Your name-calling is about as suspect as your stoicism.

"Apparently engaging in illegal activity". For what, exactly?

Except that isn't true. Winning Georgia means he still loses overall.

Also he's been at this for 2 months and he lost all of his court cases. As someone on the left I can definitely say that I'm tired of winning at this point.

The president is clearly talking about winning Georgia.

Aren't you from the UK? What have you won?

Like I said, an independent and transparent investigation would be required. Instead we get the opposite, and we are left taking the word of the same officials who told us to accept the results in the first place.

Call me what you want, Tim. I just don't care. You've called me evil, a liar, a bad man, and have compared me to almost every animal in a menagerie. What does that make you?

So if an Antifa member shot randomly into a crowd of fascists, Antifa are in the clear?

And therefore one member's personal decision to kill someone is precisely what makes it not his personal responsibility?

Far-right people really will say absolutely anything m

In America, there used to be a right to go to rallies and protests without outside interference from the government or violent mobs. Given that they routinely suppress this human right, I'm surprised Antifa didn't get worse.

There is no "reason" to be had in this. Whatever reason there may have been has been addressed and more than addressed. But you adduce reason. I do not accuse; I state fact. And in consideration of, on the basis of many, many of your posts, you are represented in them as a bad man. And I take you as such.

Yes I think the fact that it was a close race, a difference of around 12000 votes out of 5 or so million, warrants a closer look at the results, especially given the claims of fraud and irregularity. Either way, refusing the claims of election officials, there is no way to know without an independent, transparent audit of some sort.

No; you accuse. Your accusations are myriad, yet always without sufficient basis. They are pitiful in the way that your accusations seem to be for your own benefit, like you're trying to justify your own poor reasoning.

This is a strategic weakness of liberal democracy, as noted by Schmitt. Free speech absolutism provides absolutely no defence against bad faith and subversive actors from within the system, in fact all that is needed to be done to get people on the side of bad faith actors is for them to claim they are being silenced. So long as liberal democracy is willing to hold free speech to such high regard it risks facing the bad conclusion of the paradox of tolerance; erosion of the very norms that were protected. So long as people side with these bad faith actors, antifascist action will be required as a counterbalance to defend liberal norms. An unglamorous job, as everyone hates them for it.

I don’t think it’s the case that one is “on the side of bad faith actors” when defending their right to speak, though guilt by association is almost inevitable (see Chomsky and the Faurisson affair, for instance). One can defend a person’s right to speak without endorsing any of their views.

But more, the paradox of intolerance is that we should not tolerate the intolerant, those that refuse to listen to argument and thus resort to bigotry and violence, for instance the latest iteration of American Antifa. When I am unable to distinguish this species of "antifascist action" from violent bigotry, I must oppose it, with violence if necessary.

So far, at the most charitable, you are a slanderer and defamer, because all you can do is accuse. I need a little more than the accusation, Tim.

Trump has stated that he will do everything within his power, legally and constitutionally, to contest the results, which is his right. Of course, the Uniparty media never reported on that.

According to Trump, all he needs to do is find around 12,000 ballots to win, which is more than enough reason to contest the results.

I’ve read the Doctrine of Fascism. The illiberal, collectivist and statist sentiments rendered it completely useless, even as a historical curiosity, and I immediately lost interest in anything related to it. What else can be said of Italian Fascism besides how it once manifested and quickly failed in Europe?

Perfect Trumpian phone call. I love it. Though I cannot see how the gutter-press and their base are making a big deal of it, it’s not unusual that the palace intrigue and deep-state gossip has them in a huff. More of the same.

Trump administration declassifies unconfirmed intel on Chinese bounties

We had some pretty heated discussions on “Russian bounties” in Afghanistan. The story reached a fever’s pitch earlier in the year leading to Dems and their followers (and many on this board) using the story to bash Trump, while the administration went so far as to say rogue elements within the intelligence community were trying to undermine the president’s peace talks with the Taliban.

Now we have uncorroborated reports of “Chinese bounties” of an oddly similar nature. I’ll wait to see if those who lamented Russian bounties will show the same outrage, but somehow I doubt it.

I don’t care if you believe it or not. I’m just expressing what I believe.

Trump golfs, sure, and he also works while golfing, something the misinformed like to suppress. As Lindsey Graham said:

“We’d hit a shot, take a phone call. Hit a shot, take a phone call. Hit a shot, talk about what’s a good deal. It was a very intense Christmas Day.”

It’s just how he works. He’s gotten more done on the golf course than other presidents have gotten off of it, which is pretty sad.

Populism or not, it’s the right thing to do.

Trump was probably not involved in the painstaking negotiations, so I’m not sure your little scenario is analogous. The conflation between Trump and those who actually negotiated the bill (indeed, between him, his party, and his entire administration) seems to be the common misinformation of a certain narrative. But history shows Trump goes against his own administration and party quite regularly.

Trump is the most admired man in America for 2020, according to Gallup. Obama placed second. Biden was third.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/328193/donald-trump-michelle-obama-admired-2020.aspx

You neglected to mention the recision request, probably because it wasn’t reported on.

As President, I have told Congress that I want far less wasteful spending and more money going to the American people in the form of $2,000 checks per adult and $600 per child.

As President I am demanding many rescissions under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. The Act provides that, “whenever the President determines that all or part of any budget authority will not be required to carry out the full objectives or scope of programs for which it is provided, or that such budget authority should be rescinded for fiscal policy or other reasons (including termination of authorized projects or activities for which budget authority has been provided), the President shall transmit to both Houses of Congress a special message” describing the amount to be reserved, the relevant accounts, the reasons for the rescission, and the economic effects of the rescission. 2 U.S.C. § 683.

I will sign the Omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed. I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-from-the-president-122720/

This means he can withhold “pork” for 45 legislative session days. Though I suspect a congress drunk on spending will refuse to remove any of it, it may just give Americans time to object.

Trump listened to Americans instead of his party and administration, and raised a stink about it. Now my family, nearly broken by state and local government-enforced shutdowns, could get some more of their taxpayer dollars back instead of seeing it spent on gender programs in Pakistan.

Edit: McConnel blocked the increase of stimulus checks for Americans

It makes little sense to sign such a wasteful spending bill, while at the same time leaving little for everyday Americans. Despite your fantasies about Trump’s mind states, Congress has the power of the purse. It’s congress’ fault they left it so late. It’s congress’ fault it’s full of wasteful spending. It’s congress’ fault there is little left for Americans. It’s suspicious, but not surprising, that your fake concern for everyday Americans is used in the tacit defense of those who wronged them.

Nice write-up, ssu.

It seems to me that language and culture are intimately linked, maybe even one and the same, at least insofar as culture is conveyed through language.

But if the two are distinct, does the death of language lead to the decay of culture, or is it the other way about? The Rosetta Stone, for instance, the “language”, persists to the present day, much longer than the cultures that it is derived from.

Buried lede.

Subsequently, Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., attempted to get lawmakers to reconsider aspects of the spending bill related to foreign aid. That move was blocked by Democrats.

GOP blocks House Democrats' attempt to pass $2,000 stimulus checks

They were infused into one package, which only helped to amplify Congress’ priorities: chump-change for Americans while bleading the country dry.

No other president has been pathetic enough to posture this way, sure.

I suspect the anti-Trumpism is working overtime to churn out excuses as to why Trump shouldn’t be applauded for his criticism. Assume (without evidence) he has malicious intentions in order to avoid agreement. Pathetic indeed.

It’s true. Selling out Americans and bleeding the country dry is nothing new. What is new is a president who is willing to push back against Congress. I don’t recall Bush or Obama pushing back against the recovery act.

There is a huge difference between knowledge and ignorance. At least now you know. But it will make no difference if you refuse to hold your lawmakers accountable.

Well, he lives in his fantasy land, and if you will just send him money, you can (continue to) live in his fantasy land too.

And, I of course have not read the bill, nor even set eyes on it. Have you? Or are you willing to take his word for what he says, and in the context of this site to be his endorser/guarantor?

Congress didn’t even read it.

Either way it likely it would have passed silently had the president not objected.

What an embarrassing stimulus bill. Good thing President Trump is still in office.

If claims of election fraud are never proven, that will put Trump out of the running for the 2024 election because, and I am guessing here, they know that the forces arrayed against him are simply cannot be overcome. Voters are smart enough to be pragmatic, even Trump voters.

I’m not so sure about that. They threw everything at Trump and he mostly prevailed—impeachment, fake hate crimes, a hostile press, a violent opposition, investigations into him and his family, riots, organized protests, leaks, big tech and media censorship. For years they warned us of a fascism that never arrived, but unfortunately in doing so they distracted everyone from real-world threats, leaving most unprepared for what was to come. While they distracted the American president with an impeachment charade, a virus was allowed to circulate within the country. In the end it took a once-in-a-century pandemic to do what they failed to do.

I could only imagine what his presidency might have been like had cynical, anti-Trump forces given him a chance. I suspect he won’t run again (he’s too old), but if he were to come back in 2024, I suspect even anti-Trumpers would love to fill that Trump-shaped hole in their brains.

As for Trump’s refusal to concede, I love it. I can only hope that by the end of it he declassifies everything.

For any brain-sized region of space, there are only a finite amount of configurations of matter possible. That means there is a finite amount of possible brain states, which would entail a finite amount of possible thoughts. However, math is infinite, and any number can be conceived, so there are an infinite number of possible thoughts. is this a problem for reductionism?

Though I do not think the mind is a brain, I do think “the infinite use of finite means” could provide a way to avoid your problem. Just as a finite number of letters could conceivably be used to create an infinite number of sentences, a finite number of “brain states” could produce an infinite number of thoughts.

As Tim’s threadbare metaphors illustrate, the solution for statists is to plunder wealth from others in the vain hope that what they’ve stolen reaches those who they pretend to care about, and is not, say, funding another war, bailout, or Raytheon contract. That’s why no amount progressive posturing can help distinguish his activities from those of any other advocate of criminal activity. The solution to helping the poor, apparently, is to make thievery respectable in popular opinion, and to advocate the theft and transfer of fellow citizen’s resources and power to an endless bureaucracy, who will then do with it what it wishes.

Given that the statist knows not where his tax money ends up, whether it helps the poor or is used against the poor, one should suspect rather than respect these pious outbursts. Not only does it offer the statist comfort, it absolves him from never engaging in actual solutions himself, like feeding, clothing, and housing those in need.

The pandemic has only laid bare what happens when the State intervenes in our affairs, forcing us into unemployment and to close our businesses, limiting our movement, removing our right to assemble, to practice our beliefs, to speak, and to live our lives how we wish. With the arbitrary stroke of a pen, state bureaucrats have declared entire industries “non-essential” by fiat. There are police checkpoints, curfews, bans, while the useful turn in their neighbors should they breach arbitrary state decree. The worst part is, we are all entitled to nothing, whereas the State is forever entitled to some percentage or other of whatever morsels we scramble to earn.

The welfare of our fellow citizens, and our instinct to charity, was relegated to the State long ago. Why should the worker provide for the beggar, the poor, the homeless in his community, when the State has already seized the means of charity? Has the wealthy stopped you or I from providing alms, food, clothing, housing, to members of our community? Or is it because we have little left to give? No capitalist stands between me and my initiative. No capitalist has the power to force you or I to abandon our enterprise, and to use our surplus in the service of others. The ultra-rich will pay more in taxes in one year than you or I will pay in our lifetimes, and they can go to sleep with a good conscience because they have been taught paying more taxes will help the impoverished. And you want the wealthy to pay more taxes, which beget more good consciences, and more failed welfarist policies.

Joe BiXen’s son is under investigation by the DOJ. And this after the propaganda-wing of the uniparty, the US media and their lackeys in Big Tech, suppressed Hunter BiXen’s laptop story in favor of an uninformed and ignorant electorate.

Biden himself will be picking his AG soon, so I suspect this investigation will vanish.

Top 1% starts at around $10mm-$11mm net worth, of which Bernie is a part of. But doesn't $10mm seem excessive? Why should anyone be allowed to have $10MM? Maybe 5 or even 1mm is excessive when you have homeless people living on the streets.

It would be excessive if wealth was fixed and finite. If that was the case, one person’s gain means another person’s loss. But this is zero-sum thinking, a common bias, not much different in naivety than saying “immigrants take our jobs”. Wealth, work, jobs, and the factors of production are not finite, therefor any commie plundering of wealth is not only unjust, but also an indictment against their creativity and resourcefulness, the absence of which leads them to steal wealth from others instead of creating themselves.

Thanks for putting that together.

I also think the whole “preventing suffering” argument is lacking because it could be used as an excuse for the prevention of a variety of ills, to prevent greed or bad gas for instance. One could just as easily say it prevents any number of good things, too, even the exact opposite of suffering. That they present the prevention of life as a prevention of suffering suggests some degree of bad faith. We should not let them pretend that life is a one-to-one ratio with suffering.

They made themselves angry. Before Trump came on the scene the gutter press could end a political campaign if the candidate happened to scream awkwardly. They had no power here, and overestimated their king-making status. They failed and lashed out because of it.

You don’t mention that Trump acted the same with pretty much every other leader he met—only Putin. The difference is, the Helsinki meeting, framed as it was in the midst of the Russia hoax, was sensationalized for appetites such as yours.

There was no red scare scare when leading Democrats were found to have CCP agents on their teams. Obama praised China in joint press conferences after this and other ugly incidents (the killing of CIA informants, hacking and theft of intellectual property). Merkel didn’t stoop to criticize Obama when Snowden revealed his NSA was spying on her. Is this the normal you’re speaking of?

No; what was not normal was drum of war banging in the background, especially as a McCarthyite red scare rippled through the DC establishment, disrupting the entire country with a dangerous, media-induced fantasy. That’s not normal, and as far as I can tell your own thinking has only served to defend those actions.

Trump is no more a genius than is the preacher who cries from the pulpit while he gathers the last dimes from the congregants. Believers aren't stupid, just vulnerable.

Trump has had most of the corporate global media, Hollywood, the intelligence community, and Big Tech against him. The most lucrative, influential and comprehensive machinery of propaganda in human history delivered an undoubtedly anti-Trump message, fitting the propaganda model to a T. The canard of a Kremlin-linked president still rattles in the heads of true believers while they remain mostly ignorant that the Chinese politburo had already reached the highest echelons of the opposing party. There was the sensationalism around violence at Trump’s rallies while hardly a whisper about violence against his rally-goers. Information gatekeepers actively suppress Trump and his supporters and anything that might reflect poorly on his opponents.

I think Trump’s Twitter feed and the reach of the few commentators who support him are utterly mild in comparison. That’s why I would also think Trump’s opponents are far more vulnerable.

No, Bezos does not control your life and is master of no one. You willingly use his services or you do not. You willingly engage with his company or not. You willingly work for him or you do not. Having an “impact on society” is not the same as being in control of other human beings, nor is it confined to the ultra-wealthy, and no amount of word-twisting can alter that. So it’s utter nonsense to suggest these people control anything beyond their own company and property.

You have less of a say in the government than you do in the market. And I doubt you know or have any say in where your tax money goes, unless of course you are living off the government’s plundered cash already. But assuming you also pay taxes instead of just fellate your master, try forgetting to submit them to your government and see how much of a say you have then.

The state has the monopoly on violence. But they essentially own the state. To say they're subjected to the "same laws and penalties" as anyone else is naive. Yes, according to cypto-neoliberals like you, "government is the problem," and so it's no surprise that you want to divert the focus to "bureaucrats." Very typical.

My only contention is that the so-called 1% are not your masters. Elon Musk is unable to assert any control over you, and if he did, he would be subject to legal penalty. So if a person of this evil, (and in the last analysis) psychopathic class is unable to assert control over you, how is he at the same time your master?

At any rate, I become suspicious of hatred when it becomes indistinguishable from envy.



Sure, it’s easier to purchase favor from those in power when one is wealthy. But it is impossible to purchase favor when favor isn’t for sale. The reason the so-called 1% are able to seek their advantage from those in power is because those in power give it to them.

I would rather live under robber barons than under the consistent bureaucratic scrutiny of moral busybodies. The moral busybodies rule over us for our own good and with the approval of their conscience.

Since they're the "masters of the universe," it's worth understanding exactly who they are.

The 1% is not the “masters of the universe” because they do not possess the monopoly on violence. They are private citizens and are beholden to the same laws and penalties. You are more likely to lose your property or be thrown in jail by some mediocre bureaucrat than Elon Musk.

Thanks for writing that.

In cognizance of the outline above, why isn't misanthropy a justifiable philosophical resolution to the fact of human existence? Why isn't a misanthropic stance consistent with an existentialist one? Can't one believe in the truth of human existence, dissociate it from its fact in the real world, and then champion an amelioration of its vices?

As some have mentioned, misanthropy finds one or two crimes of which only some are guilty and indicts the entire species. It’s unjust, fallacious, and as such, worthy of its own condemnation and ridicule.

I can only respectfully disagree. For me, and I mean no disrespect to anyone, but for me, wearing masks as prescribed is a little too close to wearing tinfoil hats to block out all the radiowaves penetrating your skull.

There are millions of healthy people wearing masks, not because they are sick and risk infecting someone, but because they are ignorant of whether they are sick or not. Ignorance, not illness. Conformity, not heroism.

In the lead up to his election and beyond, Trump’s opponents compared him to a litany of tyrants, from Nero to Mao to Adolph Hitler. But during a national emergency, and presented the perfect opportunity to seize absolute control, he ended up leaving public health measures to the states where they belong. Now he is criticized for not doing enough. Meanwhile, as the boys who cried wolf were busy pointing their finger, the walls of state oppression grew up all around us.

This embarrassing irony should not be understated. Vast sums of human beings throughout the world now find themselves under some version or other of state control and coercion, none of which Trump decreed. Police checkpoints, curfews, lockdowns, state cessation of the economy, mask mandates, banned gatherings, the restriction of movement—those who promised us a Trumpian fascism never once warned us that the same tyranny has found its perfect breeding ground in the nostrums of paternalistic nanny-statism.

Where are they now? Santayana reasoned that “Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”; one might excuse their mistake had they turned their mental machinery to the unprecedented erosion of civil liberties and human rights we are now seeing. But no. From beneath the state jackboot we can still hear their cries of wolf.