Above came as a revelation to me from heaven. — Beena

This makes you sound irrational, in my view. I read something like this and it becomes that much easier to ignore it altogether.

Some friendly criticism. Welcome to TPF.

Innocent until proven guilty. Huge burden of proof needed. That’s justice.

Unless you’re Hunter Biden, of course. Then it’s just obvious.

Against the common view that philosophy is a two-thousand-year-old failing enterprise, a body of thought that has produced no knowledge, couldn’t we say that philosophy has in fact done pretty well in bringing dominant beliefs into question, revealing their incoherence or baselessness, or just submitting them to rational enquiry? — Jamal

Yes. The common view is mostly bogus, although I’m sympathetic to the backlash to modern “philosophy” in the same way as that of some modern art.

Questioning things is essential. Socrates/Plato set quite the tone, and fit very well in what you described — and that should be the legacy.

It's wishful thinking at best on your part, Mikie, to believe this lawsuit won't reach a verdict against Loser-1 by the end of this year. — 180 Proof

How? I wish the verdict were today. I'd be very happy to see it. I just have a feeling it'll be protracted, as these things always are.

More to comr, Mikie. Let the avalanche begin ... — 180 Proof

Again, I hope so. But so far every time it looks as though the Republicans are going to get away from Trump -- the apex being the week after January 6th -- he comes back, again and again. And it's obvious why: the voters.

Keep in mind, the voters only matter – get a say – once 'the establishment' (mega-donors, party leaders, politicians & pundits) has signed-off on the candidates. — 180 Proof

But he's beat the establishment, over and over again. The establishment never liked him. They've tolerated him because he still gives tax cuts, deregulates everything, etc. So they put up with almost anything else, as long as he continues to win and give them what they want. Only trouble is, now he's not really winning.

The voters will apparently follow him into a volcano. Take a look at the polls. It's absurd. You have well over half believing the election was "stolen," simply because he says so.

Yeah, I get it, they don't care about his past or pending civil, criminal & financial troubles but, all indications are, the GOP establishment cares about winning / regaining power in Washington DC and Loser-1 looks more and more to them like an obstacle to power. — 180 Proof

True. But again, they're in quite a dilemma, because the voters still love him and he refuses to pass the baton. He's destroying DeSantis before he's even declared himself a candidate. The establishment doesn't like this, of course, but they're stuck with him. The megadonars simply don't matter if he remains the frontrunner in the polls and has a massive campaign war chest largely funded through small donations from the faithful.

I'm not saying any of this is good for the Republican party -- it isn't, as was seen in 2020 and 2022. He is bleeding suburbia and independents. But even at that, it was still very close. In a sane world, all of them should have been blowouts. (Including 2018, which people forget was not a blue wave. Dozens won by shockingly few votes.) But the point stands: he's still the frontrunner, and very likely the Republican nominee.

Like taking candy from a baby. :yum: :up: — 180 Proof

All right then, you're on. I bet $10 at 5:1 odds. So $50 to you if you're right in either case. And yes, I'll be VERY happy to pay it, because I hope you're right on both counts.

[Edit: personal bets are probably looked down on here, so how about this instead: I'll donate $50 to TPF if you're right, and you donate $10 if I'm right. Deal?]

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

So great.

You’ve laid out a good case. I think some of it is wishful thinking (like how soon there will be a verdict in the NY civil case, and the extent to which donors and senators abandon him), but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

I don’t think it matters to his voters, who will double down as they always do, will send him millions of dollars, and will rally around him as a victim of left wing conspirators. They will also destroy any challenger, as we see already with DeSantis, who was supposed to be the shoo in.

I wouldn’t put it past him to run as an independent or Patriots Party or something like that, but there will be no need: the voters will vote him in as a Republican.

Also, when you say it won’t be Joe Biden as the nominee — care to bet on that too?

In both cases I wouldn’t mind losing money.

It’s all a massive left wing conspiracy.

A guy who brags about walking in on teenager girls’ dressing rooms and grabbing women’s genitalia because, as a star, you can get away with it — who has multiple accusers over the years…Yeah, no way this jury is correct. Has to be a conspiracy.

Doesn’t matter though, he’ll still be the nominee.

Okay boys, how much are we wagering?

I’m saying he’ll be the nominee, almost certainly. I’ll give you 5:1 odds.

Well, as we’ve now learned a million times, we live in bizarro world. Given this, I predict Trump’s chances of becoming president will only increase after this verdict.

Imagine feeling obliged to defend this degenerate. :lol:

Again, I really resent having to sound similar to a right-wing bigot. — Mikie

Also you need to explain to young girls why hormonal school boys should be given access to their changing rooms. — Andrew4Handel

:roll:

Case in point.

trans-sceptical position — Jamal

I wouldn’t describe myself that way really. Unless we’re talking about transcending biology, which it seems at least many trans people aren’t claiming. It’s a matter of terminology. If we want to re-define our words, fine— but I honestly think it’s a mistake.

I could be wrong, in the same way as I’m sure there were people in the homosexual community that were against taking over the word “gay.” Turns out that was a good political move. In the meantime, I find myself largely agreeing with the “right,” and it’s irritating.

That’s great. I want to say Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault. I can’t place it.

No one "assigns" a newborn's sex at birth -- they "recognize" sex at birth. The use of the verb "assign" is in support of the contention that sex (like gender) is ambiguous, fluid, changeable, etc. — BC

What is strange is that terms like "women" are dropped to accommodate the very small portion of the population who were born with a penis and testicles (and don't have a uterus) but who now classify themselves as women. — BC

Yes. It’s ridiculous, and it’s detrimental to the trans movement/community.

Makes me feel like I’m living in the Twilight Zone when otherwise rational, intelligent people either subscribe to the former (meaning they believe sex is as ambiguous as gender) or else deliberately obfuscate so as not to concede any ground to potential bigotry — an example being that some people are born with both genitalia, etc.

Almost anything associated with gender I’m in favor of viewing much more broadly. Clothing, behavior, jobs, marriage roles, and so forth. But when it comes to things like pregnancy, must we all go along with the insanity in order to not be deemed transphobic? Again, I really resent having to sound similar to a right-wing bigot.

It’s also frustrating to even be discussing it— but that’s my own fault.

Where do the profits go? Why am I being exploited? This is unfair. It's already in the equation from the start- prior to even being a part of capitalism or any political economic system. — schopenhauer1

It doesn’t have to be.

Also, there are many forms of what we call capitalism. I’m not arguing about that. The answer to my question isn’t simply caked into the system. It’s a very specific and fairly recent way of transferring wealth to shareholders, and it’s worth understanding.

Instead, they are used to simply categorize individuals in a way analogous to the categories man and woman.

Fair enough.

I guess I’m just pissed off that bigoted assholes like Matt Walsh get to appear “sane” to the general public because of (what I see as) miscommunication. I felt similar feelings about “defund the police,” even though I was on their side. If it confuses me, I assume it confuses a lot of others who are not at all “anti-trans”, and that’s a shame.

I still think it’s a PR mistake, but I leave those decisions to the trans community ultimately.

The English language isn't some formal system where each symbol has just one meaning that applies in all contexts. — Michael

No one has claimed that.

In other contexts, e.g. when discussing biology, "female" typically means a human both with XX chromosomes, ovaries, a womb, etc. — Michael

I’m trying to figure out what else it means. Why choose male-to-female when one could simply using “man-to-woman.” Again, I think it’s a mistake to push language this far and then retreat by saying “well we don’t mean it in a biological sense.” In this semantic world, is there ANY word for biological sex?

1. Gender is a social construct and therefore is not a biological condition.
2. The scientific facts related to biological sex are irrelevant to trans issues. — universeness

I fully recognize (1). If (2) is true, as I believe is true too, then the trans community needs better PR.

Posting this here. Helps shed light on the real answer to where the profits go: right back into the pockets of the shareholders via stock buybacks.

https://stocks.apple.com/AjVpCcZ1LTbKD5qK2teiaIA

With top executives' compensation often linked to share price performance metrics, buybacks have emerged in the past decade as a relatively simple, quick means by which to raise a company's stock price, much simpler in many cases than it is to grow sales, expand operations, or increase profits.

Markets have also seen an increase in the practice of public companies issuing debt in order to buy back their own shares, a practice that some economists believe poses a threat to the long-term health of the U.S. economy.

Glad the SEC is making some minor changes to this blatant wealth transfer from the workers to the “owners.”

We generally understand what MTF and FTM mean in the context of transgenderism so this seems like a pointless argument. — Michael

“We” do? So male and female have also been redefined in some way? That’s fine— but wasn’t at all mentioned in the above conversation. What was mentioned was “trans women aren’t women.”

Seems to me like terms are being re-defined to the point of absurdity, quite frankly. I think it’s an enormous mistake.



I’d love to have a conversation, sure. If there’s something I’m missing, I’m happy to be corrected. But I have yet to see that.

If it’s about gender identity, and loosely using “woman” to include this, I understand. If we’re expecting people to believe you can change your biological sex, I think that’s a mistake. Biological males cannot get pregnant, for example. That’s pretty basic. To ask the public to go along with believing they can is absurd, and gives bigots even more material to use to justify themselves.

"trans women are not female," — Mikie

“trans women are not biologically female” — Jamal

Fair enough. I almost always consider “female” to refer to sex, and hence biology— but I suppose that’s not always the case for others.

But if one wants to distinguish between trans women and non-trans-women, we already have a term that’s better than “men”, which is … “trans women”. — Jamal

Also fair, but this implies to me that “trans women” is distinguishing from something else…What would that something else be, though? If “trans women are women,” as is often said, then aren’t we simply in a confused state?

Trans women are women, but not biological females. So then “woman” doesn’t necessarily mean an adult (biological) female, as is often meant— and that leaves many, including myself, rather annoyed at the semantics.

I think “woman” when referring to a trans woman is fine. No need to be technical. But if people are trying to convince others that there’s no difference whatever between a trans woman and a biologically female adult, I think that’s at least a blunder politically for the trans movement (which I otherwise wholeheartedly support).

Anyway— any more discussion on this I’ll move to the transgender thread. My posts, I mean.

mtf literally stands for male to female. So no, its just arguing in a circle. — Forgottenticket

“Mtf” wasn’t used above.

But you can’t go from male to female, or vice versa, unless we radically redefine “male” and “female”. I think there’s a lot of resistance to that, and for good reason. Strikes me as insane.

Intersex and those without gametes are exceedingly rare. People can be born with six fingers too — but I don’t think it’s bigoted or discriminatory to say human beings have five fingers on their hands.

In any case, I’m moving this response to this thread so as not to derail the “motte-bailey” thread.

A good example. :up:

The gun debate is egregiously bad.

A: Trans women are not women. [bailey]

B: That's a transparently bigoted comment, functioning as it does to directly negate the gender identities of trans people and thereby deny their claims to equal treatment. — Jamal

I know it's just an example, and I don't want to go off about transgenderism, but just so I'm clear: The more correct statement would be that "trans women are not female," yes? Since "woman" (and "girl") can often relate to gender identity.

It's true that people making statements like (A) are probably bigoted. But in the cases where a person is meaning to express the corrected statement, it may just be an honest mistake. I would put myself in this camp, although I see no reason to make either statement.

To the posters that are saying it's similar, I'm not seeing where the strawman fallacy comes into play here. What would be considered the strawman in this scenario? Person A's initial (bailey) argument?

Anyway, I see the motte-bailey used a lot. One look at the Wall Street Journal editorial page is a goldmine of it. Take climate change, which usually goes something like this:

Bailey: We can't do a, b, c because of x, y, z. No carbon tax because that's the government picking winners and losers. No banning of oil drilling because people are gonna need oil for years to come. EVs are "losers." It's gonna be way too expensive. Climate is always changing. Etc.

Interlocutor: It'll require drastic changes to keep CO2 levels (and warming) under dangerous levels. You're arguing we can't do anything, essentially. Do you even believe this is an emergency?

Motte: The climate is changing. Something should be done. We're not climate change deniers!

A good example is Bjorn Lomborg - a monument to this fallacy.

The republicans are no longer a political party. Here I agree with Chomsky.

But what they’ve left behind is hardly admirable— the “intellectual” republicans are still neoliberals through and through. All their talk of small government always was a pretext for vicious class warfare and their complete obedience to corporate power. Even more savage than the Wall Street democrats, who at least throw a few crumbs to the 80-90% of the population struggling to keep up once in a while, and believe in things like climate change.

Unfortunately there’s no choice anymore for anyone thinking rationally about the world. The Democratic Party is currently the place to push for changes. We’ve seen that in the old bones of Biden, who doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what’s going on, but who has been far more progressive than Obama or Clinton, largely due to activist pressures and the strength of the Sanders campaign in ‘16 and especially ‘20. His advisors know that many voting blocks simply won’t accept the policies of his predecessors whole hog.

But that’s national stuff, where we don’t have much impact other than in how we vote. What matters more isn’t really any party, but what we do locally and how we organize— i.e., how we increase our power. There’s a great book on this called Politics is For Power, by Eitan Hirsch. I think this is where our focus should be; the choice for who to vote for in ‘24, in contrast, should take 5 minutes of brain power.

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market

Naomi Oreskes

Yes, because black markets and Bronze Age trade really factors into the modern world. You should apologize for having assumed you were dealing with adults.

there's no such thing as a market without state intervention. Markets are instantiated by states. — Moliere

Yes indeed. Worth emphasizing again and again.

Neoliberals support globalization, deregulation and privatization, believing that the role of the private sector ought to be expanded beyond the limits traditionally adhered to in the decades following the Great Depression and the Second World War. — Jamal

Exactly. When I talk of neoliberalism, I’m referring to the policies enacted since the late 70s. It’s a label for those policy changes, hence the neoliberal “era.”

So yeah: globalization, deregulation, privatization, tax cuts, destruction of unions, etc. We could go through the list: Carter deregulating the railroads and trucking, Reagan and the airtraffic controllers, SEC rule changes on buybacks in ‘82, fair doctrines act repeal, Clinton and NAFTA, telecommunications act, etc etc.

That’s neoliberalism to me. Often the justification for it all was flimsy and varied — usually something about free markets, trickle down economics, Friedman doctrine, capital flight, the Laffer curve, and other nonsense — but that’s somewhere different, the “justificatory” aspect you mentioned.

Incidentally, Naomi Oreskes has just released an interesting book about this latter part which is worth reading. It’s called The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market.

Four years of Trump, and we get upset about PR notes. :rofl:

It’d be fine if it wasn’t coming from a Trump apologist and Ayn Rand cultist. That just makes it hilarious.

I see Chomsky as saying the following, based on several interviews I've seen over the years:

There are two factions of the business party. That's undeniably true. But that doesn't mean there's not differences. In a powerful state like the US, even small differences can have a big impact. So they still matter.

I think with the Bernie campaign, Trump, and the GOP going so extreme as to not even be considered a political party anymore -- that's changed things a bit. The differences are now stark. Not just the ones @Michael mentions, but also on climate change -- which, in my opinion, eclipses even the others.

I don't see anyone saying both parties are the same, though. That they're both beholden to special interests who finance their campaigns, usually have ivy league educations, are generally wealthy or have become wealthy, etc. -- yeah, that's a commonality throughout -- whether it's Nancy Pelosi or Ted Cruz. In that sense they're both the business party. But even the business world isn't a monolith. Fossil fuel interests are different than teachers unions and tech companies.

So Bernie announced he's not running, and will be supporting Joe. That means an end of an important period. Bernie will never be president (not that there was a huge chance anyway, given the DNC).

Bernie ran two very important campaigns. His policies are now in the mainstream discussion, and his supporters have helped push Biden farther than he would have otherwise been.

So Biden versus Trump, again. What a pity. An easy choice, though. Vote against Trump again. Prevent him from getting into office. Then keep grinding on with local/state work.

That should be the extent of the mental energy used these next 16 months. But I'm guessing it won't be. Because when it comes to the US, we have to turn it into an overwhelming spectacle. Talk about overcomplicating.

How would a 'no party' system work? Say more about that. — BC

People run for office, but without any party label. I know at the start of the US, there was a lot of debate about the usefulness of parties, whether they were good, etc.

Yes, it's a one-party system: the business party.

A real two-party system is kind of the wrong question, in my view. Ideally there would be either no parties or several parties, including a serious labor party and socialist party.

I wish all the "government is the problem" folks could just come out and say what they really feel: they're anti-democracy. "Demos" is a collective, too, after all. "The people," collectively.

But they won't do that. They know they'd be ignored and marginalized.

So they have to talk about "collectivism" and "communism" and "statism" as great evils, throw in Stalin and Mao, add a touch of individuality, a dash of "freedom," stir. The product? What's today called libertarianism, I suppose.

So that's their devil: groups. The "collective," the demos. All vague and abstract, because anything more specific reveals some interesting patterns. Anything that's happened in history is because of governments (collectives), unions (collectives), social welfare programs (collectives), political movements like civil or women's rights (collectives).

They're that guy who doesn't want to pay union dues but is happy to accept the benefits the union offers. So they'll complain endlessly about taxes. They'll whine about how crappy everything the "state" does.

Yet when it comes to corporate America? Silence.

Poor wages? It's a contract you enter, so you can just quit and get another job.

Monopolies? That's because of the government.

Massive transfer of wealth to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks? Well, that's their right as private owners.

Just once I'd like to have an honest discussion with these kinds. It'd start by them simply stating, "I'm against democracy, I don't want to be part of society, and I don't care about what happens to people I don't know."

At least I'd respect that.

:rofl: Thanks for the jokes, I needed that laugh.

The arguments for taxation, in the US anyway, go back to the founding of the country. The articles of confederation were a disaster largely because they couldn’t levy taxes.

Taxes is a distraction from the real issue here— and the OP: systems of governing. Thus, about power.

I’m in favor of democracy. Our libertarian friends are not. They’re in favor of free market fantasies which, however noble the intention (although I don’t see that here really), only serve to shift blame from the plutocrats who own and run the government, to the government itself as an abstract entity.

This is exactly why these ideas have been disseminated for decades, making their way into the minds of said people. They’re very useful to the ruling class.

The low hanging fruit in the US and elsewhere is to reign in corporate power, as we’ve done before — with far better socioeconomic results. Not to drone on about abolishing the state, or whining about having to pay taxes.

Yes— to say nothing of tax protesting and tax resistance. Each have a long history, as you know— I know some people who have done it for very valid reasons. Last time I checked, none of them were in prison, nor had a “gun placed to their heads.”

People can resist only theoretically (the same as people can theoretically resist the violence of the government), but in practice it's just too hard for most so they are forced, against their will, to work according to the terms set by the capitalist class. — Isaac

:up:

A point that’s almost always glossed over when discussing wage jobs. “You’re free to go elsewhere, you consented to it.” Way too cavalier, and ignores reality.

As justified as saying “don’t like the state? Leave the country.” Which I’ll often say; the connection is not readily understood, in my experience.