I have read his essay, and I’m weary of the unibomber’s holistic methodology. I don’t think “leftism”, for example, is any sort of ideology that anyone actually holds, and the use of it as a subject of opprobrium risks painting with the same brush a myriad of competing beliefs and individuals, most of whom are without any common political goal. It also leaves out the very similar beliefs and behaviors of the so-called right. On top of that, I do not think the left/right spectrum is worth a damn.

But beware how collectivist the unibomber is. Does society really socialize children? What are society’s expectations? Upon who or what should we place our blame? I can only speak for myself but I have never felt the pressure of one, or have been the coerced to meet the expectations of other.

Metaphysically speaking I am unable to reduce a marriage to anything between two people, especially when it appears there is nothing between them, connecting them, and bonding one to the other. It also appears they are not “in” anything of the sort. I would say each of them relate to one another, or at least I would recognize that one is speaking figuratively when using such language. That isn’t to say one should never use the word “marriage” or “relationship”—abstractions, generalizations, universals are necessary to speak and think about the world—it’s just that one ought not to include them in his ontology, metaphysically speaking. As such he should not apply his politics to them.

But you raise some good questions in regards to political subjects (the people, the nation, the workers, the race, society). What sort of bond or relationship can we infer between the aggregate parts of these sets? Are these bonds actual? Or are they assumed and imposed? If they are not there, is it the goal of the politician to create them?

I agree that careful language is a solution, but it could be painstaking to speak in such a way. I think it's better to wrestle with the metaphysical questions first before adopting any particular politics.

I have a bad habit of breaking down an “ism” to its component parts (despite its prevailing definition) to get at the root of the belief. If the suffix “ism” implies a belief, practice, or philosophy, a consideration of its root word is paramount to understanding its basic focus. I guess we can thank the French for that.

For “fascism”, for example, the notion of the “fasces” is its guiding metaphor, a bundle of sticks around an ax, which Mussolini described as a “symbol of unity, of force and of justice”. I know you know this. But what thing or things in the world these are these words and metaphors supposed to represent? I’m not sure, but I suspect that the fascist imagines a political environment that may one day arise, where a multitude of objects and functions combine to form a recognizable pattern to which he can one day point and say “Behold, fascism”. His motivation and his actions must one day lead to this preferred pattern of political organization, the objects themselves be damned. The actual objects themselves, having been erased of their own significance and dignity, serve only as the pawns and play-pieces to this imaginative end. I do believe that, should one express a combination of these ideals, motivations, and methodology, he might rightly be called fascist, at least in some general sense.

Newly-found documents suggest that Biden fired Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin despite the glowing reviews of the European Commission and his own State Department months earlier. Biden bragged about his quid pro quo in 2018, dangling the promise of US aid over Poroshenko’s head should Shokin not be fired.

Shokin claims that he was fired for investigating Burisma while Biden’s crack-addled son was employed there. According to him they have provided zero evidence for his corruption.

Trump was impeached for asking Zelensky about it.

https://nypost.com/2023/09/08/despite-bidens-claim-europeans-werent-trying-to-oust-ukraine-prosecutor-targeting-hunters-firm

Speaker McCarthy has announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.



https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/speaker-mccarthy-expected-endorse-impeachment-inquiry-president-biden/story?id=103114626

Which was the sole result of economics. It was profitable, it was immoral, and it was done. This is exactly what would happen without the protection of the government. Yes, governments can worsen crises if they also behave immorally, like the European governments who encouraged the slave trade. But at least the government (in its democratic form) is accountable, while individuals are not if a proper justice system doesn't exist.

The slave trade occurred with the protection and intervention of government, with the granting of slave-trade monopolies and charters, the treaties, the slave codes, the military protection, to the funding of colonialism and mercantilism that required all that cheap labor. It was only begrudgingly and under great public pressure that such efforts were eventually abolished. And so it is with anything that tends to human rights and welfare.

The Hobbesian notion that justice is a one-to-one ratio with a state legal system is a mistake, in my opinion. Justice systems are more often than not unjust. In order to discern whether a system is unjust or not, one must first form a sense of justice in order to compare it to that state system of justice, and this must occur outside and beyond any state justice system. At any rate, I hold that it is easier to pressure and affect change morally and economically than it is to pressure and affect a government and its laws politically.

This may be true, but at least citizens can modify the contract via voting. Because of this, the nature of government has changed drastically in the past two centuries, with an increased emphasis on social welfare.

The nature of government has changed drastically insofar as it has grown in size and has monopolized, captured, and converted social power into state power. So far has it gone that we cannot imagine achieving social welfare without government. The result is a people conditioned to seek state intervention rather than to develop their responsibilities to one another. The result is a people who believe consuming, working, paying taxes, and voting for more state power, is tantamount to compassion and welfare. I fear that, as far as welfare is concerned, people only want government do what they themselves refuse to.

Does that not occur economically? I'd much rather a government, which I help elect, take 20% of my paycheck than have rampant monopolies price-gouge the consumer with poverty wages, or literally sell my life to make ends meet. And at least that 20% funds the livelihoods of millions of government employees and the unemployed, and provides me with essential services that would otherwise be monopolized, rather than feeding the incessant greed of a few thousand robber barons.

All I can say is that the government is the monopoly par excellence.

I don’t think it is reasonable because it involves the same activity: holding out for something better than the world. Theism is idealism run amok. It’s an exercise in slandering or dismissing the world, and holding oneself (one’s ideas, consciousness, mind) over and above it.

The problem with seeking the middle and not leaning one way or the other is that you never get to help decide where the center is.

That’s true. But we could trust ourselves, our families, our friends, our communities, without seeking the blessing from some distant authority. We could fully and easily reject corporations and powerful individuals, especially if there were no state mechanisms with which they could achieve monopoly, subsidy, contracts, and power.

I would argue large corporations want high taxes. They have the means to game the system, find tax havens, employ teams of lawyers, lobby the government, while the smaller businesses suffer the high costs of doing business, eliminating much of the competition. And there are many ways to avoid the rise in costs, like raising prices on consumers or freezing wage growth for employees.

It occurs in any collective where the people are bound by no more than some inkling of an idea. It could be a nation, a race, the greater good, the common weal, a union, and so on—not any actual entity or anything that can be pointed to, let alone be social with, but an epitaph on a fleeting sensation of one’s own brain. It’s easier to afford rights to this idea than it is to do so for flesh-and-blood human beings because in the end it’s easier to afford rights to oneself.

It seems to me that if a fellow worker has fallen on hard times the others ought to rally around him and help him rather than to penalize him, ostracize him, and abandon him to the whims of some union administration. But that would be the social thing to do.

That's what all societies expect. Obey the law - yes, even the petty traffic rules. Serve in the armed forces if there is war. Send your children to school. Pay your taxes. Pay your debts.
It's what every collective expects. If you join a golf club, you pay your fees, wear the right shoes, keep honest score, stay on the cart track, keep quite when others are hitting.
No collective can function without so-operation and giving up some individual freedom. If you want to be a loner, go it alone, but if you want the benefits of a society, pay your dues and mind the rules. When you take a job in a union shop and accept the wages and benefits that union has previously won through collective action, you commit to collective action.

A collective that excludes the needs and wants of its own members is not a collective, least of all any sort of community. At best it is an aggregate of factions, each concerned with their own advantage. Whoever makes the rules and to whom we pay our dues is the only collective that matters in any of your analogies. As you mentioned the rest are expected to pay up and fall in line. In my mind it sounds more anti-social than social, anti-society than society.

I personally do not think so.

I'm glad we agree on that.

I can tell exactly what you’re dodging by what context you remove from my quotes.

At any rate, I’ve repeatedly said Trump was pressuring him to look at the fraud and to share the data with his team. I can refer to quotes. You said, just like the media, the J6 committee, the impeachment inquiry, that he was pressuring Raffensperger to overturn the GA election results, without any evidence. Upon what grounds are we coming to these conclusions that are not based on propaganda?

You're really hung up on this - so for purposes of this particular discussion I'll go with your distinction. So Trump "pressured" him but did not "threaten" him.

You said that, to your ears, a few statements sounded like threats, and even quoted these threats. Threatening a public official is a felony. I’m just curious how you came to this conclusion. If not some definition, then what? If not propaganda, then what?

The exact details of the acts Trump pressured him to do are irrelevant. The relevant question is why Raffensperger - a lifelong Republican and a Trump supporter - did not do any of the things that Trump pressured him to do.

I hope you wouldn’t mind sharing your answer to this specific question. If not, then I suppose I can again chalk it up to propaganda and I’ll quit bothering you about it.

I have already given my answer and shared why I made such a speculation. Do you want different answers?

Oh I see. It’s not that he didn’t do it, it’s that he didn’t at the times you wanted him to. It’s not that he called out violence and bigotry on all sides, but that it wasn’t specifically targeted at the one group and ideology you dislike. It’s utter hogwash but at least I can see what kind of sand these foundations of lies are built upon.

Clearly Trump pressured him, but it’s what act Trump pressured him to do that is the question. If you have no evidence or reasoning beyond proof by assertion then I guess we can both agree that the statement “Trump pressured Raffensperger to overturn the GA election results” is unfounded, and maybe we’ll quit repeating it and start calling it out when people do. If the idea didn’t come from Trump, and you and Raffensperger don’t just randomly share the same conclusion, we could even say that it came from propaganda and begin to guard ourselves against it.

And if you wouldn’t mind sharing your definition of threat it would be neat to see if there is anything that indicates any threats outside of Raffesnperger’s and your own feelings, and all the propaganda that makes such assertions. If not, then I suppose I can again chalk it up to propaganda and I’ll quit bothering you about it.

I already speculated on your question and went into why I made such a speculation.

It might work. But the utilitarian argument for government doesn’t cut it for me. Slave plantations worked. Some treated their slaves better than others. But none of that eliminates the immorality of the plantation system.

It’s the same with government. No state has ever began with any sort of voluntary social contract or disinterested view of promoting justice and order. Any attempt to do so was always ancillary to their main purpose. States are imposed in order to protect power and exploit those under its dominion, enabling a small class of beneficiaries to satisfy themselves through various confiscations, like the taxing powers and legal system.

Paine believed Biden’s lie that Trump never denounced white supremacists and furthered that lie up until just recently. Instead of indignation of those who duped him, he now spreads the conspiracy theory that the person who informed him of the truth is part of a scheme to infiltrate anti-Trump echo-chambers. The rot must begin right at the top.

Here are the moments I could find that Trump “pressured” Raffensperger to do anything.

Here he is pressuring Germany to say it if he finds it [criminal activity, big problem, mistakes]:

Trump: So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state. And flipping the state is a great testament to our country because, you know, this is -- it’s a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to call it. If it was a mistake, I don’t know. A lot of people think it wasn’t a mistake. It was much more criminal than that. But it’s a big problem in Georgia, and it’s not a problem that’s going away. I mean, you know, it’s not a problem that’s going away...

Germany: This is Ryan. We’re looking into every one of those things that you mentioned.

Trump: Good. But if you find it, you’ve got to say it, Ryan...

Here he is pressuring Germany to check on the ballots:

Trump: Well, you better check on the ballots because they are shredding ballots, Ryan. I’m just telling you, Ryan. They’re shredding ballots. And you should look at that very carefully. Because that’s so illegal. You know, you may not even believe it because it’s so bad. But they’re shredding ballots because they think we’re going to eventually get there ...

Here he is pressuring Raffensperger to go back and look at signatures:

But you have to go back to check from past years with respect to signatures. And if you check with Fulton County, you’ll have hundreds of thousands because they dumped ballots into Fulton County and the other county next to it.

Here is Trump pressuring Raffesnperger to say he is going reexamine the election.

And every single ballot went to Biden, and you didn’t know that, but now you know it. So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election, and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this. And it’s going to be very costly in many ways. And I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it, and you can reexamine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers, not people that don’t want to find answers. For instance, I’m hearing Ryan that he’s probably, I’m sure a great lawyer and everything, but he’s making statements about those ballots that he doesn’t know. But he’s making them with such -- he did make them with surety. But now I think he’s less sure because the answer is, they all went to Biden, and that alone wins us the election by a lot. You know, so.

Here he is pressuring Raffesnperger to meet with Ryan.

I would like you ... for the attorneys ... I’d like you to perhaps meet with Ryan, ideally tomorrow, because I think we should come to a resolution of this before the election. Otherwise you’re going to have people just not voting. They don’t want to vote. They hate the state, they hate the governor, and they hate the secretary of state. I will tell you that right now. The only people that like you are people that will never vote for you. You know that, Brad, right? They like you, you know, they like you. They can’t believe what they found. They want more people like you. So, look, can you get together tomorrow? And, Brad, we just want the truth. It’s simple.

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/nation-world/full-text-transcript-of-president-trump-call-with-georgia-sec-of-state/507-776ec762-22fe-438f-948c-96a9d52257eb

I don’t see anything in here about pressuring Raffensperger to “overturn the GA election results”. Given this, perhaps you can provide evidence that Trump was pressuring the Secretary of State to “overturn the GA election results”. Also, if you wouldn’t mind sharing your definition of threat, since you’re so sure Trump threatened him, it would be helpful since am still unable to see it.

If I believe what I am writing I am not operating on bad faith.

I try my best to explain my reasoning. I don’t try to deny the value of evidence. I try to include all of it—not just accusations, not just the evidence of the prosecution, not just what I read in the media, not just quotes out of context—but all of it, and it has served me quite well. If you can find where I went wrong, then please show me, but skirting around my back in an attempt to influence others to ignore and ostracize another member is cowardly.

Giving an audience to someone who does not engage in good faith with the argument is not defending the truth.

Do you think I do not believe what I am writing? The point of exposing my beliefs here, rather than some echo chamber, is to have them exposed to criticism.

Why should anyone want to debate about the most transformative figure in the history of the United States when we can talk about T Clark’s poetry?

If you like government so much, maybe you’d like Somalia better when they had one. It had all the regular stuff: totalitarianism, corruption, political oppression, and of course they turned their weapons on their own citizens and committed genocide. I guess they got their tax dollar’s worth.

Maybe you have different criteria for a threat, but to my ears it sounds like one. Trump is saying that if Raffensperger does not do his bidding then he would be committing a criminal offense.

I’m curious to hear what definition of “threat” you are using to assure yourself that those are threats. It certainly doesn’t fall under any legal definition of threat, which is a felony. He never expressed any intent to harm anyone in anyway. He never said anything about doing his bidding, contrary to what you say.

But even beyond that I'll repeat my previous question again. Raffensperger was/is a life long republican and at the time this happened he was a Trump supporter. If there was a legal way that he could have flipped GA to go for Trump - for what possible reason would he have NOT done that?

Public and political pressure, maybe. One minute you’re conversing with lawyers on contesting a close election, the next you’re indicted on sham RICO charges. No one is safe in Georgia, apparently. I suspect it’s no coincidence he supported Georgia’s Election Integrity act the month Trump left office, and now the experts are warning him about problems with his Dominion voting machines. All conspiracy theorists, I guess.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/23/brad-raffensperger-georgia-dominion-voting-00103298

Only if there was a threat.

It’s true. Crime pays. Taking people’s money can have its benefits.

Yeah the 'ol won't/can't answer questions, so throw out random ones of your own. I have to admit I used to do stuff like that a long time ago.

Used to? That’s the second time I asked that question, right after answering yours. So you still do it.

As to your queries: I don't know and I (pretty much) don't care or worry about it. I have received a huge amount from my tax dollar, even though I am paying more total taxes than the vast majority.

What have you received?

Oh no, his feelings. Poor guy.

How much have you payed for the Department of defense and have you gotten your money’s worth? I wager you have no clue what you’re paying for or where your money goes, whether to the fire department or into right into a politician’s pocket.

Yeah, “and we’ll find hundreds of thousands of signatures, if you let us do it”. Who is this we? It’s us, the Trump team

Trump: Okay, whatever, it’s a disaster. It’s a disaster. Look. Here’s the problem. We can go through signature verification, and we’ll find hundreds of thousands of signatures, if you let us do it. And the only way you can do it, as you know, is to go to the past. But you didn’t do that in Cobb County. You just looked at one page compared to another. The only way you can do a signature verification is go from the one that signed it on November whatever, recently, and compare it to two years ago, four years ago, six years ago, you know, or even one. And you’ll find that you have many different signatures. But in Fulton, where they dumped ballots, you will find that you have many that aren’t even signed and you have many that are forgeries.

The notion that Trump is pressuring Reffensperger to “find” votes is just another hoax.

How many of them checked the signatures as per the Trump team's request? Or shared the data? It's ok, you don't know the answer to that. Neither does Trump's team. Neither do I. Just take it from high and repeat what you've been told, I guess.

That's besides the point. The point is Trump is being indicted for lawful activity, and based on a lie even you repeat. Did Trump pressure the secretary of states to "find" votes? Or did he say "I have to find 12,000 votes", and "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state". "I" doesn't mean "you". "I" doesn't mean "The secretary of State for Georgia". "I" doesn't mean "Brad Raffensperger". What does the word "I" refer to when it comes out of Trump's mouth, and why is this word suspiciously missing from your account every time you repeat it?

The office of the Secretary of State in Georgia.

The votes he’s speaking about are the votes people were going to make but couldn’t because someone already voted for them. It’s why he pressured them to examine the signatures.

We’re going to have an accurate number over the next two days with certified accountants, but an accurate number will be given, but it’s in the 50s of thousands. And that’s people that went to vote and they were told they can’t vote because they’ve already been voted for. And it’s a very sad thing. They walked out complaining. But the number’s large. We’ll have it for you, but it’s much more than the number of 11,779 that’s -- the current margin is only 11,779. Brad, I think you agree with that. That’s something I think everyone -- at least that’s a number that everyone agrees on.

If they shared the data and reports maybe none of this would have happened. But they didn’t.

For not looking at the fraud and sharing their reports and data with the concerned party? Yes.

Is there a possibility for the worker to make decisions individually?

There isn’t. Unions often have the power to discipline their members, whether by fine or the denial of union benefits. So crossing the picket-line may come at extra cost to you and your family. It’s an extra layer of collectivist bureaucracy, meaning the decisions are made by a faction of the membership in tandem with the forces of union administration, whether you agree with it or not.

Trump and his lawyers were pressuring them to look at the fraud and to share their reports and data. The Big Lie™ is the criminalization of these efforts and the propaganda surrounding it. No thinking person can look at the phone call and come away with the exact same outlook as the deep-state dinner theater shoved in your face for years. So no, they’re not heroes, but propaganda-driven knaves.

Maybe if you weren’t paying for the salaries and benefits of union administration you could use that money to save for emergencies.

I would not pay for the Dept. of defense or the fire department given the chance. How much have you payed for either service and have you gotten your money’s worth?

Still waiting to hear about the details on the acquisition of "nonstolen" money...

Have you ever paid for something voluntarily, for instance for a product or service? We do it all the time.

It’s more of an attempt to say the vat represents the body, shedding what is necessarily a fundamental factor of mind and self in favor of an untenable view of mind and self as brains. The thought experiment is evidence of a brain/body dualism not that much different than mind/body dualism. Premising epistemological considerations on the absurd is little more than navel gazing, in my opinion.

Sure.

However. people who think seriously about the subject recognize that different parts of the human body do different things. What the brain does seems to be of particular interest. Do you disagree?

Obviously it is of more interest than the foot, and people spend a great deal on it, but should that be the case? I’m not so sure. For instance, the question of where the brain ends and the rest of the body begins is in my mind insoluble. The carotid arteries, the spine, the endocrine system—all are intimately connected, and are therefor one thing. Removing the rest of the body from a theory of mind is a huge but fairly common mistake.