Articulated rather well, I think. Extra points for accuracy.

My gut tells me they’re going to stick with Trump to the bitter end (that is to say, when his voters lose interest or are no longer voting for him in numbers they need). The fact that he got 75 million after 4 years is terrifying, but I look at it as them giving it all they had. Biden was also an exceedingly poor candidate, but unlike Hillary was endearing to many and, importantly, not a woman. I don’t see the Trump brand growing by the numbers they need in the future, but who knows. Look at the Latino vote in southern Florida.

In the end, his followers are so deep in the cult that there’s no reasoning with them. We just have to be thankful we have the numbers - for now.

You say you want a revolution well, you know...

I just don’t get it. — NOS4A2

I wonder why.

That is absurd. 80% or more were approving of him after 4 years. Does that sound like a poor choice? Not from their point of view, and your point of view is just your opinion. — FreeEmotion

I really can’t believe people still use this phrase.

“Just your opinion.” Well it’s just YOUR opinion that it’s my opinion.

Really adds depth to the discussion.

Please stop that.

Trump should really start a third party and split the right for a generation. That will show them libs. — Mr Bee

Excellent idea. I'm actually really hoping this happens. It's not outside the realm of possibility, although probably unlikely.

What a stupid comment.

Right, like calling an injury a murder without evidence. — Brett

We’re all glad you’re here to make sure the record is set straight. Just a straight-shooter seeking the truth objectively. :rofl:

Oh, I see. You disagree with me. — Brett

Good observation.

You come after me every time. Is there a reason for this? — Brett

Just nice to know you’re not fooling anyone with this act, probably not even your self. Your hypocrisy and pro-Trump bias is obvious. But please carry on. Let’s make sure we get every word right while our Capitol building was just mobbed and desecrated. That’s what really matters right now.

Don't pretend to be rational when you're stinking of bias. — Baden

:clap:

It took a real and concerted effort to turn the election around. It was done with cunning, with fraud, and with brute-force cheating. — god must be atheist

There was no fraud and no cheating. Lord and savior Trump saying so repeatedly doesn’t make it true. Your delusions are your own.

Thereby ends the greatest presidency ever. — NOS4A2

:lol:

Yeah, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln — Trump. An impeached, deranged failed businessman and reality TV star who cheats on his wife with porn stars, rapes women, lies as he breathes, and has the mentality of a 3 year old.

Really went out on a high note too.

Hey NOS: enjoy 4 years of Biden. :kiss:

Maybe not murder though. — Brett

lol.

Go rest your head Brett.

They're all jumping ship, including a surprising number of his supporters. I'm seeing it even in online forums -- Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.

Makes you wonder, though: had this happened a few months ago, or even a year or two ago -- before he lost the election and the Georgia runoffs -- would there be such a universal outrage? Would there be resignations? Editorials of condemnation? I have my doubts.

Seems awfully convenient for the people that enabled him for 4 years. But we'll see if they impeach and remove him. That'll be the real test. If they don't, then my question has been answered. If they do, I would still wonder. Still, I give his removal a 20% chance.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/07/barr-trump-committed-betrayal-of-his-office-455812

When you lose even Bill Barr...guess he must be caught up in this unnecessary "moral panic." Let's stay calm as our capital is besieged. No reason to get hysterical, ladies.

Only those on this forum who project and fantasize that I am operating in bad faith. — NOS4A2

Not at all. We believe that you believe every word. Which makes you even more of a cancer.

And thanks for hearing me out despite the ad hom. They don’t want anyone to hear these arguments, let alone discuss them. — NOS4A2

You're right -- yesterday was just a normal protest. Not a big deal. Media playing it up too much. So are the Republicans. No weapons, no one was hurt, no police were hurt, no property was vandalized, etc. It is the people's house, after all.

There. Now you can go back to your Newsmax message boards. You've done your duty here.

I only wonder why Nos is thinking what he thinks. The danger is that people do not see each other as reasoning beings anymore and do not recognize each other as such. — Tobias

Because when someone is no longer swayed by truth, by evidence, by reasons -- then they are in fact no longer a rational being. Still a human being, but not rational. When this irrationality threatens you, me, our children, and the future of the planet, then I also consider them enemies. I'm left no choice.

Moral of the story, Trump trolls will never concede even the most obvious facts and are not worth engaging. — Baden

↪NOS4A2

You didn’t get any impression of rioting? — praxis

s
— NOS4A2

Huh? They intended to stop the proceedings which would have proclaimed Biden the president elect... or was it just coincidental and does it happen every odd Monday morning? — Tobias

↪Tobias Don't waste your time on the Trumptard. — Benkei

No NOS4A2 is gaslighting you it seems.. — schopenhauer1

Yes indeed. Glad I'm far from the only one who notices.

The only difference is how these people are being portrayed in the gutter press: one group as terrorists, a violent mob, and the rest as concerned protesters and activists. I do not remember congress or the senate saying it was an attack on democracy when protesters occupied, disrupted and sometimes accosted its members.
— NOS4A2

There is a difference between fighting, looting and rioting because of perceived social injustice (looting and rioting being criminal of course, do not get me wrong) and storming a government building with the aim of seizing power for your own preferred strong man. The first is civil disorder, the other an attempt at toppling the democratic state. The difference is that the legal order is shocked in the first instance, but not itself in danger, whereas in the second instance it is itself under threat.

In the same vein there is a difference between political protest and rioting at the Kavanaugh hearing, where the seats of power have not been breached and the storming of the capitol where they have been. The threat to the legal order is much larger where such actions succeed than where they do not and the shock to the legal order is consequently much more severe.

I know US criminal law is not used to thinking in terms of 'the legal order', it is a rather German / Dutch conception, but there must be something similar. The same rationale applies when terrorist intent is punished harsher than ordinary street crime, which holds under US criminal law. It is not 'the gutter press' just doing something, in reporting differently about these two instances. The difference is similar to the way attempted murder is reported and actual murder is. The second presenting the more severe shock to the legal order and therefore warranting much more coverage and indeed condemnation.. — Tobias

A cultist like NOS4A2 doesn't deserve such an articulate response. Don't waste your time -- he's a dead end mentally.

unlawfully storming the Capitol building?
— Pfhorrest

How do you define that? What law are you referring to? — Brett

any restricted building

Is it a restricted building? — Brett

Drop the act of being objective or truly interested in any way. Just jump right to the complete rationalization of what happened yesterday. Spare yourself the mental gymnastics.

I like that you show sympathy for how these people have been duped and manipulated, since that "war for hearts and minds" really is where the battle needs to be fought; but lots of people fighting for lots of bad causes have been duped and manipulated into thinking they are good causes, and that doesn't make their actions okay. — Pfhorrest

This cuts to one of the more important issues. In my own rage, I have to remind myself that these people really do believe the election was stolen, among other false things.

This level of brainwashing was taken to a new level by Trump, but as you know it's been going on for a long time -- in talk radio, in Fox News, and in print. Propaganda goes back much farther than the last 40 years, but it's especially pronounced during this era.

Combined with the simultaneous neoliberal assault from the business class and its results on the bottom 80% of the population, who turn for answers to these propaganda channels, and there's no wonder why 35%-45% of Americans believe the election was stolen, that Trump is a savior, that there's a deep state, etc.

At the core of all this, I think, is irrationality, in the sense of belief without evidence. This has always been around, but I can't help but think that religion, the education system, the fascination with sports (blind loyalty to the home team), jingoism, etc., all help contribute to making people ripe for a charlatan who's clever enough to take advantage. On a smaller scale it's called a cult, but on a larger scale it's called the Trumpism and the like.

Plenty of examples even on this thread. Pretty scary indeed. How do we counter all this?

Facial recognition firm claims antifa infiltrated Trump protesters who stormed Capitol
— NOS4A2

I heard antifa fucked your girlfriend — Maw

Lol.

Yeah and I heard all the "rioting and looting" was really Trump supporters in disguise.

Wouldn't doubt it.

I wouldn’t doubt it. — NOS4A2

What a shocker.

And also have the numbers, training, technology, equipment, weaponry, etc., that should far surpass anything we saw today. If used. For some reason, it wasn't. (Until much later.)

Nothing seems insane today, but I'd like to know something more concrete.



Yeah, they had a goal I suppose. But unlike burning a building spontaneously, given that they knew there were thousands of people in town and that this was certainly a possibility, you'd imagine the security would have been ramped up. Also, the small fact that it's the capital building and was in session. It's baffling.

Has anyone gathered anything factual about why the police and security allowed this to happen? How could they not have anticipated this? Where was the ass-kicking that we saw this summer from law enforcement?

Captures a lot of it. Especially the parts about neoliberalism and media ecosystems. Despite the latter coming from the guy who helped create the conditions for Trump by turning his back on his supporters. But regardless.

"History will rightly remember today’s violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation. But we’d be kidding ourselves if we treated it as a total surprise.
For two months now, a political party and its accompanying media ecosystem has too often been unwilling to tell their followers the truth — that this was not a particularly close election and that President-Elect Biden will be inaugurated on January 20. Their fantasy narrative has spiraled further and further from reality, and it builds upon years of sown resentments. Now we’re seeing the consequences, whipped up into a violent crescendo."

This is what comes of electing a sociopathic con man. What a fitting end: a disgraceful finale to the worst President in US history. To the millions who voted him into office, the 40% of Americans who supported him through four long years, and all the 70+ million people who voted for him: let this be your legacy. You’re responsible for this. You’re complicit in this. The damage done to the future of the country and the world over the last four years is unforgivable and unforgettable. We’ve become a global embarrassment.

But despite the best efforts to run this country into the ground and, through foreign policy, nuclear weapons policy, and climate change policy, the rest of the world, there were more rational people than not.

We now have the presidency, the house and the senate. The healing and rebuilding begins. We have much work to do, and have learned hard lessons — from 40 years of neoliberal policies, an economic crash, a leader who turned his back on us (Obama) as we were sleeping, and now four years of destruction and degeneration. We can’t repeat these mistakes again.

Heidegger’s version of this integration between feeling and thought is the equiprimordiality of Befindlichkeit ( attunement) and Understanding. — Joshs

Heidegger wrote:
“ In terms of fundamental ontology it can also be expressed by saying that all understanding is
essentially related to an affective self-finding which belongs to understanding itself. To be affectively self-finding is the formal structure of what we call mood, passion, affect, and the like, which are constitutive for all comportment toward beings, although they do not by themselves alone make such comportment possible but always only in one with understanding, which gives its light to each mood, each passion, each affect. Being itself, if indeed we understand it, must somehow or other be projected upon something. This does not mean that in this projection being must be objectively apprehended or interpreted and defined, conceptually comprehended, as something objectively apprehended. Being is projected upon something from which it becomes understandable, but in an unobjective way. It is understood as yet pre-
conceptually, without a logos; we therefore call it the pre-ontological understanding of being."(Basic Problems of
Phenomenology) — Joshs

Are you equating understanding and thought (in the sense Heidegger means, in the sense of "apprehension" and "disclosure" [aletheia])? Because otherwise I still fail to see how this relates to the above quotation of yours, to which I initially referred. What Heidegger is talking about here is the pre-ontological (pre-theoretical) understanding of being.

I don't think Joshs is misinterpreting Heidegger by claiming attunement and understanding are equiprimordial. — fdrake

In my translation it's "state of mind" -- but regardless, I don't see how this relates to "thinking and feeling" being integrated. What Heidegger is talking about here is one aspect of being-in-the-world, namely "being-in," of which understanding and state-of-mind are two constitutive "ways." This is on the way to re-interpreting it all once again as care (Sorge), and then care as temporality. All very interesting, but I still don't see how any of this is related to Joshs' post.

Heidegger’s version of this integration between feeling and thought is the equiprimordiality of Befindlichkeit ( attunement) and Understanding. — Joshs

This really doesn't make much sense I'm afraid.
— Xtrix

You mean in Heideggerese or in normal english? I think it makes good sense in Heideggerese. — fdrake

Not really. Where is the equiprimordiality of attunement and understanding to which Josh is referring -- in Being and Time or anywhere else? And how does it reduce to something like "feeling and thought" being integrated? Heidegger never talks like that. But what does it mean anyway? Is it simply saying that the mind/body and subject/object dichotomy is a construction of the West that we can go beyond? Alright, fine. Say that, then. Heidegger actually says that. The rest is just interpretation.

Incidentally, your quote of Heidegger seems unrelated to what you're saying. There he's in the middle of discussing the meaning of phenomenology.

No, one plays less than rationally all the time, in chess and in poker. Why? Because if you can tell, from experience, intuition, instinct, etc., that the other player is bad and in what ways he's bad, you can very easily take advantage of it by making moves that are sub-optimal, even bad. That's not playing like a computer would play, which is completely based on logic but has no clue about their opponents.

I would never use the scholar's mate against a good player, for instance. Against a child, yes. A computer, however, would not. To play a child the way a computer would is to be way too rational/logical/theoretical about the game.

You can most certainly be too rational in chess. And in poker, for that matter.

Heidegger’s version of this integration between feeling and thought is the equiprimordiality of Befindlichkeit ( attunement) and Understanding. — Joshs

This really doesn't make much sense I'm afraid.

This seems an interesting question. One way to approach the question could be to consider that on a global scale the average American consumer is an economic elite. How we regard our wealth in regards to the very many around the world who have so much less might provide some insight in to the mindset of the American top 1%. — Hippyhead

I imagine it would, but then again the top 1% (and remember, here I'm really meaning the top 0.1%) are very different than the average American consumer, who (like you mentioned) themselves are already quite privileged when compared to those in the rest of the world.

The people who control the companies that control the world are human beings as well, but with a unique circumstance: they're part of a club, a tradition. This tradition is one of true power in the sense of actual control over decisions on a national and international level. This tradition has many manifestations -- there have been ruling classes and elites for millennia -- but currently it appears as the corporation. This represents big business.

I think an example is helpful: Amazon. (You could take Facebook or Google or JP Morgan or Walt Disney or one of the fortune 500 companies, they all operate basically the same way.)

As a corporation they function and have attained their status in a system of rules and rights -- e.g., the idea of private property, ownership, corporation as legal "person," private profit, etc. -- and function within this system. They not only have control over people who work for them (amounting to millions of people), but the families, friends, and communities of which these people are connected. They own the major media, have the resources to both lobby ("influence") government for favorable legislation and bribe ("contribute to") politicians.

All of this is easy to see, and right on the surface. Takes a few minutes to think it through, and I think most Americans take it for granted.

So what's the point of me reviewing the obvious? Because if these companies essentially run the world, then the people running the companies is where we should be focused -- and are the topic of this thread. They are the owners of these companies, and make all the decisions about how to run the company. They appoint the administration, from the CEO on down the executive and managerial chain, and decide what to do with the profits. Specifically, they are the major shareholders.

And here a little knowledge about how a corporation operates is important, as is a little acquaintance with how stocks work. But otherwise it's fairly obvious what group makes the important decisions in a corporation. Perhaps there's 10-20 people on the board of directors, representing these major shareholders, and a handful of others. Add them up, maybe 50-100 people run any one of these Fortune 500 companies.

Add all the companies together, and you're looking at a number in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. That's not 1% of the global population. That's not even 1% of the American population. There's about 328 million people in the United States. 1% of that is 3.2 million. We're talking about tens of thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands tops, who control the world by controlling the corporations. 0.1% would take us to 320 thousand, which itself seems too high, but is at least closer to what one would expect -- at least in the United States.

When you start asking questions about THAT group, comparisons to average Americans just don't seem to fly.