The administration is taking form. Trump names campaign manager Susie Wiles as his Chief of Staff, the first female to be appointed to the position.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/07/trump-susie-wiles-chief-of-staff

Yes to both questions. The GOP of Bush and the neoconservatives is largely over, with many of them now voting Democrat. I hope the Democrats can have the same evolution but voters can’t even have the same candidate everyone voted for in the primary.

It’s called “churnalism”. The press in other countries parrot the press from the United States. This way they can save costs on doing their own journalism. Understandably, most people do not have the time to look for the truth so the accept the skewed view.

Three issues give me to reject the proposal.

My methodological individualism leads me to oppose the sociology. A nation does not impose its values on other nations. The individuals in government impose their own values on individuals in another nation, whether the rest of the nation approves or not.

Human flourishing is not the goal of the state. Its goal is to secure its power and advance its own interests. It is an anti-social institution and not fit to impose social values.

Imposing values on another group of people is wrong for the same reason it would be wrong for them to do it to a western nation: it isn’t up to them. They have not been afforded any right to do so.

His opponents come from all parties, so it isn’t really about parties.

I remember in 2016 they were chasing down Trump supporters and beating them, attacking them, or otherwise harassing them with impunity. It wasn’t just the routine bigotry you’ll read from people on here, but it was pervasive movement throughout the United States. It has captured the big institutions, the press, academia, government. There is a moral panic occurring and I naturally side with the victims of it, and it looks like the tides are turning.

He took on both parties, destroyed them both, and ended many despicable political dynasties. But most of all the behavior of his opposition pushed me to support him. One has to oppose an evil movement like that. Some of the policies were an added bonus.

I’m feeling pretty good about it. I overestimated the effects a corrupt press has on public opinion and figured Harris would win, or they’d kill him, so was pleasantly surprised to learn otherwise.

I agree. One principle of the anarchist tradition is to assume all authority is illegitimate until it proves itself to be legitimate. A parent or teacher can proves its legitimacy, for the most part, even if it is a heavy burden to prove. Any voluntary choice of whom to follow eliminates the need to seek this proof entirely.

But when a politician or agent of the state is an authority through appointment or dictate, their legitimacy cannot be proven.

If the brain gives out it just means the brain gives out. Just a body before and just a body after.

A historic campaign and the greatest political comeback in history. Not even bullets could stop the Trump train!

Sadly, the live-action-roleplay of his opponents continue. Fighting an imaginary fascism involves erecting an actual one, so I suspect political violence, institutional subordination, and a captured press will be working diligently to disrupt the Trump regime. Luckily the people aren’t buying it anymore.

It just doesn’t follow from any of this that we require a master. If anything, the fear of others suggests we ought not to have one.

When I think about everyone I’ve ever met, and pick the individuals who I believe might run amok if government disappeared tomorrow, the number is very close to zero. And just dealing with people in my day-to-day leads me to believe that people aren’t as anti-social as statists make them out to be. Anarchism, in my opinion, has a more accurate view of human nature, one where people typically work together rather than at constant war with one another.

Understandable. No one would want any criticism of routine nonsense.

Trump’s opponents never accepted the 2016 election, therefor they had fascists tendencies, like Hitler. Trump joked he was going to be a dictator, therefor he’s going to be a dictator. This is the level of reasoning over in clown world.

This is a tangent. I have no problem with identifying an individual identity as a series of causally-connected spatiotemporal stages. The objection I have is in defining the "natural kind" (for lack of a better term) of "individual human being". This would have to be based on a well-defined set of necessary and sufficient properties, that unambiguously identify an object as either being one of these, or not. An object that can produce multiple human beings cannot possible be said to be an individual human being, even though it is commonly in the developmental history of human beings. The same is true of blasotocysts- clusters of cells, that may produce multiple human beings at several stages.

So my position is that an individual human being (i.e. an object of that type) is something that emerges. gradually during fetal development. I regard a properly functioning individual human being as a self-sustaining organism with certain physical and intellectual capabilities, including a sense of self. You can disagree, because there is no unequivocally correct answer. But you have no rational basis for denying me (or women) the privilege of deciding for themselves.

All objects that can produce multiple human beings are individual human beings. A mother, for instance, can do that. But this is also true of asexual reproduction. An individual amoeba, for instance, can produce another amoeba. Unfortunately (and oddly), we may have to think of one zygotic twin as the parent of the other.

I would never deny you or other women your privileges, but your distinctions are completely arbitrary. Worse, they are inapplicable to those with developmental disabilities, those who cannot care for themselves, and those without your favored set of physical and intellectual capabilities. At any rate, the reduction of humanity and dignity to that of “material” is the name of the game for anyone who wants to end such a life.

I recognize the image on the right as a person. I don't recognize the image on the left as a person.

If you recognize the image on the left as a person, can you explain how you recognize it as a person?

The one on the left is what the one on the right looked like about 9 months earlier. In those 9 months, what changed for you?

Provide your complete principium individuationis. My issue is that there is no such thing because "individual human being" is a concept with vague boundaries. A zygote isn't a strict boundary because a zygote can produce multiple individuals. If we focus on the histories of a set of twins, they are clearly not individuated at the zygote level.

It occupies its own unique and distinct position in space and time. A zygote is alive. At no point does a zygote die and get replaced by another living being. If left to live a zygote can continue his life, without interruption, for upwards to one hundred years.

Twins are individuated at the zygote level until it reproduces asexually, then there are two individuals.

The bipartisan Trump team is a big FU to the establishment uniparty, but also the inevitable result of the political triangulation made popular by bill Clinton and its most recent representative, Kamala Harris. The two parties were nearly indistinguishable since then until now. Whatever the results, new parties are emerging from the old ones.

Identical twins begin with the same genetic material, they lack this uniqueness you mention. So unique genetics can't be the basis for identifying an individual human life.

The genetics only distinguishes the zygotic human being from the rest of his environment, ie, from his parents. But I also included the principium individuationis, his location in space and time, as the marker of his uniqueness.

If 2016 was any indication, people know what will happen should Kamala lose. I wager she will win, but better safe than sorry when the participants of a moral panic still have a chance to receive that last, crushing blow to their psyche.

Rights *arent* just values. It seems you havent understood my post. Rights are values instantiated in the world through physical force. I can value anything I wish, but I do not have the power to enforce my own values in the world.

Why do they need to be instantiated by force? Why do you need to enforce your values on the world? They only need to be instantiated by your own thoughts, speech, and actions. You can confer anyone else any number of negative or positive rights you wish. You can confer someone the right to free speech, for example, and simply refuse to censor him. You can confer someone the right to housing and give him a place to live. It’s a superstition that only man in his official form can confer rights. Rather, like any man, you can confer anyone else any rights you wish.

“Material” doesn’t encapsulate what it is and what is occurring, whether it is living or non-living, and so on. Everything in there is a material by definition. The difference is this is the one thing in there with its own distinct and unique genetics, occupying its own unique and distinct position in space and time, and will remain as such until the end of its life.

How is that possible before there was a government to rule those medieval gangs and city-states?

City-states had governments. Many of them were republics, modelled on the Roman one, much like the governments of today. So of course they warred with each other. That is also true of the Italian republic which set about warring with other nations.

It just isn’t clear why you’d give this group the right to create and defend rights while denying it of everyone else. After all it’s just a value in your mind. Perhaps they have different values in their minds.

History shows there is no right that governments have not violated, so it is odd that you’d choose this group and not any other to help protect them. If they should choose to violate your rights, you are left with no one else to fight for them.

In physical reality, all you have done is granted power and authority to some men, while diminishing your own and others.

A zygote can develop into multiple persons.

All the more reason to let it live.

This is not a picture of a person, Fire.

Some people may think it's a person because that's what they've been led to believe.

There is a reason that people have been led to believe it's a person. Is that reason based on morality or something else?

If that is an human zygote, every person who has ever existed goes through this stage in their lifecycle. What leads you to believe it is not a person?

Olson provides the logical form so you can check its validity.

1. x)(x is a human animal & x is sitting in your chair)

2. (x)((x is a human animal & x is sitting in your chair) x is thinking)

3. (x)((x is thinking & x is sitting in your chair) x = you)

4. (x)(x is a human animal & x = you)

It is their presence, not their absence, that breeds their corruption and incompetence. The arbitrary rule of competing gangs and never-ending wars are fixtures of government rule and statism.

So long as you know your condition is that of a willing slave it is fine with me.

Statists love their made up scenarios and hypotheticals. The irony, though, is that your cartel government acts just like your enlightened one, with slight variation. At least with collaborative defense and other avenues of voluntary cooperation you don’t need to be exploited in order to keep their racket going.

The absence of unjust forms of government won't prevent forms of unjust governance from emerging out of the relationships between individuals. Some gangs thrive on being embedded within a population where they can avoid scrutiny and terrorize individuals, neighborhoods, and entire regions as a long as there's no government acting on behalf of the common good. Perhaps that's why all modern countries are ruled by forms of governments, and why anarchy has remained a half-baked idea for adolescents who don't like being told what to do.

There are plenty of gangs in modern countries, terrorizing individuals, neighborhoods, and entire regions, all while there are governments “acting on behalf of the common good”. So perhaps that isn’t why modern countries are ruled by forms of government, or at least they’re not doing a good job at it.

2. The concept of "rights" only makes sense in the context of a governing body which can establish and protect those rights against negative actors. Otherwise its simply a value you hold, which has no bearing on anyone else but yourself.

This is a common political superstition. It doesn’t make sense that we have to create a governing body so as to establish and confer rights upon ourselves. What you are really proposing is that you want to give a minority the right to create rights while refusing to keep that right for everyone else.

The state has been conceived as a person for quite some time, for example in Hobbes, but at least as far back as Ancient Rome.

Thanks for the insight, and I think you’re right. The idea that we are animals, and not angels or something, proves to be a good foundation upon which to reach further metaphysical and ethical insights that might not only prove to be beneficial, but accurate. At any rate it leaves the idealistic and dualistic theories wanting.

As far as I can tell the debate around personhood currently evolves around the conditions of our identity through time, the psychological or physical “continuity”. Animalism suggests the latter. If this is so it appears to me, at least, that the only thing that does persist is the animal, and personhood ought to be granted to it rather than its psychological conditions.

If we are human animals, and human animals are persons, we ought to extend personal identity to the limits of the human animal’s life instead of limiting its application to the fleeting moments of psychological awareness or memory. Without doing so it is impossible to say whether a person is born or a person dies, and persons that are never born or never die is inconceivable. While it can be said that human animals are born and do die, unless personhood is extended to these limits, the same cannot be said of persons.

What timeline is this? Perhaps I should have voted…

As I noted in my response to Ludwig V, that's a matter of values and not of fact, which is fine as long as we recognize it.

What would the fact be, then?

The things of this world. What else is there?

I think those who deny it want to believe that there is a human spirit or soul or essence which is not of this world. It seems to me something like that would be the real motivation to deny that we are animals.

This is it. I also wager this motivation is the beginning of all such theories that are platonic or idealistic. It satisfies some impulse to raise man above everything else, simply because he cannot find value in man if he does otherwise.

It’s fine to quibble about that but according Olson and animalism in general it is statement about our fundamental nature.

But I do find it extraordinary that we are the last extant species of human beings.

Thanks, I assumed people would read the paper, but will try to add more.