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.

Why are they stupid? They're supposed to protect doners so you don't give me money to run for alderman only to find that I spent your money on donuts.

If you give someone money and they do with it what they want it’s your fault for giving them money.

Because they are stupid laws. The US did just fine without them.

Are you not your physiology?

It is possible until the determinist can find anything else in the universe that controls a persons actions. They have utterly failed in that regard.

I’m not an anarchist. I believe in justice and prosecuting someone for non-violent vices such as a campaign finance violations is unjust. Witch hunts are unjust. Persecution is unjust. Fishing expeditions are unjust. Digging through someone’s private affairs to appease the establishment is unjust. The list of injustice is too long to bear for anyone who cares about justice.

It depends on the law because I do not believe in most of them.

Oh dear. You can curate and string together as many of my quotes as you wish and give yourself exactly the story you want to hear. It’s a telling habit. Still, two impeachments, dozens and dozens of investigations, and here you are empty handed with nothing to show for the wasted efforts, tax dollars, and time you’ve spent as a true believer.

You quote me out of context and then apply that quote to some other subject. It’s the basest propaganda, but it works wonders on someone such as yourself, which is probably why you do it.

I don’t care about the details in this most recent of witch-hunts, but I’ve pored through the details in the Russia case and many others, and the conspiracy theories are just as bunk now as they were then. You can go back to any page in this thread to confirm that.

Ever read what Al Capone was finally convicted of? Was it unjust to put Al Capone in jail?

Capone, Hitler, Mussolini. Have you ever heard of a false analogy?

He's going to be charged with violating federal campaign finance laws. You been out hunting moose or something?

I remember when establishment supporters swore he was a treasonous, Russian asset, and now this is the hill they’re dying on. Campaign finance! Clinton and the DNC were fined for violating campaign finance laws just last year and the establishment wasn’t frothing at the mouth then. Pure deep-state dinner theater.

Is that a “no”?

I don’t know nor care about the details. Establishment supporters have been making the case that Trump was a criminal for years, and let’s just say their record is abysmal. Can you tell me briefly what he did this time that has the foam increasing in and around the mouths of those who believe this shit?

What isn’t true?

The establishment’s base is resting their hopes on the word of a porn star, a lawyer who plead guilty for lying, and a political district attorney. This is their Michael Avenatti moment once again. You gotta love it.

It’s typical of his critics to erect some sort of show-trial for political purposes. Impeachments, J6 hearings (complete with a television producer from ABC), raiding his home, multiple investigations and civil suits, and now thinks he might be arrested by a Manhattan district attorney (of course). This is the deep-state dinner theater that has made Trump a folk devil in the eyes of the establishment base.

Which would still be external to the system under analysis.

And just as arbitrary.

So your argument is "if we limit ourselves to speaking about the body... then we find that all events are caused by something in the body". well, no shit.

Does talk about the will have to do with anything else? For some reason you’ve limited the discussion to “cause” only, but the body also controls, regulates, orders, directs such activity, and it does it under no other influence.

Your causal chain begins rather arbitrarily, at the point where the hammer strikes the tendon, and not in the doctors brain for instance. It begins exactly where it suits you, somewhere in the environment. But that the environment can affect the body is a given. I’m speaking about the body, so all I can say is your hammer’s impact causes the compression of the tendon. That’s it. Your causal chain begins precisely where it ends, because every causal link you can muster to describe after that is caused by the body, utterly contingent on its being, structure, function, and so on. There is no hammer in there firing neurons and constricting muscles, I’m afraid.

I’m not sure, but I suspect that you’re going to eventually say the body is like a Rube Goldberg machine, or that the body does not govern, control, or cause any of these actions. Is that what we’re getting at?

A motor neuron

But isn’t the rising of the leg caused by the contraction of muscle?

All a hammer can do is compress the tendon.

Is this you trying to say that certain reflexes are controlled by hammers, and not, say, a reflex arc?

The debate over the argument from illusion is quite extensive, already. Whatever your stance on it it’s an interesting one.

I'm not sure I see the problem. If you and me are next to each other and we are looking at the Empire State Building, I can point to it and say "that's the Empire State Building". I can only assume - all else being equal - that you will see something very similar to what I see. There's no way to literally get into somebody else's head, but, daily experience seems to show we see things similarly.

The problem is with the idea of sense-data. It leads us to believe we are not able to see the Empire State Building, only the sense data. JL Austen states it like this:

“The general doctrine, generally stated, goes like this: we never see or otherwise perceive (or 'sense'), or anyhow we never directly perceive or sense, material objects (or material things), but only sense-data (or our own ideas, impressions, sensa, sense-perceptions, percepts, &c.).”

It’s like saying we sense sense, or experience experiences.

If you are interested in how the brain works, that's the topic of neuroscience and cognitive science. You aren't going to find an entity "the self" in the brain, even if such constructions originate there - with interplay with the environment of course.

I think I may be missing something, or probably am missing something.

Right, there is no self living in the brain viewing experiences and perceptions. So indirect realism is redundant. That’s the basic point.

Are the activities of the human organism uncaused or caused by something else?

I always took “unmediated” to mean that nothing else is intervening in the relationship between perceiver and perceived. In other words there is no veil or buffer or experience between man and tree. I could be wrong on that and appreciate any other formulation.

For me, problems arise when insert some other object of perception like sense data. If we are perceiving sense-data, then we ought to be able to instantiate it. If we can perceive it we ought to be able to point to it, because for anything to be perceptible (perceivable?) it must have some scope and position in time and space. The problem is, whenever we try to examine the nature of sense-data, experience, impressions, we end up examining a person’s brain or some other loci within the body. We are invariably examining the perceiver in search of the perceived, as if they were one and the same, or one was inside the other.

Al those things you listed are the activities of the human organism. The organism regulates its activities, but it is not a "single entity" if by that you mean there is some overarching central program. You make if sound as if there is a super-organism over and above the organism, a super-organism that controls the organism

I just said it regulates itself. I’m not sure how that implies two organisms. How do I make it sound as if there is?

I can't be. Not under those conditions you just specified.

Now do you want to discuss the actual conditions which prevail in the real world? Or continue to make up whatever shit comes into your head and then say "hey, if this bullshit I've just 'reckoned' is true than some other bullshit I also reckon must be true too" and pretend that's serious thought?

Go for it.

Do you think we stop seeing when we sleep? That we close our eyes and find darkness in order to sleep suggests we might not. The whole time we are staring at the back of our eyelids. Perhaps dreaming serves to distract us from our senses.

The control the human body has over itself is near total. Every action, weather it’s the heartbeat, the creation and secretion of hormones, the production of white blood cells, hair growth, breathing, talking, eating, walking, sexual arousal, digestion, is controlled and regulated and caused by a single entity: the human organism. Under these conditions, how can the will be unfree? What else in the universe controls the will?

Thus we fracture it into mind/body, involuntary/voluntary, conscious/unconscious, and posit ourselves in one and not the other. This, here, is the fundamental delusion.

It organizes the affairs of whomever captures it, capitalist or otherwise. All that changes from one ideology to the next is the class of beneficiaries and the extent of its exploitation.

The bulk of GDP is produced by business because government doesn’t produce anything. Its only means of subsistence is the exploitation of its own people. But we should remember that government, too, is an employer par excellence. Over 15% of the American workforce are involved in military, public, and national service at the local, state, and federal levels. That’s to say nothing about those employed in its orbit, like lawyers and contractors of various sorts.

I’m afraid the industrial scale of this exploitation goes largely unnoticed.

I do think the state is inextricably bound to the economy, much to my dismay. It intervenes in trade on account of its preferred beneficiaries and plunders from its subjects their property, their labor, and the fruits of it.

So if we, like Marx and Engels, are to distinguish people by class, between oppressor and oppressed, it seems to me the proper distinction lies between the State, those who seek to capture the monopoly on violence, and the rest of us—workers, employers, sole proprietors, or anyone who is legally deprived of his efforts, and legally forced to labor for another’s benefit.

I think you’re dead on about how the individualism/collectivism debate obscures things. Ironically, individualism is a more inclusive form of collectivism. It considers every individual of any collective, which means the entire group. Collectivism as it has traditionally manifested subordinates the individual to group interests, which is always decided by a powerful group at the expense of the rest. The myth of the “common weal” or the “common good” is used to smuggle this conflict past the customs. Perhaps this is an example of another magic spell, something to be enchanted by.