyone, but really they’re just watching your malfeasance.

Look how effectual everyone’s words are. They can convince no one but themselves.

The way I understand it, the movements of the body are not separate from the body, but are just aspects of it; so, I don't know how not to distinguish between the two.

The aspects of the body are the body, at least when I look. What distinguishes them beyond the words used to describe it?

As previously illustrated, community hasn’t faired so well to quell violence, or worse, has supported it. When communities come to head we call it war, for instance.

I guess you’d have no choice but to depend on others if you are unable to defend yourself. Sounds terrible, to me.

A fellow citizen might try to kill you though, so I should hope it would be easier. A gun is a great equalizer in that regard. How do you propose the weaker citizens should defend themselves from the stronger?

Wow.

They said some things…the total extent of your complaints.

So another nothing burger. Look at the lengths you go to fabricate a reality you know is not true.

Did he stay?

A lot of it has to do with history. Gun laws have been used to blindly suppress certain classes: black people, first peoples, Catholics, immigrants, and the poor. It has become a point of humor that gun-controllers need to search through racist codes and laws to present any legal precedent in American courts these days.

Consider this quote from former slave and anti-lynching advocate Ida Wells:

”Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky, and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.

The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases

It would be wrong to suggest that gun-controllers seek to suppress certain classes, but her argument should haunt anyone doing so. What happens when the law refuses to protect, or worse, turns against those they are meant to serve? This fear is almost laughed off as an anachronism. But then I have to watch as the great Canadian leader sends guns to Ukrainian citizens while taking them away from his own. Slavery, war, and genocide are never that far away, and official murder is always easier with a disarmed populace.

Americans simply do not trust their government enough, nor should they.

It’s obvious that more guns equals more gun deaths. I don’t think there is any point arguing against that. For the gun rights advocate, and to any rights advocate in general, the argument should be focused on the how immoral and unjust the utilitarian arguments against human rights have become and will always be.

The trite point that more guns is correlative to more gun deaths is a fine enough premise, but that this premise should lead to the conclusion that those in power should have the control of such weapons doesn't quite follow. To make such a leap, and to deny a person (or population) his right to own a gun, requires first the fear of other human beings, and second the desire to control them. The justification for this seems to be to make of a gun owner both a potential murderer and murder victim in some potential future. This line of argument could be carried to absurdities. If his lust for the denial of rights was absolute, he could justify putting everyone in a padded room in order to save them from falling off a cliff.

As vivid as that prophetic future and possible murder may be in the utilitarian's skull, the insinuation is unjust because it convicts not only those who would commit such crimes (and their victims), but those who would not, punishing them alike. The punishment in this case is to deny people their right just in case, preferring instead to reserve the right for those in power.

The unjust fear of others and the immoral desire to control them is disguised as saving lives, indeed caring for others, yet the utilitarian would be unable to point to a single life he has saved. On the other hand, the rights advocate can point to every victim of the utilitarian's fears and desires, for it encompasses every one of the utilitarian's fellow citizens.

I like the way you put that. I’m sold.

I thought that was a little jab at me. It was a good one, by the way. But I think my question still stands. How many contexts would be necessary to appease someone like Austin?

I played it longer and it follows the one sentence you’ve quote.

“ You can’t do that, you can’t go after people. You know, when you’re president, and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go after them so you can win an election.”

That sounds pretty explicit to me.

I should like to emphasize, however, how fatal it always is to embark on explaining the use of a word without seriously considering more than a tiny fraction of the contexts in which it is actually used.

I suppose we should wonder how fatal it is. Certainly he doesn’t mean one will die if the philosopher never lists the correct amount of contexts, or uses less accounts than Austin or Banno finds appropriate. Sure, Ayer’s limited account does not help us at all with real pearls, real ducks, real cream, real watches, real novels, but what about the topic at hand? It seems the worst thing to come of it is that some word-concerned philosopher, who never raises his head from the text, might have to quibble about it.

The quote I gave is in the ensuing remarks, but suspiciously missing from your context.

The media was kind enough to quote him out of context, frame it, and you were silly enough to fall for it and defend it. Shameful.

“You can’t do that, you can’t go after people. You know, when you’re president, and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go after them so you can win an election.”

Why wouldn’t you include this in there?

Exactly. He’s saying that because he is being indicted then if he wins the election then he will indict his opponents if he sees that they are doing well and beating him.

And you think he’s going to do this in the 2028 election, even though he can’t and won’t run in 2028? Utter nonsense.

He's literally saying that.

He’s literally not.

He wasn't just explaining why it was wrong. He was explaining that he would commit that very same wrong that he is falsely accusing others of.

All I have to do is look at the preceding context (which you suspiciously leave out) and see that you’re wrong.

“They have done something that allows the next party — I mean, if somebody, if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business, they’d be out of the election.”

No it's not.

But you thought he was saying it allows him to terminate the constitution, which is an absolute lie.

He's planning to weaponize the justice department in response to legitimate cases against him.

False. He was explaining why it was wrong.

A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.

This is true. A fraud at that level allowed for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles of the constitution. That’s why it was wrong.

If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who is doing well and beating me very badly, I'll say, 'go down and indict them.'

He was explaining why it was wrong to weaponize the justice department, because doing so sets the precedent.

The Durham report was damning, and completely lost on those who followed blindly the false reporting around that time. The involvement of the Clinton campaign, the dismissal of exculpatory evidence, the confirmation bias, and the corrupt hearts and minds of those involved in that investigation is found not only the central actors to that scam, but also in their true believers. The problem is, these corrupt hearts and minds still run the show, and the true believers still follow along.

Jim is Jim. Jim acts. He’s not a set of anything. We tend to abstract Jim into states of Jim. We name the states we have abstracted, make of them a set, and so on. It is at this point we have stopped considering Jim and now consider our own abstractions, ourselves.

I don’t see a problem. Jim remains the same throughout while what he performs does not.

You can tell what is and isn’t driven by straight propaganda by its constant repetition. Repetition makes true. It has been the hill upon which the anti-Trump mind crucifies itself, but at the same time reveals its naked absurdity.

The notion that Trump called for the termination of the constitution or that he was going to indict political opponents is nonsense. It’s just the clever twisting of his admittedly loose words into something palpable for the anti-Trump mind, riddled as it is with the incessant campaign for views and advertising bucks from an industry in its death-throes. So it cannot be that Trump’s opponents are weaponizing the justice system against him, even though they campaigned on it and are now doing it, it’s that we ought to fear Trump maybe doing it in some dystopian future, much like the future they promised us before he was elected the first time, but what only Biden could deliver: war, failed economy, weaponized and two-tiered justice.

Yes. One can abstract out a specific action from another by considering it on its own as a state, by placing limits on its duration, naming it, and presenting it as a singular movement, and so on. The actor is the action, or rather, the actor acts.

Thanks for making it more clear. I was just trying to picture it, the haphazard result of dividing what I believe is one entity into two. A “perception” to me is just the perceiver considered abstractly, and not worthy enough to be given position, spacial or temporal. But in a way it does come after, insofar as it is a post hoc state, an afterthought, as in “between this time and that time I was perceiving such and such”. So for me it speaks little of the directness or indirectness of perception and doing so leads me into wild territory.

I would oppose any such view, personally.

I think these details are important because no one mentions these components of perception, as far as I know. Which extension do you mean?

What do you mean here that it can be said for animals but not nervous systems?

It cannot be said that a nervous system can perceive because perception involves more than nervous systems. For instance, in humans, lungs, a heart, bones, muscles, skin etc. are involved in the act.

Educated and nuanced is how they see themselves, but then they repeat almost verbatim the propaganda they’ve been spoon fed for the last few years, as if it was soy. Trump was educated in the Ivy League. I’d love to compare their education, but then again these days “educated” is another word for “instructed”, and instruction aptly describes how they think about politics. It’s why they fell for the Russia hoax, and every hoax since—just following instruction.

I didn't say that. I said that the perceiver (in general) is the medium between the perception and the perceived.

You also said that the nervous system was the medium. So if both perceiver and nervous systems (in general) is the medium, then I’m left to assume nervous systems are perceivers in your view. They perceive and are also mediums. But I just don’t know how that can be possible, because much more than a nervous system is required for the act of perceiving.

Humans and other animals perceive, and are therefor perceivers. This is what I mean when I use the term “perceiver”: a thing that perceives. It can be said these things perceive. The same cannot be said of nervous systems.

As for your positioning of perceiver, perceptions, and mediums, it’s too odd for me to think about because it implies the perception (whatever that is) is somewhere outside or behind the perceiver.

I don’t think it can be established that a perceiver is both perceiver and perceived. I suspect that, given the indirectness theory, that you would say we perceive our nervous systems, and not the sound waves in air. Is this so?

All processes are mediated or mediate. Perception can be validly understood as a process.

I’m not so sure. I cannot see the difference between the body and a bodily process. When I point to either, or both, I am pointing at the same thing. I don’t know how to distinguish between the thing that moves and the movements it makes, as if I was distinguishing between the morning and the evening star.



The nervous system is not a medium, though, because it is a part of that which senses—the perceiver—not that which the perceiver senses. I guess my next question is: where does the perceiver begin and end? I doubt appealing to biology can furnish an answer in favor of the indirectness of perception. Sound waves, for example, where the medium is air, contacts the sensitive biology of the ear directly, not indirectly.