I can only speak for myself, but my own paranoia is the compression of space, that distant events and people can influence local and regional affairs. Covid is one of the more recent examples, but also war and economy. If the men of Davos had it in them to implement an agenda, like Agenda 2030, it means that a few hundred men could decide the future of the entire global population.

Note that he won’t address what I said, won’t make an argument, or explain what I said was wrong.

This is why I've said that talking about the 51st State and referring to the prime minister as "governor" is far more dangerous that it at first seems. Questioning the sovereignty of a nation state is like summoning up the devil. You either have extremely dark intentions, or you simply don't know what you are doing. Coming from an "expendable" country, we take these issues dead seriously.

Let's remind ourselves just how good the relations have been. Not only are there people like you or Canadians living in the US, there's about 1 million dual-citizens that have both Canadian and US passports. What is their role here?

The only lucky thing here is that Canadians understand that this isn't what Americans voted for when voting for Trump. But once the trade wars starts and if energy cuts from Canada produce rolling blackouts, the Americans can also have the grudge against the Canadians. It truly can get ugly.

The only sovereign the leaders of Canada swear an oath to is the King of England, his heirs and his successors. Canada is Crown Land.

That’s why all this sovereignty piffle is nonsense. Canada’s new prime minister was Trudeau's financial advisor during covid, was governor for the Bank of England during Brexit, and his American company Brookfield Asset Management is currently embroiled in a lawsuit where they are accused of buying bribery contracts and obtaining concession rights, charging massive tolls to poor Peruvian workers who had to use the highway to get to their jobs in the city. No one voted for him. He is not a member of parliament. He's a jet-setting globalist through and through, an actual oligarch. He'll look good flying away every weekend to do a summit in Whogivesistan, no doubt, and mingle with European elites, but I see no future for the average Canadian under his leadership.

His installing as prime minister is the swan song of globalism. The geography, the culture, the language, and potential for trade indicate that the idea of a north american partnership of some sort, along with Greenland, is far more appealing than continuing to exist as the vassal states of crumbled European empires. At least in the US, and in Finland, we can remove our heads of state, and talk about sovereignty.

The only way they can pull it off, as far as I can see, is if they do massive cuts to taxes, regulation, and spending to offset the cost of the tariff on consumers. If it doesn’t work we can close the door on economic populism.

The Fair Trade concept is definitely interventionist, but according to them it’s aimed to produce the conditions for free trade. It’s like the paradox of freedom, where freedom eventually leads to tyranny; one has to eventually fight back or lose it. I’m very interested to see if it works.

I think that's a reasonable assessment, ssu.

Trump's plan is a huge gamble and I'm prepared either way. Personally, I rather like the trade war so far. For example politicians here are forced to discuss eliminating “interprovincial” trade barriers in Canada. There are stiff rules and regulations between provinces in the country, making it almost necessary to ship products to the US rather than to other provinces. Politicians here are forced to talk about lowering taxes and addressing the cost of living crisis. The new prime minister even cancelled the much-reviled “carbon tax” of his predecessor and is looking to lower more regulations should he win the next election.

Trump isn’t the only one abusing tariffs, either, and other countries have seemingly turned Trumpian overnight. Some provincial leaders in Canada have banned alcohol from red states, or threatened to cut off energy, and has also tariffed the food. The government even bought billboards in the US that said ironically “Tariffs are a tax on American Workers” while mentioning nothing of its own tariffs on American goods and taxes on Canadian citizens. Another irony is that Canada has abused tariffs for most of its history, at least up until NAFTA.

But the rhetoric from the state-funded news and its dutiful followers has turned alarmingly nationalistic and anti-American, with pundits discussing bullshit like guerrilla warfare or joining the EU. So it turns out that, without America, the self-righteous veneer has slipped away pretty quickly and the underlying truth is exposed. It turns out that Canada cannot be a globalist socialist welfare state without the United States, and has to think of repealing its own totalitarian inclinations. Watching the EU scramble to rearm, I suspect it's the same in Europe.

It still amazes me how one man can have such a global effect and I fully welcome the shock to the system.

I don’t know, but Aristotle considered barbarians to be natural slaves, and natural slaves are a necessary component of the polis. But that wouldn’t complete the dyad of “those who cannot exist without each other”, even though they were existing just fine without a master. So perhaps the polis extends beyond the city and the barbarians are just out there waiting for a master.

Unlike you I never said one way or another, like when you said the FBI was going to collapse. I’m fully aware that Trump’ and Musk’s policies are a massive gamble.

If I do predict I err on the side of pessimism, like I did with the election, so if I’m wrong I am pleasantly surprised. I collect these little predictions that are given to me and store them so when they prove to be right or wrong, I recognize whom said what. And so far you’re batting zero, my friend.

The difference is that others like you take their predictions of the future as justifications to apply actions in the present. It’s a racket, of course, because if they’re wrong they can say their actions prevented the future; but if they’re right they can say “I told you so”.

I don’t know what causes one to engage in political violence against innocent people and their property. I am unable to project myself into that state of mind. There was another video I watched where a woman was driving in a cybertruck and she was boxed in by another car, after which the driver got out and physically attacked her. She claimed to have bitten him to fight him off. These sorts of attacks are now commonplace.

One part hatred, one part mental illness, maybe. Who knows?

I just watched another news story of an unhinged Tesla terrorist casing an owner’s house in the dead of night and slashing every tire. This is the first time I’ve seen one smart enough to cover the cameras before engaging in the activity, but of course the owner had a camera on his door and captured the entire act.

This particular act wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment meltdown of the mentally ill, as usually is the case, but the use of a mask and duct tape suggest some level of planning, so the owner guesses it was probably a neighbor or someone who followed him home.

The continued escalation of this brand of terrorism, now common to the fringes of the anti-Musk cult, will eventually come to murder or retaliation.

I suppose his biological divisions into animal kingdoms might indicate a greater whole, but I’m not aware if he believed in higher political partnerships.

It’s interesting to note, though, that his metaphor of the state as a living body, particularly a human body, has been used until modern times. Head of state, corpus (corporation), body politic, for example, are remnants of that metaphor and have persisted through the history of statism. Perhaps Hobbes was right that we must conceive of it as an Artificial Man.

Speaking of brain-farts, “annexing” is the incorrect term and a conspiracy theory. The proper term in English is “cession”. American offers to buy Greenland have occurred many times and invoking the Monro doctrine has occurred throughout US history. For instance, the US occupied Greenland to protect it from the Nazis, who were occupying Denmark at the time. Given the constant shift towards totalitarianism in Europe at the present moment, perhaps Greenlanders would prefer better company after all.

It does. It is illegal. And no evidence of the alleged waste and fraud is ever presented beyond wild internet memes about millions of condoms for Gaza and the like. It’s all just rhetoric used to justify egregious behavior. All of DOGE’s boasts about how much money has been saved have been debunked.

It might be illegal to you and some Obama-appointed district judge, but not to the Appeals court. And unlike every agency in American history, the official DOGE website posts its work, what it has found, what it has removed. And it has turned out that—if true—everything it has removed is a massive waste of money and spent on causes that contradict the administration’s objectives.

So all this rhetoric about Nazis and oligarchs and threats to democracy, which people use to justify terrorizing others and brandish swastikas—actual, not imagined, egregious behavior—is complete hokum.

Another myth! Trump has no interest in balancing the budget, and none of what Congress is proposing will achieve that end. Trump's proposal to cut taxes will far offset the amounts being saved by Musk's chainsaw, which will hardly make a dent in the overall financial situation.

Trump has repeatedly claimed he wishes to balance the budget, so claiming he has no interest in it is false on its face. And to be sure, Musk used the metaphor of a scalpel, measuring thrice cutting once when approaching the cuts. So the image of a chainsaw wielding Musk is just that, an image, not any reflection of the reality of what is occurring.

The idea that DOGE is going to 'balance the budget' by indiscriminate cuts is a myth. Most of the cuts are ideological, driven by Trump's animus towards 'the deep state' (read: the state).

Musk basically said the proof is in the pudding, and that we can check back in by the end if he was right or wrong. So it’s not a myth because it hasn’t happened yet. It’s an effort towards a goal, at worst, a laudable and perhaps necessary one. And these mischaracterizations and conspiracy theories only serve to distort the truth.

Same old same old. I heard him denigrate John McCain's military service - as a loser. I don't get your reference to the Iraq war. And Russiagate has never gone away; it's only a question of how much he's in bed with Putin. And what was his lie about the CIA operative? You deal in pronouncements, not facts; your mendacity is disgraceful. Try dealing in facts.

I pronounced the fact he said what he said. It’s in the article the author wrote. You’re just ignorant of that fact, and ironically you had learn about these things from me.

Musk's actions speak louder than words. He knows how to come across in interviews. As for 'ironed out in Court', Trump and Musk have already crashed through the guardrails on multiple occasions, a deliberate strategy crafted by Stephen Miller to 'flood the zone', knowing that the judicial system wouldn't be able to keep pace with the scale and rate of Trump's orders. There are now more than 30 legal challenges to Trump executive orders, but even if some are found illegal much of the damage may not be easily remedied. And, not co-incidentally, Musk is campaigning for the impeachment of 'activist judges', those being any judges who have the temerity to stand in the way of Trump's juggernaut - something which even the purportedly Trump-friendly Supreme Court has issued a warning on.

As regards the USAID and Foreign Aid, regardless of whether there was wastage and fraud, those funds that were held back had already been approved by Congress, and Foreign Aid in particular is scrutinized by no less that four congressional committees. If Congress hadn't been completely cowed by Trump, there's no way he and Musk could have perpertrated these outrages which are indubitably going to affect many millions of people in the developing world and beyond. "World's Richest Man Sets Records for Misanthropy."

It doesn’t matter if the funds had been approved by Congress, and certainly no one in Congress approved of waste and fraud. It is the executive branch that gets to decide the contracts and the staffing. They’re just not allowed to sit on congressional funds, and will have to use it appropriately. This was the ruling of the court, as well. So it’s already been settled.

Today, an appeals court overturned a lower court’s ruling that the dismantling of USAID was unconstitutional, because all cuts are approved by government officials, not DOGE, not Elon Musk, not Congress.

If Musk’s actions speak louder than words, then maybe we shouldn’t focus on his words, and focus on his (and DOGE’s) actions. The waste and fraud already removed has been extraordinary, and if they can balance the budget it might just save the government from insolvency, and people can continue to get proper aid.

What he thought and realized, and when, is more than I know, and more than you know. We do not know that he was mistakenly invited: how does that happen in a top-secret meeting? He was apparently identified as well as anyone else. I suppose he was silent. But how is he eavesdropping? Please make that clear? In a meeting so constituted, attendees are supposed to listen, and what is the expectation of privacy? (Ans.: zero.) And how is he to know that he is not supposed to be there? Maybe he was exactly and precisely supposed to be there.

If you had read the article you’d have a better understanding, because Goldberg describes his thoughts.

I know nothing personal about the Atlantic editor, beyond what I have seen of him and read. But he appears to be an honest and honorable man in a job that requires both, but you calumnize him in favour of people we know are vicious, mean, and contemptible. Why?

He’s the same guy who lied about the suckers and losers hoax, the Iraq war, and Russiagate. In this particular story he lied about the CIA operative, when in fact it was Ratcliffe’s chief of staff. A real honest and honorable man.

You know better! He was invited and accepted. Later when he referred to it, they attacked and insulted and abused him - they also said nothing was classified so he published. Your version not just spin, but an entire fiction. Why are you such a liar?

How had he "hung out"? How was his watching "prying"? How did he know it was a mistake - he at first thought it was a prank on him. And what was his obligation to inform? Presumably they knew who was in their very secret "principals only" meeting.

Until you clear up at least these discrepancies and inconsistencies in your accounting you're a troll and a liar. And so far you have failed.

He was mistakenly invited and stayed, silently, eavesdropping, long past the time he realized he was not supposed to be there. The reason you’re fine with this is because you are ill-mannered and immoral, and you would do the same to others if given the chance.

Now you’re speaking my language. Do you remember the work? I always found Habermas too difficult to read and never got into him. But your summary here has inspired me to give him another shot.

Good read. Thank you for writing it.

The topic of "masculinity" or "femininity" is always difficult for me because I'm not good at thinking collectively. It forces me to imagine some archetype and postulate it as exemplary. I can’t deal in essences and universals so largely abandon those concepts. It’s the same with gender.

I don’t think the crisis can be limited to or blamed upon any specific ideology, topic of thought, or domain of discourse. I believe this because anyone can read the literature, watch the movies, or think about these topics and not come to some mysoginistic or far-right conclusion.

Nor should it be limited to the members of one sex because a crisis in one necessarily begets a crisis in the other.

On top of that each sex is comprised of billions of individuals, and there is not enough evidence to suggest one way or the other that the crisis affects any substantial amount of them.

But I do agree with your assessment that there is such a crisis affecting some men, and they will often seek a political rather than a personal solution.

If I try to picture modern masculinity, or an archetype, portrayed as it is in various media or on the political stage, I can only come up with an archetype like the Eloi of HG Wells’ Time Machine. This archetype largely contradicts my personal interactions, so is largely symbolic rather than instantiated.

I think the causes of this crisis percolate in the interface between the biological and political, that there is a schism between biology and the conditions and expectations of political society. I would argue that many evolutionary, sex-specific traits, are becoming increasingly unneeded and even unwelcome in some domains. As a result, we get obesity, sedentary lifestyles, depression, higher blood-pressures, and so on, which can lead to lower testosterone, lower sperm-counts, lower muscle mass, and the general decline of the male biology.

In other words, Men, or at least the political man mentioned above, is largely removed from the environment their own evolution has designed for them, and unless he finds some kind of outlet (sublimation?), he will seek a political solution.

He hung out in the conversation, watched with prying eyes, without notifying anyone of the mistake for many days. That’s secretive.

He then published and spoke about his embellishments in public. He is the perpetrator of many hoaxes and him and his publication are rabid anti-Trump propagandists. That’s hostile.

Good work. Much to chew on here. It’s interesting to note that to Aristotle (if I remember correctly), any man who was without the polis was either a beast or a god.

Very interesting, I wasn’t not aware of Habermas’ thoughts on the matter. Thank you.

I like your thinking here. Personally, I believe the political animal and the social animal, and also the public and private realms, can exist without each other. But I fear one realm, or at least the conditions one might find in such a realm, is replacing that of the other.

Sure, but I was more curious as to what you believe. Is it a civilian? A city-dweller? Who or what possesses the qualities Aristotle sees?

I think Aristotle has an archetype in mind, and am wondering what that archetype may have looked like. Part master, part slave, maybe?

I believe Aristotle said it could be either. There are "natural" slaves, and also those enslaved forcibly whose nature is otherwise. Probably in the Politics?

You’re correct, but since Aristotle I think we’ve come to find that there is no such thing as a natural slave, that they are all slaves by “convention”.

I know, I cited it in the OP. Also Hobbes. Also Aquinas. But I was hoping to start a discussion, not a reading.

The interesting thing about the interview I watched was the chasm between certain portrayals and that which presents itself to my own eyes and ears. I have I think listened to all sides, and though Musk may come off as weird, only one brand of portrayal appears completely unhinged and can be used to justify terrorism.

The so-called checks and balances are working just fine, if you can’t tell by the various injunctions and rulings, and any “subverting constitutional norms and safeguards” will be ironed out in court, the way it always has been.

1 applies, and that’s the sense in which I used it.

spy verb

1 : to watch secretly usually for hostile purposes
2 : to catch sight of : SEE
3 : to search or look for intensively —usually used with out

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spy

Interview with DOGE. Why do you hate these people?

In either case, their lies - and attacking Goldberg, have made the story bigger.

Maybe in Anti-Trumpistan. But outside it’s gossip and scandal-mongering, and worse, malicious sabotage.

It’s true, Waltz or his staffer screwed up. I don’t deny that. But in terms of fuck-ups, it’s a tiny one. Big deal. On to the next outrage.

It’s guess it’s a shame he could only leak a successful military operation, and not something that would make the administration look terrible. In the scheme of scandals this sits up there with Sharpiegate in its stupidity-to-outrage ratio.

A military serviceman or an intelligence officer using Signal-app to forward timetables of future military strikes, an issue obviously classified in any sitution, would be severely punished. Likely that serviceman or officer would lose his or her job because of his or her recklessness of not following opsec-rules.

That these people don't give a fuck about such issues is the disrespect here. They can pray for the troops as much they want and hold up the flag, but such actions show actually how much they respect following orders.

That the source of your ire is a never-ending list of counterfactuals that you guys can pull out at will makes it look pretty silly, to be honest. Oh, it could have led to a nuke falling on a baby giraffe! You can’t find the disrespect so you have to make it up. That’s how far we’ve come.

Since the US is had it with having any allies (except Israel, I guess) and just wants to cozy up with Russia, what is us to do other than rearm and think our security over?

Cozying up with a bunch of totalitarian nanny-states might not be in our best interests anymore. The cauldron of both communism and fascism is unleashing its next aberration on the world and perhaps cutting the chord is the right thing to do.

You're inconsistent. In the past, you supported the release of newswothy information:

I still do.

Regarding embarrassment: the officials committed the embarassing behavior. Goldberg was doing his job reporting it.

He was spying.

Marco Rubio hasn't served.
Steve Witkoff hasn't served.
John Rattcliffe hasn't served.

Then if you’re going to make such an accusation, quote one of them or describe how one of these three were disrespecting the military and the intelligence services.

Or was it this statement from Waltz? By far, the most newsworthy statement in the whole chat?

“Whether we pull the plug or not today European navies do not have the capability to defend against the types of sophisticated, antiship, cruise missiles, and drones the Houthis are now using. So whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. ”

Fair enough, but these people are all former military. Unlike Lloyd Austin, Blinken, and Milley and their efforts in Afghanistan, leading to the death of soldiers, they took full responsibility for the debacle.

No, sorry, telling even half an hour when you launch the aircraft is by all means crucial secret information. If intercepted, you do have time to people to take shelter, disperse, bring on the air defenses. And then people like Tulsi Gabbard deny everything.

None of that happened though, and I doubt this sort of leak or the use of the Signal app will continue given these concerns.

Indeed. That has nothing to do with the motives you assign to Goldberg

But his embellishments about war plans and lies about CIA operatives do.

Thanks for the correction. But unlike you I’m not appealing to the authority, only the humor of the statement.

Waltz' childish attack on Goldberg has zero bearing on the serious error Waltz committed. It just shows how dishonorable he is. He ought to be grateful that Goldberg didn't publish what he'd learned. Imagine if Goldberg had published this (allegedly) unclassified information immediately.

Your irrational loyalty to the Trump administration is truly pathetic. You were unwilling to believe Waltz even committed the error and jumped to the conclusion (without evidence) that it was the "deep state". Waltz played you, and you don't even realize it: he's deflected your attention from his error to the irrelevant fact that the recipient is a liberal.

No, I’m willing to believe it, now that the evidence is clear that Walz’s account added him. Now the question is how Jeffry Goldberg was added to Waltz’s contact list, and subsequently the chat.

Goldberg isn’t a liberal. He’s neocon. He was a cheerleader of the Iraq war, and was the one who came up with the “sucker and losers” hoax. Rather than remove himself from the situation or notify other members of the error, he surreptitiously took screenshots and used them to embarrass all involved.

This is such a stupid take. Hillary Clinton sent classified information through her private email server, and she was found to have destroyed much of it, even using hammers on the devices. The two events are not even close.

In any case, the full release of Goldberg’s messages actually make the staff look pretty good, in my view. I was worried that Goldberg might not be lying this time, that there could possibly be “war plans” and the name of a CIA operative, both of which turned out to be false. But JD’s questions about why we are again subsidizing European defense makes me happy to see. Let the EU protect their own shipping lanes. The children there need to learn to stand on their own feet. It reminds me of the Schwarzkopf line “Going to war without the French is like going hunting without an accordion.”.

ROFL!
"When the Fox host asked [Waltz]how Goldberg’s number ended up in the group, Waltz responded: “Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else’s number there? " -- source

Sound familiar? (See my prior post)

Clearly you read it. Why did you deliberately leave the rest out?

“Of course I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we’re trying to figure out.”

Edit: There is in fact now photographic evidence that Waltz added him to the group. Whether he was disguising himself as someone else is not clear, but Waltz should probably resign either way.