The fact our eyes point outwards is something the indirect realist is unable to overcome. But the matter is simple. The contact with the rest of the world is direct. So how can one perceive indirectly a world that he is in direct contact with?

“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country? Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely hates the USA!”

So no, it isn’t true that “Once an individual is born, they are immediately part of a society that may not fully align with their values and principles, and they may have to make compromises and trade-offs to survive and succeed in that society”. The very first assertion…at this point I could care less what follows.

Did you or did you not make the assertion that a newborn is immediately part of a society that may or may not fully align with his values and principles? We know the answer to this.

Once an individual is born, they are immediately part of a society that may not fully align with their values and principles, and they may have to make compromises and trade-offs to survive and succeed in that society.

I cannot just accept the first assertion and move on. I need to know if the principles and values were acquired later in life, through life, long after the fact of being born.

The fear of you acting on them influences me, the voter.

It does matter because one’s values and principles cannot be violated upon birth if there are no values and principles. One requires life and living in order to form values and principles at all.

It certainly does influence voters. It does so because people will believe you will act on your threat.

Are Russian tweets and Facebook ads the unjust influence of an election, but threats of civil unrest aren’t?

I never brought up the influence angle, but should you remain consistent, maybe you can alter my mind with your words enough so as to influence me to believe that threatening civil unrest should an election not go your way is not election interference.

How does a newborn come into the world with values and principles?

Perhaps given your propensity for sorcery you can move me with your words to believe the same as you do.

Again, your words are not influencing anything. My belief that you may act on your words do. Is this going completely over your head?

Threatening civil unrest lets people know your intentions, that you may become belligerent should things not go your way, and threat of this future activity is more than enough to get people to do what you want.

Yeah, sorry, your words are still not influencing anything. They do not have the causal effects you pretend they do. Your words only reveal what you think. What influences me are my own fears of what might happen should you get violent and burn my business down.

Given the mass violence and rioting of that year, you don’t think threatening the country with more civil unrest is any kind of threat to voters?

Election interference is letting people vote, according to NOS4A2.

No need to lie about this.

It made it easier for voters to vote, and the fact is that the majority of voters voted for Democrats. So yes, that’s democracy.

Whereas the opposing view, that making it easier for voters to vote is a bad thing because it favours one’s opponent, is textbook anti-democratic authoritarianism.

If altering election laws in the run up to a contentious election is “democracy” and “making it easier for voters to vote”, what is threatening mass protest should their opponent win and advocating for the censorship of opposing views?

What was once a form of voter fraud became legal in many states right before an election, and it worked in the current president’s favor. “Democracy”, right?

Election interference is now “preventing or making it harder for people to vote”, according to Michael.

Sorry, repeating “democracy” isn’t going to work. They altered laws because it would have otherwise been illegal to do what they did. If Russian tweets and Facebook ads is election interference, then altering the election laws, censoring political opponents, and threatening mass protest and riots should they lose is election interference.

There is really no way to defend censoring information that makes your favorite candidate look bad, so don’t bother.

No matter the explanation they’ve told you and therefor what you’ve come to believe, and no matter how many times you try to invoke “democracy”, altering state election laws, fundamentally changing how voting itself occurs in the run up to the biggest election in US history is interfering in an election in my opinion.

Yeah, you can’t make someone do something with words. But denying people access to information prohibits them from making an informed decision.

Oh, it’s all “making it easier for voters to vote”. The censorship, altering state laws, social media censorship all makes sense now.

Altering state voting laws in the run-up to an election, getting social media to censor opponents, and threatening businesses with an army of astroturf protesters ready to protest the results should Trump win, is election interference.

It’s by their own admission.

You didn’t mention that Trump spoke with Abdul Ghani. That’s because the propaganda you dine on doesn’t tell you these things. The propaganda tells you the deal is bad; you think it’s bad.

It was election interference on a mass scale. They had astroturf protesters ready to riot should Trump have won. After the riots of that year of course the chamber of commerce acquiesced. That’s not democracy; that’s fascism.

Trump himself has vowed to beat the democrats at their own game, and ensured us his campaign will be ballot harvesting and pushing mail-in votes. I guess we’ll see if it works.

No problem.

There was a massive shadow campaign to alter how the very election was ran, and Big Labor teamed with Big Business and Big Tech to alter election laws, shill for mail in ballots, and of course it favored one candidate over the other.

I’ll let you know when your opinion means anything.

It felt really good because until then cowards like bush and Obama hid behind bunkers.

Brave = dodging the draft because of bonespurs

Smart.

Trump is so scared right now.

A source said of Trump’s team, “They are very pumped about this … The Manhattan DA, NYPD and even the Department of Justice were trying to work out a quiet handover coordinated with the Secret Service — and Trump was having none of that. If an indictment and arrest happens, he wants it to be public.”

We are even told that Trump’s people are planning to “try and film and document it with their own camera crew, they want a shot of him in cuffs and will release the mugshot. They are loving this stuff.”

https://pagesix.com/2023/03/21/donald-trump-in-high-spirits-team-pumped-over-arrest/amp/

Effectiveness is no measure for leadership, for me anyways, unless one adheres to some statist or collectivist foundation. Hitler was effective. Who cares?

Honestly it was just nice to have someone who wasn’t an utter coward, for a change. The man walked into North Korea where past presidents could only peer through binoculars at a safe distance. He reasoned with Kim Jung UN. He reasoned with Putin. He reasoned with the Taliban leadership. He reasoned with Xi. He reasoned with the Saudis. Imagine warmongers like Bush or Clinton or Biden doing something like that. His mere presence made the status quo shudder beneath its glaringly apparent limp-wristedness. Now that he’s gone, look where we’re at. War in Ukraine. Failure in Afghanistan. A belligerent North Korea. An ascendant China. And a war-posturing American world order trying to assert itself as the world police again.

It will be interesting to watch the machinations of the state in all this. Their aging citizenry has invested large portions of their lives and income to the promise of a substandard living and care after they quit working. But the state has spent their investments, in some cases giving it to the other states, for other citizenry.

The best way to uphold their bargain would be for the state to decline in size and in proportion to their population, shifting resources from a disappearing segment (children) to the other (old people) if need be. Except we all know the state does not decline, does not want to recede in accordance with its population, and will instead import a new labor force to make-up for the problems it itself has caused, as Canada is doing right now. It will attempt to increase its population, tying for itself another Gordian knot.

OK, so you don't like the establishment the establishment, Washington, the 4th estate, the political dynasties, and their stooges on the world stage. So Trump irrated them.

That still doesn't make him a good US president, because just irritation isn't good leadership.

It doesn’t make him a bad one, either. The deep state doesn’t want leaders, anyways. it wants a compliant figure head to give itself prestige so it can look like a doting grandpa as it funds war, regime change, and rips off the public to pay for its boondoggles.

But it explains the fanaticism of his opposition quite well. They’ve sent the entire perverted and corrupt American justice system after him. District Attorney Alvin Bragg, for instance, is trying to raise a misdemeanor to a federal crime, all while telling his staff to avoid prosecuting crimes like resisting arrest in his own state. It’s purely political. It’s a show trial.

You might be right. Those with greater resources will create for themselves more access to hearts and minds. But I think the tide is turning. Who knows? Maybe future archeologists will be searching through forums like this one day and laugh at how primitive we were.

That’s a good point. But it isn’t necessarily worse, either. It’s not only that we have more access to information, we also have better access to the means of publication. Personally, I would rather wade through landfills of propaganda than lose the access to this technology. It’s just now we have to equip ourselves with the skills to deliberate our way through it. That may take some time and training, but so much the better.

There is currently an effort by those in power to criminalize misinformation. That way lies State Truth, and it has invariably led to human rights violations.

I’m probably not the only one to use the phrase.

I see it as a boon to reason. With a greater conformity it was much easier to submit to the general consensus whereas now, given the myriad of doctrines, one is nearly always forced to think for oneself, or risk being pulled every which way like a windsock. The decentralization of knowledge is a paradigmatic moment history will remember.

Trump has none of the characteristics described in Miller’s lecture, I’m afraid. More nonsense.

Trump is so refined and polished, according to Fool.

I don’t care whether you agree or not. Try telling us your own beliefs.

Change in terms of ideology. I can’t predict the future but my hope is that the spell of statism becomes untenable and people begin to claw back the power the state has stolen from them. But that only begins as soon as we stop thinking in their terms.

He was fairly nondescript as far as presidents go, except that he did away with what Arthur Miller described as executive tailoring, which is almost prerequisite in Washington.

In historical terms he is either a folk devil or folk hero depending on where one’s allegiance lie.

For me he is the demagogue I’ve been waiting for, the kind Murray Rothbard defended. His mere presence has lead the establishment, Washington, the 4th estate, the political dynasties, and their stooges on the world stage to overplay their hand, and I don’t think there is any going back.

I’m not confident he will be convicted or not because the entire system is stacked against someone like Trump. I am suspicious of the system and anyone who earns a living from it. The state is only after protecting its own interests and Trump goes against those interests.